Villain hasn't raised a flop c-bet before (0 out of 7 opportunities)

Winning Poker Network (Yatahay) - $0.25 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

BB: 121.72 BB (VPIP: 16.25, PFR: 13.75, 3Bet Preflop: 7.14, Hands: 82)
UTG: 100 BB (VPIP: 15.29, PFR: 11.18, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 176)
MP: 92.28 BB (VPIP: 17.20, PFR: 8.60, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 101)
Hero (CO): 179.6 BB
BTN: 108.76 BB (VPIP: 22.49, PFR: 15.31, 3Bet Preflop: 11.46, Hands: 217)
SB: 148.72 BB (VPIP: 17.85, PFR: 12.46, 3Bet Preflop: 9.09, Hands: 307)

SB posts SB 0.4 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.4 BB) Hero has K K

fold, fold, Hero raises to 2.4 BB, BTN calls 2.4 BB, fold, fold

Flop: (6.2 BB, 2 players) T 6 4
Hero bets 2.4 BB, BTN raises to 8 BB, Hero calls 5.6 BB

Turn: (22.2 BB, 2 players) 5
Hero checks, BTN bets 12 BB, fold,
'
I sized my c-bet because I thought the board looked dry, but now I realize that 87s is open-ended and 98s and 97s are gutshots. Villain fired their second barrel on the turn on a card that didn't look too good to me. I didn't hold the K, so I didn't block any backdoor flush draws.

Might as well fold flop if you're gonna fold turn.

That is quite a bad turn but your small bet may induce aggression from lots of gutters maybe even a spazzy played AT, i think a lot of players 3b TT pre so usually villain is repping 44 66 64s which is 8 combos if he can have 64s and flat pre well he can have 75s 89s 79s 78s, the turn completes the most obvious draw but there is still plenty of hands you beat that will take this line not to mention how bluffable you are if you fold kings here turns a call and there are some rivers we can fold on but most rivers will likely be a call too.... Sometimes he will show you a set and that is what you call a cooler gg

It's ok to lose a pot.

What range do you think you're playing against given flop raise?
How good a hand is yours in that spot, in comparison to your range?

Sometimes you hate life, but gotta call. If you're folding kings here you're getting crushed by LAGs - and he's not wild but the most active on the table so far.

ch/c flop. shouldn't be betting much on this texture, and i even think checking 100% of range is a reasonable simplification.

ap i call turn.

I disagree I think we should be betting this flop frequently , against a reg I'd like a small sizing , against a weaker player we can be unbalanced and start betting larger with our value hands and smaller with bluffs.

Not folding turn. I'm calling and re-evaluate on river

T64r with an IP caller is a pretty stabdard range check IMO. Exploitatively you can have an expanded betting range if you think IP is fishy and flats way too wide otb, but vs. a good player you should be doing a lot of checking in a "close-to-GTO" strategy.

When regs flat behind me, I x a lot on dry boards in SRP's.

If hero ranges are too well defined, vil can raise you since you have almost no Tx in your range. If KK gets check-folded on scary turn its even better.

I am really baffled by the nitty stats at this table, but ACR was always nit infested.

I can understand that the action and the board on the turn are unfavorable, but I really can not comprehend this level of TAG seems overall excessive and highly exploitable. Are there literally no sophisticated LAG players left in ACR?

At this table, with the BTN three-betting so much, for a cutoff open I am going to have TT, ATo, ATs-JTs, and T9s. BTN's presence is going to force me to drop all the other offsuit T-broadways, but I wouldn't describe what's left as "almost no Tx."

In my experience, this is typical for a table full of Beast grinders. I try to table-select for at least one juicy player, but sometimes I wind up at a a table like this for a short while.

I think they play higher.

high freq X otf with our range but not sure if simplifying to X 100% is good. It's not that hard to play a cbet strat of good backdoor stuff + our more vulnerable value hands like JJ,QQ, AT.

Interesting that even gutters with bdfd are mostly x'ing flop.

We are playing a 15% flop xr, to provide some context. (That's with IP having a 40% flop size only, though).

So even though we're checking flop a lot it's not like our range is so brutalized relative to BTN on this board. (If it were, then we wouldn't be able to have much of a xr range, is what I'm thinking).

+1 well said, nice analysis.

Range check flop, as played, call turn, his sizing indicates a very common sizing tell among weak players, specially with the FD OTT, so he is very likely to have a draw or a mergy valuebet like Tx that will check back OTR. Jamming turn vs a whale is a decent play also because your hand will look loke a draw.

This. With your line I def like folding river better if we fold. Do we have bet stats for vil?

I love PIO Solver responses. Just crushes every response, thanks.

What did you learn from that that you can actually implement into your game? I'm genuinely asking because I think PIO is very meh considering we're facing very suboptimal playing people. For instance, not many people are betting this flop for 40% and that's the entire basis of the conclusion. I'm sure the flatting range is very off as well.

ftr, I was very pro PIO for a while but soured on it when I looked into buying it and how it actually works.

I personally dont own PIO Solver but I am looking into getting it. From this hand alone I learned i need a much stronger checking range on board textures that are dry and against a strong flatting range pf.

There's definitely more optimal lines since we are playing against bad opposition but that also leaves you open to getting exploited so id rather learn the optimal lines against good competition.

Checking flop vs microstakes fish with an overpair is a HUGE mistake in my opinion.

Every player at microstakes is not some fish that is incapable of hand reading. look at villains stats, his preflop stats are solid.

What conclusion? I think we are just exploring and discussing how to play our range on this board, and working to come up with a general approach based on the equity distributions observed on this board texture.

Re: 40%, not sure exactly what the pool is doing on this board, some people are stabbing bigger like up to 65%, others are splitting exploitatively and betting 30-40% with middle pairs/pps below the T, but personally I simplify to just bet my entire betting range for the same size, and I think 40% is good for that spot and kind of standard among many (better) regs (lol complimenting myself), bc the board is quite good for us and OOP has to xf a lot, so even 40% puts OOP's OCs w/o bdfd in a difficult spot already, KQ stuff has to xf, AJ has an annoying meh xc or whatever. Basically just going for efficiency as far as (folds we get/dollar invested) and from that standpoint I think 40% is optimal 60% given the ranges.

I also don't know wth I'm doing w/Pio sometimes but in general I think in poker we are playing 1) a certain baseline strategy and adjusting that strategy based on observations of 2) the opponent 2a) the player pool and Pio helps you with 1) to not have a ****ty baseline strategy.
Many regs are just cbetting like 75% on this board which probably isn't terrible given the pool doesn't raise enough IP but it's pretty far from correct and thus can't be too good.
In conditions of uncertainty about 2) and 2a), having a good baseline strategy kind of has amplified relevance in your overall profitability bc your approach is mainly relying on the baseline strategy lacking other reads.

More simply stated, I get that we don't know the ranges, and we don't know opponent's approach, but Pio is teaching us which strategies are likely to NOT BE GOOD in information vacuums, so we can NOT DO THOSE. lol


You can also use Nodelocking feature to drill down on specific tendencies of 2) and 2a) that you have directly observed or have commonly observed in the field.
There are some things Pio suggests doing that NOBODY is doing, like e.g. on high card monotone textures like KJ8hhh Pio is triple barreling a few combos like 54dd 64cc, and you can node lock to remove those and then see what you actually need to call down with given they never have those hands. So you can certainly tweak your solutions in the most obvious of spots to AVOID results that deviate so largely from how things should actually get played IRL that they make Pio seem useless.


You also should be using Pio to drill yourself on common flop spots, e.g. BB-BTN flop defends, are we xc'ing Ah6 on 772hxx, or T8dd on J63dxx, etc., bc on flops, when ranges are still wide open, you can't be doing too much explo stuff (whereas on rivers you can do a wide array of explo folds and stuff vs. most populations), so you can instantly and confidently improve your approach just by knowing more spots on flops/turns. Again it's all about knowing the baseline strategy, so when you have an opponent opening 40% OTB, you can xf some of the most borderline defends, when they're opening 50% you play GTO, and 60% you maybe call a little wider and/or xr more or something like that. But if you don't know what the baseline is then where are you? What is the alternative to knowing baseline strategies, to guess and assume?

maybe this helps?

Nah, I’m not folding my KK for a 1/2 pot bet. You can put that in the hud, 100/100 opportunities.

Preflop is good. Flop is good too. I like the bet/call and I like the small sizing too, given how dry the board is (yes 87s is a double gutter, but that's only 4 combos).

Turn I'm definitely x/calling. I'd expect villain to bet much bigger (closer to pot) if he had a set or better. There really aren't that many combos we lose to (13 combos of realistic sets+straights), and he could be making a weird play with a hand like 99 or ATs.

I'd get sticky on most rivers too, unless villain bets 70%+ pot, or unless an Ace or a Ten comes.