I'd fold river, people aren't 3 barreling enough on these dry-ish boards . Some of his bluffs also caught up otr.

snapfold otr readless , turn is gross , would not call without the added equity and definately fold and AK Q J

I like turn call, and I'm snap folding river. This is just one of those spots to me, the fact that it's nl50 combined with that people show up with less bluffs in these spots. I mean we got : 22,66,99,55,76s,65s, we could have 43s not sure you do, 87s, all of these hands are like obvious call (May have forgot a couple of hands/combos).. My point is , we're really far down in our range and having two 8s here doesn't accomplish anything good in terms of blockers. Like we're not afraid of him shoving up with 16 combos of 87 OTR. I'm folding and I wouldn't rly think about it.. You could call here with some kinds of reads/history ofc.. But you're playing a pool with players who generally under bluff, and it's a board where you are percieved to be quite strong. There are better board textures out there if you feel like being a hero vs an unknown.

You played it fine. People aren't bluffing often enough to call here.

to he or not to he, that is the question?

Shouldn't villain really consider folding turn? Could we really consider calling turn& folding river an exploit because villain might not 3 barrel enough?

I'll make an attempt at finding what kind of range we need to call down with in order to prevent villain from having a profitable bluff with any two on this run-out. Basically just applying 1-a to our pre-flop calling range on every street. (That said, this may be way off in terms how this situation actually works, but I don't know any better method/approximation at the moment and I'm too tired to speculate). If there are any mistakes, please point them out.

(I proceed with the assumption that we don't have a raising range on the flop or turn, which is certainly debatable. It does make this kind of thing much easier to look into though).

Pre-flop

Calling range vs 3-bet:

246 combos.

Flop - 9d 6h 2c

Reduced to 225 combos on the 9d 6h 2c flop.

Villain bets 5.5 / 8.5 and we need to defend roughly 60%:
1 - (5.5 / (5.5 + 8.5)) = 0.6

(Not considering rake due to simplicity).

Hand type | Percentage of total range | Number of combos

Sets | 4% | 9
TT, 9x | 12% | 27
PPs, 6x, 2x | 20% | 45
Draws | 7.1% | 16
Overcards w BFD | 12% | 27
AQ | 5.8% | 13

Total | 60.9% | 137

Which combos to chose is of course debatable when we have exhausted pairs and draws. Two overcards with backdoor FDs seem like reasonable picks, as does AQ. (If we peel wider than that, including the Ax with undercards to the 9 and BFDs we're defending 67%. Include some offsuit overcards and we're rarely folding).

So basically it looks like a board where we can peel quite a lot of hands comfortably, but have very few strong hands in our range. I'd very much like to hear which hands you guys favor calling, and why.

Turn - 9d 6h 2c 5h

Going to the 5h turn with 137 combos, they are reduced to 132.

Villain bets 13.5 / 19.5 and we need to defend roughly 59%, so let's make it 60%.

Straight, set, two pair | 14.4% | 19
TT, 9x | 20.5% | 27
Flush draw | 8.3% | 11
5x or better + GS | 18.2% | 24

Total | 61.4% | 81

This seems like a very reasonable way to pick hands, without looking into it in great detail. Nutted hands and strong draws of course are included. Non PP pair + draws (e.g. 86s) are prioritized before PP + draws (44, 33) since they have more outs against overpairs. TT and 9x are chosen mainly due to the high absolute hand strength, but this could certainly be discussed and dissected. It depends on a lot of factors and quite frankly I'm not aware of all of them, and too tired to try and piece it together. Comments on hand selection?

River - 9d 6h 2c 5h 6c

Going to the 6c river with our 81 combos, they are reduced to 76.

Villain bets 28.75 / 46.5 and we need to defend 62%.

This is where it gets more tricky. "Only" 26.3% of our range is nutted (trips or better) and obviously call, even beating the villain's value bets.

Quads, full house | 15.8% | 12
Straight | 5.3% | 4
Trips | 5.3% | 4

If we were to base the rest of our call-down hands entirely on absolute hand strength, without any blocker considerations, (simply choosing the best 62% 5-card hands from our river range), it would look like this:

TT, A9s, K9s, Q9s, J9s, T9s, 98s, 97s | 35.5% | 27

Which comes out to TT, and any 9x hand. Using this method, we fold 88 on the river. Combined with the above nutted hands, we get:

Total | 61.8% | 47

(Top 62% absolute hand strength - no other considerations)

Further considerations

But it's not really that easy. Correctly picking our bluffcatchers is the hardest part of the analysis. Just because we have a hand with higher absolute hand strength, doesn't mean it's the best hand to call with.

For example, if villain is never value betting worse than TT, the relative hand strength of A9 and 88 would be the same. Even though a pair of nines is higher than a pair of eights, it doesn't matter as far as beating the villain's value hands goes.

But maybe our opponents main bluffing hands are hands containing 8s, and/or hearts, such as As8s, Qh8h, etc. If this is the case, calling down with 8h8c would be really bad, since we block villain's most likely bluffing hands.

In any case, to get a precise answer, we need to think further.

Some basic considerations:

-We want to block villain's value combos, making it less likely that he has a strong hand that beats us.
-We don't want to block villain's bluff combos, making it more likely that he has a bluffing hand.

So here we can no longer just consider our own range and pick a percentage of hands based on absolute hand strength (or on earlier streets - playability). (Not saying that's the best approach on the earlier streets either, of course).

To know which hands our opponent can and should value bet, we need to consider our own range and how it will defend versus bets. (For example, if 60% of our range was trips or better, our opponent could of course not value bet a hand like AA).

To know which hands our opponent could have bluffed with on earlier streets, we would need some knowledge of his pre-flop range, and his tendencies. (For example, does he 3-bet a hand like Qh8h, or Jh8h? Could he be betting the turn and river with AhKs?).

(I just want to mention that there's definitely a very precise and correct way to approach this entire situation - but I'm not aware of what that way is! So I'm just mentioning a few things that come to mind. Please add to the discussion, point out my mistakes and poke holes in reasoning wherever you can).

At the moment I'm a bit too tired to go further with this, but here are some interesting considerations:

-If we call the river with every single 9x combo or better, AcAs has 55.6% versus our calling range. If we fold 98s and 97s, this drops to 48.7%.

-If we call the river with every single 9x combo or better, TT has 48.8% - 50% equity vs our calling range. If we fold 97s, this drops to 44.6% - 46%. If we also fold 98s, this drops to 39.7% - 41%.

(Software used is Combonator, I can definitely recommend it).

One mistake in the above post (even using the simplified 1-a street by street thing) is that I failed to consider that when bluffcatching, we only need to consider the range of hands that can actually beat a bluff. So, going to the river, perhaps hands like T8s and JTs shouldn't be considered bluffcatching candidates, making our calling requirements just slightly tighter. (But T8s beats T7s!). Then again, I don't really have a good grip on how this works.

If someone can bring some enlightenment to the thread, please do!