Villain is not a bad poker player but definitely not good. He is looser than average pf and he doesn't fold to 3bets as much as the average opponent.

From what I can tell he plays relatively straightforward. No obvious spew but also haven't seen him try anything too tricky yet.

Full Tilt Poker $200 + $10 Heads Up No Limit Hold'em Tournament - t10/t20 Blinds - 2 players
The Official 2+2 Hand Converter Powered By DeucesCracked.com

BTN/SB: t1520 M = 50.67
Hero (BB): t1480 M = 49.33

Pre Flop: (t30) Hero is BB with A J
BTN/SB raises to t60, Hero raises to t180, BTN/SB calls t120

Flop: (t360) 4 4 5 (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN/SB checks

Turn: (t360) A (2 players)
Hero bets t180, BTN/SB raises to t480, Hero requests TIME, Hero raises to t1300 all in

How is my move here? He bets out at paired boards a decent amount of the time so I would probably expect him to bet 4x and maybe 5x. I think that the most likely hand here is something like Ax or Kx trying to get to a cheap sd.

His turn move seems to confirm Ax or very rarely A5. I was considering between flatting and shoving and decided on shoving at the last second for value vs. lower Ax. I think that this particular opponent is probably shoving AQ + pf.

Is shove here good? Do enough Ax call to make this +EV?

Ty

I like the shove, well played

this is never Kx trying to get to SD

dont like the shove call revaluate river


also why no c-bet?

i think he meant that villain checking back flop could be Kx trying to get to showdown

i like shoving the turn here. if we flat turn, we rep a big ace pretty perfectly, so it's a terrible spot for villain to continue a bluff on the river, and he should even be checking back most worse made hands. by the analysis in OP, we're not behind very often, but flatting doesn't save us money when behind anyway as we usually have to c/c a shove on river. otoh, shoving the turn ourselves should rep a range that includes some bluffs, so that's probably best to get max value from his worse Ax/bluffcatchers.

i like not cbetting here a decent amount also since villain sounds like the type to float/play back enough to make it not very profitable.

villain can't continue a bluff anyway if we shove
are we really bluff 3-betting this turn ever? i can't see myself doing that against this guy at all.
ax is never folding now regardless of future action and i don't really think his other bluff catchers are ever raising the turn. makes no sense to raise with a bluff catcher.
i agree with all of this. against some people i'll c/r this sort of flop.

OP - 3 bet size standard? I'd probably make it 210 or smth, but that's a cash game habit.

I call and re-ev the river as well tbh. Your not beating much here against a straight forward villain that hasn't done anything tricky. If villain is half-decent, what you think he's putting you on after you check flop and lead ace turn? It's AX so often and i think if villain wanted to bluff here, he'd stab at the flop. I doubt a st8 forward villain would raise a8/a9/at here either, but stranger things have happened.

He could be doing this with draws some of the time, but i expect him to shut down on river when he bricks because i think once you call his raise, it shows your not going anywhere in a way, and his FE will be small.

Having said all that, once we call and re-ev the river, if he shoves, i puke, but i don't think we're good a lot here against described villain. But i expect the river to go chk/chk enough for you to flat turn profitably and i'm pretty sure it's the optimal line.

And if he does shove, you need to fold or soul-read. I usually make the hero call knowing it's probs meh, and as soon as he shows me nuts, i say "i knew it" :P

Which is why moving all-in on the turn is so tempting in this spot, and needless to say, why I've done so on too many occasions.

This wasn't mentioned so I thought I'd point out that if we flat we only have ~62% of the pot left behind, so there's not exactly all that much room to re-eval most rivers. It also makes it pretty tough for villain to fold any hand that isn't a bluff.

I agree with c-betting not being automatic here. We flopped a marginal hand but with some SD value given the fairly dry flop, so it's not always prudent to turn it into a bluff.

shove is horrible there u should flat turn

It's hard for shoving to be horrible given how little is left behind IMO, but please provide some sort of reasoning behind your opinion if you're going to join the discussion.

it's such an obvious horrible shove. not extremely horrible but pretty damn horrible because it is a lot +ev to call here and let him bet into you in the river. if he is bluffing and u raise all in obv he's folding but if u flat there is a small chance that he will be stupid enough to bet with nothing and u are obv calling river. only reason he should flat is because there is no way he is making more money by shoving turn

I see villain on 4x here quite often imo.
Given the action (and as said before by someone else), he knows our most likely range is Ax here (possibly a big pair, which would make his bluff with an A coming ok, but not so likely given the no cbet on flop).
So I would say that his raise on turn is bad if he does not have us beat (or maybe Ak or AQ).
Imo i'd flat (or fold) on turn and check/fold the river.
Everything, of course, depending on villain's aggressiveness and thinking level.

Don't really think 4x is all that likely here considering how I think villain is decent enough to realize that he can probably cbet to get value out of overcards and can potentially stack an overpair.

And Sandeep I don't think shoving is horrible here. It was a tough choice between shoving and flatting and I'm beginning to see the merits of flatting here but I definitely don't think shoving is absolutely horrible. Maybe its just me but I actually see Ax here quite often and I can't really put villain on AQ or AK.

I dunno I end up shoving simply because flatting turn seems tougher to play because a river shove from him is suuuch a puke spot and I'd actually be slightly surprised if he DIDNT fire the river with a lot of his hands. Just wanted to make poker easy i guess

I think you play fine vs opponents who you can get thin value from. In this case A6-A10. However, against most opponents I tend to call here, and let him bluff with hands that have no showdown value at all. That makes you more in long run than getting thin value. Also, you might get A6-A10 to bet your hand for you as well.

Yo lamdun, but the thing is, if you want to 100% stack off here, and ur def not folding, i'm pretty sure it's calling turn>shoving. Yeah you said u puke when he shoves river, but he's snapping all those hands that he shoves with when YOU shove obv. So it doesn't make any difference. You basically give him rope to hang himself when you call turn for the times he does bluff. I think it's a low %, not rlly sure but still, i think it justifies calling more. IMO

So, I disagree. I think if we want to 100% stack off here (which I think is fine given reads) then shoving is best. I don't expect a not-terrible, not-spewy villain to bluff shove river pretty much ever since, as you say, when we flat, we obviously have Ax a lot and probably a good Ax after we 3bet. For the same reason (we have so much tpgk), I also think he's not v-betting very thin either on the river.

So, if we check river, I think it should be to c/f to a shove since he's rarely bluffing or vbetting worse -- he's mostly valuetowning us. However, I still think shoving turn is better than c/c turn, c/f river (or folding turn), since he can get it in w/ a lot of bluffcatchers on the turn.

I agree with this. There's not enough left behind that I would be folding the river (calling 820 into 1320), and if you flat, villain can put you on a draw or 5x and bluff some rivers, and maybe even "value" bet something like 66 or A5. Also, Ax almost always bets almost every river, so you don't have to worry about losing value from the hands you beat.

I'd be snapping pretty much any river too, expecting to see worse aces and rando-tarded bluffs a huge percentage of the time, so I totally don't get the part about needing a soulread to call a 62% pot bet.

So what do we get value out of when we 3-bet then....

shoving is just silly without a very good read

and even then it'd be thin

well, what do you think his raising range is here?

edit:

basically, if villain was a solid tag, we should fold turn. b/c he's never raising turn w/ anything we beat, ever. AT is a bluffcatcher, and he knows that, and he pretty much can't have a draw.

however, solid, standard play never raises here in villains place because he never has a better hand either. he ships better aces pre, folds 55 and all 4x to the 3bet.

so to be in this spot at all , we have to assume villain is kinda spewy or not so great at evaluating relative hand strength (and OP's reads seem to confirm this).

given that, to answer your question, i expect 3betting to get value out of worse Ax.

Doesn't make much sense. He won't bluff river because our range is aces but he'll call a 3bet on the turn with worse ax when we'll have stronger ax after the 2nd 3bet? I somehow doubt that tbh.

The funny thing is, this is actually a rlly ****ty spot and there's no gr8 line we're in love with, no matter if your in the shove or call camp. But looking at the hand again, we could have saved this hassle by just c-betting here. The villain is st8 forward and i expect him to fold a lot. So yeah c-bet vs this villain and thread/ ?

Someone even already said it as well, and i think i'd have c-bet vs described villain like always. Obv you can check vs other villains as well.

makes pretty good sense to me although, in explaining why, i'm in danger of repeating myself.

firstly, our percieved range is stronger when we flat than when we 3bet, imo. at least i assume it is since my real ranges fall that way.

therefore,
- against his bluffs: it doesn't matter what we do since he shouldn't put any more money in the pot. if he's not continuing bluffing, then c/c down has the same expectation as any other line.
- against his worse made hands, we should 3bet turn since repping a weaker range while at the same time not giving him the chance to check back river is obv. the best way to get the money in. c/cing down is terrible since we give him every opportunity to lose the minimum.
- against better made hands, we should just fold turn. c/cing down is terrible since we stack off bad.

to say it in a different way: against no component of his range is c/cing down good, and against most components, it's pretty terrible. so, it's obviously no good on average, that is, against his combined range.

Yeah, I also disagree that your hand is "obviously" Ax a lot when you flat.

Regardless, even if villain's bluffshove frequency is very small, it only has to be non-zero for flatting to be better than shoving, since any Ax that raises the turn is extremely likely to bet the river if you flat.

Strongly disagree.

Since everything else you said stems from there, that's pretty much where I cut it off.