Villain 16/15 90 hands

Calling seems like the worst option of the 3 here to me, this feels very thin, but we need some bluffs here and this is probably our best one.

PokerStars Zoom, Hold'em No Limit - $0.10/$0.25 - 6 players
Replay this hand on Upswing Poker

UTG: $25.00 (100 bb)
MP: $37.57 (150 bb)
CO: $43.39 (174 bb)
BU: $20.31 (81 bb)
SB: $63.22 (253 bb)
BB (Hero): $42.32 (169 bb)

Pre-Flop: ($0.35) Hero is BB with A♣ A♦
2 players fold, CO raises to $0.75, 2 players fold, Hero 3-bets to $3, CO calls $2.25

Flop: ($6.10) T♣ 6♦ 8♣ (2 players)
Hero checks, CO checks

Turn: ($6.10) 7♠ (2 players)
Hero checks, CO bets $4.37, Hero calls $4.37

River: ($14.84) K♣ (2 players)
Hero checks, CO bets $10.63, Hero raises to $34.95 (all-in), CO folds

bet the flop for value 2/3p
river is just wow
you don't need any bluffs after checking for 3 streets...
c/f river

Bet the flop, although I admit this combo is better to check because you have the A so you are less vulnerable. I don’t like the river XR because the river is the K specifically which cuts down your flush combos. Now you only have AQ and AJ. All other Ax most likely just call preflop (can’t have AT) because the T is on the board.

I like idea of it but if Villain can hand read he should call with straights/sets here since
1) we would have to play our hand this exact way (although A9 might do this now that I think about it, but you also might XR turn so that is discounted)

2) We really only represent 2 combos, maybe 3. This might be okay at a super low frequency like 10-20% of the time but we just don’t represent much.

river is quite spewy to me either fold or call (calling is much better than shoving) he should have a reasonable amount of 9x 77 etc = jamming doesnt really serve much purpose here

True, very valid point about the Kc riv. I’m never calling here I think we’re never good so I should prob just fold.

What's your reasoning behind the flop check?

Never checking this flop with Aces.. it's better to check here IF the botton card wasn't a 6.. than I would check more often..

You are deep.. he has a lot of hands that you can get value here.. all gut shots.. all straight draws.. a lot of flush draws.. common man.. he will have 4c2c in his range.. since your 3bet size was lower than expected..

anyway.. River is a fold.. all in is overplay.. he will call you with all the straights.. sets is an easy fold.. because you should have more 9x 3bluffing PF than calling deep stack..

Board isn't the best for us, villain has more sets, we're deep, hard to get 3 streets so we have to check somewhere, pot control, don't mind seeing another club OTT etc

Pretty sure he doesn't have 42s in range, and yes i realised my 3B was a little small pretty much as soon as i did it.

hand seems fine up until the river. River is major spew

We can/should play some nut flushes this way so repping the nuts isn't a problem. Can't be terrible imo, it may be the most profitable play. If I am villain I am folding near 100% of my range at this stack depth. So villain specific and this guy looks tight reggish enough. Merge element also, villain might call with a worse hand with Qc for instance if he is bluffcatching

Betting the flop, ppl tend to play worse against bets (not raising enough and betting a somewhat balanced range when checked to) and villain shouldn't have 2 pairs when you 3b that big unless his fold to 3bet is like 15%.

He shouldn't have many 9x either but I'm still folding turn. River is fine, we have 0 sdv against his value range and this is one of our best bluffs, we don't block QJ and it's very though for him to have a flush when The A, K, T of clubs are out.

Your hand is a showdown value hand on the river. AJ or AQ would be better bluffs because they block straights.

Pretty sure flop should be X at high frequency given stack depth and flop texture.

I'm not checking this flop ever. Dunno what games you guys are playing but people suck at 25nl lol

He has most tens in his range, fair amount of SC's like 89,67, T9 etc, plus his fd's, some 9x like A9, 99 etc.

Also, he might not 4b KK, a lot of the time not QQ, so can have that and JJ plus occasional floats like AK/AQ.

Yes he has, TT/66/88 but that's 9 combos, plus the occasional T8s/79s maybe 68s which again is a small number of combos. and he's a bit of nit by the looks of it so slightly less likely.

From my own experience, people dont raise as bluffs too often in these spots unless they are specifically aggressive and somewhat talented relative to the player pool which is an absolute rarity. If I specifically knew villain could do something like that I might possibly consider a check but may even just bet/call as part of my range.

We can check other hands that are slightly worse if we want too, like JJ/Tx maybe QQ and other SC's we 3bet with and hit a piece on the flop with.

As played, I think he is fairly polarised on the river, I mean, what's his value range on this river for that size? 9x? Seems like flushes or air to me, and people don't like folding flushes. But I do understand the bluff and I think theoretically it might be ok.

Some really mixed responses on this one

If you bet and get xred you're hating life. If you bet and get called you're not really thrilled since there are so many turn cards that is good for villain here, T, 8, 6, 7, J, 9 and any club. You're only going to get 3 streets on very specific run outs so x and protect your xing range otf.

Yeah i'm happy with the x OTF especially given how deep we are, another club is so so, but at this stack depth i want to do a lot of pot controlling with non nut hands

I'm probably barrelling all these turns for value

What would your flop cbet range be out of curiosity?

You're not getting much value barreling those turns IMO.

Erm TT-QQ, KK no club, AA no club, KQdd/cc, ATs, AK/AJdd, QJs. Something like that

Depends on my 3betting range pre. I don't have much of a cbetting range otf, if I 3bet TT/88 (depends on villain) I'd just balance it out with a couple of strong draws. But you should be checking flop quite a lot here.

Also you shouldn't really be betting any of the turn cards that I listed above.

Which hands do you want value here from?

Yea, I mean AA should be betting for value imo. Understand checking for balance but I personally think it's unnecessary at these stakes.

With regards to value betting, first of all, they normally will raise sets+ and super strong draws, so that makes their flop calling range weaker.

We can get value from any Tx, JJ, QQ, KK (sometimes KK/AA will flat although limited combos) any 9x like 99/A9/89/flush draws etc (of course depending on turn; 7x turn card means value betting 9x goes out the window obv lol)

8x and 6x turns are good. They are unlikely to have just those in their range, maybe sometimes 67s, A6s but not a huge deal relative to the abundance of Tx that flats pre (Like JT/QT/KQ/AT, probably even off suit since we're deep) and his overpairs. Also they reduce set combo's that decided to slow play.

T is not so bad because we can value bet over pairs and 9x and flush draws, 7 we can still bet vs over pairs, Tx and flush draws etc. Jx sucks a bit but still value to be had vs Tx and draws etc.

Took me some time to work it out in equilab and well damn you're so right. 7 and 9 are the worst cards we can get, dropping our equity (vs range you +/- put) to 40%, 8/6/T give us ~60 against whole range. If he raises top at flop it will be even higher. I find just one problem with betting flop, we cut Ac from all his bluffs. We are throwing ourselves out of pretty cool hand as we can't really call it (or can we?) If he raises sets/straights/monsterdraws and some lighter bluffs with equity like OESDs and even 77 we are underdogs. On the other hand, if villain is value heavy we can comfortably bet/fold... damn I suck at poker, still lost. Looks like the tagger villain is, the more comfortably we can valuebet here.
Correct me, if I went into bull**** mode anywhere here

You mean can we call if he raises? If so sure. It all depends here. Think of it like this ....


If villain is gonna raise sets+ vs a cbet a lot, what is he doing? Trying to get value from AA, what we have

That's apparently the reasoning for checking flop, yet what are we gonna do if we just get barrelled? Same sort of situation. Never mind that though


If he is raising to get value from AA, then maybe he feels like an observant player will think just that. Something like 'hey, this guy raised my cbet here, looks like a set' is what they might expect from us. So knowing that, maybe people will raise lighter. It's very player dependent but we might even raise people here with lots hands in villains shoes. We could really creative with many things at certain times in game flow, like JT might even suit to raise and barrel depending on how villain plays etc Maybe you should raise yourself a lot

Anyway, if we feel like someone is capable of raising light, which may certainly be the case in aggressive games (not really 10nl. Maybe see it in more like 50nl/100nl+ usually with at least some dynamic/less so in a vacuum), then yea we can have this in our calling range otf and distribute our ranges later appropriately. Makes it pretty tough for villain if he's bluffing when you flat flop and turns he's like uhhhh haha

Most will assume AA won't fold to 1 raise, and won't be up for raising and barrelling against unknowns, so that means flops raises are generally nutted. If we bet, we bet/fold and get away from a nutted range. If they call, we 3barrel, they put us on a busted fd and call us with JJ or something

Yes, very exploitable, but 1. we have solid reasoning for using this exploitative strategy against villain (based on our earlier observations) and 2. he's not gonna make much money doing a few bluff raises otf in this exact spot, I mean, when does it happen? You have to play a lot to sweat over it and 3. We can easily adjust and perhaps we even bet/call for value depending on our read of villain and use it to have a stronger cbet range to stop villain messing with us. The beauty is we can bet/call AA, sets, and draws, then on turn and river runouts, what's he gonna do? Estimate our exact range frequencies and bluff us? Check to us? Make mistakes is what he's gonna do. Just the way we like it