Foxwoods 5/10, 10-handed.

Villain is a loose player with a wide raising range preflop. He is a decent player overall and is capable of big moves. His moves are sometimes a little too big and crazy though. He views me as a smart player who is also capable of a lot of stuff.

I have 4500, villain covers.

I am on the button with AQ.

Preflop
Villain limps, someone else limps, and I raise to 65. Only villain calls.

Flop (150): QT9
Villain checks, I bet 100, and villain raises to 300. I feel like his range at this point is just too wide for me to fold so I call. He does like to bluff when he sees an opportunity and me c-betting after raising from the button seems like a good one.

Turn (750): 4
Villain checks. This leads me to believe that he didn't have a big hand on the flop. I am pretty sure he was on some kind of bluff and is deciding it is not worth firing another bullet. I decide that instead of making a big bet here, I will make a very weak-looking one so that he will think I am conflicted between protecting my hand and getting to showdown cheap. Then he will pounce on me. Something just told me this would work right here. So I bet 300, and he did indeed raise me to 1000. I call, planning to call whatever he bets on most or even all rivers.

River (2750): J
Yucky river card. Everything got there but air. He bets 2000. Time to do some optimistic analysis to rationalize a call. Recall that I am ruling out any made hands on he flop. Also, because of his bet size and the fact that he didn't think too much before betting, I am ruling out any two pair or set. This leaves straights or basically nothing. For straights, he could have 88, 68s, 78s, 89s, 8Ts, KQ. For nothing, he could have AJs, 67s, A9, maybe even 22-77. I don't know. Somebody please tell me I can call here...

I don't think he is bluffing the flop here as often as you think. That flop crushes his range of holdings. I have no problem with flop play, but given that, I am most likely checking behind on the turn.

As played, you have to fold to that turn c/r. When you get c/r'd twice in the same hand you are often crushed live.

Just fold the flop.
Villain has KJ

river is an easy fold. I'd bet $500 on the turn and fold to CR.

reread OP and I guess you can call his flop c/r, but I would def check turn behind, even though i understand ur small bet turn plan, i dont like it, cuz u are just levelling urself IMO

i agree that the turn bet is a little fancy but i dont mind it if you have a good read on villain

i think that i would check the turn though, i also think that i would call this river if i called the turn CR, i dont think he bets this river like that with the low straight even...you can easily have a KQ imo

Given infos, and villain's image, I guess betting turn is just horrible, if you don't want to fold to a checkraise.

Inflating the pot here with TPTK on the turn doesn't make any sense to me.

Either pot turn or check. Betting weak is simply the worst solutoin of all. Potting the turn we get our aswer. If he calls we probobly got him beat or he has a draw. If he raises again I would have enough info to fold. Checking the turn we induce him to bluff and controle the pot low - however we let him draw for free with a potential draws and there is alot of cards we dont want to see, so we need to be ready to fold river if action induces so. If the opponont is tricky I would check turn and if he is standard I would bet turn and fold to cr.

As played.. easy fold.

It is kind of tough to defend the river call, but I think the turn play can be defended despite what people say. When he checkraises and then checks again, he almost definitely does not have me beat. He most likely puts me on AQ or KK or AA, and he would want to keep the pressure on with two pair or better. So the best plan for the turn is to bet in such a way that I can get the most money in on the turn and river. It seemed like 300 would do it.

River is a definite fold, if he has a good read on you he can valuetown you far too easily. I like a check behind on the turn, in which case you can call the river. Betting the turn just opens you up to unnecessary variance and doesn't really get you any meaningful value. If you are going to bet, put him to a difficult decision by betting big rather than weak.

Lol, I would say "unnecessary variance" is one of the reasons why I play poker for a living . Like I said, I knew I was good and wanted to induce a bluff, but I guess people here aren't down with that.

I agree with most of the posters who say check behind on the turn and call any river bet. I think when you are this deep and you only have 1 pair, pot control becomes more important than trying to get max value on the turn. This is even more true when the villain is like the one you described, who is capable of bluffing this river after pulling a double-checkraise bluff.

Aargh, if he is capable of all this bluffing then I should do what it takes to make him bluff, right!?

Yes, but you don't know for sure that he is bluffing, which is why we try to exercise pot control so he can't valuetown us.

The point is, by playing the hand the way you did, you put yourself in a very tough situation where you might have to call on the river with one pair for a 900bb pot. Whether you should call or not, and whether you took the best line in this hand, depends on how often the villain will make huge insane multi-street bluffs like this. And since you probably don't know the exact frequency with which he will do that, and since it is probably less frequent than you might think during the heat of the moment, I think it's probably more +EV to take the safer line.

Now, if you are really certain that you have the best hand on the turn after he check-raises you, you might as well 3-bet him, for a couple of reasons: 1. He probably still has plenty of outs to the best hand on the river. There are lots of scare cards that could come out. 3-betting protects your hand. 2. You can't assume that he will bluff the river if he misses. And he certainly won't call a value-bet if he misses and checks.

Yeah, whether I should 3-bet the turn is a kind of interesting question. I was almost positive that if he was bluffing, then he would fire another big barrel on the river. And I wasn't worried about scare cards because he would see them as scaring me and still bet. I probably should have called the turn and planned on calling on any river except an 8, J, or K.

"Aargh, if he is capable of all this bluffing then I should do what it takes to make him bluff, right!?"

That is one hell of a read to want to put in 900BB with TPTK my friend. Especially on such a coordinated board such as this given PF action....

Hi McStinky,

I understand your thought process here; you have a stronger hand than you would need to raise pre-flop and bet this flop, your opponent knows this, and he's very bluff-happy, so you are trying to induce a huge bluff and pick it off. Fine; not a bad strategy in general. But here, your hand is simply not strong enough to risk that.

If you had 2 pair or a set on the flop, your play would make much more sense; maneuver him into making a big move when he's a 2:1 dog or worse. Similarly, you could do this on a less coordinated board with just tptk or an overpair. Here, you made the mistake of thinking that you could spring the trap with just a pair on a board that contains all sorts of ways for you to be crushed.

As played, you should've checked the turn behind IMO with the plan of calling a lot on even terrible-looking rivers like this one (since your opponent is nuts), or better yet, you should've checked behind on the flop and rope-a-doped the rest of the hand. In other words, pot control, even though this is the type of player that you sometimes wouldn't have to use pot control against with tptk. On this board, you do.

Cero I disagree, its pretty easy to put villain on a jack here if we think he was bluffing the flop, and in position this makes our hand really easy to play. Snap fold a K or an 8 and call any blank river. A jack is the only iffy card since he could have AJ but it's still a fairly easy fold.

Oh yeah a board pairing card is not great for us but we still have a solid call.

It would be cool if I could put him on 9J, TJ, QJ, or AJ from the preflop, flop and turn action, and then rule out two pair from the way he bet the river, and then confidently call because he has AJ. But pretending to be able to read someone that well is silly. You are right that folding is the right play.

I called and he had 89. Pair plus gutshot on the flop, and picked up a flush draw on the turn. Good read by me, bad execution.

I think checking the turn is better than bet/call.

As played, villain's c/r followed by c/r followed by a big bet on the river with 4 cards to a straight on the board looks like he's got TPTK beaten way more than 70% of the time. Since you'd need to be ahead at least 30% of the time to have it be +EV call, I think a fold is best.

A push on the river representing the K-high straight would be better than a call. You might actually get 2-pairs and sets to fold. And even the low-end of the straight might fold too, but I doubt it given how big the pot's become by the river.

I'd fold.