[2-4] Top pair facing big River bet with possible Flush

3bet to 80 pre.
Probably fold turn, we only beat bluffs.

If your description of V2 is correct, river is a fold for me.

His river sizing is not representing any KQ with Kd which missed the flush. He can have AA/KK, and perhaps 77 and really wishing you have a flush to call him down.

:c

I don’t like the passive play. The problem with just calling and not raising is that you never defined V’s hand. So when you faced a big river bet, you had a harder decision than if you 3bet.

AP, raise the flop to 60 at least. Based on read, V could be cbetting with 88-JJ and flush draws. You are behind only AA, KK, maybe V has A2s. V has more flush draws than made hands.

I’m probably folding the turn. Fold river

Seems well played to me. Now call.

Calling given description. 3b pre is not mandatory imo. Keeping in V1 has value.

Reveal:

Thoughts:

Tell us why the gift of gab plays AQo passively

Against this player type we should call all our bluff catchers until he adjusts.

Villain: I feel you’re giving him too much credit. He isolates a 75bb stack with 54s from LJ and barrels it off with zero equity into a strong range. You can easily have flushes, a strong queen, or 77. Sure, you may flat pre and fold OTR QTs, QJs, KQs, but if you have those, you should also have more flushes (KJs, JTs, KTs).

⸻

Pre: I don’t hate keeping the limper in tbh. I would prefer to 3-bet AQo more while flatting AQs due to playability.

Flop: Easy call.

Turn: Don’t love it, but can’t fold yet.

River: Meh. Villain dependent. If villain is capable, we click call.

A lot of it relies on OP's read being accurate.

AQo is a pretty starting hand, but it's pretty marginal as a 3B, especially against a capable / aggro player who may 4B more of his range when he's OOP.

If OP is right, that V thinks hero is risk averse ("scared money"), then we could debate if he thinks her 3B range is too strong for him to 4B light, or if he thinks she might have too many 3B-folds if he 4B's, and so he can 4B light. Maybe he decides to polarize and 4B the top and bottom of his continue range, making life hell for hero when she 3B's next to act.

Here, the weak player has limped in, and the strong player has raised, but we have position on him. If we 3B, the weak player is likely to fold. If we call, the weak player is likely to come along, which we'd prefer, because he's more likely to make a big mistake post flop, whereas the strong player is less likely.

Once we decide to flat call pre, there isn't much reason to raise the flop c-bet with TPTK on Q22.

I guess if we're really concerned about the possible flush draw, we could put in a little raise, but it makes our hand pretty face up, and there's no guarantee we're ahead. V could have AA, KK, or the one combo of QQ.

If we raise, we're mostly folding out all the hands we'd want to continue, and if V is creative, he could put us in the blender with a 3B, knowing full well we're unlikely to have QQ or 2x here.

The 7d on the turn is unfortunate, but here again, there's not much reason to do anything but call the 65% pot bet. A capable, thinking V isn't going to stop barreling with his value or bluffs just because the flush comes in, and we could still be ahead.

The river is the real decision point, IMO, where we need to put everything together.

We know he's capable of triple-barrel bluffing. We know he uses big over-bets with value. Yet here he's bet less than full pot. We have a hand that is both somewhat under-repped and one of the best hands we'll have, short of a turned flush or flopped trips with a hand like A2s. We opted not to 3B pre, and play our hand as a bluff catcher, so it makes sense to continue bluff-catching.

I hope I don't sound like I'm bragging, but my first reply was short because I didn't think this one needed much thought. In game, I might take a few seconds to be sure, but I think calling the river is almost automatic. If V has us beat, he's just got us beat.

Hope that all makes sense.

Well, he bet 70 into 106 on the Turn, which as a pure bluff has to work 40% of the time, and then 220 into 246 on the River, which as a pure bluff needs to work 47% of the time. (And since he in fact had basically 0 showdown value, we can also just omit the "as a pure bluff" qualifier.) On the Flop, I'm floating him with a ton of stuff against this small bet, so the Turn bet should be correct. So I guess the question is, what range do I get to the River with, and do I fold 50% of it? And the answer has got to be yes, right? A flush just isn't likely; every flush I can get here with is only a single combination. So it's like, what, AJs, ATs, KJs, KTs, JTs, A9s, A5s? That's just 7 combinations in total. And I'd always 3bet QQ, so the only boat that I could possibly have is 77, and even that is a stretch.

I feel like you can't both say that it's a very hard call on the River and that it was unimpressive from Villain. If we have 50% to fold AQ then surely he gets the 50% fold equity he needs on the River.

I would definitely 3b this esp being in position. As played on the flop I'd raise - he'll call you fairly light as your raise doesn't really make much sense. Turn is a call - river is close. He shouldn't have a lot of bluffs with this line - by the river you have all the Qx/flushes/2x/etc yet he's still betting into you. Does he bet KQ this way? I think based on description of him and you I would call. On a more important side note I would play more aggressively especially in position against him - it seems like you're intimidated by his aggression and letting him run you over. He's going to get the best of you playing this way.

Now that you explain it, I agree with you preflop. I’m still raising the flop. A call by hero on the flop suggests Qx as much as a raise. After seeing the results, I don’t really get why V2 bet the turn. Isn’t betting the turn here oop with air here after hero called twice in position a huge leak? River bet by V2 seems more like an action by a maniac than a card shark. I don’t think you can win in poker barreling 4 streets with 54s after whiffing the flop. IMO hero overestimates V2.

i dont think i would raise this flop with anything with a player behind.

Thanks for sharing your thought process.

Isolating with 45s (in LJ!) against a 75bb stack and barreling it off like this is definitely a fun way to play, but probably not very good EV-wise. If “good” means having fun and putting people in tough spots, though, then he shines quite a lot.

It’s a tough call OTR, since we didn’t have him tagged as a fun player. With that info now, we’re probably not folding queens here (meaning AQ and KQs, since we’re likely not calling pre with QJs or worse).

Question: how would he play KQ, QJ, TT, AJ (ace of diamonds) here?

If V2 is a card shark, he’s never betting the flop oop three way without some equity, and the only equity he has on this flop is AA-KK, Qx, A2s, and a diamond draw, maybe AK. So when the 7d comes on the turn, and he bets after hero called preflop and flop IP, I really think you gotta consider folding.

Everything looks different if V2 isn’t a shark and in fact spews his stack barreling four streets oop with air against a tight-passive hero.

I read other replies and spoilers so I could be biased but my thinking is that once we get to the river, this is a call vs. this player. You have to have some bluffcatchers vs. a guy who is fully prepared to make large river bluffs otherwise our life is just going to be terrible. I don't think you can have any better hands that qualify as a bluffcatcher either, so this is the one to take a stand with.

I don't think that flatting pre is terrible, the issue is your position because we don't want this to end up going 5 ways out of position. If you were on the button it may be optimal vs. this guy because you crush his range but it's not so strong that you like a 4bet.

Also I like calling flop, it's a small bet in position, OK cool lets call.

Turn is the decision point for a brick river and I may just pussy out and fold here.

Honestly, idk. Probably what the solver does in that spot, but I haven't studied enough GTO to really know what it would do on the Turn and River. I'd guess AJ with the A♦ probably plays exactly the same way as his hand here (that's one of the few logical semi-bluffs), but idk about the hands with equity.

Given the OP’s read, I now agee hero played it fine. Results suggest the OP’s read was way off. Opening the LJ with 45s and barreling flop, turn, and river with air is not a card shark but a maniac, and I would of course always call river bet by a maniac with top two.

So, "It would have worked against me but only because the opponent is actually bad"? That's what you're going with?

I think hero raising flop is problematic, at least logically, though maybe raising makes sense exploitatively. V is uncapped on the flop. He could have AQ+, so if we raise, I'd think our plan is to fold if he 3B's? The underlying assumption would be that he never 3B's as a bluff.

The problem I see is that if V adjusts he could start 3B'ing as a bluff, or he could stop c-betting and barreling off with his bluffs, and we'd lose value in spots like this one. The other problem is that we're potentially losing value when we force him to fold, or we fold a hand that could have improved when he 3B's.

I don't think calling flop suggests AQ exactly. Hero could have worse QX, some diamond draws, and some 2nd pair hands that call flop but fold on a later street when V barrels. We'd probably fold some other QX combos here on later streets, if not the flop.

I agree that V's line doesn't necessarily align with the read that he's a shark. He's definitely aggro, and possibly thinks aggression can compensate for weakness in other areas of his game.

The turn bet and river barrel do seem spewy to me. I wonder if there's some theory to suggest V's hand is supposed to be put into this line as a bluff. If so, then I'd say this is an example which shows when we should deviate from theory in live play. But it's hard to think this line is super GTO.

I would never take V's line. But if I somehow got to the turn the way he did, I'd just shut it down, not barrel off. I'd think a check-check-over-bet or check-bet-bet line might be more credible, and get more folds from hero. The challenge there is that V should mostly just fold whenever he checks and hero bets flop.

Well I wanted to write this after everyone agreed with me that the line was well played from Villain, but seeing that this isn't happening and everyone who disagrees just decided to ignore the fold equity argument for some reason, I'll just post it now.

My key takeaway from this hand is a pretty generalizable principle, namely "there are boards with the property that decent players will overfold all three streets (relative to the fold equity you need as a complete bluff) and hence you should recognize those and triple barrel t hem with any two cards, if you're playing against one such player". It's the analog of seeing someone with 50% fold to minbet tournament stats online and betting any two cards on the BN.

Idk whether I'll actually do this any time soon, it takes a lot of guts to go through with this, but theoretically if I were in this situation with this board against one of the other pros, I should take any two cards I got here with and bet every street. Also against some of the tighter losing regs tbh. And even against the more calling happy regs, you should probably still barrel Flop and Turn? Actually let's do some range analysis. Suppose we have a wider range from a splashier player, like this:

and to the Turn like this (the low suited hands that haven't hit anything now contain only the dimaonds, and the Ax contain only those with the Ad). (I don't think this is too wide, splashy people will float you with anything that has a sliver of equity to such a small Flop bet):

... and then these call the Turn bet (every flush and everything with a Queen, and full houses obviously)

With these ranges we have 40% fold equity on the Flop and 56% Fold equity on the Turn, vs. 40% and 47% needed with these bets. So yeah you should barrel at least the first two streets, at least, even against splashier players, never mind someone like me.

Also this is a pretty conservative analysis (it assumes AQ never raises the Flop, which is dubious, and Q♣9♣ calls 100% of the time on the Turn, which is also dubious) so probably the reality looks better.

I've never done something like this, it's a super high level move tbh, but I'll make a thread if I ever find a spot.