Villain is 35/30/11 after 21 hands. He uses reg sizings and hasn't done anything unusual so far. This is his first cold-call.

BB is a 31/0/0 fish after 26 hands.

Ignition - $1 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 5 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

Hero (CO): 89.63 BB
BTN: 99.5 BB
SB: 103.23 BB
BB: 133.86 BB
UTG: 151.08 BB

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has A A
fold, Hero raises to 2.5 BB, BTN calls 2.5 BB, fold, fold

Flop: (6.5 BB, 2 players) 3 7 6
Hero checks, BTN bets 3.09 BB, Hero calls 3.09 BB

Turn: (12.68 BB, 2 players) T
Hero checks, BTN bets 9.04 BB, Hero folds


I strongly suspected that villain was set mining against the fish in the BB. To me, his flop and turn line looked like a set or maybe 54s/76s/98s trying to milk me. So what's the problem? Oh, just that my play is a 10 BB punt in the 50nl General 2.5x sims in GTO Wizard.

Is my exploit justified, or did I go too far?



Thanks for any help!

Hmm doesnt feel right.

it's ass

Villan knows that this runout is very good for his range, he will apply lot of pressure IP with most of his range, never folding turn and probabily bluff catch river. If he has set, that's poker

You're close to the top of your x/c range, he probably thinks you have a lot of Ax, and an overcard hit the turn which is always the best card to bluff at. Folding is crazy unless you have some super soul read maybe in a live game or something.

He can also have some suited aces. As8s and the like may barrel. QhJh if he doesn't 3b every time.

I want to call.

We need results on this one. Agree with the wisdom of the crowd.

Villain could also have pocket pairs that did not make a set. Especially 88 or 99 are really liking that flop. The T is not great for those hands, but they do pick up a gutshot draw. They still have good equity against your range so I could see villain firing a second barrel with them. There are enough hands we beat, IMO, to make this a call. Unless villain is a total nit I can’t see folding this.

Not folding.

Also would recommend looking into a 3rd party software, either JuroJin or IntuitiveTables. Would probably lean towards IntuitiveTables just based on the price.

It's true that button has all the sets, straights and some two pair here, so I do get where you're coming from and the general sentiment is good. Blocking the BDNFD is also good for a fold. But...the clue is in the title...it does seem a little extreme.

Are we presuming that JJ, 99 etc are 3bet off? Doesn't he check back 55/44? This could be a fold-and-say-nada spot, it's probably quite close

I like it. See, yesterday I used an even more extreme variant of this strategy :

€0.10 NL FAST (6 max) - Holdem

BTN: 162.5 BB
SB: 62.5 BB
BB: 225.2 BB
UTG: 134 BB
Hero (MP): 100 BB
CO: 128.7 BB

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has A A

UTG raises to 3 BB, fold, fold, fold, fold, fold

UTG wins 2.5 BB

Hey, a 0EV strategy can't be bad, isn't that what GTO aims for anyway

This is a myth that a lot of regs seem to fall for. Having the Ah is good. It's not even neutral. Thinking it's bad is a pretty big thought process mistake. NFD bluffs are only a small part of the IP betting range here. The Ah gives you higher equity against bluffs (and some value bets) by blocking outs and that's more important than the fact that you block some bluffs.

This is a great post and something I still struggle with.

Thanks.

Axhh hands don't bluff river that often which makes it higher EV to have A in our hand because BU is more likely to bluff river.

Fwiw, I almost titled this post "Tariq Haji mode activated" because I got the idea from him. In his RIO videos, he emphasizes more than once that the regs in this pool are loaded with small pocket pairs when they cold-call in this spot. I remember seeing him check-fold the flop with KQ on something like K53 rainbow in one of his vids against an obvious reg. He was right.

Against a reg who only does this when he is set mining, we might be up against a set 100% of the time against these sizings.

just so i understand, you did this in an anonymous pool bc he might only be set mining when he calls the button bc u saw it in a rio video? his sizing doesnt even look polarized

i think if you get positive feedback from being "right" in this spot its going to do way more harm to your game long term. its just so many assumptions based on nothing.

can you elaborate on the tariq hand? how do u know he was right?

I am not a RIO member right now so I can't pull up the hand. But Tariq was playing on Boniton, so he was able to show us that villain had a set in his post-session review. He was right and felt that the spot was important enough to break down in detail after the live play. I believe that the villain was just a BTN with reg stats at either 100 or 200nl. Tariq also did a video on BTN cold-calling ranges on Bonition using his database soon after that backed up his idea.

Tariq makes a lot of wild hero folds in his videos that work well for him, but they can be difficult to emulate.

To me, villain's sizings look incredibly milky. I wouldn't expect a reg to use these sizings as a bluff. Choosing 1/2 instead of 1/3 or a big bet jumped out at me. And on the turn, I felt like he was just trying to go as big as he could go without scaring me. Again, I felt like a bluff might go bigger.

Can we get results for this hand?

It would be sweet if you were right!

c-c-c-cALLIN

Not good. It looks similar to Tariq hand but it's not. KQ is not a pure bluff catcher but it's close to it beating only a few potential value bets (KJs and KTs and splitting with KQ) still it's a huge fold but in this case we just beat too many value bet to consider folding.


@DDP - Something tells me he did have a set this time

Result does not matter - its a call (even it was a set this time)

Don‘t be result oriented / its a big leak

Is this your coach perchance?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvA5D6ZTkkk

folding aa on turn in SRP is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural

Results matter for data accumulation.

Thanks Kendoo!

Yes, villain had 33. I was just waiting for the discussion to fizzle out before I revealed the results. I hate it when people post results before I get a chance to reply to a thread.