I'm participating in a conversation about a heads up hand and the other participants seem to be in consensus but I am not so convinced.
believe it's nl25 about 100bb effective.

Hero is bb with KK, button opens and hero 3 bets, button flat calls.
Flop comes K73 with two diamonds.

one school of thought is; super safe spot to slow play it will be tough for villain to have hands that can call 3 bets so we should check the flop.

the other school is; this is a board we will want to bet a lot of our range on, we can get called by worse, we want to create as big a pot as possible/get stacks in by riv, a third diamond could kill action and mostly, we have top set heads up on a board that looks like an obvious spot to c-bet our range.


If more detail is required than I have given to give a meaningful answer then I am already wrong. I don't wanna say which way I am leaning but I will say I am leaning pretty hard and think this is trivial.

What should we typically do in a spot like this?

i think if you have the Kd slowplaying is even more correct.

even without the Kd this spot should be slowplayed like 65% of the time

why?
why do we need to have slow plays on a board we are going to want to bet most of our range on?
not arguing just asking.

Don't we want to bet as much of our air on this flop as we can?
Aren't we going to want to semi bluff like all our draws on King rag rag?
Can't we bet for thin value with a LOT of our range because our 3 bet pocket pairs are going to mostly be like 88+ and 7x hands are second pair? And because the diamond draw is open?
I want to c-bet this flop SO OFTEN and I don't know what hands I really want to check and call with. I feel like we are better off betting hands like 88 in this spot because of the draws and the 7x combos and how good the board looks for us to bluff on.

Obviously we aren't just gonna bet everything BUT the nuts. And we are going to want to bet a ton of hands here. I just don't know what this slow play is doing for us.

I would understand if it was a flop like Ac9d3s and we were gonna want to check and call a lot of hands like TT-KK that we would maybe want to uncap our checking range.

Well, before a huge strategy discussion maybe I should wait and see if any kind of consensus forms.

I guess the game is up, I thought this was the thickest value ever and the more interesting question was just how to size it.

Thanks for responding.

Who else?

Slow play or c-bet K73 two tone with KK as pre-flop 3 bettor OOP HU?

use pokerstove and find out yourself.

dont want to be a dick, but it will answer all your arguments and questions.

You want to cbet your range with small sizing

Spewmachine is right, Donovan has solid thoughts, so what to do?...
to bet out or to slowplay?...
to extract max value from this spot or to stay balanced?...
it is so tough to figure out what is the truth in this world!!!...
Arghhh...We hate it so much!!!...

Cmon, guys, it all DEPENDS. However, just go from the simplest thoughts - don't make it complicated: if a villain plays out his cards and folds anyway - slowplay, but bet your air; if he is watching your a$$ - cbet most of the time if he is on a suspect. The more skill villain has - stay more balanced. Simple, right?

To bet or not? It depends mainly on YOUR style and then do an adjustment on the villain's mind, but don't outplay yourself. Concentrate on spots that build your WR mostly, and than improve on other spots slowly. And the luck will come your way!

maybe i should drop a sentence to answer.

since villian will never have a set of Kings here, you dont need to have one in your betting range.

you dont have to be balanced in spots where villian isnt.

since poker can be described as a signal game, i suggest you look up this chapter in a game theory book to get a better idea about balancing.

many people confuse the nash equilibrium with things that have nothing to do with the game but their asthetic values or subjective ideas how the game should be.

By the same logic we don't ever need to be balanced because we are always eliminating potential holdings from villain's range based on our 2 cards.

What you're saying doesn't make sense.

i think you confuse here a range discussion vs an actual hand discussion.

i suggest you think about it again.

if i have the nutflush my opponent of course cant have it, but i wont have this information if i dont have the nut flush
if i know my opponent never has the top set even if i dont have it, this is a diffrent kind of situation.

^^our goal is not to play GTO, but to exploit villain. I suggest you keep reading your awesome GTO books and stop confusing unadvanced players. Let them understand basics first and play out from there. As I've stated above, it all depends.

Here's few basics examples:
1)In example, if villain sees me as a very aggressive player who 3bets 30%+lifetime, I must NOT to slowplay set of kings most of the time and bet out and induce spazzes and floats. If he is a NIT or ABC player, I'll slowplay them mostly. If he's a general station fish, obviously, you bet out most of the time.
2)If villain gives you credit, then you slowplay more often.

Simple.

the only person you will exploit by betting top set on a dry board is mostly yourself.

Whatching how villains cry time after time after spazzing out and floating how do I have a hand always beating them (be it 3rd pair or top set of kings) when i 3bet 30% is totally suitable for me.
Keep playing GTO and slowplaying ZIXTY FIVE PERRRRCENT, champ.

why should betting more likely induce spazz than checking?

the reason you check is that you hope villian trys to fire 3 barrels with air or hits some kind of draw or pair on the turn.

without a King villian is unlikely to pay off 3-barrels, and if he has a FD, he most of the time will bet himself. villain wont raise all his FD if we bet also.

^^because most regs at low stakes that I've played against think I'm so FOS. Those who are more egoish and agro, they spazz out easily, other ones try to float and take it away or hope they are good lol and not bluffing if i check, thus making slowplay not so juicy. Slowplaying makes sense in a vacuum, for example if villain doesn't know me than I'll slowplay.
If you know that villain will barrel air with high frequency - obviously, check it to him. Let him do the job. About FD - it's not a large part of villain's 3b defending range. We are trying to maximize our line against his whole range.

the FD is the only hand that can call more than one barrel on this board realistically. a bare 7 will fold alot of turns, aswell as ace-high

and again, the spazzout is more likely to happen if you check.

if you are an aggressive player people are less likely to float you, and if they bluffraise, they are done with the hand after you b/c or b/3b most of the time.

once in a blue moon you get it in against a FD on the flop or someone will barrel against b/3b or b/c but for that they have to be on megatilt.

Villains at low stakes overplay hands hard. They are not folding. They do float. They do spazz out. They do not shut down easily. I'm not talking about nits and ABC players now.
As long as they stay in a game with any pair/2p/lower sets/FD/str8draw/gutshot/backdoors like AdXx/AxTd I'm gonna keep firing. The most juicy spazztards I've met are at NL100, making me 19bb/100 profits lifetime.

Once again, I'm not advocating to not slowplay in general. I reinforce my statement - it all DEPENDS!

you might want to know though that the best poker AI for NL HU is mostly slowplaying top set on dryish boards, but fastplaying lower sets.

the poker AI though has been trained against itself though, but it preforms very good against humans.

you might want to know though that the best poker AI for NL HU is not even close to my agression level, thus not giving extra incentive for a Doug's team to spazz out and float him
And he cbets around 65% overall.

Now I'm pretty sure that you are just trolling. Thus, I'm out. GL with your GTO endevour!

I do believe that it can make a lot of sense to slow play top set on dry boards, or to just c-bet most of your range with a small sizing. Both of those answers do make some sense to me and they do seem to mostly depend on my or "hero's" overall strategy.
What I was really getting to here was that I was in a discussion where I said (see my post above) all that stuff. And i was just kinda waved off like it was not a stylistic thing or that it was a close spot where there was more than one good strategy or even that it depended a lot on the villain.
It seemed everyone else in the discussion had reached a consensus that it simply IS a good idea to default check top set on a board like this.

And, just for whatever it's worth, I don't think that is the driest board. I think the fact that it is a two tone board gives me three reasons to bet that wouldn't be there otherwise; get value from flush draws, get value before the third flush card comes in and kills my action, and because I can have flush draws in my betting range.
I don't think that it's a very wet or volatile flop but any time there is a flush draw open it adds at least a few combos of hands that can pay you, a few combos of hands you can be bluffing with, and creates a few combos of hands that will give you good action only before a three flush shows up (the flush draws and the mediocre bluff catchers that will fold once the three flush hits but call while you can still rep draws).

Granted a flop like 875r could be more volatile and a flop like 8s7s5d def IS more volatile but I, personally, believe there has been an over correction about the presence of flush draws. We went from most players putting way too much weight on the two tone flop to a state where I think people under appreciate it's significance.

I also don't wanna be a dick, or disrespectful, but I'm not sure how pokerstove would answer this for me. (Or how to get pokerstove these days, did you man equilab?)

An equity calculator is always helpful when trying to figure these spots out but its not as if i can put into "poker stove"; "should I bet my KK in this spot?"

I mean, i realize I'm crushing him to shreds but it's a bit less clear if that means to c-bet for value or to use my hand as a slow play.

If you have some tricks or tips on how to go about solving this with an equity calculator I would be interested in knowing them.

yes, you are crushing him with your betting range, even if you never bet your top set.

i think the problem with betting is that there are not enough hands you can get value from. he will call with most hands just one street or no street at all.

so you shouldnt be concerned about a card killing your action, but more hope that you check and the turn gives you action.

at least i play this spot this way

Doesnt playing hand straight up (cbetting) due to the flush draw agaisnt a unknown and otherwise wide range outweigh everything if we genuinely cant make a rational argument for a read against opp...For ex. If we check and flush card hits,we now know we can no longer play for a monster pot on river...aka whether we bet or check and opp now becomes active were setting ourselves up for disaster by having to place so much weight on a opp having a flush the bigger the pot gets let alone check calling two* barrels (turn AND river) (all BC we out readless and got cute)...This SUCKS granted we had top set..rite? or fish thinking

Check is so much better on average for the following reasons:
1. We block tons of worse hands.
2. we don't really deny equiity against a FD, because its correct for it to call most sizings.
its way better to bet the turn if we want to target the FD, because then it is incorrect for him to call with it.
3. we induce tons of hands to take a stab on the flop/turn (not making him fold nearly as many air as if we had bet)
4. he has usually only a couple of FD combos in his range

Agree here.. and yes for sure depends

My playing style is very loose agg and I see lots of spews in weird spots as villians try to make weird adjustments and rationalize themselves into making not say rational decisions. I have to admit I also see this in myself a lot and is a big leak of mine as I try to master the loose/agg style.

So depending on how loose/agg I have been in the match I could easily three barrel this board and be called down by a 7. There will be times where I like checking also as per the reasons also stated.

In a vacuum I'm really not sure

+1