Hi,

I played a hand recently and wanted to get your thoughts on it. I folded because I felt that the villain had a better hand than my top pair, but upon reviewing the hand, I realized that If villain has AK+FD, KK+ maybe I should have called.

I'm wondering what kind of hands villain might have had in this situation. I generally tend to overfold post flop, but I'm trying to improve my game by bluff catching more often.

Would you recommend calling in this situation ?
Calling down and getting a note (First hand with villain)?

I'd appreciate any thoughts or advice you have.



GG Poker - $0.05 NL FAST (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

Hero (BTN): $8.52
SB: $6.70
BB: $4.23
UTG: $14.16
MP: $6.98
CO: $7.50

SB posts SB $0.02, BB posts BB $0.05

Pre Flop: (pot: $0.07) Hero has Q A

fold, fold, fold, Hero raises to $0.10, SB raises to $0.60, fold, Hero calls $0.50

Flop: ($1.25, 2 players) Q 3 T
SB bets $0.25, Hero calls $0.25

Turn: ($1.75, 2 players) 6
SB checks, Hero bets $0.58, SB raises to $5.85 and is all-in, fold

SB wins $2.70

Raise flop, call turn. Not much else to say beyond that. Just take a look at the ranges here, and it will be pretty clear.

Well played.
You are dead vs most value hands, bluffs have a lot of equity vs you. Mistake would be to fold AsQx, this is pure bluff catcher in spot that is not super over bluffed.

Isn't AsQx kind of a wash here? It's better he doesn't have it if he's calling, and better that he has it if he's bluffing. What's the data on this not being over bluffed? I'm interested because a 3-bet from the SB after an open btn, should contain some pretty wide ranges. Lots of straight draws, combo draws, and Ax here. Is this an ideal line for villain if he flopped it?

Edit: Tried to find a pretty neutral range. Not too aggro or passive:

This hand driven to you directly from DriveHUD 2 Poker HUD & Database
Board: Qs Ts 3s 6c Xx


Just hard to find a range where you're under 50% equity on the turn.

If you give him so much AK AJ with FD ofc it's a call. Idk why did you put A3o 9Jo 33 in his range?

But yheam maybe AsQx is not ideal call as i though.

Idk what mda is for this spot. In theory probably breakeven call, so i don't think it's mistake to fold.

Most people don't go around and 3b to 6x pre, then x/r jam the turn with airballs at 5NL.

We don't beat any value, have a bad redraw, all of thie bluffs have a ton of outs, we lose to merges like AsQ, KsK and AsA, and have 0% against flushes and sets.

I gave him AK with either A or Ks. AJ w/ A spades. I put combo draws.. As3x, Js9x, and three 33's (for a set 3 folds, just to increase the equity against). What's the issue? I mean, it's going to be difficult to get below 35% equity, let alone 50% here. It's pretty clearly a call.

You said in your first post it wasn't an over bluffed spot... where does that info come from?

Don't they usually 3-bet small w/ big hands at these stakes, even OOP, and 3-bet big when they want folds w/ weaker hands? I've never played these stakes, but even at small it predominately used to be this way. And it's not X/R jam with airballs.. there's a ton of combo draws out there.

Type up a range you think he has then. I'd be interested, because I don't think this is a very close call/fold spot. Take into account the site and I'd probably be fist pump calling.

In my pool the size isn't relevant to hand strength at least from regs, but I don't play anywhere near this low. When I played 25 and 50 They almost all used a consistent size. They would likely raise larger with stronger hands if I had to guess. They also don't 3b enough esp blinds v button, so i think there's a lot less for them to bluff with than whatever theory suggests.

I know we don't beat value, and this feels like an underbluffed spot in general. Maybe it isn't?

Remove tons of combo draws w/ TP and spades. Keep almost all value heavy with a couple of combo draws to the nuts, you're still around 40%, and that's a super tight range imho.

This hand driven to you directly from DriveHUD 2 Poker HUD & Database
Board: Qs Ts 3s 6c Xx

Issue is 33 A3o Js9x are not 3bets pre, QTo as well.

If you put AQ and KQ in his value range then ofc this is a call, but imho you won't see those hands in this line.

Whether they are 3-bets in the SB or not theoretically, you need to account for them a % of the time. But any ways, if you remove those they just make your equity slightly increase. That's why I only put Three 33's, and A3o with spades, to account for that sometimes.

Do you have a range you think justifies a fold? Let's remove the ones you mentioned.

This hand driven to you directly from DriveHUD 2 Poker HUD & Database
Board: Qs Ts 3s 6c Xx

Sure put much more flushes in that range get rid of these KsQx AsTx, those hands have very natural call.

Ok, and which flushes do you think are X/shoving on the turn?

Took a second look at this hand and it's actually much closer than I was initially thinking, but of course just comes down to how many combo bluffs your opponent will have. ~40% being the break even point, you have to basically remove a ton of value combos that opponent can have. It still looks like a call, but it's probably closer to 40-44% equity, depending again on number of combo semi-bluffs.

I thought about this spot again, mostly because I was interested in all-in calling range analysis. When you guys look at all-in calling ranges, are you always just eliminating hands that "shouldn't" raise or 3-bet pre-flop? Or are you just looking at GTO calling ranges? I don't read these forums consistently anymore obviously, and was interested in the consensus on the analysis process... if there was any.

My view: I don't think you should be eliminating hands because they aren't an accepted pre-flop range, and thus shouldn't be downline in the tree. That's just not how poker works. Poker is a human game and people do random things that they "shouldn't be doing" all the time. EX: Someone is tilting, or down for their session and about to leave and just want to play one last hand, and so on. Look at how many hands you've seen where you've been surprised by what someone showed up with. And I'm talking about regs, not fish. Hands that generally "shouldn't" be played pre-flop, should be heavily discounted when analyzing, but you should always include some combos just based on the current board and action - not the pre-flop strategy.

It's just something I've noticed several times now, so was curious how you guys process and analyze those spots in the forums today.

I try to keep it simple and use these things in some order.

Does it immediately "feel' like I should call or should fold, or not sure?
Do I beat value?
Do I think the pool or player is likely to underbluff or overbluff the specific spot and sizing?
Can the player have a relevant amount of merges, and how am I doing against those?

If I can't decide what's best then I just fold, because when that happens I'm pretty confident that I'm in some 0ev spot where folding is extremely likely going to be correct. Whenever the call is supposed to be +ev, it's just going to be so marginal that it doesn't make up for the times that calling is -ev.

Adding hands to the opponent's range is bad habit. Range should just reduce in size with every move he makes.

Trying to account for miss clicks and/or random plays without any info just complicates analysis.

Cool, thanks for sharing. That process makes a lot of sense on the whole in real time.

So you start w/ a very specific, "it can only be this range of hands pre-flop", and reduce those as move down the decision tree.

That's basically what I thought, but was trying to gauge how many in the forum do the same.

My view again: This isn't how you should evaluate all-in decisions, and it will lead to some very costly mistakes if you do. Like I said above, you should start with a most likely played / accepted range, but you can't completely remove all hands that are outside of these charts, as the post flop decisions should dictate likely hands that would take those specific lines. Some can be almost completely removed, but others should be added at a reduced amount. For example, like I did in the above hand w/ 3's. People shouldn't 3-bet 3's, but sometimes they will and it fits the action so you add a couple of combos.

Mental note how many hands you've read in here when regs showed up w/ hands they "shouldn't" have played pre-flop. Why does this happen? Sometimes people don't play perfect pre-flop strategy, and sometimes they deviate from that for reasons you don't know. This doesn't mean you should just add every nutted hand because someone went all in, but it should be a similar, and logical process, to how many bluffs you add to someone's range. It's an educated estimation, based on the action and opponent. It's unfortunately not a perfect science because you're playing a game of incomplete information. Trying to make it a perfect science will fail. So the question should be, how do you get it the closest to a perfect science as possible, while using fair-minded reason and logic to get there?

Adding hands post flop that you didn't give him pre just means you didn't evaluate pf range correctly.

If you want to be super pedantic you start with pf range that (for example) 3bets 99 100% and 3bets 33 5% A3o 2% or whatever frequency you think are best approximation of range pool will show up. All those hands are in range with negligible frequency and will have almost no effect on your strategy.

Now you have more precise range that are very hard/impossible for human to comprehend and very easy to overestimate how often he has those super infrequent hands. Complexity goes through the roof and gained ev is minimal maybe even negative if you blunder for time to time.

I also see people do the opposite a lot. They'll be like villain is a super lose passive fish. Then villain will raise flop or some some similar action an its like oh i folded because villain only ever has the nuts. I understand betting and raising condenses ranges but not from 40 or 50 percent of hands to 1 combo. I personally think a lot of people already have something in their mind they want to do and will play mental gymnastics to make that action seem correct. Also they have preconceived and often flawed notions of how populations plays and dont really think of hands from flop forward

You have several logical fallacies going on here, so let me try and break it down better.

You'd need to know your opponent's PF range w/ 100% accuracy, in order to arrive at accurate conclusions, the deeper you go down the decision tree, each decision multiples the possibility of error if you're incorrect about your opponent's PF range.

This is what I'm saying you should do instead:
1) Start with an accepted pre-flop range (GTO or stake adjusted accepted PF range).
2) As you get further down the decision tree, remove or add ranges, based on opponents actions.
3) Any hands that don't fit in step 1, but do make sense based on your opponents actions, heavily discount or completely remove.

You're taking ALL of the information you have, and use deductive reasoning to arrive at the most logical range. You don't limit your reasoning to one staring point only, but look at the hand wholistically. Your approach is way too linear imho.

I don't think it's horrible to try and make beginning pool estimations. The pool will only 3-bet X hand 10% of the time or whatever. If we had perfect information here, then yes, maybe taking a very linear mode to hand range construction could work. But that's why GTO play doesn't work exactly when playing and assigning EV to hand ranges... human players don't work like that.

For sure, but these players likely will never be winning players. Your goal should be to find the best answer/solution, not to bend reason so you aren't wrong.

Adding hands to the range on later street is logical fallacy. He can't magically appear with A3o ott if he folds that 100% pre flop that works for human or non human players.


Adding random hands to the range can cause more harm than good. We don't need to turn this into 5 page discussion

Ok... ya, you're not understanding what I'm saying at all. That's fine, the reasoning is laid out above for anyone who wants to learn and improve.