Only 40 hands on villain prior this hand, nothing striking in stats, reg. pre is a punt especially given limited data, i should lean towards 4betting. What is villain hand here? a4s or aaa, or he changed his mind about his SD on river and decided to turn somethinfg into bluff ? HEEELP

PokerStars, Hold'em No Limit - $0.25/$0.50 - 6 players
Hand delivered by Upswing Poker

UTG (Hero): $77.41 (155 bb)
MP: $81.06 (162 bb)
CO: $55.42 (111 bb)
BU: $50.75 (102 bb)
SB: $50.00 (100 bb)
BB: $50.00 (100 bb)

Pre-Flop: ($0.75) Hero is UTG with T♣ A♣
Hero raises to $1.10, 2 players fold, BTN 3-bets to $3.50, 2 players fold, Hero calls $2.40

Flop: ($7.75) 3♠ 5♦ A♦ (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN checks

Turn: ($7.75) 2♣ (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN bets $4.86, Hero calls $4.86

River: ($17.47) 8♦ (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN bets $12, Hero?

i think its probably safe to assume most people arent turning up with a 4 very often, so the str8 is kind of a nonfactor
if ur gonna call a 3b with Ax you really shouldn't be folding when you hit it hardly ever, or ur gonna be massively exploitable... - pending maybe the grossest runouts, like 9tjqA or something where he can easily turn up with kx, or if hes overbetting 3 streets or something crazy..

if ur gonna get blasted off tp to normal lines/sizing, on whats actually a pretty benign board - just fold pre
esp with flop xx im mashing the call button to showdown while whistling dixie tbh

with rivercall, i think hand is vwp. mixing some 4b pre is good as well

I kinda agree with this, but i dont remember when last time i run into such line, i m mostly nl 25 player, and my poker understanding tells me it's autocbet spot, i m capped AF, so what is villain doing especially otf, or i m wrong?

i think youre leveling yourself and assuming he thinks its an autocbet spot, and thus by not auto cbetting he must be up to something.

at the end of the day, youre gonna call a 3b with Ax and flop TP you cant trick yourself into folding in most circumstances


you cant win every hand. in the long run you're giving up a TON more by folding these spots, than you are when you call his riv bet and he turns up with a better hand.

Preflop is very standard btw not at all a punt.

In theory we are never folding this.

However, alarmclocks should go off on Ahigh-boards when people check back. It is very seldom to fold to just one bet on later streets. Usually it is weaker SDV-hands or absolute nuts. Most of those weaker SDV-hands wouldn't start betting this turn for this sizing so it is very weird.

All in all villain are repping very few valuehands but it is also a line that is underbluffed.

I probalby wouldn't fold but wouldn't expect to win often at all here.

We are basically hoping for some JThh that just gave up otf and now started blazzing. Most regs on lower stakes would just bet 1/3 with that type of holding otf and if they xb flop they would probably again go for a smaller bet ott as a bluff....

Villain had aqo(no dia) as you pointed out, i know it's underbluffed spot, but no reads have to call in case he is some spewtard, no idea why he checked flop, he perceived me as very nitty maybe, i was rather expecting some thin valuebet on river, maybe aj, maybe same hand, but aq looks too good to check, especially it's very had for defend for me on this board with raises

It is good to xb flop sometimes with villain's hand.

Yeah,

Villains line looks very standard to me. We have to have some strong checks to protect our checking range and a TPGK hand is fine to do it with. It keeps our range wide, may get us to bet the part of our range we were going to fold on the flop and still gets a bet on the turn. TP is not necessarily a 3 streets of value type hand so it is fine to sometimes decide to go for those streets on the turn and river.

Hero played this hand fine imo. I think the only thing I might do differently is to sometimes donk the river since we can easily represent the Flush. Does he fold AQ? Probably not but if we max size it may be an option. In villains shows are you calling an overbet on the River with AQ when the flush got there?

Not good and a very bad hand to do it with.

Don't want to sound bitter but that last paragraph is full of resultsoriented thinking since you know villains exact hand imo.

he gave me free card on flop i cant really cr for value and remain balanced, if i had pp with a dia i would cr river, becouse why not, and he dont have that many flush draws that are good flop checks, any axd would be better flop check i think, weird line, but he didnt won anything more than he would playing "normal"

Preflop is standard, call river

Is turn maybe a bet sometimes as well? Do we think button bets enough of his KK/QQ type hands (which might check back), or hands which completely whiffed the flop but decide to start betting when faced with such weakness, to justify another check, or do you want to set your own price on turn knowing that KK-TT should still call?

Check-call turn seems fine too though.

River button probably checks back enough better Aces to make this a worthwhile call

Edit: just seen result and I would mark down this opponent as a decent player, that's a good thin value bet on the end

Im not taking it that way and I’m not meaning to sound results oriented. Genuinely trying to understand when we can donk bluff rivers and wondered if this was a spot. Can you clarify why this would not be a good spot?

1. Because of the positions (UTGvsBU) we have to fold a lot of SC preflop. QJdd and QTdd etc almost always fold to the 3bet.

2. We 4bet some % with some broadway diamonds. Hands like KQdd, KJdd mixes 4bets and calls pre. Making us have fewer diamond-combos in the actual hand now since we called pre.

3. Ad is on the board which makes us have even fewer diamond-combos.

4. We bet most of those few diamond-combos we have left on the turn since we rather bet them than x/c. For example T9dd, 87dd isn't great to x/c turn with since we often will end up with Thigh/8high otr being oop. Exception is KQdd that have a little more SDV that we can check/call turn with.

5. So when he bets turn most of our diamond-combos makes bad calls (except for like KQdd). Therefore we cannot call the turnbet with those hands. We rather raise his turnbet with most our few diamondcombos we have left. So almost all of our diamondcombos is out of our range at the river.

6. His diamondcombos are somewhat reduced too since he checked flop but he can still have hands like QJdd and QTdd KTdd that would bet turn now that you cannot have anymore.

Since you don't have more flushes in your range than he does it doesn't make sense to donk river when the flush completes. Both of you have very few diamond-combos.

(The diamond otr is such a boardchanger that it might look like at first glance when you break down both of your ranges at the river)

Thanks. Great response!