[5NL] KQo, OOP, river decision.

Villain is 27/27 through 35 hands. Fold to 3bet 100%, 3/3. Steal from button 33%, 1/3. 100% cbet, 5/5.

PokerStars - $0.05 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

SB: $10.65
Hero (BB): $5.63
UTG: $5.44
MP: $5.37
CO: $5.39
BTN: $4.92

SB posts SB $0.02, Hero posts BB $0.05

Pre Flop: (pot: $0.07) Hero has K Q

UTG calls $0.05, fold, fold, BTN raises to $0.20, fold, Hero calls $0.15, UTG calls $0.15

Flop: ($0.62, 3 players) Q T 9
Hero checks, UTG checks, BTN bets $0.44, Hero calls $0.44, fold

Turn: ($1.50, 2 players) K
Hero checks, BTN checks

River: ($1.50, 2 players) 2
Hero ???

Pre - I think I should be 3betting this pre, I don't like the call considering he had folded to every 3bet so far and I have KQo OOP.

Flop - He bets fairly big on flop in a 3 way pot, that looks pretty strong to me. Villain's range - 99+,AJs+,KJs+,Q9s+,J8s,T9s,AJo+,KJo+,Q9o+,J8o,T9o. I don't think villain would play 87s/87o this way, am I right to leave these out of villain's range?

Turn - He checks the turn. Did he flop a straight and is scared of a bigger straight? Did he hit a straight and is scared of the flush? If he was drawing to a flush, I doubt he would check it so can we take any FD's out of his range now? I think we can take out AKs/AKo as I think he would only play AdKd that way on the flop and obv the Kd has come on turn.

River - I'm not sure what to do here. I don't think I can bet for value as I can't think of many hands that I beat that would call, should I be c/c here?

Looking at the combo's there are - 3 of 99, 3 of TT, 6 of JJ, 1 of QQ, 1 of KK, 6 of AA, 16 of AJ, 8 of AQ, 8 of KJ, 4 of KQ, 6 of Q9, 6 of QT, 8 of QJ, 16 of J8 & 9 of T9.

That's a total of 101 combo's. I can beat 37 combo's ( inc 2 of the KQ combo ) leaving me with 64 combo's that beat me.

pre is fine. at first i wanted to B/F $0.5 on river because his range is somewhat capped, but now i wanna just C/F.

Assuming UTG doesn't fold a lot more to a 3bet (so basically your call makes it 2 way otf unless other call hits very hard otf) I think calling a BTN raise with dead money in the post is defintiltey ok. (you may want to swap some of your calling range and raising range at a later date though from a balance point of view)

I'd bet the flop in all honest, not sure how i feel about Villains differnet lines (will update)

^^ What is your plan if you bet the flop and get raised?

River I really don't know between b/f, c/c or c/f. Waiting for yAAwn and Spoon...
b/f small: you might still get some value from a one pair hand and block bluffs
c/c: some bluffs in his range, may turn a pair into a bluff, but if he bets any significant amount we have to fold
c/f: if we think he almost never bluffs here

meh... maybe I like the small b/f best

edit: call pre is OK. Against a significantly tighter opp raising a limper I would tend to fold.

Originally Posted by daviddem

^^ What is your plan if you bet the flop and get raised?

Fold. If I was to play with villain a lot, make note of how often he was raising here and adjust accordingly

Originally Posted by Cobra_1878

Interesting. I was going to lead the flop as well but decided at last minute not to as it was a pretty wet board.

What does checking achieve? On a wet board like this with TP when you're going to call a decent sized bet anyway you may aswell bet yourself.

Checking and your opponent bets tells us nothing as he could be having a stab at taking down a wet board with nothing as it's checked to him or he could have a real hand.

Checking and your opponent checking also tells us nothing, and it allows him to see a free card which as the board is so wet makes us hate our hand more.

At least if you bet and get called you know he'll have thrown away a lot of the rubbish in his hand making it an easier fold on a later street and if you get raised you can be pretty certain you're behind and fold.

Originally Posted by ImSavy

Fold. If I was to play with villain a lot, make note of how often he was raising here and adjust accordingly


1. What does checking achieve? On a wet board like this with TP when you're going to call a decent sized bet anyway you may aswell bet yourself.

Checking and your opponent bets tells us nothing as he could be having a stab at taking down a wet board with nothing as it's checked to him or he could have a real hand.

2. Checking and your opponent checking also tells us nothing, and it allows him to see a free card which as the board is so wet makes us hate our hand more.

3. At least if you bet and get called you know he'll have thrown away a lot of the rubbish in his hand making it an easier fold on a later street and if you get raised you can be pretty certain you're behind and fold.

1 and 3, you make it sound like you want to bet for information. This isn't why we are betting. Refer back to the reasons I listed

2. When opponent checks behind on a flop texture like this it narrows his range drastically since he suddenly doesn't have the top 25-30%(random estimate) of his flopping range now.

Originally Posted by ImSavy

Fold. If I was to play with villain a lot, make note of how often he was raising here and adjust accordingly


What does checking achieve? On a wet board like this with TP when you're going to call a decent sized bet anyway you may aswell bet yourself.

Checking and your opponent bets tells us nothing as he could be having a stab at taking down a wet board with nothing as it's checked to him or he could have a real hand.

Checking and your opponent checking also tells us nothing, and it allows him to see a free card which as the board is so wet makes us hate our hand more.

At least if you bet and get called you know he'll have thrown away a lot of the rubbish in his hand making it an easier fold on a later street and if you get raised you can be pretty certain you're behind and fold.

If I check, I can't be raised. At the time of the hand, I wasn't sure what I would do if raised, now I know I should fold but at the time I didn't know that.

If opponent checks behind on flop, I can be pretty sure I have the best hand and have managed to keep the pot small with a marginal hand.

Originally Posted by Icanhastreebet

1 and 3, you make it sound like you want to bet for information. This isn't why we are betting. Refer back to the reasons I listed

2. When opponent checks behind on a flop texture like this it narrows his range drastically since he suddenly doesn't have the top 25-30%(random estimate) of his flopping range now.

Is there something wrong with doing this?

Originally Posted by Cobra_1878

Is there something wrong with doing this?

Yeah, because there are much more important factors to consider. I did mean we were also betting for value and the information is a helpful byproduct of this, however things like relative position didn't even enter my mind.

Originally Posted by Cobra_1878

Is there something wrong with doing this?

Gaining information from a bet is a nice side-effect of a bet, but it is never a reason to bet.

Definitely leading flop. Couple of reasons

1) I lead these types of flops quite frequently because these board are cbet a way smaller frequency and they nail my range pretty hard.

2) We want it to go bet, fish call, reg action. This ties the regs hands and he's pretty much forced to put in a huge raise w/ everything that crushes us and he pretty much can never raise a draw because there's a fish in the pot and getting 3b at this point would be horrible for him.

Instead of check, fish check, reg action. Now even if we had a monster here and we c/r. The fish ends up putting 0 money in the pot a huge amount of the time. If we have a draw we end up c/ring and same result or fish actually tags along and now reg just ships it in because loldeadmoney and last thing is we c/c and hope it goes 3way which isn't that bad of a result and probably happens pretty frequently.

If button is the fish then we are a little more happy to check, let reg cbet and we get to see the fishes action v a bet before it gets back to us. You guys need to think more about relative position etc.

I'd just bet/f the river like 65c. People are stations and we have the best possible 2pair out of a huge number of combos of 2pairs this guy could have.

Originally Posted by Icanhastreebet

2) We want it to go bet, fish call, reg action. This ties the regs hands and he's pretty much forced to put in a huge raise w/ everything that crushes us and he pretty much can never raise a draw because there's a fish in the pot and getting 3b at this point would be horrible for him.

Instead of check, fish check, reg action. Now even if we had a monster here and we c/r. The fish ends up putting 0 money in the pot a huge amount of the time. If we have a draw we end up c/ring and same result or fish actually tags along and now reg just ships it in because loldeadmoney and last thing is we c/c and hope it goes 3way which isn't that bad of a result and probably happens pretty frequently.

thanks for this. i always used to (and i'm sure i still will whenever i play) overlook the strategic implications of relative positions.

Originally Posted by Icanhastreebet

Definitely leading flop. Couple of reasons

1) I lead these types of flops quite frequently because these board are cbet a way smaller frequency and they nail my range pretty hard.

2) We want it to go bet, fish call, reg action. This ties the regs hands and he's pretty much forced to put in a huge raise w/ everything that crushes us and he pretty much can never raise a draw because there's a fish in the pot and getting 3b at this point would be horrible for him.

Instead of check, fish check, reg action. Now even if we had a monster here and we c/r. The fish ends up putting 0 money in the pot a huge amount of the time. If we have a draw we end up c/ring and same result or fish actually tags along and now reg just ships it in because loldeadmoney and last thing is we c/c and hope it goes 3way which isn't that bad of a result and probably happens pretty frequently.

If button is the fish then we are a little more happy to check, let reg cbet and we get to see the fishes action v a bet before it gets back to us. You guys need to think more about relative position etc.

I'd just bet/f the river like 65c. People are stations and we have the best possible 2pair out of a huge number of combos of 2pairs this guy could have.

Interesting. I was going to lead the flop as well but decided at last minute not to as it was a pretty wet board. I wasn't sure what I would do if raised although now it seems pretty obvious that it's an easy fold. I don't think about relative position when I am at the table either, something else I will have to work on.

Yeah but what if it goes lead flop / fish folds / reg raises? Then he could be doing that with hands that crush us and with draws. What do we do then?

edit: I'd think it's probably a fold as well because we have some edge on the draws but we are totally crushed by the rest of his range (sets, two pairs, straights, AQ).

re-edit: but yeah, what you said totally makes sense: betting gets value from the fish and forces the reg to play his hand face up.

if we lead and reg raises with range of something like sets, straights, NFD's and pairs + FD's then we comfortably fold right? i mean the worst hands in his range still have pretty good equity vs us and the nut hands crush us. plus we are OOP and suffer from ROI (lol acronyms) so i feel completely fine doing this.

Originally Posted by rpm

if we lead and reg raises with range of something like sets, straights, NFD's and pairs + FD's then we comfortably fold right? i mean the worst hands in his range still have pretty good equity vs us and the nut hands crush us. plus we are OOP and suffer from ROI (lol acronyms) so i feel completely fine doing this.

Yeah this is pretty obvious. I should have made that point in my post but the weaker player continues a decent enough % and it's pretty obvious what our action is with this hand v a raise. It's good to think about with the rest of our leading range and checking range how we want the fish to react. Balance isn't as relevant(never is at micros) because we are just trying to maximally exploit the fish in this case.

my post was directed at daviddem who seemed confused about how to play vs a raise

i've never really had a "donking" range except in rare spots. i was always too concerned about how i would balance it to avoid being exploitable and the effect it would have on my other ranges (ie could be cutting EV from my C/R or C/C ranges or some shit. i don't know). fuck i overthink poker some times.

Your range is always going to split up into sections for example;

<---Bet for value---Bet as bluff---Check-Call---Check-Fold--->

So if you find yourself in a situation where you have a hand that falls into your check-call range for example, you wouldn't come out betting just to see how villain reacts so you can gauge the strength of his hand/range.

In other words you don't want to bet with the sole purpose of gaining information, every time you make a bet you are gaining information about the strength of your opponents range, but that's not why you bet. You bet to get worse to call or better to fold.

^^ I would agree if it was heads up against BTN, but don't you think that, as yAAwn said, the UTG fish being rather likely to call warrants the donk bet? Or are you saying that you would call a raise if action goes hero bets / fish folds / reg raises?

Then for the river if you check, how big a bet would you call here?

Originally Posted by daviddem

^^ I would agree if it was heads up against BTN, but don't you think that, as yAAwn said, the UTG fish being rather likely to call warrants the donk bet? Or are you saying that you would call a raise if action goes hero bets / fish folds / reg raises?

Then for the river if you check, how big a bet would you call here?

My bad didn't notice the fish in the hand as well! I don't mind the donk then to isolate fish since he has a wide call down range, but it's not a great spot if btn raises.