7 handed, I raise in the HJ (third to act) with A5. CO calls, SB and BB call.

Four of us see a flop of KQ7.

It checks to me and I continuation bet. CO raises. He is a winning pro. SB folds, BB folds. I call.

Turn is J.

I check call.

River misses me… 6.

I check, opponent bets, I fold.

Once CO raises the flop, is it ok to call flop and check call turn hoping to hit a diamond by the river, otherwise fold? Any reason to re-raise the flop and take back the lead?

My plan on a turn diamond would be to check raise, and to lead out on any river diamond regardless.

This is one of those out-of-position spots where I don’t love check-calling and check folding when I miss, or check-calling and betting rivers when I hit.

I think the line you took is best. I would actually c/r most diamond rivers (but fine to donk board pairing diamonds or the Td, etc.).

winning pros dont flat the cutoff... or much if ever.
hand looks fine.. fwiw.

His range is much weaker than yours on this flop and turn. I think not fighting for it is criminal with this combo

what would you advocate 3 bet barrel? there are not many hands ace high has nipped after the hook rolls off on the turn. maybe you could c.r. turn against some players ? usually see the sigh call down with j10 when i do that.

I’m not so sure about this. He raised into three people, we have the most obvious draw and are blocking diamonds so he likely has some sort of made hand. Plus he has position. People don’t fold pairs.

You can say “people don’t fold pairs” as an exploitative argument. Fine sure I don’t agree but that’s your call. You can’t say “I’m not so sure about this (range advantage)” that’s just wrong. We can have AA,AK,KK,QQ and he can’t. That’s huge. Plus once that turn hits we have AT way more than him based on the action.

You are certainly right with range advantage. But this turn improves a ton of his cold call/raise range. Kq k9 kt, qj etc

I play in a few show downy game. This exact board came up the other day and the guy called a c/r and a river bet with a naked queen (lol sample size)

I think you played it fine. The problem with KQxJ boards is that they're hitting a cutoff flatter a lot of the time, especially after they call the flop bet.

I don't think your bet is getting many folds, and I think you're getting raised a fair amount of time. Even if you don't get raised, if they call the turn, they're very likely calling any river.

They also probably won't put you on diamonds, so you can likely successfully check raise river if you hit.

If it were a blank instead of a jack, I would advocate betting the turn.

As it came down, you played it right.

The J on the turn makes it pretty unlikely for him to fold for 1 more bet to a c/r but if he has something like KT and calls that one more bet, it's going to be a pretty lousy spot for him on the river. I wouldn't say it's likely to get a fold, but it's not unheard of. I would, though, think it's likely for them to fold hands like QTdd, JTdd, J9dd etc to the river bet.

How much of their range is that? The diamond draws that paired are about 5 combos worth vs 30ish combos of KQ/KJ/KT which is probably not enough. But sometimes they fold KT. There're also oddball hands mixed in there too that might fold immediately to the raise. It's also a big benefit when you do this against weaker diamond draws that haven't paired, since if you take a passive line you're likely going to check/fold the river.

It would take a very stubborn player to call off on the river with JTdd ish hands so it's very rarely going to be a complete fail. In most cases it'll be a small loss because they don't fold quite enough or a small gain in that they fold slightly too often.

are we fighting on the flop or the turn ?

I wonder how a turn checkraise w/ diamonds here balances out vs. our AT, T9s, QJ, or slowplayed made hands? Seems like it might be reasonable to go for it on this particular turn card. Like others have said, some people might bet/call the turn with QT or JT, then fold the river unimproved.

You'll be laying him 11:1 on the river and so you would want your ratio of value to bluffs to be somewhere in that ballpark

You will usually play this way with ATo, ATs, KJo, KJs.... sometimes this way with T9s, KK, QQ, 77, KQo, KQs, QJs, QJo.

Then let's start by assuming for simplicity that you open all the suited aces. Would it be balanced to bluff ALL of the ace high diamond draws that haven't paired?

AT has 16 combos, KJ has 9 combos. KQs/KQs are 9 and 9 (discounted by half for 9), KK/QQ/77/JJ are three a piece, discounted by about half for 6, QJs/QJ are 2 and 9 (discounted by 75% imo) so about 3, … somewhere around 40-50 combos.

Alternatively you have 6 combos of suited ace high diamonds that haven't paired from A2/3/4/5//8/9.


So no, it would not be balanced to bluff all of them. If you decided that ace high diamond draws that're unpaired are the best possible hands to bluff with, you might then randomize to bluff with 2/3rds of the time, and 1/3rd of the time to just call. Or maybe substitute one of them for a hand like T8dd. but that's assuming you even open A2s in the hijack, which you may not, and if A5s is one of the worst suited aces you open, then it's for sure an optimal bluff.


You can't crunch these numbers on the fly so if you wanted to use a basic heuristic, just figure out which hand has the highest draw value and the lowest showdown value, and that hand is probably an optimal bluff. The same can't be said in NL since being blown off your hand is an actual possibility and you don't want to potentially have to raise/fold your high equity draws, but in limit this is a good approach.

and to clarify... best equity / worst showdown is somewhat ambiguous since rarely will a hand satisfy both those criteria. so you should first constrain your options to hands that have the lowest chance of winning at showdown, either because you're never going to win if the river goes check/check, or because you will end up check/folding the river due to only beating bluffs and having blockers to some of his likely bluffs.

You don't, for instance, want to raise the turn with AJdd over a hand like A5dd since, if you had AJdd, some of the time when you call, the river goes check/check and you have the best hand anyways (against something like JT or 76dd).

You also don't want to choose 54dd over A5dd because the opponent should never check back a hand that you beat in either case, and for both hands you should be check/folding to the river bet. You might, then, consider these to be identical in terms of their showdown value - in which case you should err on the side of choosing the higher equity one to bluff with.

Q1). Would you 3 bet flop low frequency % of time once it gets HU on flop?

Q2). Would you c/r turn low frequency % of time once that turn his giving us more outs?

Personally, I play as same as OP but I play bad uncreative TAG.

Based on, equity, game history vs bad TAG villain, GTO, I argue it should be correct to 3 bet flop low frequency & c/r turn low frequency %.

No idea what that % is nor if that's correct but most crusher LAGTAG generally mix it up on spots like this. Especially vs bad TAG villain that cold called pf in CO vs HERO HJ open pfr.

Someone want to give me a cold call range for villain?

It doesnt much matter, either is fine.

If you havent re-raised the flop, go ahead and x/R this turn if you want to achieve any kind of balance to your AT/JJ value x/Rs. This combo is now the strongest draw that you can possibly hold in this spot and it doesnt block the weaker holdings villain may and should have in his range.

A x/R on the turn is super-scary, and frankly, most players are severely underbluffy here. OP says the villain is a winning pro. Well if that is true he should recognize this fact and be folding some combos of his range.

However, if you have the perfect read that villain wont ever fold a hand this deep into the hand/getting these odds and will only hold made hands given his line so far, by all means go ahead and play it passively.

Thank you very much for the prompt reply.

A5s+, ATo, K9s+, KTo+, Q9s+, QTo+, 76s+, JTo+, T8s+, 22-99 is potential cold call range I can think of.

Probably too conservative or optimistic hand range though. Guess I'll post in low stakes board what 3 bet range should be as villain which for me in a conservative range probably KQs+, 77+, AJs+, AQo+ but those are way too conservative and generally way more hands I 3bet as villain unless HERO is a giant NIT TAG.

He shouldn’t have s cold calling range in this spot

+1

I agree. Even if villain in CO is a winning pro based on OP, some winning pros play subpar / atrocious pf.

I argue as soon as a winning pro cold calls pf in CO vs HJ pfr by OP, I'd label winning pro as bad TAG if I was OP.

I'd 3 bet flop low % of time and c/r turn low % of time. Depends on my image vs villain and game history vs villain. Still not sure if that's correct in real time or just based on equity and GTO.

I went ahead and ran it in solver - 3 bets flop with some Ax of diamonds but calls more. Donks some on this turn card including our hand 1/3 of the time! Didn’t expect that. If it checks turn it CRs 20% otherwise it plays it like OP did. It prefers to bluff CR turn with A9 and A8 diamonds (I would guess they block straights better)

Thank you very much for this.

Donking turn some makes sense in theory to me based on EV. I almost rarely donk turn unless bet -> 3 betting so great to know turn donk should be done for draw hands without blockers. C/R turn low % but only with blockers.

I'm 3 towning flop and barreling. Your range smashes this board.

You can improve or you don't and it gets through, great.

If you brick and he calls down, show it so people know you're capable of going HAM with a draw (will help get you paid when you have it).

Also I wouldn't mind getting snapped off and showing just to know WTF a winning pro flats in the CO with! Unless he flatted AA/KK/QQ to mess with another reg which does happen. People get bored playing live poker with the same jabronis day in and day out.

After some thought: He 100% has QT of diamonds and is trying to push you off AQ.