I recently played EPT Vienna and very early on day 1 I had what I thought was a tough/interesting spot. This was level 2, 75/150 with 30k starting stacks. We were 6 or 7 handed at this point because some of the seats hadn't turned up yet. This hand is against a young pro, whose name I did recognise when he shows his ID (always have to check those when they give it to the dealer) but I forget now. So I assume he is good and knows what he is doing. We have played a few hands already and I have won a few thousand chips from him. My stack is about 36k and his is about 21k.

I have Ks7x and open the CO to 400, villain calls from the button and BB calls. Pot is 1275.
Flop comes AsQs8s and I bet 600 and villain calls, BB folds. Pot is 2475.
Turn is 9s and I bet 1300 and he calls, all looking good so far nothing difficult, I hope he has Js10x as his most likely holding or AxJs or a sticky 10s or something that makes sense like that and will give me 3 streets of value, although most hands probably don't give me a good 3 streets of value and will fold the river to a decent bet.
River is 6s, for a board of AQ896 all spades. I bet 3000 in to 5075 and he takes a little time, not that long and then makes it 12k total, so just over pot and leaving himself about 7k behind.

What can he be bluffing with here? Is anyone really capable of bluffing with the Js or 10s blocker to the straight flush only? My hand must look quite obviously like what it is, the nut flush? I am open to advice here in terms of bet sizing as well as call/fold river. My thinking is that he only represents Js10s for the straight flush and level 2 of the ME almost nobody would be betting a blocker here or bluffing with complete air, especially someone who sound like they have travelled far (US sounding imo).

I tanked for about 4 minutes and then folded. I am interested what people think of this or if it is simpler than I am making it sound. There were at least 3 obvious spots at the table so not looking for high variance was a part of the reason for folding too.

Unreg pre.

I'm not good enough to fold.i wouldn't be raising K7o pre this early in a big tourney.

River is a fairly simple fold because the set of heroes who will bet three here without the Ks is so small and the set of heroes that will fold the Ks is so small that villain has zero reason to suspect you will ever fold and that should be good enough to ensure a 0% bluff frequency. I say probably, because you've won 6K chips in hands vs villain and haven't given us relevant history.

So far this tournament there had been maybe 2 3bets from the entire table and none from this villain. I won a big pot off of him when I open aces pre and then get 3 streets of value on a q9xka board. I should be giving more information I'm sure, I don't post here as much as I would like. Villain just seemed to be very solid, calling in position, folding 3 out of the 4 times I raised my sb vs his bb so he isn't that interested in getting in to a pot with me in position at this point it seems. We had played around 10 small sized hands so far and when we were even shorter handed I had been opening a lot and won about 40% of the total pots played in the first 30minutes but over the next hour and a bit I played much fewer and slowly grew my chip stack because people weren't playing back at me and were giving up to my cbets or turn bets a lot, so there seemed to be risk free money to be made both for me and the villain because the rest of the table weren't very strong.

Unreg pre seems like the best advice but was just wondering under what circumstances this would be a call if it is a fold at the moment? Obviously against a massively tilted player but this didn't seem to be one.

fold pre

bigger flop

I think you should be checking turn. We prob get 2 more streets from his good spade hands by checking but it's unlikely when we b/b into an uncapped range. Protects the rest of our hands and too hard to balance a bet range here. If you never have bluffs on this turn, so you shouldn't bet against someone good.

River is an easy fold (sounds pretty gross) because you're hand is face up and no one is trying to fold you off the Ks.

The only other thing I can see he could have it a set he turned into a bluff.

I don't know what his button calling range is, but this would be a potential bad beat jackpot hand with 3 possible straight flushes, JTss, T7ss, and 75ss, so the straight flush is not all that unlikely.

Betgo--There are really two straight flushes that beat us because T7suited requires a card from one of the other two combos.

But I do think this is a gross river fold. My only hesitation is that I that I think we're almost as faceup on the turn as we are on the river and I'm wondering if he should be raising turn with his straight flushes in order to a) increase chance of stacking us and b) getting more action before a potential scare card hits on the river (i.e. a pair on the board, or a card that brings four to a straight flush)

lolwat

we are only losing to two potential combos...i.e., if we had T7 suited, we'd have the nuts and if we had 75 suited, we're only losing to one combo..

The 2nd part is correct about T7ss being the nuts and so on.

However, OP has Ks7x, so he doesn't block any straight flushes. There are 3 combinations that beat him, but 75ss and T7ss are not calling the raise on the button unless he is a loose player.

I guess we're arguing about how you define combinations...JTss T7ss and 75ss are all theoretically combos that beat us, but only two actual combos that beat us can exist in this hand..

That's not how you define combinations. He doesn't block his own hands, because he only has two cards.

For example, with no other information, there are 6 combinations of AA AsAh, AsAd, AsAc, AhAd, AhAc, and AdAc. You count it as 6 combinations. You don't say it is 2 combinations because if we have AsAh, AdAc is the only combination left.

Now if we had the As, there would be 3 combinations of AA an opponent could have, AhAd, AhAc, and AdAc.

Yeah, but that's not the case in the OP. There is the possibility that villain can have 7s5s, the possibility that villain can have Ts7s and the possibility that villain can have JsTs.

the more you know

OK. I'm going to eat crow and concede this argument to Betgo. I was confused by the reference to the bad beat jackpot because I don't think OP would ever win a bad beat jackpot with his hand here. So I didn't understand the reference to three straight flush combos in that context, which got us on a digression from this interesting spot.

OP couldn't win a bad beat jackpot, but JTss versus 75ss would result in a jackpot in certain cash games.

I pretty much agree with all of Turbulenc3's comments. I think the decision to check the turn is the most interesting part of the hand. I think that we should be check-calling our entire continuing range in this spot because the turn card is really bad for our range. If the river pairs the board I think that this allows us to lead with small flushes as a bluff.

Good fold, he'd have to have a ton of info on you to attempt to push you off the Ks here. Also Pre is not good.

I agree that this is a fold. I also agree that turn should probably be a check. Not really sure how you are balancing your turn betting range here. Part of the difficulty in this hand results from the fact that your hand is so face up, and the reason for this is lack of balance. You should be checking this turn, which hits his range harder than yours, especially against a strong player where balance becomes even more important. What does your range look like after you bet the turn? If the board had paired on the river, are you c/f your entire range if he makes a large enough bet?

Thanks for all the replies. Yes I agree pre isn't good. I'm not sure why I didn't check turn because as a lot of you are saying I can only really be betting 3 with the k of spades or the straight flushes and jack of spades doesn't likely call river. A lot of the time I only bet flop and river to make sure I get 2 streets with my more nutted hands and this should be ones of those, especially when it is this obvious. If board pairs on the river instead then it must be an easier fold except that it adds a few more bluffs to his river raising range. I probably would check then fold to a large bet on the river if it paired. Still not sure many people would try to bluff me there if it did pair on the river without a house.

Having an uncapped range ourselves and betting into a range that contains a limited amount of offsuit Ks combos (+some Kxss/SF combos of which some would've raised flop/turn), with all other hands in that range being mere bluff catchers, I don't see why we wouldn't be able to have some bluff combos in our 3barrel range.

This doesn't make river a call (even if villain thinks we're capable of bluffing 3 streets on this board, it should only lead to lighter calls and not to bluffraises) but I don't understand the comments of 'our hand is face up', 'we always have Ks with this line', ...

I think the sickest part of this hand is that, assuming you open the straight flush combos pre, Ks is the bottom of your range on the river based on how you played the turn.

I just thought why have you switched to Bikram ))
#epicfail (no offense bruh)

seems a fine fold at this stage and agree with guys on previous streets.

Some funny questions:

As hero do we just call 75ss?

As a villain do we ever raise Ks?

Ok, I understand the argument for folding is that our hand looks like exactly what it is and villains ONLY value combos are straight flushes. However, the OP made it sound like he already had some history with this player winning some chips off of him (don't think it was mentioned whether the chips were won with or without showdown).

We opened cutoff, and it might be possible our opponent just thinks we are full of it and is trying to either rebluff us or make us fold all of our weak flushes. Someone mentioned he may have a set that is turning into bluff, but I really think if he doesn't believe you have the Ks, a river raise gets you to fold your entire range so it's a tempting bluff-raise spot. I'm not really arguing that the fold is bad, because I don't know if your opponent is capable of bluffing here, just saying that there is a non-zero percentage that a villain could not believe you and try to take the pot away.