-Our range in villains eyes - I'm assuming you mean on the river? That's a really good/interesting question, however I am uncertain of the amount of impact it has on this spot. My reason for saying that is that villain insta-shoved the river, so he didn't pause to analyze my range in a spot that is very uncommon (consider: my line to this point was 4b PF, bet/bet/check. This line doesn't happen too often!) Now it's possible that when I checked river, villain had some sort of instinctual reaction. For some this would be to be thrilled to get the opportunity to showdown a boderline bluffcatcher/value hand (like AJ) , and for some it would be a clear indication that such a hand is good, and they would (could) react by insta valuebetting it. I'm very unsure on a lot of these thoughts/considerations/conclusion, but thinking along these lines is a very inexact process.

-Villain's turn play. I think villain would smooth call the turn with AA but not with KK. With how much money is in the pot, and how vulnerable KK is/is perceived to be, I think most villains would be very happy to make the safe play of shoving over my turn bet to protect their hand. Especially since in practice almost no one is following through on a turn bluff on the river here with how little stack is left to bet with and how big the pot already is (because the bluffer might expect very little fold equity in these spots).

-99TTJJ of villain pre. I expect villain to be likely to 5b these hands PF because they have a high amount of equity in their preflop state, but are vulnerable on the flop. Also he might think they're ahead of my 4betting range, and just be happy to win the pot preflop by shoving, without giving me a chance to catch up with whatever hand I might be 4 bet bluffing with. He is getting fine odds to call preflop (3.37:1) , but I think that he might feel his hand does better 5betting than it does calling a 4b.

-Hero's river play. Heh, we are at the top of our range by a mile when we check the river in this spot, we have a hand of such a strength that villain would never expect. From that standpoint alone, it's a clear call. However, I just felt at the time that villain wouldn't show up with any worse value betting hands, or any/many bluffs, and therefore I had to fold, even though I was at the top of my range. Being at the top of one's range when facing a bet usually makes continuing vs that bet a good place to start, but it is not a mandatory or binding rule that we always have to call when we're at the top of our range. In this spot I simply felt the top of my range wasn't good enough.

As for our hand being face up as weak, this is a real issue/concern. However I think it's importance is somewhat reduced by villain's timing OTR, by how quickly he shoved. Again, he could have instiuncualy processed that my hand/range was weak in one second after I checked the river, and made the allin bet immediately. I just felt like this was significantly less likely than him having a value hand. Obviously I have to be right very very often with this line of thinking, and fold, given the odds the I'm getting.

I also don't think villain took the time to process whether he should turn pairs into bluffs or not. My thought was that he would be super happy to instantly check pairs down and try to beat AK or A2 or whatever else at showdown (which he is going to successfully do a lot of the time when I check the river here).

I hope this helps!! I realize it's complicated and that my thoughts are out in left field a bit. Let me know if you have any follow up questions please.

Nick

1. This is a real issue for sure. I think I wasn't as aware of my range as I should have been in this spot. With this stack at this stage of the tournament, I'll be opening really wide a lot. But this lineup of stack sizes and players behind me is unfavorable to open into, and it would have a real, drastic affect on my RFI frequency. Villain knows I will run a high RFI by default in these conditions, and by his experience playing with me for the previous hour (to the QQ hand.) Villain is also very far to the side of extreme aggression and VPIP, but I think he would tone it down a bit in this spot given the stack size conditions you mentioned. I also think he would expect (correctly so) that I would tone it down a bit in these conditions. This should serve to tone him down a bit further as well.

2. Your ranges looks pretty good. I do expect villain to be on the wider (even widest?) side of his 3b bluff combos here, even showing up with some pretty irresponsible hands (given stack sizes behind). But you're right - villain is going to have plenty of hands that can peel a 4b. My size needs to be bigger.

A lot of your range and sizing considerations seem really good, and I find myself nodding my head in agreement as I read. I likely would have done well (better) to have implemented them myself here in the moment. However, I had a lot of exploitive thoughts going through my head in this moment, that perhaps influenced my decision making too much. First, the history. I had made a 4b/fold vs him from EP to a similar size earlier in this tournament, granted we were less deep at that point. He 5b shoved and I folded.
I thought it I made it this similar size, he might recognize this size as a weak and respond with that thought in mind. I realize this is an utterly simple way of seeing this, and it's not giving villain much credit, but at the time I didn't know much about him and thought that could have been a viable thought to exploit his way of thinking. Additionally, I didn't think villain would have the cojones to 5b bluff allin here, so a huge part of the reason why I choose this size was so that he could make it a small 5b and fold to a 6b shove from me. I thought my 4b/fold to this size earlier might increase his courage for making such a play. It's a pretty marginal mode of thought to begin with, and any conclusions draw there-in are going to have a very high margin for error. I would have likely been better off using range and sizing fundamentals here rather than multiple exploitive thoughts.

I really liked Jason's bet sizing points as well. So much of my thought about this hand went into my river play, that I hadn't considered things like my flop and turn sizing.

I'll take a crack at these questions on his behalf until he sees this thread.

-AA 10th minute. I think that he (I as well) would be less inclined to flat KK here simply because of its increased vulnerability postflop as compared to AA. I imagine he would say that there is certainly a time and a place for it, but more often than not it's a great hand/spot to start getting value from the hand by 3betting. I mean a lot of that is how I feel, and I think he would be in agreement.

-Q no. 2: This is a really good question that I'm curious about as well. I got a lot out of a post below on this very topic though, see what pleno1 had to say about how to play most/all of our range on the flop here.

I agree that my sizings throughout the hand are poor, on every street. For an extensive post about my thoughts on my PF sizing, see my response to a post by steve93 above.

I agree that it's clear that villain will have significantly more combos of Jx than nutted combos OTR. I had an idea that I could play this spot perfectly by checking - that he would only bet with better hands, and never bluff (with what combos, and why, since one would think my river checking range consists entirely of give-ups) and that most of the time we just check the river and I win at showdown. Now why not bet the river in the first place? Fair question, and I'm not in love with my thought in hindsight, although I do still like it to some extent. I just felt like after my line to this point, all of the betting and action that has taken place, that I would be hardpressed to actually have a bluff if I bet the river allin for a tiny amount relative to the pot. Because of that, I thought villain would fold all worse hands than QQ if I bet AI OTR, without too much fuss. Again, debatable.

Just this!

Hey man, thanks a ton for leaving all of these thoughts. They're great points and ideas, and I'm getting a lot out of it. Thank you.

I gave no thought to checking the flop in-game, and very little thought to range play in general in-game. I feel like I see pretty clearly now the range play of checking this flop and its benefits. You outlined it very well, and it simply makes good sense. My approach at every point of this hand was max-exploit though. Now I'm not saying this is the correct way I should have approached this spot, or the best way. It was just my mindset at the time. Perhaps I put too much stock into the dynamic here, and not enough into the sheer fundamentals of range play(s) and bet sizings.

I felt with the history we had; I had 4b/folded from EP to this size , some fold to 3bs, and some Bvb encounters, that villain was ripe to stack off very light in this hand. I also had two explotive thought that made up the bulk of the reasoning being my decision making in terms of action taken and bet sizing used in this hand. Cliffs are 1. Playing off of the past, recent history and 2. Giving villain to 5b/fold to a non-allin size. I felt/feel like the chances of him making a 5b bluff to 800k as compared to allin is like 15:1 in this spot, so I wanted to make sure he had room to do so. For a more detailed explanation of these explolitive thoughts, it's in my response to a post above by steve93.

I agree that sizing PF is fundamentally poor, and may even be exploitively poor as well. He'd seen me 4b bluff to this size earlier (granted that was much more shallow, so big difference), so even though it seems dubious that I'd make a 4b bluff with A3o to this size, that he might think that I would. Agree that this size makes him far less likely to jam, and biases him to peel given odds and playability of large portions of his 3b range, but I felt that he wasn't bluff jamming much here to begin with, so biasing him away from that wasn't much of a loss. Now I just said I based a huge decision on my sizing here based on my "feeling"/assumption that he wouldn't 5b bluff ham here. I have very low confidence in this read. And since I have low confidence in this read, and this read includes poor fundamentals (sizing) I'd likely be better of making a more fundamental (bigger!) size with my range here.

Agreed that postflop bet sizing is pretty uninspired and disappointing. I didn't do a good job of staying one step ahead of things in this hand. That's a product of being at peak on Sunday, and the tension of the moment too I'm sure. But clear, big mistakes on my part in postflop bet sizing.

River. I felt that he wouldn't call a shove with worse given the immense strength my line had shown to this point. I think I'd be hard-pressed in practice and in his perception to show up with a bluff here OTR after this action. So I thought betting was a reverse-freeroll, and that if I checked, I could play perfectly. Usually he checks back his bluff-catcher and I win. Sometimes he bets, and when he does, it's always going to be with a monster that has been slowplaying. I assumed villain would never turn a pair into a bluff here, which I feel pretty confident in but am not certain. I didn't think he would value bet a worse hand (like AJ) OTR in general, and especially given his instant timing. Do you think it's possible he value bets AJ OTR here? What do you make of his insta-shove timing OTR?

Thanks again for leaving such a quality response here man. It's very much appreciated.

Cheers,
Nick

Really good and important and interesting questions. It really just comes down to villain's tendencies. You'll see many many players in both camps with all of these hands you mentioned. Jason had a good quote about this villain that comes to mind here: "this guy just really likes to raise". That makes me bias villain's play with these specific hands to thinking he'd 3b them rather than flat. IIRC, he never flatted IP much, so maybe a product of circumstance / sample size, or maybe his game is to not flat much at all.

If I were villain I'd be flatting AJs, 99 and TT for sure, and JJ is really close to me.

Zach, that post was unreal good. Thank you again for. I wanted to use this space to point out to anyone who stumbles across this to go read that post that Zach wrote. I found it to be super helpful.

Haha, I gotta say, the gig is up - I made the fold just to get you to come out of the woodwork! Haha.

The thing about it, is yes he was playing absurd, and yes on the surface it seems like he could have tons of bluffs and tons of hands that he turns into bluffs, but I think I can narrow his range to mostly value with a few reads/assumptions.

First, everyone gets dealt AA. No matter how absurd you play, you get the same amount of AA as everyone else. And I'm nearly certain that if villain was dealt AA here, that he would play it this way on every street. I'm very confident in that.

Secondly, his river timing. He insta shoved river when I checked. I felt like if he had one pair and I checked river, he's be breathing a huge sign of relief, and quickly check behind. It seems to me that deciding to turn one pair into a bluff here would take some thought processing, and he simply didn't take the time to do so.

Now some other people had mentioned that maybe he was value betting a worse hand. That's a real concern, AJ is a real possibility, but again, I still felt like this hand would go into the category of "phew, yeah I'll check behind" rather than the "sick, this is a slam dunk instant value bet allin" category.

He just shouldn't have a need to turn a pair into a bluff here since when I check the river most (all?) of my hands are just air that is giving up. So I think that when he bets I'm looking at a whole lot of weapons of mass destruction, Ace Ace.

Dude, awesome post. This was a fun read because it was in the same sort of mode of thinking as a lot of my thinking was in this hand. Also, you brought some new, cool points to the table. I'm also glad you caught what I said about his river timing, because I think it's super important. And I just love your interpretation of what his river timing could possibly mean (licking his chops with AJ).

I never considered that this guy could just be sitting there thinking he's set the trap of all traps for me with AJ. Just not tense or worried at all, but praying I jam river, and when I check, he happily and confidently just jams allin. Now this seems possible, but I must say I still do think it's unlikely. Regardless of our "street poker" dynamic of things being super loose, my line is still super strong, the situation is still super big/important/tense, and therefore I gotta believe that this guy would have some worry in his mind with AJ here. And if does have that worry at all, it's going to slow down his river timing. Now I'll backtrack a bit - I suppose it's possible that he has this tension and everything, but when I check the river it's instantly relieved and he says - "ha! I must have the best hand, insta allin for me, woohoo!". Again I would say this is unlikely, but I do acknowledge it as a legitimate possibility. And the trouble for the side of folding to this river bet after checking is that I'm getting amazing odds to call, so any small things like this that give me the best hand even rarely, make it so I just have to call. I still don't know that it's enough , but it's definitely close.

Some other things. I think sometimes he 3bets AJ PF. I also think that sometimes he jams AJ on the turn, thinking that the pot is already massive, and he doesn't want to risk a K Q or T rolling off on the river. So by the time I check the river to him, he doesn't have all of the AJ combinations to begin with, I don't think.

I mean we can get rid of KQ from his range. He just doesn't have it after calling a turn bet. KK, maybeee, a hand like 99, ya maybee, but KQ just seems like a stretch. I mean even A3 is a stretch, because it could play much differently preflop (fold to my open perhaps). There definitely could be a funky hand in there somewhere/somehow, there definitely could be a random thought that popped into villain's head that made him take this line with a bluff, but from what I can see and think and hand read and guess, I think that I am still losing enough on the river that my price isn't good enough to call. I don't have tons of confidence in that though, and fully acknowledge that I could be wrong and wrong by a good margin.

Read my comment above to Rob Kiss's post. That addresses my thoughts in detail about what I think villain does with AJ. Cliff notes are I'm very unsure about my line overall, and my fold, haha.