Tdogger88

So the biggest thing i think we need to consider is what our range looks like after checking the flop. If we bet all of our aces then were capped at a pair of queens on the turn with some 64, 43, 33 and maybe 66, and im notneven sure if we shouod get to the iver with 66 there. So a pair of queens would be fairly high in our range and we would need to consider which ones to call and which to fold, i still think im olay letting go the ones that block the FD that hard. That said, the more Ax we check on the flop with, the more Qx we can fold so figuring ouf these frequencies is job #1

So in general, when you see a calling station raise someones bet, its becayse they have a value raise. Or at least they think its a value raise. Otherwise they just call, so these raises let you make some good solid folds. And remember that youre not at the top of your range here, you could easily have floppdd a set and been barreling for value all along, he doesnt just get away with this, so fold some. Against these types of players a bet/fild line is always better than a check call becayse theyre ahead a lot when they bet and theyre happy to check down with juat about any showdown value that they will also likely call a decent bet with.

What do we lose to and what do we beat? We lose to AA, KK, flopped sets, 53, and 64, AQ and KQ and maybe A3 of clubs exactly? We beat all flush draws (of which there's actually a lot, loads of AXcc and K high draws and plenty of other suited connectors) and 86 and 98.

I don't think we beat any value bets as I don't think he's gonna value bet Q8 or Q6 if he even has them. And he never bluffs with a better hand so we just do the math. I count 42 combos of hands he has for value and 26 for bluffs. So if these ranges are accurate then we're getting the right odds to call. We're getting 2.39:1 to call so we need about 30% equity and we have almost 39. This is also assuming that A) Our opponent is bluffing too much by using his nut flush draws when he doesn't need to, though this also takes A3cc out of his range (while I never put AKcc in his bluffing range at all) and B) Our opponent is also bluffing with all of his gutshots and is opening hands like 96s and T6s. Point B isn't much of a stretch because if we don't have a Q then we don't often really have much more than a gutshot here so he can bluff pretty profitably with those weaker hands, we more need to consider point A. That said, if we take all Axcc out of his betting range, we still have enough equity to call. It's much closer to break even but slightly winning. This bet size for him becomes correct when we take all out of his range while leaving his value betting range the same (which may actually be slightly too wide).

At the end here I think we need to decide which Qx to call and which to fold because our range is relatively small on the river here. If we just call 100% of our Qx we're calling too much and open ourselves to getting overbet and a lot of annoying stuff. Q9 isn't a great hand to call with, I'd rather call Q6 as we're blocking more value hands and not as many bluffs, whereas with Q9 we're only blocking bluffs. So do your analysis, follow what range you think your opponent has and consider their betsize. If you think they have too many bluffs in their range or not enough (like if they really like betting nut flush draws or really don't like better gutshots) and evaluate based on that. If he's betting nut draws here then we call for sure. If we think he's underbluffing then we can actually call with Q6 and fold Q9.
I tend to do bigger analyses but it helps me to write them too, I hope you find it even slightly helpful.

This is really interesting to me though

You're definitely right about him.being able.to raise this flop a lot, his range does allow for that kuch better than ours. I think that's just more of a reason to call, like I'm not sure shoving QQ-AS over top of his raise is a great move on the flop so were not really telling those hands. They would just get folds from his air and calls from his sets.

What does SB call on the flop with? The problem is we're usually drawing really thin against a SB flatting here. More passive players tend to play very weak strategies with Ax in the SB that leads to a lot of flatting with a good amount of Ax and probably some middling pocket pairs. And probably a fair amount of SCs. So when the BTN bets out, which he can do because he has more Ax than either of the blinds (all Ax are opens from the btn while blinds will 3bet at least part of that range), but when SB calls he has to have an ace, 66-maybe like TT if he decided not to reraise and a hand like KQ or QJ and maybe KJ. I find it kind of difficult to assign SB a range here because I really don't like the flat against a BTN open, it's just such a good spot to steal and since there's not ante you're really not getting a good price to call. Like maybe if he thinks you're not likely to squeeze because you've been passive then okay, but otherwise I think this makes him look like a passive player. So this range is probably not super far off.

So we're can definitely call against BTN if SB folds (however I think fold when SB calls, we're just doing too poorly against him) because he can bet so much expecting us to not have an ace that only calling with an ace or better is folding far too much. Turn call is fine, I don't think having a raise here is great because we can pretty much only rep KJ and maybe ATs or possibly 66 we slowplayed on the flop. Everything else would have raised pre and if we have a very narrow value range with lots of middling hands that called flop I think we can safely say we should flat 100% of our turn defends.

On the river we lose to most 2 pairs, KJ, J9 and sets. It's difficult for BTN to be value betting a hand like AK on this runout. I mean, what does he have like K9hh? 55? AJ? What does he do if he valuebets AJ and gets raised? I think it's just hard to actually find a bluff here, we lose to way too much. I think fold river.

Every time I try to write a response here I realize how much theory is actually involved in this hand. Some topics to consider here are how to balance flop betting ranges in 3bet pots (We have a relatively narrow range with very little fat value here, we have to be very meticulous to decide on a flop betting range and THEN consider how we defend when we get raised. That means calling freq. vs. shoving freq., I do not think it would be out of the question to say that we never 3bet the flop and only defend by calling, or never call and only raise). We also want to look at how check/raising or check/calling impacts the hand. An important idea is that we never want to take a hand that has a lot of equity and put it in a spot where we have to fold when raised.

For example, say MP here told the entire table that after the flop comes out his only raise size is all in. Would we want to be betting with 98hh here? Sure we might have the equity to call but were really not happy if he has a set, or if he has AThh suddenly we're in pain because he has a better flush draw and is blocking the ten.

So in the end, I really like the preflop 3bet with a hand like 98. Generally have good equity when called, can get lots of better hands to fold, not a big deal to toss away if we get 4bet, you know the deal. On the flop I think I prefer either betting and only defending raises by calling, or checking our entire range and deciding which hands to raise or call, if we want to raise any. Say we check then MP bets 15bb (leaving 75bb eff.), if we raise to 40bb and he shoves on us then it'll be 35bb to win 150? I don't even know what hands we could have that could find a fold there, so I'm not entirely convinced the raise is a great play. I'm feeling we should be bet/calling or check/calling only.

I don't much like raising turn. Difficult to get called by worse hands there and when we get raised, are we calling to get it in with what is likely 20% equity? We're raising there for more than half of villains remaining stack. Since the pot is so big, I think they're gonna be trying to control the size of the pot with their more volatile hands and be betting like this with a pretty polarized range which makes raising here not super appealing. I think a cool discussion would be to talk about which boards, if any, we could work in turn call-river lead lines.

As for flop, I'm not really sure how I feel about it. I think the call is okay. We need to defend about half the time so we should be considering our entire preflop 3betting range and deciding which hands make the best defends, I don't think overpairs will be enough to cut it. And we need to make sure we don't leave our calling range too weak by raising all of our strong hands. In fact, I'm probably fine with either a bet line or a x/c line and not having a x/r at all.

So preflop I would not be upset to see a fold here. Very small sample size so we're really not sure how aggressive this guy is going to be with his button raises, but remember he knows that he's raising an UTG open. Since we don't have too significant of a read here we should use a much more general strategy. So we're gonna want to 4bet for value with our best hands TT/JJ+, AK, we're gonna want to fold our worst hands (of which this hand may fall into), and decide whether or not we have a calling range while we balance our 4betting range with a few bluffs. There are a few problems with having a flatting range in this spot. Firstly we are up against a fairly new opponent. 21 hands is not a lot and we don't know how he's going to treat the situation post flop. If we're calling with the plan of giving up if we don't connect with the flop then the flat is really not appealing. We're only going to connect with the flop 1/3 times, which means we are getting direct odds for that draw. However, we are at a range disadvantage for a lot of the flops that we do connect with. If we hit a jack then we still lose to JJ+, all of which are in our opponents range and virtually none of which are in ours. Because we're getting direct odds for the draw, it's also understood that when we do connect, we need to get more money out of him in order to be profitable. If an ace flops and he has QQ, he may literally just check/fold flop. That's before we mention that BTN could be 3betting for value with all AQ and AK, which is a lot of hands that have us hurting bad on an A high flop.

That is a big write-up all to say that flatting AJs here against a new opponent is a dicey situation at best. 4bet or fold. I recommend folding because 4bet bluffing here is something we need to be really sharp about and I'd probably do it with a hand like AQ or A5s. I'd love to have a hand like 86s in there too but then you get into spots where you may just be 4betting too much and we're not really happy there.

I like not ever having a raising range on the flop. We don't really have AA or JJ pretty much ever so a raise is repping 77 or AJ, that we can maybe balance with a hand like T9s or 98s with a BDFD. Because we're letting go a good amount of Ax and 4betting some Ax, he knows he's got a range advantage when that ace hits so a bet probably comes with a good amount of hands that don't have aces in them so we're likely calling with a few speculative hands and trapping with strong ones. Like if he has AK which is perfectly likely, it will be very easy to have him all in by or before the river, and with top 2 I am loving that situation. If he has QQ then I don't want to be putting him in a tough spot. Love the flop flat call.

Turn, nothing has changed. You are so far ahead of his range it is mindblowing. Sure, he has AA or JJ sometimes, but guess what, we block both of those hands. And yeah blockers in HE aren't always super worth talking about but when your hand limits your opponent from having 6 strong value hands to 2, that is a significant change. Call his turn shove or I will find you and set you on fire.

These types of boards are the ones that confuse me when I'm deciding on a checking range. The only draw we really have here is T9, so either we need to take some weak pocket pairs that have little to no showdown equity or some very weak backdoor draws like A5cc or 76hh that need a good turn to barrel in order to have any sort of a bluffing range. So if we're playing a tighter range for whatever reason, does that mean we check our entire range because it no longer makes much sense to value bet? If we value bet with no bluffing range then we leave ourselves open to making huge mistakes later on in the hand, so if we check our entire range we can continue in a more clear way on later streets, that does make sense to me. Is that the idea here?

If he plays this aggressively with his value hands then we know we actually beat a good chunk of them on the flop. He might have 99 and might have QT but its very unlikely that he has KK or JJ and we beat K9 and J9. So with 19 combos of hands that we lose to, 15 combos that we beat, even if he has no bluffs in his range we are getting very good odds. The problem is that when we flat, we are very likely facing a turn and maybe a river bet while playing a very big pot with a lot of bad turns and rivers for us. A 7, Q, or any heart is gonna suck. But if we fold KJ then what is our continuing range looking like? If we had a heart draw it would be very difficult to fold here as we're pretty much getting direct odds, especially with the nut draw. But we can't ONLY call or raise with heart draws because it's too exploitable, either our opponent always folds when a heart hits or always blasts when it doesnt and suddenly we lose all our value.

So our question becomes "do we ever shove on his raise?". Conventional thinking is no because we'll isolate ourselves against his strongest hands and get all of his weaker hands to fold. But if that's the case then we definitely want a raising range here (if he's playing aggressively with 2 pair+ AND we think he'll fold the weaker part of that then we're losing a ton of value by not having a bluffing range), we just want it to be polarized with strong hands and draws, and KJ isn't strong enough, so do we call then? We need to find a way to differentiate between which hands we'll call with and which hands we'll raise. So if we raise straights and KK, call other sets and some 2 pair, it will really help balance out the draws that we're calling with (remember we cannot fold some of those draw because of the odds we're getting, literally almost direct odds to hit on the TURN).

Honestly I might just fold J9 here because it makes it harder for him to have QJ, but KJ is way too strong to fold in my opinion. I mean I can't imagine this guy is really thinking about how his sizing is letting us call profitably with more hands. If we see him do this more and he keeps showing down the nuts then we can adjust our strategy to only flatting with those draws that are getting the right odds to draw out on his hands. But remember, a heart sucks but it won't always be terrible, he can be afraid of it too. Right, like if we think a heart always gives him the winner then we just jam flop and hi five everybody in the room.

Thanks for the reinforcement! I value bet the turn, he called and I checked behind on river, lost to nut flush. Was balls.

I think because SB is involved in this hand too, raising flop is much better. If BB bet a larger size then we could consider calling, but at that size we'll just be leaving a huge price on the table for SB and we miss out on value. I also think betting the turn is a mistake. A very good portion of both BB and SBs ranges are flush draws and when they make their draw, neither fold to a single bet. So the question is do they call with worse? Well when we call flop our most likely hand is at least a Q. So say SB had 98 and thinks well we could call with a flush draw on the flop, maybe BB is betting with a flush draw or 76 or something, maybe has A high and just wants to represent, the 8 can be good, so he calls. The flush comes in and we bet. Either we made our flush draw or we have a queen. His 8 is no good and he lets it go (probably). Like we have to really hope that one of our opponents has something like a single pair with the Ad.

Now you might say that there are a lot of bad river cards, but I'm not really sure there are. Like diamonds suck, but then its really just a 9. Other cards will often times just improve their hand but still leave it 2nd best. A, K, J, 7, 6, etc. ... They all just turn single pairs into 2 pair which likely leads to more thin value betting that we can snap off. So when we bet turn and THEN get raised, what are we expecting to happen when we call? If he has a FD and misses he can't stop betting because he definitely loses. So if we feel like that's the most likely betting line then why not just check back turn and pay off one bet instead of 3?

So all in all, this is a super annoying spot but I think raise flop for sure. As played on flop, check back turn (we have other hands that we can turn into bluffs here and better hands we can value bet). After betting turn I'm not sure about calling there, I wouldn't hate a fold but I understand the call too. As played I would fold river.

I agree with the general consensus here, I don't think we accomplish very much by 4betting with this hand. That said, I don't think a call is the worst thing in the world because I think our implied odds are actually half decent here. If we were in the BB then I would definitely be considering a call, given that we still have BB left to act and don't have any reads on his aggression I think I don't hate a call or a fold.Though when we call we are doing it on the assumption that CO is going to call as well. For those odds I'm okay with a call, I like a fold too, I don't like a raise at all.

There's a line you can place in the hand history while reviewing it before it gets posted. The line hides everything that happened after wherever you place it.

As for the hand, I actually think this one is pretty interesting. BB can be defending relatively wide but I wouldn't expect to see him with all sorts of disconnected garbage since we are raising from the 2 spot. On a T43hh board, BB has many more bluffs than nutted hands here. Very rarely will have TT or 43, 44 and 33 are there for value, but he's also got 65, 75, 76, K5hh and the like, some weaker Axhh hands. Bottom line is he really only has 6 guaranteed value hands (using the term guaranteed loosely I guess, I mean I can't say he NEVER 3bets with them). The Q hitting on the turn affects our range a lot more than it affects his. We can still have lots of AQ, AK, KQ, AJ, KJ, QJ, QT, All of which just got stronger. So to be honest, I don't really know how villain should play his range here. If we develop a range advantage here, he definitely wants to continue with his sets, because it's less likely that we'll fold. Does that mean he should bet big on the turn? If he has 44 or 33, he's not looking for us to check back and going bigger gives him the opportunity to keep a good amount of his bluffs, right? I'm getting off topic.

His check usually either means he's giving up and is check folding or has weak SDV and wants to get to showdown for cheap. The 3 pairing on the river hits his range far more often than ours, which is just about never unless we decided we hated money and didn't want any value with our 33 on the flop or turn. I think we will see a 3 a decent amount of the time here, but more often a 4 or a missed straight draw/weak NFD or 2ndNFD. Getting almost 2.7:1 we need to win just over 1/4 times. Given his very small value range, I don't think I can fold here.

Back to getting off topic, I would love to tear apart the turn here. How should villain play there? What happens if he pots it, or overbets. He's so brutally polarized and a large amount of our range doesn't want to fold. Is that just straight up pricing out hands that he can get value from?

I really think we should just be folding pretty quick here, there are very few hands that we actually beat. We lose to every other 2 pair and he can have several straights if he's limp calling that wide of a range. We need him to be bluffing 43% of the time to profitably call this bet. If his value shoving hands are AT, T9, KQ, KJ and QJ, thats 65 combos and means that we need our opponent to have 49 combos of bluffs. If we start with NFDs then he has 7 combos there, add in suited connectors and one-gappers then thats another 10, KT, K9, K8cc is another 3 so we're at 20 combos. So we need him to be bluffing with 29 straight draw combos or add in more flush draws? I just don't think he has enough bluffs for us to be able to call this size. Fold. If we were higher up in our range we could consider differently because we would beat some of his value hands, but I don't think he's value (or protection) shoving worse than bottom 2.

I think bet/folding turn is a better strategy on this hand. I wrote out a bigger response but got rid of it because I think everything really just hinges on the fact that when our opponent has us beat, we will still usually lose the same amount when we take the initiative, except it gives us our extra out to win the hand. Yes, we he folds turn it is usually because we were ahead, but it changes play for the river. He can still have some nutted hands that are gonna check/call turn then check to us on the river, so we get to decide which rivers we barrel if any and which ones we give up, but by betting the turn we give ourselves the ability to have more or less the same action but with more information behind us. I could be wrong here but I feel a lot more comfortable with this line.

I'm not sure I understand, are you saying we should flat instead of 3bet or that we should fold pre?

Yeah at 100 bigs deep I think flatting QQ in position is an option so you may occasionally have top boat here, but you're usually topping out at AQ so letting it go means folding pretty much your entire range.

Lots of good comments in this thread! I would like to see what people think of a flat pre if we think the BB is on the passive side. We have so many other hands that can 3bet and balancing our flatting range with stronger hands does allow us to see flops with weaker hands and hit these flushes or straights. I do not like it at all if we think BB is reasonably aggressive since we're just folding out our equity preflop when they squeeze. But with a flat, I'd rather have the extra bet in the pot and have our equity be more or less the same.

it was the first time in a long time that I've been berated at those tables, I usually have pretty good results. It got to me a little bit lol but thank you!I would honestly love for someone to tell me exactly how and why I actually AM wrong, I just at the very least felt it was pretty close and I like my edge otherwise.

This is actually a weird spot, but I see 3 possible lines here: a) Shove turn b) Fold turn or c) Call turn, call river.

The issue here is that people are calling this guy a huge nit, but also saying that this crazy nit flat called a check raise on the flop with a naked gut shot and overs. He's really only comfortable with an 8 or MAYBE a J, and even with the J he's behind our raising range a lot.

OTR he could have 98, 87, TT, sets, maybe JT, but he could also be chopping with us. Some of these hands may check back for showdown value. If we think he only does this with JT then 2:1 on the turn isn't good enough for us to call. But that also means we should shove turn. If he never bluffs river then calling just allows his weaker value bets to realize equity. Either he folds his turn bluff that he was never going to barrel, calls it off with the only better hand, or potentially calls it off with a strong hand because we can have bluffs in our range. Otherwise I think we have to call it off.

There are just too many ways for us to be winning or chopping here, I think we have to call. Clubs bricked, pair+straight draws all bricked and we beat KT. AT is very hard to have and AK is even less likely. We lose to pretty much only TT and QJ assuming neither elected to raise flop or turn. Be prepared to lose sometimes when he slowplays AK or does some other spicy move.

How does this generally turn out though? We usually fold out some hands that are flipping against us which is good, but isn't SB usually only continuing with hands that are ahead of us with maybe a few flips (AK, AQ, etc...)?

Ace river for profits, queen river for entertainment