Tighish villain limps in MP, I raise AJo in late position, BB comes along for the ride.

Flop is JT4

MP Donks, I raise, bb folds.


Turn 7

He check calls

river 9

He checks

it's not that thin unless you know he tends to play draws that way

Minus reads / play history vs villain, I would bet call the river but I play bad.

Did also not predict ranges and run hot cold equity either.

I played with him for an hour. I assume can agree that bet/call is incorrect?

If he raises river for value, there are no word hands in his range. So we’d hope he has dmsort of weird kj bluff deal

Bet/fold seems optimal unless you can convince yourself with some kind of live read that he's bluffing often enough

Given the description villain is tight, I am ok checking back here. If he is tight and capable of hero folding better made hands than hero on this card, it's not clear.

I generally don't expect villains to balance their value donkbets with semibluff donkbets, so I lean towards bet/fold.

I thought this was an easy bet/fold but a player I really respect looked at me like I had 6 heads when I didnt check back

What worse will call
What better will call

Prolly can elim some k/r candidates since many will donk out. But even then ...

Feels like # of better will call > # of worse will call

This was the other player’s point, but there has to be a fair number of jacks and tens in his range

I guess worse case scenario he limps all qt (12) kt (12) at (9) jq (8) jk (8), bets out on the flop with all of them, not k/r straights or flushes, and it’s just a matter of him pegging you on exactly ak aq qk 55 66 etc and pays off.

After thinking about this more, I agree there isn’t too many 2p combos (like 2 of each suited middling cards). This line isn’t as extreme as I thought as there is room for so many worse hands assuming villain is the type to just donk out on the scariest possible card.

I like bet/fold if I think he’ll pay off with tx and has qto in his range. I’d def xb against most tho since I still think it’s a bit optimistic.

I did my best to put villain on a range and ur like 70-30 vs. what I got.

Here's my range for villain --

Offsuit hands - qt, qj, kt, kj, kq, at
Suited hands - t8, t9, j8, j9, q8, q9, qt, qj, k8, k9, kt, kj
Pairs - 22, 33, 55, 66

And forgot a bunch of diamond only combos, so just added these - a8, a6-a2, k6-k3, q6, 86, 65

ur still ahead 63-37

i still think it's a bit optimistic to include all the Kx and Qx broadway combos in villain's limping range (don't forget to include JTo and 9To which has us beat as well), assume villain will donk any pair on the flop, assume villain will donk all flush and straights on river, and then assume villain will station all the 2nd and under pairs after the scariest river comes

i guess an exact hand like qj kj qt makes a ton of sense given the flop donk and river check, so maybe im being pessimistic and this is much closer to a bet than i think and maybe many villains will station a hand as bad as QT or will even show up with 66. i guess it matters a ton whether QTo and KTo is or isn't in villain's preflop limp range.

i'm trying to think what hand exactly is hero going to ever practically bluff here given the scariest river card (qk got there, flushes got there, oesd got there, low gutshots got there)? I guess qj (although it still beats qt,kt,at)?

No aces?

Villain is described as "tightish" which to me says tons of KJ/QJ/KT/QT/AJ/AT (suited and offsuit) in his range and not much T9o/98o or random diamonds. obviously a more precise read on his limping/raising ranges could change things quickly.

So donking flop range? Kq, JX, TX, q8, flush draws, subtract what he wouldn’t limp

FYI I had black Aj

You can also assume he wouldn’t c/r a hand on the river that he wouldn’t earlier. So no flopped sets.

yup I added a8, a6/5/4/3/2 of diamonds ….

and I added JT/T9/J9 per Tiger's suggestion ….

and we're still ahead 55-45.

Seems an automatic value bet to me. Probably bet/call but could bet/fold if you thought villain incapable of bluffing.

The hands that people call to the river in that game never cease to amaze. Just bet. KJ, QJ, AT are most obvious candidates. But he also shows up here with 66, thinking you have AK or AQ. Just bet it.

You say he is "tightish" but you've only been playing with him for 1 hour--so you can't really know. Just bet.

The great fallacies of sample size math.

Of course you can know after ~40 hands.

I bet-fold this and feel good about it.

It's bugging me I don't agree with a lot of posters and am not understanding why betting is so clear. I get it's tempting to value bet but the flop raise kind of decapitated OP's available bluffing range on the river which reduces the # of value combos he should be betting given the way this hand has played out. If so, wouldn't this make bet-folding ridiculously exploitable? Or do I have it backwards? Top-top should have some show down equity here so why not realize that equity on this gnarly board by simply checking back instead of bet/folding it away? I think I'd rather turn AJ into a 3 bet bluff rather than bet/fold and feel good about it.

I could be totally wrong so comments welcome. I didn't work out how many bluffs OP realistically has here. It just doesn't seem enough to me at first glance. Also, maybe this has nothing to do with whether or not betting is correct?

bet/fold ~ check back

bet/fold >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> bet/call

Just so I understand.. Does AJ really have such limited show down value that we don't care about realizing its equity? I get that most posters here and experts are value hounds. But the reason they can go for thin value is because they'll have an appropriate number of corresponding bluffs to get paid off. It seems to me that OP doesn't have enough bluffs here and is way more weighted towards thin value than monsters making this an ideal board for villain to bluff check-raise. In addition, there has to be at least some region of hands that are not strong enough to value bet yet are too weak to turn into bluffs. If we don't slot AJ into this category which hands do we? KJ, QJ, Q9, K9, AT, KT? Maybe so. I really don't know the answer because I haven't worked it out and my intuition may be very wrong.

I'm not trying to be argumentative. I just learn better when I take an opposing view and let someone point out where I'm being wrong and/or dumb. I'll work it out later and see if I still feel the same. This is a good hand for me to think about

Thanks