Super light call down

Its not a super light calldown. River is essentially a blank so BTN has to calldown some 9x if he wants to make BB's bluffs indifferent which is something you definitely would want to vs someone as agressive as LLinus. There is also a decent chance LLinus will overbluff this spot so if thats the case BTN should never fold 9x

69suited actually

Ok ok little bit lighter but still 9x > JJ or TT
So what did LL have ?

The 9 kicker makes virtually no difference in this spot. There are gonna be some blocker considerations that might change the EV a little bit but that is most likely not significant. In that sense having a kicker that unblocks BB's bluffs would be prefferable so its possible that 96 is a higher EV call than Q9 or J9

Agree with Saulo, 100% 98, 97, 96 have better Ev than Q9, J9, actually I would say it´s a huge mistake to call blocking the Q and the J, thats why we usually want to fold hands like AJ on this spot and call A8- and twopairs instead, AQ is call because BB could have the same hand, AT is a shitty spot.

It´s important to consider the frequency BTN has a TP / Twopair, he doesn´t need/want to call with weaker pairs on this spot unless he thinks bb has too many bluffs.

@ elias, you fold AJ in this spot? seems crazy. i woulda thought 96s is one of the worst since it blocks 56s/67s, 63s which should bluff here basically always. I understand why 98s or 9Ts would be better than Q9 though.

I'm not really sold on Q/J being a bad blocker...we remove LL's most likely value range and before seeing the showdown we have very little info about his bluffing strategy. It's also worth noting that if QJ was the best bluff hand according to pio, that would almost certainly change as soon as we start folding Q9/J9/AJ (!) at 100% freq.

Exactly, QJ is the best hand possible to bluff, that´s why Qx and Jx are the worst blockers. Would It change if we start folding hands blocking Qx and Jx? People dont know how we fold so I personally dont think so. By the way, do you consider J9 and Q9 as a standart call on the river? playing 6-max If you call those 9x you are folding maybe 15%-25% of the times.

Anyway that turn is a little bit complicated and I dont think we must bluff QJ very often if we can use other weak draws instead, maybe QJ + blocker of the flush could be bet. If we dont think QJ is betting often on the Turn, then, blocking Qx or Jx is not very important. I personally think both overplayed their hands on this spot, good for the show :P

I'm not really sold on Q/J being a bad blocker...we remove LL's most likely value range

Blocking bluffs is far more harmful than blocking value is beneficial. Value and bluffs are not in a 1:1 ratio in a perfect betting range so blocking 1 value hand does not neutralize the effect of blocking 1 bluff.

You are making very smart posts Saulo, I would add that when you are on the btn facing all in on the river and you need to choose a hand to call it´s way better to have TP than 9x because with 9x you block only A9s-99 and A9s is a rare 3bet from BB, with an Ace you block a lot of Top pairs / Two pairs and that´s a key point when you are building your calling range

I definitely agree with both comments (9x is a standard river fold, and blocking bluffs is bad!) but just don't understand the focus on QJ. I think there's a heavy bias going on from knowing the showdown.

I ran a quick sim on the spot last night and found QJs was bluffing infrequently on turn (but always on river once we arrive here). The suggested river calling range was quite linear (almost all combos of A8+ calling, with some mixed strat from A7-). Have you seen conflicting results?

yeah the focus on QJ dont make sense to me either, i wouldnt expect more than 1 combo of QJ bluffing this river given that it isn't betting turn that often...either by solvers or the players imo. 56s on the other hand is always barreling turn and almost always barreling river, there are 3-4 combos. 96s is one of the weakest 2nd pairs to call with, this is very far from equilibrium and cindy has to be making an exploitative call here, in his own mind. i give him credit for it. Im guessing the Ax that called the least with in your sim was A6s?