I marked this hand for review but by the time I finished my session I had quite a bit more hands on this player than I did at the time, this hand started pretty soon into my session. At the end of my session he was running 20/15/6, with 28% WTSD, 53% W$WSF, 79% cbet, 33% turn-cbet.

Preflop, I flatted because I didn't have much history with villain so I had no idea how he would react to a 3-bet and didn't want to get 4-bet and have to possibly make a marginally/bad shove.

Flop is standard imo, I don't think there's much to discuss here.

Turn, I decided to donk because villain had a really high c-bet % (65%-80% IIRC) and he had a turn c-bet stat of 20% (1/5 samples), I thought there was a decent chance he could check back a good amount of hands that I could get value from. When he raised my bet, I checked my HUD again and noticed he had a really high W$WSF stat, (somewhere between 50%-55% I think) and a aggression factor of 4.4, so he seemed to be pretty aggressive.

The part that was confusing me was if I should shove or flat? At the moment I thought flatting was better since he would have an opportunity to bluff the river and if I shove he'll fold his bluffs. What do you guys think? Is donking even good? Should I donk/shove, donk/call, x/r?


Merge Network $0.25/$0.50 No Limit Hold'em - 5 players - View hand 1579353
DeucesCracked Poker Videos Hand History Converter

SB: $70.48
Hero (BB): $50.84
UTG: $25.38
CO: $76.86
BTN: $50.00

Pre Flop: ($0.75) Hero is BB with Q A
2 folds, BTN raises to $1.43, 1 fold, Hero calls $0.93

Flop: ($3.11) 3 5 A (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN bets $2.33, Hero calls $2.33

Turn: ($7.77) T (2 players)
Hero bets $5.82, BTN raises to $18.76, Hero calls $12.94

River: ($45.29) 2 (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN checks

I'll def c/r the turn. As played shove the turn after the raise.

I don't like leading or x/r the turn ... I probably just x/c again and lead if I hit the flush, trips, or 2p on the river.

As played, I def don't like b/3b on the turn. The way you played it, shove river.

Donking the turn does not achieve anything. He will simply call your donkbet with the same hands that he would bet the turn anyway. The only difference is that you get yourself in ugly spots when you get raised like that.

When you donk the turn for that size your hand is always Ax so he can play perfect vs your hand in position, as played I would just fold to his raise.

The line i would take would be x/c turn donk shove river since he can level himself into thinking you are doing this with a missed fd, or wakes up with a straight that he can't fold

once you called the turn you have to just shove the river its hard for him to fold dont allow him a free showdown when you hit.

easy c/c c/c
shove rivers

Noob question: Can someone explain why we're not x/r the flop. And when we do call the flop, why we're not x/r the turn? Villain's range is probably pretty wide here. Given that he's 20/15, he often opens 30% or more from the button; maybe even as high as 40% .This means that many hands that he can have are drawing on us: Ax,3x,5x are drawing to two-pairs, and 2x,4x are drawing to a straight, and he could always have a flush draw. His range is wide enough to include a bunch of those. When he hits, his hand will often be disguised. He's aggro, so we can't even distinguish between the times that he actually hit something, to the times he's just barreling with air.

When we check-call the flop and/or turn, we are letting him look at free cards. I understand that when we raise, we're taking him off most bluffs, but don't the advantages of just taking the pot now, pr charging him to draw, outweigh the risks? In my game I sometimes check/raise here with air as well, but even if you don't, isn't it risky to play this so passively?

I know there's a reason that you guys are all recommending check/call, and I'd love to understand the thought process behind that.

Took the words out of my mouth.

If he's only firing 30% of turns, he's only firing towards the top of his range. So I think we put ourselves in a bad spot where if we x/r we are doing it as a bluff because nothing worse calls, and I think by leading we turn our hand face up.

30% for villain’s range seems reasonable. Therefore it’s very hard to construct a 30% range that includes 5x, 4x, 3x or 2x, except where the ‘x’ is an ace (perhaps 54s squeaks in). Even with PFR=40% we're struggling.

Villain’s only aggressive OTF. OTT villain only seems to continue with hands where (s)he has it. So, for me, x/r OTF basically says to villain ‘don’t put any more money in this pot unless you can beat a good ace’, as does x/r OTR. Until the river, we have TPGK, which is a medium strength hand, and any sensible villain will not get involved further unless they crush this.

In terms of letting villain take a free card, I don’t think the risk is as big as you fear. Spade FD is the most likely draw: on a PFR of 30% (= all broadway, all aces, all pairs, SCs and some one-gapper SCs), only about 7.5% of this is suited, and therefore less than 2% (= one quarter of 7.5%) of this is spades. Even if villain does have two spades, the odds of the third spade coming OTT is 9 cards out of 45 (=20%), so for villain to have FD and for it to hit OTT is 0.4% (=2%*20%). (It’s actually even less than this: now two spades have appeared on the flop, it makes it more likely that villain has hearts/diamonds/clubs rather than spades, but I’m not going to do the math here).

Thanks for the very informative reply! I hate to be a nag, but I'm still uneasy about a check/call line in this hand. My main concern is our being OOP. If we were IP, I'm totally up for just calling all the way, and only betting if villain misses a bet. But OOP, I feel that so much can go wrong, and will lead to villain getting maximum value when he's ahead and losing the minimum when he's behind.

Let me start by asking a preliminary question: say you flop a set in this hand. Do you also take a check/call line on the flop and turn? Note that a set is a less vulnerable hand than AQ here, while on this flop a set doesn't beat that many hands than AQ does, so they are of similar value.

Going back to analyzing a x/r vs x/c line on the flop: Note that villain's turn barrel % is low. Therefore, when we simply x/c and then check the turn, we're often giving villain two free cards. Then we bet the river for value, and he raises if he has drawn out on us. Seems like a RIO situation to me.

What is the upside of taking the passive line? Firstly, we avoid losing to bigger flopped hands (but that's not a huge concern here, I'd say). Second, we extract value when villain decides to bluff or calls a river bet with a weaker hand than ours (typically a weaker ace, but sometimes he was bluffing with air on the flop, but caught up on the turn or river and would call a bet with a middle-pair type hand). I assume that the main reason you advocate a passive line is mostly the latter, i.e. value extraction. I understand this reasoning, and will think about this more deeply. It seems like a matter of experience (and of course highly depends on villain's player type), but I do feel that unless villain bluffs or barrels too much (which this villain doesn't seem to), a passive line carries too much risk, for too little potential gain.

I'd love to hear more opinions from swimrun or anyone else, and/or maybe a reference to a source or 2p2 post talking about playing the passive line vs taking control of the hand.

Sometimes you gotta do your own bidding on the river.... as played shove river...he checks behind quite a few value hands if he puts you on that kind of combo range (big part of your range considering you flat turn and not jam)

All of this.

Any time I have TP + draw its the perfect spot to c/c and bluff catch. We have the best hand a lot of the time and the times we dont we have outs to the nuts. If we c/r or donk/3b, we narrow villains range so much that when money goes in we are probably only about 30% at best vs his range. By c/c we are probably about 70% vs his range.

Leading the river is a must if we bink.

No worries – I like it when ppl respond to my posts because it makes me re-think some of my assumptions.

I think you’re scared of shadows here. otf the hand is (fairly) stable. We are ahead of everything in his range except:
1. AK, A3, A5 – in these cases we have 3 queens to beat him, and bdfd
2. Sets – we only have bdfd to beat him (and hope board doesn’t pair)

The draws he has to beat us (that are in his range) include:
1. Spade FD – as analysed earlier, although scary is not very likely [I made a mistake in the figures in my previous post: villain is around 1% to hold 2 spades AND for third spade to hit ott, not 0.4% as posted previously. Still very unlikely though]
2. Improving to 2P – three outs
3. Gut-shot str8s – four outs
4. Improving to set – two outs

So in either case we’re either way ahead or way behind. As Sc00by writes, x/r folds out his marginal hands - which we were beating anyway - and leaves us in a large pot oop with 30% equity (and remember, the 30% equity is only if we get to see both the turn and the river).

Good question – my first inclination with a flopped set at NL50 is to check-raise, particularly on this board because there are so many villains willing to stack off with TPGK, esp when villain thinks hero might be on a semi-bluff with spades. However this villain is 20/15, which does not set him out as someone who will stack off with TPGK. So, with a set I’d x/c F, T and lead R if a brick hits.

I’m not so sure it is: with a set we’re still vulnerable to spade FD, gut-shots and villain improving to a better set. The only hands that are no longer a worry is where villain improves to 2P. And if villain has to improve to 2P to win, he is unlikely to do so with only 3 outs over 2 streets.

For me, this is why we don’t DB ott: he’s only calling when we’re beaten which is very RIO. Yes he is getting two free cards this way, but he hasn’t got many outs to improve. And as played, we are only betting otr for value because we've improved to the nuts.

Cool, would be good to read further opinion

Hello again.

I am still thinking about this c/r vs c/c question. No clear decision yet, but I still favor the c/r.

I just saw a big discussion in the live low-stakes forum about a very similar issue. Hero there is SB, holds KJ on a flop of J84r with three players seeing the flop and facing a cbet from a loose opponent, called in one spot. One camp in the thread strongly advocates check-calling all the way, because a raise will only be called by better. The other camp strongly advocates check-raising, essentially for protection and for taking control of the hand when we're OOP, since there are so many bad turn/river cards for us, and we likely have the best hand right now, so we should raise and either take it down here, or charge opponents to draw. As in this thread, I'm in the c/r camp.

This will remain an unresolved question, I'm sure. (I've been thinking about it for months now, way before I saw this thread, and I still don't have a good answer), but I think it's one of the most important, and most routine, questions in NLHE. Again, if anyone knows any discussions of this point (verneer, maybe?) I'd love to read about it.

Yikes. Forgot to add the link to the similar hand in the live low-stakes forum. Here it is:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/17...-5-nl-1150094/