[2-4] Pocket Pair facing big River bet on wet board

I agree there are enough missed draws to call

x/call turn + donk river on the Ace doesn't really make sense to me
mmmmaybe 43 or some combos of A4/A5

but also theres a lot of 1 pair plus open ended , or missed hearts

Welcome to the forum.

I think you played it fine, now fold. I might bet more like 40 or 50 on the flop after V1 mucks and V2 checks. It sucks the A came on the river. Your hand is now a bluff catcher. You say V2 is aggressive. Has he made any big bluffs? Without a read, I would fold because your average V doesn’t make big bets on the river with air.

Big sigh, probably leaning fold. Typical low-stakes players aren't bluffing and just have some random Ax way too often here. Ultimately I think it's a judgment call on how capable this V is of bluffing in this spot, and I guess if you really trust your read we are getting good odds to bluffcatch. Bonus is if you see a bluff, that's really useful to add to the read.

I think I like betting the turn bigger, as there are a fair number of draws to charge and it seems to make it more likely we get checked to OTR.

Thanks! 😀

Unfortunately I don't think I got a single showdown before this hand. Iirc he played two big hands against the same player before this one, but he won both without showing. So all I really know is that big pots don't scare him, which doesn't mean he bluffs a lot.

Yeah, as I said I somehow managed to misread the pot size, weird mistake to make but it happened. I wanted to bet much closer to Pot.

I think I call the river. It’s easy to justify a fold, and fold can’t be that bad. But I probably look him up here.

Since it's clear that V1 isn't a typical low stakes player (aggressive, plays 5/10), calling this river is worth considering. Much depends on how often he was defending his straddle and big blind, which would give him more 3x (e.g Q3hh or K3hh), two-pair combos (e.g. A2-A5) as well as 6x. The small sizing on the turn does mean he can call rather wide (I'm not sure that you should bet turn at all tbh). Betting an A river on a board where you're meant to have a bunch of overpairs and not so much Ax can be a bluff, although V1 shouldn't have much air to bluff with apart from some random 6x. In the end, I probably fold, but it's not a straightforward decision.

Reveal: Villain had A♥5♥

Grunch:

Re, your read on V1 - so he's aggro to the point of being intimidating, possibly used to playing higher stakes, and he's straddling "every" hand (I assume this means 1 hand per orbit and not literally every single hand)?

When someone who is aggro and big-stacked starts straddling a lot, my general assumption is that they want the game to play "bigger" and / or are hoping to make other players at the table uncomfortable with how big the game is suddenly playing, leading those other players to make mistakes, or simply tighten up, allowing the straddler to run over the table.

PRE - opening 99 first to act seems pretty standard. I'm not sure about the sizing. I assume the straddle is 8?

I'd probably use a small raise size when the table is playing tight and I definitely want action, and a big size when the table is playing loose or I don't want too much action. If we think V1 is going to over-defend, a bigger size seems appropriate. So if the straddle is 8, and we think V1 isn't folding very often, I might make this 30 to 35, rather than 24.

FLOP - it's interesting to wonder if the SB open folding would lead V1 to think we'll be c-betting wider now that it's heads up, leading him to float wider.

I think the c-bet is fine, when our hand benefits from some protection, and there are enough worse hands we can target for value. Again, I'm not sure about the size. My default c-bet size IP is going to be around 1/2 pot in SRP's.

Something around 1/2 pot seems fine, though in a straddled pot with a lower SPR, I could see going slightly smaller, like 1/3 pot. So, I might bet 25 here, but 32 doesn't seem "too" big, and certainly doesn't seem too small to me.

TURN - One option is to size up and make a PSB or over-bet here, if we think V is capped when he just check-calls flop.

But if V is aggro and capable, he might conceivably show up here with a strong hand or a good draw. So I might size down, to 1/2 pot, to give him a chance to x/r for value or as a bluff. I'm probably calling any x/r that isn't outrageously large.

Your bet of 80 into 140 may be a smidge too large to induce a raise, and slightly too small to help define his range more. I think it would be better to bet 70 or less, to induce a raise, or 120 or more, to charge his draws, deny equity, and polarize his continue range.

If we bet small and he raises, we'll have to decide what to do if he barrels or checks the river. If we bet large and he calls, we'll likely need to check back most rivers. If we bet large and he raises, we're in the blender, but should probably fold more than call.

A third option would be to pot control by checking back, with a plan to call most rivers if he bets around 1/2 pot, give or take. If we think he's capable, we may need to call a bet up to 2/3 pot, depending on the river card. The line of checking back the turn with showdown value is intended to induce a lot of bluffs or weak value bets from worse hands.

Of the three options, with no heart in our hand, and on a 7-high board, I think either betting small or betting large are probably marginally better than checking back.

RIVER - I actually think this is a pretty straightforward fold, unless we've seen V make this sort of play without having an ace or better.

It helps to think about what his range looks like on each street, as we get to the river. When he check-calls the flop, I'm giving him all the 1P combos worse than ours, as well as some 2P, some sets, and occasionally a straight.

When he check-calls the turn, I'm giving him the same basic range, but starting to discount some of the strongest yet most vulnerable combos, like sets or straights with no heart in them.

When the heart draw bricks, but the ace appears, and he donks river for around 1/2 pot, I think he could have some aces-up combos now, like A4 or A5 of hearts, and some weak AX combos, like A6 or A3 of hearts. He could also have some slow-played 2P, sets or straights that think we ran into TPTK with AK.

If he's a studied player, he could have some AX combos that were BDFD on the flop, like A7dd / A7cc and A4dd, and maybe some A2cc / A2dd that turned bottom pair to go with the ISSD/BDFD they had on the flop.

It's hard to think he's turning a hand we beat into a bluff. Like, he's probably not doing this with 88, or just K-high.

The more natural bluffs would be some 1P + a bricked draw hand that blocks the nuts, like 76 or 65, or 66 / 33, but there aren't many players at low stakes who will donk for 1/2 pot with those hands, hoping we'll fold something better.

Thanks! This is helpful.

I think the most important thing is, I didn't properly do the full range analysis while playing, and was deciding based on a mixture of a more shallow analysis & intuition. So e.g., yes one pair is likely, given the play up to the Turn, but I didn't include the additional step of thinking about it in terms of combinations, like many of the one pairs that make the most sense here are Ax, which just picked up two pair.

And the other important part is this

because I was thinking 76 during the hand, but looking it without emotional investment, it's not a plausible thought process because he wouldn't expect to get a fold. I clearly have something, and most people will call half pot with something. Putting him on 76 would have made more sense if he bet 320.

Minor replies:

Yes, I meant "every hand" as in "every hand you can straddle", which is just UTG, the casino doesn't allow re-straddle or button straddle.

Right, as I kept saying, I miscalculated pot size; "wanted" to bet something like 120.

When I say intimidating, I actually mean this in a much more primal way, i.e., I feel intimidated in the same way I might feel intimidated by someone (almost always a man) in a non-poker context. But in practice these two things are significantly correlated, which is why I think it's useful information. If I get this vibe from a player, sometimes they just turn out to be just a typical weak passive live player, but most of the time they're someone more aggressive. I think it primarily tracks confidence level, and usually the players who're the most confident are also aggressive, but not always.

I've seen a bunch more hands from this guy since and he's actually just playing relatively "correct" (in a GTO sense) relative to the field. He's bluffing much more than the average player, but I've never seen him table anything outlandish.

Zeroing in on this:

Don't fall into the trap of assuming small bet = value and big bet = bluff in this line. It's rarely a bluff when someone goes check-call, check-call, donk on a river card that might make you or them a reasonably strong hand. The bet size is just a reflection of how strong a hand he's targeting to call.

He's betting around 1/2 pot. That's a size that will get calls from all your AX type hands, and might occasionally get looked up by non-believing hands that are worse than AX.

Since you got a reveal - we ought to note that he took a strong yet non-nutted hand and bet for a size that can be called by a wider range. I wouldn't expect him to show up here with a bluff if we see him take this line and use this size in the future.

The times where he MIGHT be bluffing in this line would be when an obvious draw comes in on the river, and he's got a blocker to the pure nuts. Like, if he had the Ah in his hand, and the river is a third heart.

If he comes out and bets big in that scenario, I'd mostly fold. If he bets small, I might be more inclined to look him up, especially when our hand blocks more of his stronger hands, like 8h8x blocking some flush and nut straight combos.

Foreword: I've seen the hand reveal already.

You started the hand with less than 60x effective, assuming straddle is 8.

Preflop is standard, although with your specific hand and stack size you might want to go bigger.

Flop is about as good as it gets for you: bet bigger, with the plan to shove on a reasonably safe turn.

OTT, although the spr is still kind of big because of the smallish bet otf, I would probably shove.
V should have very few overpairs and 2p. Sure he has a few sets, but also an awful lot pair+draws and over cards + draws.

As played, river is tough: V's bet size looks like value to me, and you hardly beat any value at this stage. Admittedly though, here I can be biased by the hand reveal.