Did you have As?
Seems like you wouldn't x/r flop and give up draws here since u can still be repping Js, Qs or As for value and maybe possibly 3s or 4s is still in your range 200bb deep? Unless you were trying to x/r twice? Lol

aa no spade jacks qq and qq are the only thing that make sense. I dont like it tbh. What bluffs are you going to be running from utg vs hj in this spot. Id rather not have a flop chk raise range and play turns and rivers. I personally think you had qq here and because you thought hes wider than most you were going for the chk raise chk raise line because his range consists of many bkdoor fd and flop fd with no showdown value that you thought were more likely to bet the turn.

If he had kk and chked turn then he has to call rivers i would think.

I wrote out my thought process below which is sort of long (along with the work I did). Didn't include screenshots since I'm technically supposed to be studying for exams atm.... Cliffs at bottom for those tl;dr

No idea about preflop, I'm all for bigger at larger stack depths but this is massive. It may not be overly ridiculous if there are antes but I think it's too big.

In the case where your range is narrowest (worst possible scenario for him):

If we open 15% UTG (Suited broadways, AJo+, KQo+, 22+, A2s-A5s) and play our whole range as a call in this spot and fold 2/3 of the time (which I think is reasonable given his huge sizing and 4 guys behind us that will all protect our open some % of the time).

We see a flop with 5% of hands (77-AA, AKo, AQs,AKs).

We fold flop 40% leaving us a range of TT-AA, AKdd, AKss, AQdd, AQss, AsKx, AxKs to call the flop.

On the turn our range has 55% against KK which means he should check.

If he narrows it further by betting, we can fold another 33% leaving us a range of JJ-AA, AKss, AKdd, AQss. This give his KdKh 15% against our range.

This makes betting turn a clear disaster if this is the case.

In the best case scenario possible (best possible scenario for him):

We play > 19% UTG (22+, suited broadways, ATo+, KJo+, AXs, 56s+, 97s+)

We 4b AA, a few bluffs (~1%). We call with 66+, AK, AQs, KQs, AJs (Note, this range was handpicked to favor him on this board as best as possible, while still being realistic.

We fold flop % ~40% and call with 99-KK, AsKx, AxKs, AQdd, AQss, AJs.

He has 70% equity on the turn.

If he bets and we call JJ-KK, AKss,AKdd, AJs, AQss, KQss, we are folding 43% of the time and the times he gets called he has 41% equity.
 

The range that you folded had 7.4% equity so I think even in this case he should check, as the equity you folded is negligible when compared to how he has manipulated your range.

In this case he should also check.


I think what we can see here, in the worst case scenario for him, betting is borderline criminal. In the best case scenario for him, checking is still clearly superior to betting but it's slightly closer.

I think that means turn check is pretty mandatory unless he thinks you're a complete nutter from UTG.


As for your river lead its either a mandatory lead if you think he has no/little AK in his range or a mandatory check if you think he has a lot of AK.

You have 6 combos of AK and 9 sets. So you get ~7 bluffs which work out to be 99 and some AJ combos.

We check KQ/AQ/KK/the rest of the AJ combos.

If we check, we have 32 combos on the river (6 straights, 9 sets, 1 AQ, 1 KQ, (6) KK, (6) 99, (3) AJs)

If he bets just under pot, we can jam AK and call AJs/KK/KQ/AQ and fold our sets and 99.

(Since I assume his river betting range is polarized to AK/Air if he bet/check/bets this runout for ~pot (thus our blockers > our sets). If you think he's slightly less polarized then sets > 1P +blocker obviously.

Cliffs: 

Worst case scenario betting turn KK is criminal.
Best case sceario betting turn w/ KK is slightly bad.

River lead is purely a function of his AK combos.

If he has no AK, we can run him over.

If he has AK and his river range is polarized to AK/Air, we need to check our range and call with any hands that contain blockers (and AK).

If his river betting range is slightly depolarized we can call AK/sets and play river reasonably balanced in either scenario.

Let me know what you guys think.

Cliffs from Apot seem good. 3b pf KK, b/c flop, ch turn and decide river. I have no clue wtf you can have Phil, especially when he holds Kd. Maybe ATdd/ATss deciding to bluff? The one combo of AKss could possibly make sense

Oh boy,  I somehow missed that we check raised the flop.

That's pretty indicative of the amount of sleep I'm currently working on and how well this exam is going to go haha.

I think if anything this makes his turn check probably more mandatory but at this point I will leave it up to people more qualified than I am to respond.

Normally, but not when I can't even read the action haha

I can't imagine any hands really that UTG plays in this way, even if UTG is playing wierd. I mean, check raising JJ on the flop and then checking the turn is wierd, while check raising JT is just probably bad and we dont think UTG is playing bad :) 

I'm discounting 33 and 44 combos from UTG's range cause if they were not just open folded pre they would prob fold to a 3bet. Once UTG checks the turn his hand actually looks like AsKs or AsQs as those hands make the most sense to c/r flop with. But given the action for the rest of the hand I think we have to discount those because AsQs doesnt want to bet river and AsKs likely bets the turn. The funny thing here is that your range should be so narrow but its still hard pinpointing exactly what it is! In order of likelihood in this unlikely scenario I would say you have JJ,AsKs,44 for value. PFA has played the hand well up until now, unless he believes that AsQs or AsKs is a large part of your checking range on the turn in which case he could bet. On the river he just needs to beat like 1 or 2 combos of a bluff to be able to call against that range so I guess he should call.

I think this hand is quite intersting. Both of your pf ranges should be pretty narrow in this spot, I'd also say its a spot where if I were in Phil's shoes OTF I wouldn't have a c/r range.

That said when you c/r I think you can have JJJ or AA for value and that's probably it, I think you can c/r flop with Askx and as well any other nut fd combos in your range. Im not sure how is pf range is structured but its possible his range doesn't contain JJ which would be very good for you because your range is small and contains every combo of JJ.

The turn checking through is interesting, he can certainly have QQQ, but it is a very wet board, and one that I would expect phil to fire most of the time (although maybe check AA AsQs and potentially give up with some Askx combos). Once the T hits OTR I think Postflopaction has a fairly face up range of AJ-KJ,KK,AA + potentially any spade draws. 

I'm not really sure what he should do vs a bet, phil's range is fairly unlikely to include sets, and potentially includes AK, its hard to come up with bluffs in phil's range, however I think ultimately I'd fold KK I think Phil is good enough that he's not raise calling that wide a range pf deep oop, and as a result it just seems to me that he's going to be too value heavy on this board.

haha weird hand Phil! eq.fest's post looks pretty gd. For you to take this line it looks like u either missed a double x/r or checked turn for some other explo. reason with a value hand or that u somehow improve on the offsuit T river with some of your bluffs. 89ss/dd usually barrel turn but i guess QTss or AKss could conceivably be played like this. 

His pre-flop 3-bet is huge, even for 200BB.
This is a somewhat odd board to c/r, as you only rep JJ and 55/33. Against that sizing, I don't think he expects you calls 55/33 OOP very often.

As PFA with KK, bet-calling seems like the obvious play.

Really confusing turn check. You're saying here that you had a check-raisable hand on the flop, but now you don't want to put more money in. That makes it look like the Q helped you. AQss/KQss makes sense. There would be no reason to slow down with a set. He's going to get your money anyway if has a bigger set, and PFA shouldn't 3-bet QQ UTG vs HJ for >4x.

As PFA, he might expect you to double c/r, and since you're fairly polarized on the turn, I don't see the need to bet myself.

Given that you didn't overbet, I'm assuming you don't have AK. You're repping AQss here, and only sets if you and PFA have odd dynamics, to the points where you checked the turn because of it.

As PFA, because of his blockers, I'd end up calling. You're repping the flopped sets and maytbe QTss if you called that OOP pre, and that's about it.
Jamming his blockers as a bluff isn't too bad either.

Really confused. I guess you took a weird tricky line with JJ because he is so smart and you wanted to throw his handreading out the window by checking the turn.

Or you have like ATss (not sure you peel pre OOP vs that size though) and didn't wanna call the flop and see brick turns OOP so you c/r to rep AA/KK/JJ, and on the turn it suddenly feels uncomfortable only repping JJ and you know he will most likely check behind so you are hoping for a free river.

And on the river you feel it's so bizarre to try rep anything now so that's what I'm going to do. And he has no sets and so few AK (if any) and you think he is going to give your riverbet alot of cred because he should probably know that when a great player takes a superweird line vs another great player then it is maybe a little more likely it was a weird trap for value with sets or a "strange" AKss/AKdd/AsKx/AxKs.

When good players takes fishy lines it scares other good players. :)

For all I know you could probably be so sick to turn AQss into a bluff to get him off AA/KK. I wouldn't be surprised Phil :)

Looking at the hand now though, it seems like a line I would/could consider take with AsKx/AxKs. C/r flop with alot of backdoor-equity and two overs and planning on barrel spades. Then Qd comes and I could see myself giving up because I don't like only repping JJ/AA and I'm probably perceived to have more semibluffs. Then I smash the river.

After having mulled it over for a while I'm not entirely sure much value makes sense with this line and I'm also not entirely sure how we're bluffing, I think Aces make the most sense in phil's shoes tbh. 

Here's my reasoning:

Flop "value" check raising range--> AA/JJ/44/33.

Not entirely sure we flat 44/33 pre or even open them so I'm discounting those.

Preflop JJ raise call seems like only option.

Preflop AA, I think 4betting a 3b this huge from these positions is probably polarizing yourself to AA/the odd bluff which is probably not a great idea.

So I think our flop x/r range is JJ/AA/air (draws)

Turn: 4 possibilities.

1:

We have JJ and missed a double x/r which seems poor given the following:
a) The only hand that beats us now is QQ, and all the money goes in regardless of the line we take.
b) We can get in all his rubles by going bet/bet at this point, we don't need to get 2 bets in on any street.
c) JJ is doing splendidly vs his range, and doesn't mind narrowing his range to overpairs/draws since we're still doing great vs that range.

2: We have a draw that picked up a Q and no longer wants to bluff. 
Possible, but I think there's certainly a case to be made for betting turn with these hands but possible. 

3: We have AA and on the Q do not want to narrow his range further to JJ+/massive draws (especially if we have AsAx making his range mostly JJ+. We're doing meh against JJ+ (still ahead given he doesn't 3b JJ/QQ with a freq. of 1 pre and probably 3bs KK with a freq. ~1 pre.) But because if we narrow his range to this on the turn, and then bet river (narrowing it further, we're now behind when we're called). Similar to the justification I gave for not betting turn with KK as PFA in my previous post where I thought Phil hadn't check raised flop.

4. We had some airball and gave up

River:  


3 Possibilities:
(I've removed the case where we missed a double x/r w/ JJ)

1. We're betting a hand like AQss, seems unlikely given ranges.
2. We have a bluff that randomly decided to stab river. Also seems unlikely but I guess it's possible.
3. We have AsAx (or maybe just AxAx) and feel that he'd bet QQ/JJ on turn when checked to, leaving his range as QsXs, KK, Jx, AA, potentially the odd AK combo).

A range which we can actually bet into on the river especially if we hold As --> we block most of his AK floats.


Cliffs:

I'm not sure what bluffs we can have here. Potentially like AsTx? or AsJx? Those both seem like bad peels pre though.

It's also difficult for me to come up with a "value" range here for us but the hand I can build the strongest case for Phil having here is AA.

Let me know what you guys think.

In a bayesian equilibrium GT perspective I don't think Phil is betting this river without any blocker to AK, so his range would be ok to have AA, KsQs, AsQs, AsKx. I think QQ and JJ he may bet a little smaller, because PFA range has a some AKs hands and since he has no blocker that would be a value bet probably can't stand a shove by PFA. 

Beside that, the size can't be so small because he has some bluffs on his range but I think it is the perfect size for AA on this spot. 

I wouldn't raise any hands on the flop, while it might be okay to raise AA, I find it more beneficial to bolster my chk/calling range which will include plenty of hands weaker.

River seems a bit ridiculous since villain should have AK far more than we should.  If we wanted value from a made hand, we should have bet the turn.  Not sure anything other than JJ makes sense to raise the flop, definitely nothing makes sense to take this line.  Maybe I'm being over-critical, but I'd never play any hand this way.

I think your line makes a lot of sense with AA, if you did decide to flat pre with it.  CR flop looking to barrel good turns ---> Q sucks, check ---> villain checks back, fistpump ---> T improves AK but you block half of them when you hold AA, so 2/3 looks like it still gets really good value from KK or whatever other broadway pairs he has in his range.  

I tried to figure out how many times bigger than $1800 he made it, and I was ok up to $5400, but then I had to carry the $800 over and I got lost.  If I can't figure out how big the raise is, and I'm OOP, I'm probably not flatcalling too much because my flatcalling hands tend to rely on sucking out vs a range they're doing badly against so I need good odds.  I'd probably just fold a lot and 4bet occasionally in this spot.  Risking $7500 to win $2700 is just really expensive in non ante with 3 live hands behind.

Anyways, I also probably wouldn't take this line very often if ever postflop.  I think he should fold KK vs you, but I don't think he will, but you might not have played enough with him to know trying to bluff him off KK here is suicidal.  I agree that your most likely hand is probably AA I think?  Or AsKs?  I guess you could also just have JJJ and figure he bets turn to protect with KK-AA some % and he bets AK as a bluff pretty often, and once he bets he might feel committed. 

Yes the sizing is pretty big pre (4.166x) but it doesn't seem that unreasonable with all things considered. He's committed to the 2 short stacks behind whatever size he uses. Maybe he feels expo. that crazy elior and samo with (207 eff and 187 bbs) will play bk either by 4b or calling a lot less frequently vs a sizing that seems stronger. He could also be under the assumption that phil likes to defend a very wide range when getting a gd price with deep stacks so if he cuts down his odds slightly he can put phil on a more defined range making things look better for him postflop. Not really much to add just that the fact most people see the sizing as huge could sway some frequencies of players ranges in favour of the villain.

He should show up on the river with ~30% of his flop cbetting range, so cbetting 80% of his range on this board with a 3bet of 5% in this spot means he'll show up with AA+ on the river 13/18 times when he calls your river bet (a little more than 2/3rds).  

The interesting thing here is more than 1/3rd of his range will be the nuts if you include AKss in his flop bet/calling range.  AsKx + AxKs + AKss are 7 combinations out of the 18 he'll theoretically call with on the river, and this works out to be ~39% of his range when he calls your river bet.

I actually thought about that but it should still make KK the indifference point and shouldn't actually change our value betting range. 

I guess your bluffs would be something like ATdd or something, right? 

I still don't see what we hope to get called by with KK, but I don't think it makes betting that bad with it, though it does seem to argue for something like 30k instead.

I think you guys are sort of demonstrating that CR'ing AA is bad b/c..

-villain is not going to be able to make sense of hands that work well as bluffraises, so he should assume Phil is aware of this and is not bluffing nearly enough OTF, (villain gives phil credit for being aware that the flop bluffraise will be perceived as fishy, but villain knows phil is not a fish)

but if Phil perceived villain on the level in parentheses, it becomes sort of an awesome spot to bluff with Ax, assuming villain will fold KK by the river.  I'd call this level 3 aka pure pwnage.

The more i think about this hand the more i think Phil doesn't have AA. Since a lot of people seem to think AA is his most likely hand I wanted to ask a question about pre flop.

If we start at the first major decision point in the hand -  PFAs pre flop 3b of Phil's UTG open. PFA chooses roughly a 4x 3b and basically represents a very strong range. Say AA,KK,AKs maybe QQ for value, then some bluffs to balance like A5s, AJ/KQ type hands, some suited connector stuff whatever. Phil stated in the OP that he thought PFA would be wider than most but not by much. I'm assuming tho he doesn't think JJ is in that range, maybe some combos of AKo. Anyway it seems somewhat clear that vs that range we want to make the pot bigger and 4b w/ AA. We can't imagine PFA will make any tight folds with the value portion of that range, preflop at least. So now we get to go to the flop with more money in the pot and PFA will have to make some tough decisions over multiple streets with a lot of money in pot with his strong bluffcatchers like KK and risk either folding the best hand on some street to our 4b bluffs or calling down and losing a big pot.  

Ok tho Phil could be saying well if i 4b here 200bbs+ deep in these positions it polarizes my range and he can really put me on only AA maybe KK and the occasional bluff. So Im just gonna call everything and protect my 3b calling range so its not capped and not 4b so he's not so clairvoyant of my range. Phil would also maybe get to add more value combos to his flop CR ranging on certain boards textures permitting like the J43 flop here and PFA might make more of a mistake with hands like KK and his 3b bluffs so that AA possibly becomes higher EV.

Since a lot of you guys seem to think AA is his most likely hand why do u think strat B (calling pre) is the highest EV one even if we run the risk of losing value somewhere or getting outdrawn post by his bluffs? Seems to me vs this 3b sizing at 200bbs we should have a 4b range? If the highest EV play with AA is to 4b then optimally we should choose that one right? Should we ever play a mixed strat w/ AA here?

We also have Phil's flop x/r and turn check. If we did play AA like this up until the turn should we even chk the Q turn? QQ improves to better but thats about it. If we think QQ is in his PFAs 3b range pre isn't that more reason to 4b? 

Apotheosis presented a decent argument on checking AA on the Q turn. Just wondered if anyone could expand on the turn line we should take here. 

Cool thread interested to hear Phil's thoughts on the hand and what he had.

Since a lot of you guys seem to think AA is his most likely hand why do u think strat B (calling pre) is the highest EV one even if we run the risk of losing value somewhere or getting outdrawn post by his bluffs? Seems to me vs this 3b sizing at 200bbs we should have a 4b range?

i can think of 3 reasons .. 

1) phil is a self proclaimed weirdo as seen in OP

2) phil was in a nitty mood and didn't want to be in a position where he had to barrel off a 4bet bluff for 6 figgys

3) phil thought he'd have opportunities to take a weird looking CR line on a board that he should otherwise not have a CR range on and get paid big

I think the flop is a check, we're not getting 3 streets of value with KK on a J43ss board and the fact that we are over 200bbs deep means we need to play slightly more defensive. By checking flop we also don't put ourselves in terrible situations, facing a c/r is really tough for us since we have to play 2 more streets and we only have 2 outs to improve. So flop is  a check, turn is a bet if he checks or just  a call if he bets. River is probably a fold, bad run out and we beat nothing.

A few quick toughts.

Would you play the flop or turn differently in his shoes?

1. The QJxx board is arguably one of the worst boards for KK, checking back becomes almost standard. There is a slight possibility that by letting Phil see a river for 25.5k he gets off cheaply, but that assumes a high turn barrel frequency.

2. A couple of good posts in this thread arguing about how KK becomes a hand that needs to pot control, even after the flop goes x/b/c.

I expect him to be 3-betting wider than most would in this spot, though not by a huge margin.  I'm really unsure what to make of his preflop sizing.

3 The narrower PFA valuerange becomes, the larger his raise size should be. Building a range around KK-AA and a sizing of 12.5bb isn't enough to get 200bb of value on most board runouts. If you want to do this you need to 3-bet to a larger size. Hence, with his actual size he should have a wider range with more merged hands like QQ-88, suited connectors etc, or, alternatively, no raising range at all.

4. A range built around KK-AA should pot control a ton on QJxx, and balance the flop checking range. If PFA has more JJ and As5s type hands in his range he can cbet more frequently. But having a wider 3-bet range with two shortstacks behind is not a good situation.

5. I don't see why it is such a good spot for AK to 3-bet preflop and b/c the flop, PFA shouldn't have many AK combos in his range, mostly AsKs and AdKd. This makes the river bet a bit small, indicating a thin value hand for Phil.

What do you make of it? 

6. I put Phil foremost on AA, a weirdly played pot controlling JJ (against QQ the money goes in anyways), some AsK that got there, a rare bluff with a hand like KsQs or AsTs (not sure if Phil calls many worse spade combos in this spot).

We ever gonna find out the results, Phil?

Bump

results!?