FooDooFaFa

If simplifying it allows you to reduce variance then I would say the least amount of simplification which puts you within your variance-acceptance-threshold (i.e. works with your risk acceptance).

Otherwise the only scenario I could think of would be something contrived like "I think shoving has the highest ev but the spot is rare and villain is bleeding money in almost all other cases so I'm just going to fold here and win all the money for sure within 20 hands."

Except as a mental exercise why would you simplify a strategy which you presumably understand, can evaluate to having a higher ev than a simplified strategy and can play properly?

Limping is an example of a strategy I've seen over the years that professional players have tried to implement, and failed, and so they don't do it. This breaks one of the three assumptions above, so I wouldn't call it "simplifying" to not limp.

I'm a fish and calls. I don't know if my reasoning is good though. The more I think about it the more grossed out about it I am. Essentially after pondering this a few minutes, I think that if villain is bluffing a reasonable amount in this spot we can check a weaker range and bluffcatch, but given the limits I would assume that villains don't bluff enough and that we can fold.

From villains perspective I believe that he would have quite a lot of hands that beats your air, and there are not that many combos of bluffs. Maybe backdoor clubs? QcJc, KcQc, etc. But does villain shove them?

Given that, I think we need to have flushes in our check-range. Something I didn't suspect when I started writing this. I think folding is fine. Obviously I had to lose that money all hypothetically.

Why do you assume that you are playing a breakeven or better strategy? Cherrypicking portions of your graph when deducing winrate and then attributing losing streaks to variance seems non-constructive to me.

I don't mean to call you out on it or anything, but I think it's a faulty way of reasoning. If your winrate is deduced by the average of your hands then the graphs you've shown indicates that you are a losing player, simply because the line ends "in the red."

I fully appreciate that variance can be a real mood-killer, but if you attribute a downward-trending portion of your graph to variance, then logically corresponding upward-pointing trends should be attributed to variance as well. These trends to exclude should logically be determined before analyzing your winrate.

Statistics is treacherous.

Anyways, I would suggest looking at individual hands or small portions of your range and ask yourself "is this a reasonable winrate for this portion?" You can have large samples where you pick up AA very rarely and never get any action. That's a more useful way to analyze whether some of your losses could be attributed to variance. Similarly, how often do you get 3bet oop? With what portion of your range? Etc.

Thanks for the discussion guys! I agree with the thoughts put forward and am happy that I seem to have gotten some of the ideas right. Unfortunately that I didn't have blockers to Ad was not something that I thought of while playing and I ended up tank-folding. Next time I'm better equipped though :)

I think it's well played like that. You should consider making it larger preflop though. I think your range for villain might be quite correct, though you should consider that he might just have random hands quite a lot. Limpers don't have a linear, thought-through strategy.

When villain calls, he will have a lot of equity most of the time, so I wouldn't be results oriented here.

Your flop bet achieves nothing except for bloating the pot. I think the turn reasoning is "technically good" because good things can happen on the river and he might fold. On the river I don't think you should bet again.

When villain limps I think you have the opportunity to outflop her playable range (which will happen quite often) and then your EV becomes a few big blinds, or you can flop and turn some draw like you did and get villain to give up some equity by betting the turn.

If you're going to bet the flop bet bigger. But I don't see why you would want to bet this flop but not raise preflop. Either villain just folds a bunch or she doesn't.

I think your big mistake is focusing on whether this particular turn with this particular pot size could potentially be part of some funky multi-street bluffing strategy when you are just facing some random who thinks limping the button is a solid strategy. And honestly, it seems like it is against you.

Do you really think it's reasonable to develop balanced check-donk strategies against lp limpers at NL2? If so, that work should start with you nailing your # of preflop combos, your # of flop combos and come up with specific lines on specific flops like this one. Not on this turn. I'm fairly sure it will be an exercise in futility.

Villain called flop when you tried to rep something, villain called turn when you tried to rep something stronger or a flush, what makes you think villain wants to fold on this river? Does she really have a balanced range where she'll overfold low pairs since she has flushes, which you block, which makes your river bluff marginally profitable? I don't think so.

I might agree that it's too loose, and I will look over my sb range vs co open to see what happens there. I will also look into bet sizing oop, but so far ~$1.76 vs 3x open works incredibly well at this stake, but it might be too small when I move up.

Thanks!

No worries.
To clarify, I'm saying that if you cbet flop, you should size up your flop cbet size since the pot is rather large to begin with, and if you do so, I think you are pretty encouraged to jam turn as a bluff.

But I think a perfectly fine and profitable line in this situation (for this hand overall) would be to check-give up and choose a different battle.

I don't necessarily think that the range you put him on preflop is that bad. But I think you underestimate how many AK, AQ and KQ, AJ, ATs, etc there are. Even though some surely are inclined to 4b bluff preflop.

You bet very small on the flop and while your range is uncapped, plenty of value-hands would benefit from a larger bet, and if I were you and had KK, AA I would aim to bet larger on the flop to jam turn. Therefore I would do so with my bluffs as well.

As played to the turn, the SPR is awkward, I think villain should jam turn with AQ+ and strong draws for sure. When he bets small, he needs 22% equity to call your jam, which he certainly has with almost anything. I don't think your range is strong here.

I think you could have played the hand such that he is puking with anything less than or equal to KQ, but the way you played it you managed to get it in with no chance to profit and huge variance.

Moreover, your 10 outs give ~20% equity, but only 4 are to the nuts, i.e. ~8%, and you need to win ~45% outright to make the jam profitable, you certainly don't have that much fold equity, and your equity is probably not that clean. Plus, on the turn villain can check back and just win with his weak holdings.

I think your problem is that you don't really know what to do when you wiff with AKo on a board like the one you got. I actually might use it to think about my own ranges a bit. My intuition says that it's fine to either bet flop, jam turn or check with the intention to give up alternatively reevaluate turn when flop checks through.

Moreover, you probably get a lot of EV from preflop folds, flopping strong aces and kings that can have several profitable lines post-flop, so much so that when you look at this hand in particular, I think it's fine to go "whelp, that missed." and give up. AK has potential but with the given flop it's just not that high in our range. Particularly at NL5 I think a giveup is fine.

I do something similar to you and I think it's very level -1 thinking and plain wrong (it doesn't model the scenario and sets you up to play weak-passive). Say you bet $4 or around that, and she raises you with As/Ks blockers. Yea, sucks to have the worst 6x hand possible, and she "outplays" your hand by putting you in the shit-spot. But what's more?

Why is she checking the flop with this hand? Why is she calling the turn? She takes the two hands with little showdown value which actually blocks your bluffing range and has quite good equity against the pair-type part of your range and decides to come along for a bunch of calls? Sounds like villain just took a good betting/raising hand and turned it in to a high-priced potential bluff on the river.

What happens with all our 67s, 89s, TT-66, and a bunch of flushes? It's not like you have nothing here, and considering that I think I like the overbet on the turn.

I'm trying to think of what our range for betting should be here. It's difficult to see whether 65 goes into bluff-catching or betting. You beat all his air and potentially if he bets pocket pairs JJ+ for light value. I'm not sure what portion of his range would call a bet though.

So I'm leaning to check-calling with this hand, and I think it's worthwhile to consider what to do with your stronger hands. I think maybe petting $4.40 or something, you should have plenty of bluffs available.

I would like to continue the flop rather large, maybe 3/4 pot. It's a wet board and my "clear value" hands like AA, AT, A9, 99, 88, 9T and I should also have tons of things that can turn really strong draws with which I can later take any line on the turn.
In practise I see myself also betting AK for value, but I don't think it's correct. Imagine a turn bringing a two-flush with either a 7, J, Q or K. Neither card makes A9, AT, AK thrilled.

So to change my mind: maybe bet 1.2x pot with sets and some hands that can turn a lot of equity (QJ with bdfd), and check-call the two-pairs, AK-AJ, and some hands that can turn a lot of equity?

I'm not so sure about it though, it's pretty much the spot for which I need to learn more about my own ranges and sizings :)

Raise bigger preflop. I'd make it $1 to $1.1, giving her a bit worse than 2:1 on her preflop call (pot size is raise to $0.9 right?). I dare say raising a 3 BB open to 6.5 BB oop is bad, you're giving her no incentive to fold almost anything and you're either just narrowing your range or building a big pot to play oop.

I'm a fan of the fact that theoretically it only really matters who the PF raiser is except in regards to how it affects opponents ranges on further streets, however in practise I find that the pf raiser has initiative. On the flop I'd use it and bet because I think your betting range is ahead of her calling range, villain should have connected plenty on the board. This should set up a turn barrell and maybe a river shove or bet again, while not pricing in any gutshot or straightdraw.

In general I think you've misplayed the hand by trying to "sucker in" money when you hold AA in particular, and in the process you let everyone draw profitably with anything against you.

I think you're overanalyzing the wrong spot in the hand.

For starters, if you can rep 88 and 99 given preflop action, it means you have a massive limping range and practically never isolates?

How wide do you play from HJ? I don't open Axs 100% when playing 6-max and with the lower amount of blinds posted per 100 hands in full-ring, I wouldn't include it in my opening range by default.

My experience with micro-stakes full ring (NL2, NL5) was that they were massive call-fests and a "limp often, bet huge when hitting flop" could be profitable, however that would completely contradict having a bluffing-range whatsoever.

In my opinion, you're about to blast off 150 bb to defend a very questionable 1 bb limp, you're in a spot you shouldn't have been in to begin with.

I think you should look at your preflop ranges a bit more, and reevaluate if you're actually repping what you think you're repping.

Oops, I'm in the wrong. 

I'm just starting out in PLO so this'll be my first post about it. 

Remember that you have to use 2 cards from your hand, so you don't actually have a BDFD, and on a Q94tt board in a 3-bet pot multiway, I expect there to be a lot of TJxx combos that goes well with it, along with 99, QQ, occasional 44 and spadedraws. You do have the nut blocker but having just played a few hours of plo5 people seem fairly happy going with a much worse draw than that. 

I expect to be called a lot on this texture, and considering that you need pretty much either an ace or king-ten runout to complete a straight worth talking about (while dodging spades), I might check back and be prepared to call maybe once or twice on say a paired boardcard or a brick (say 2c, 3d, 5h). 

However, my population read is that people are super-duper-mega-passive-foldy at this stake and so I might bet $1.70 and expect to see a lot of fold from 6677, 56QA, random stuff like that that people might show up with. KKxx might fold out some equity, etc. 

The problem for me here is that I can't think of a pure value-bet hand on the flop that would check back turns. This makes me like a flop-check better. 

Facing the action, I expect flushdraws, wraps, and sets and think we have little equity. If betting, I like betting much smaller to be able to make an easy fold.