Villain is a tag who threebets vs steals fairly consistently.

Poker Stars $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Hold'em - 6 players
2+2 Hand Converter Powered By DeucesCracked

BB: $58.25
UTG: $66.00
MP: $83.25
CO: $42.35
BTN: $89.75
Hero (SB): $50.00

Pre Flop: Hero is SB with K K
1 fold, Hero raises to $1.50, 2 folds, SB raises to $5.50, 1 fold, Hero calls $4

Flop: ($11.50) 9 9 7 (2 players)
SB bets $7, Hero raises to $14, SB calls $7

Turn: ($39.50) A (2 players)
SB bets $30.50 all in, Hero...

If you fold here, what's the worst hand you call with?
If you call here, what's the best hand you're folding?

Thx!

I can't vote either way (at least not honestly) because of the "This is easy, you should" prelude to both answers .

On the flop, we've continued trapping and in the process have nevertheless made ourselves damn close to committed, and in theory it feels like we should be considering ourselves close to committed on that flop (with only 4x the pot in our stack and a strong overpair). But we also encouraged a call from Ax hands and weak draws with our min-raise, and, well, Ax just hit.

SB's tendency to 3-bet frequently versus steals seems a little encouraging, since it suggests he's the type who's looking for a game of chicken. And to some extent the range we're representing seems light on aces, unless the flop min-raise was posturing on our part. But in a way our flop min-raise represents posturing, a draw, or a monster. Meanwhile, there is some chance too that Villain is hoping that ace hit us. And I'm rambling.

At the table, I probably either convince myself that Villain is too untrustworthy and the pot has gotten too big to be folding to a 3/4 pot bet (especially when I would have been willing to go all-in preflop or on the flop if doing that or folding were my only choices), or I tell myself that that 61 BB push on the ace just looks too strong and fold. I doubt I'd make either play every time, so I guess my intuition is telling me it's close. But I'm not even confident about that !

I think the flop minraise is gross, if you're going to minraise anywhere I'd do it preflop, I don't like that either thoough. Make it $20 at least, if you take it down, good result.

Id 4 bet all day long preflop, both because he needs to learn he cant keep 3 betting you, and most importantly because people get insanely ******ed preflop in BvB spots and you are sitting on a gold mine, 4 bet and let him shove with 99, ATs, and a myrid of other hands that wont get the rest of their stack in on lots of scary flops, plus its super vomit worthy when an ace flops and you just flatted KK OOP

I dont like the flop minraise, he either has a hand and is felting, or doesnt have **** and isnt playing back at you because the board is paired and you minraised, and this might scare him off from from felting with A7 or something. And sooooo many turn cards suck from his prospective even if he thinks you are FOS that its really hard to make more money. I would have just c/r shoved


I fold the turn, if he got the balls to shove as a bluff there, more power to him. If he doesnt have an ace, he likely has some other kind of made hand, and people generally really suck at turning made hands into bluffs, so I dont see him now bluffing TT or J7s, often enough that its a profitable call. Lets not forget he could also have a 9, or even just a draw that still has plenty of outs against you. So really hes gotta be stone cold bluffing here a lot, and I just dont think its enough


oh, also agree with the "I cant vote because of the "its easy"" wording

ha, I suck at polls.

For a moment, assume the flop minraise is a misclick or was made with some logical read.

Anyone want to take a stab at the followup questions?

isnt the hand ballsed up or something? one minute hero is SB, then hero isn't. whose hand is which and in which position?

So assuming hero is villain, and I see your hand, which is KK in the SB and you're shoving the ace turn for slightly less than a PSB (this is a lot of assuming...)

It depends on herovillain's postflop play, the flop minraise may suggest TT-KK overpair that fears commitment, or a AQ FD or similar looking to get a good price with equity.

On the turn i think they call any ace, any set, fold TT-KK and fold most OESDs (???). However your bet is strong for an ace. This reminds me a bit of that limit hand where we had a raising war PF and i bet the turn ace after a rag flop and you folded TT. Not easy to make L / NL comparisons, but this rings a bell of that just with deeper bets and stacks.

augh, you caught me Pete.

I was villain in this hand and was playing KQs out of the sb.

Villain in this hand had taggy stats, and so I figured that he could fold the exact range that you described. My obvious mistake was on the flop, though I'm not positive how big of a mistake it was. If a taggy villain threebets a button steal and then minraises a low paired board, I think it's going to be bs or at least a foldable hand a strong enough percentage of the time that autofolding to the minraise is going to be trouble.

The flop is a disaster, as others have gone into, unless our opponent is super-paranoid-bluffy and will either call or shove mega light.

Sitting in our opponent's shoes, what does our hand look like? We could have some suited 9 I suppose, though the minraise is gross even with that - if we want to underrep our hand calling is way better, if we're going to raise might as well make it look like a draw and raise bigger.
The minraise looks most like the cheapest bluff possible,(or cheapest hand protection possible), since virtually no legit hands would benefit from leaving that stack size behind on the turn - draws would hate to have a 3/4 psb left when they miss, 9x would hate to have 3/4 psb left if a "scare" card came, ditto KK etc.

All that said, villain should know that we pretty much never have an ace, and our overall range is something like TT-KK/some bluffs/rare 9s or FH, most of which is going to be scared as crap of the A. So, I'm calling if I bluffed and hit an A, and I'm calling KK, whether I call or fold QQ depends mostly on how many other mediocre made hands I'm making it to the turn with.
Essentially this is a fancy way of saying KK is the top of our range, and if our opponent recognizes that most of our range is weak he can bluff us with impunity unless we call a portion of our range, which should logically be the top.

Alobar had a good point that this steal-resteal situation lends itself to bizarre aggressive play both pre- and post-...the less aggressive your opponents run after the flop the more you can safely fold here, as he pointed out most wont turn pairs into bluffs and there's not much air in his range. I'm used to seeing players take 55/88/gutshot here and cram it in on the turn if they are going to bluff, so game conditions can be an overriding factor.

This is mostly an academic question since myself (and most here) are just never put in this spot, for the specific reason that this SPR is just awful for most of our hands compared to putting more or less in on the flop.

Surf

lol, good lord I feel soooo ****ing stupid. I didnt even notice any of that ****....my reply makes zero sense, lololol

So now that I've been outed, here's what the hand really looked like.

Poker Stars $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Hold'em - 6 players
2+2 Hand Converter Powered By DeucesCracked

BB: $58.25
UTG: $66.00
MP: $83.25
CO: $42.35
BTN: $89.75
Hero (SB): $50.00

Pre Flop: Hero is SB with K Q
1 fold, MP raises to $1.50, 2 folds, Hero raises to $5.50, 1 fold, MP calls $4

Flop: ($11.50) 9 9 7 (2 players)
Hero bets $7, MP raises to $14, Hero calls $7

Turn: ($39.50) A (2 players)
Hero bets $30.50 all in, MP calls $30.50

River: ($100.50) 5 (2 players - 1 is all in)

Guru,

The flop call is going to cause trouble IMO. Hands he's "bluffing" with like 22, AJ can be ahead of you, and our options are extremely limited by a few factors:

-tiny SPR on turn
-we can't rep the board
-our hand rarely improves and is currently unshowdown-able

If he's really out of line shove it in his face on the flop - but he needs to be really out of line to make that even a consideration. If people get to spongy/fight back too much def cut back on cbetting so they end up fighting back into the teeth of a stronger range.

all that said now that you got your perfect turn card shoving is def the best plan, hopefully he lays down a bluff that beats you like a small pair, or a hand like TT that was raising to "see where it's at" on the flop.

Surf

edit: hopefully he has JhTh which he misplayed on the flop.

villain had KK, but I agree the flop call was kind of a stubborn "I don't belive you" thing without a great plan to back it up. I got lucky that I hit a bluff card and unlucky that I overestimated villain's ability to fold KK.

Nice read.

What the?

Hang on...

lol

W/KK I prefer flatting the flop to induce action from draws, low PPs and Ax hands that have 3 outs espeically against a tag. I'd prolly call down the turn too figuring he has TT-QQ often enough to make this call + EV

Hand in questoin - spr is too small to get him to fold, if he were deeper I'd like it better but he's prolly already committed once he makes the flop raise. Also remember that his flop raise is very strong. You 3 bet him pf and he still came over the top of you. You are drawing to a bluff card more often than not b/c his hand range is heavily weighted toward overpairs and maybe the occasional AK. Just fold the flop