Hi @ all!

Let me start by saying that I just started playing again a few weeks ago after having been away from the games for about 5 years. I had a pretty good run at 5NL and finished a 3.30 tournament in 3rd place, so I was able to move up to 10NL. Thus, I won't pretend to be an expert on today's micros or anything.

That said, I wanted to share an observation that somewhat contradicts common knowledge. During my sessions over the last couple of days, I was in a few spots where I ended up calling river bets rather lightly i.e. with bluffcatchers. I did so based on villain and board texture. While some spots were in regular pots, several arose in 3-bet pots. I naturally wasn't correct in all spots, but I was a fair amount of the time. And what I found particularly interesting is the type of hands villain would show up with.

One example:

On a
8c4cAd9h4d board
in a BU (me) vs SB pot, villain (who 3-bet) showed up with
KsJh
after barreling 3 streets. (Not my favorite hand to barrel 3 streets with on that board, to say the least)

Now, my sample size is obv very small. I don't want to read too much into those spots. At the same time, conventional wisdom has it that villains in the micros hardly bluff OTR.

I wonder: Might this actually be an urban legend based on behavior from the past? Might it be the case that there is a certain typology of micro villains who actually massively overbluff in those situations (which would be a good exploit vs a population that overfolds because of said population read)? I suppose some of you played considerably more hands at 10NL recently and I'd love to hear your (empirically backed) take on this.

And if that type actually happens to exist: which stats should we watch out for? Obv a pretty high 3-bet% over a decent sample is a good starting point as those ranges are wider by definition. Then we could look at their cbet% on T/F/R in 3bet pots. But those stats need time to converge. So maybe there might be some other clues that should make us more inclined to call down lighter.