dakalle4

Congratulations!

I think the fold pre is a good play. Assuming we get to the flop, I'm okay with a check for deception due to the flop being rainbow. If the flop had 2 to a suit I'd lean more towards betting flop for value and protection. I like the turn shove. If another heart shows up on the river we might make more mistakes such as folding to bluffs. Due to SB 4bet size I'd mainly be concerned about a set over set situation with JJ or slowplayed TT being a concern. If SB shows up with JJ or TT your equity is ~3% which would be a disaster. 

If SB calls with a heart draw you have between 85% and 70% equity which seems fine to shove. 

I think the way you played it prevents you from making mistakes with your hand. I like the post flop play.

I would really like to see an essential level video that tackles a similar topic to Nick Howard's recent video "Building range models (part 1)"

I'm playing similar stakes and although it's great to have fish that call too much, my experience at these stakes is when they shove all in, they usually have it. Since you mention they're fish I think it's worth mentioning that they could even show up with a 2K or 7x in this situation. Some players at these stakes hold on to anything in hopes of catching a card later. 

I've been running into value lately so often in spots like this that I've started check folding in this river spot. It is certainly exploitable but at these stakes I'm not so concerned about people picking up on it. The way I see it is; if I'm not paying them off in spots where I think they have to have it, I'm exploiting villain instead of the other way around.

If you've played a lot of hands with villain before and you've seen him make some spazzy low equity river shoves then I'd be a lot more inclined to call.

I agree with both of your comments, Thanks for the feedback. I can't say for sure exactly what I was thinking with my tiny reraise on turn, maybe I was just distracted and responding to his super small bet size. I do prefer making it $1. I think my reasoning for checking turn was his small reraise on the flop but I do agree, betting the turn makes more sense.

I think I'm still calling in this situation. The line that you take with cbet, bet turn, check river looks like a missed heart draw or AQ AK AJ. It almost looks like we're giving up on the pot. Villain has plenty of chips to take a stab on the river and he's giving himself a pretty decent price to do it.

I'm still learning some pot odds here but it looks like you have to call 18 to make 50.21 which means you only have to be right ~35% of the time? (50.21 / 18) = 2.79 so 1:2.79 = ~35%. 

It looks like we have a deceptively strong hand here. With the price we're being offered and the actual hand we have I like a call. I'd be interested to hear more ideas from others about this hand.

This flop with the exception of 999 or A99 is about as good as flop as you're likely going to see with A9. If he's clicking back with AK of spades you have 71% equity vs AK spades and 56% vs 76 spades and j10 spades. So against a spade flush draw, straight and straight flush draw, worse case scenario you're getting it in with 56% equity. 

The worst hand for you would be 89, which would mean villain blocks the other 9 and you'd have to catch A or 8 on the run out. Leaving you with about ~13% equity to win and 10% equity in a split.

If you're up against 88 you still have 23% equity in the hand. Due to the 9 still being in the deck somewhere.

You're crushing hands like AA with 91% equity. KK with 87% equity.

There are so few combos of hands that have you in trouble in this situation. I'm not sure villain is going to 3bet pre with 89 clubs or something like that. I'd lean more towards JJ+ or AK spades, which you have some great equity against. I think he very likely was on a nut flush draw or straight flush draw.

I think if you fold to a flop like this, you likely shouldn't be calling his 3bet with this hand. The 9's are much safer than an Ace showing up on the flop for your hand. I have no problem getting it in on a flop like this with a hand like yours in a heads up match. It would take a very strong read for me to fold a hand like this to villain.

Nice work Brian! Congratulations!

I also like a river call here.

As the hand plays out the turn and the river aren't really scare cards so our hand isn't getting weaker. So if we wanted to fold, the time for that should be on the flop. Since the flop is quite good for us, I think calling down works. His story doesn't really make sense, AT and JJ maybe can get here flatting a 3x open preflop. I'm thinking more often villain will take this line with a draw that missed. I do think villain could 3 barrel AQ, AK, KT. 

I'm not super familiar with these stakes, so perhaps an exploitable fold may be good here. I would want to have more of a read on this player to make an exploitable fold like that. So I'd end up calling here.

Any chance for some mix game videos at the essential level?

Great video, I've really been looking forward to a video on this topic! Thanks!

I also found this video to be quite helpful. I've had trouble in the past with the idea of ranges. I think your video really cleared up some of these concepts. One thing I found very helpful to visual learners like myself was when you visualized the ranges with the hand range selector. The visualization made it easier to understand having multiple ranges for one person. Thanks for the great video Michael!