River top 2 pair, Villain bet/3bets all in

Ugh. Ugh

I think you played it fine, and this is a hecka big decision.

Normally this should be an insta fold, river 3 bets are usually so nutted, but given villain description, and action, I'm trying to work out what the heck he could have.

Slow played set? Straight? Misssed Draw? Air? Overplayed Set, 2P, or AA?

No idea, I think it's a fold, but I really wanna call.

have never seen anyone not extremely good or extremely spewy bluff like this. i would fold if that wasn't clear. am aware we are capped etc but this is like the line to fold to vs everyone

Given reads and previous hands this is a pretty easy call. Also river sizing doesn’t scream set or straight.

This looks like V has the straight to me. Bet small on the turn & river trying to keep hero from folding. Then when hero is hooked, he gets the money in.

At the same time, V doesn’t realize how strong you are and could have Q6, Q7, Q8, or even AQ, so it’s no easy decision. I don’t think he’s bluffing, he’d have folded to the hundred if he thought he was beat.

So many times the river is a card just good enough to get me involved and lose. So often these posts tell me all about villain & nothing about hero. Maybe he thinks after stacking you earlier, he can scare you off your hand. It’s hard to know what V is thinking about you in crafting his strategy.

Agree with 97 - really want to call, but I’m folding here.

Easy fold. You’re at the bottom of your value range, and his shove is never worse.

I overlimp the HJ as per my style. Hand plays fine multiway (if it does that) plus we'd hate to face a big LRR from this guy. But we got this HU in position with a nice playable SPR of 11, so nice result if expected.

Think I'm also checking back this craptastic flop. Might be a small argument against ABC players to cbet to fold out Ax, but this guy probably doesn't have Ax.

I'm also just calling the turn. SPR is large so we don't want to go crazy with just one pear. We can keep in all his bluffs and weaker value hands. We can see what happens on the river and make a solid decision.

For this weak block bet sizing I would mostly raise/fold the river. The only time I would consider just flatting is if I truly didn't know what to do facing a re-raise. A river raise in general is pretty nuttish, and yet he doesn't seem to care that we just made a 4x one. Is he really just blasting off with a busted draw or lol middling two pear?

GcluelessNLnoobG

River sizing is so small for T9, and T9 is really all I'm worried about. Sets bet more than 1/2 pot on turn and probably donk flop too. How much of H's range sigh calls 1/3 pot when every draw bricked? Exactly. Versus going nuts when a King hits? A lot bigger for Door 1 vs Door 2, right?

And making a grand total of 22 bigs would be tragic, when starting with the nuts/near-nuts on the flop and a potential 125 to win.

For 125 bigs, getting ~2-1, I probably pay V off. Even though I doubt V's bluffing here.

Grunch:

My general approach to whale-ish recs who can show up with a really wide range is to pot-control whenever our hand is strong but not nutted.

So, here, I like the raise pre to gain position and hopefully get this HU. I like the check back on the flop and the flat call on the turn.

The thing about the river is that we have no reason to think V understands anything about hand-reading or bet sizing. He might think he's doing the right thing with a 1/3 PSB when he has a set or a straight, or he might accidentally turn K7 into a bluff.

I don't love not getting max value when we have the best hand, but it's an acceptable trade-off to get to more showdowns and win more pots, which we should be able to do when he's limp-calling with a wide range and we're just raising and bluff-catching with good showdown value hands.

Like, if we did have the nuts here, we know he can bet-3B-jam worse for value, so this is a fantastic line to take with T9. I'd be sick even if we had KK or QQ here.

ETA - I mean...my gut instinct is to just fold, but I don't think it's terrible to call with top 2P in a spot where V could conceivably have a worse 2P and just thinks we have AK, or he might accidentally find this line with some KX combo that was bluffing on the turn, like K9, KT, or K5.

As soon as I typed that, I started to think this is going to be K9 or K5s at some absurdly high frequency, because 1/3.

I love this post.

I'm inclined to call. He sounds like he could have some suited mid K/Q that made 2 pr.

Close your eyes and call.

Easy fold, best case is you’re chopping. As described you’ve played it properly.

Thanks for the replies!

My thought process:

Pre: Easy isolation attempt IP vs a weak player, w/ a wide range. Sure, I could get limp/shoved on, but I'd rather take that chance and hope to play a pot HU w/ position.

Flop: Only have K high vs a potentially sticky, loose, unpredictable opponent, unlikely to be profitable to start a bluff here. Flop also is much better for a l/caller range than mine.

Turn: Rate to be ahead here plenty, but don't want to bloat the pot with just one pair on this type of board, so calling seems better than raising. Not looking to bet/fold against someone who likes to play their draws aggressively, but not looking to bet/call with the flop being so 2 pair/straight/set heavy.

River: Now I have top 2 and opponent is betting small. Raising leaves me open to being shoved on, but opp doesn't like to fold so there's value to be had vs worse 2 pair & 1 pair hands. If I get shoved on, I will likely fold since line would be so strong and opp can have all the straights and sets.

I really try to not be afraid of bet/folding in order to maximize value, but it can obviously backfire when a V overvalues their hand. The difficulty I had w/ this hand is my read was that he just wasn't the type of player to bluff the river like this - he liked to "gamble" w/ cards to come, and didn't seem to like to try to "outplay" folks. If I thought he was bluffing AND thought there was a chance he was overvaluing some hands, then I guess it's an easy call.

It happens. Good players will find folds in spots like this.

I'm honestly unsure if like the river raise-fold line for value here. I wouldn't be shocked if it was solver approved, but my gut reaction is that our raise-fold range should be polarized to nuts or bluffs, and KQ is neither. It's too in-between.

I don't know if I'd be able to put this together in game, but if V is just a loose rec, I'd expect him to size up with his thick value on the river, and not find the more tricky reg line of betting small to induce. If he wanted to induce, I'd expect him to just go for a check-raise. If we were able to figure this out in real time, it would be a pretty sick call.

Interesting hand. Thanks for posting.

One more thought, after re-reading the OP...

In the prior hand, V limp-4B-jammed with AJo pre. While I hesitate to draw too many inferences from a single hand or showdown, I think if I saw that hand go down, I'd peg V as someone who is prone to taking hands most of us would see as clearly 2nd best and turning them into Hail-Mary bluffs rather than making a disciplined fold.

The rest of the read would seem to align with this - he's a loose-rec, good-natured, likes to have fun, likes to gamble, drinking, will limp-shove with both strong and marginal hands. He'll get it in with an OESD or FD, and will c-bet or call a c-bet on A-high boards with JJ.

I'm not saying making the call here is "easy", but it gets easier when we see him doing this sort of $hlt in other hands.

Grunch: Seems like an easy fold to me. Almost nobody 4-bets postflop on the river with a bluff or a worse hand. River is already kind of close between raise/call with so many better value hands out there. If he shows a bluff, that's really impressive, and you should take pictures because you just found a unicorn.

Sorry to be pedantic, but V 3B the river, not 4B.

While this is a sample size of one, I was once in a pot with someone who donk-3B and called my raise-4B jam on the river for 300BB's with the 7th nuts (4th boat vs my nut straight flush). He was actually a studied player, so a loose drinking rec can certainly be over-valuing a worse hand here.

V apparently didn't think he was bluffing. He probably thought he was beating AK or AA. But who knows? Maybe he thought hero could be over-playing TT or JJ. He's a drunk rec-fish.

It's a gross spot with top 2P, but with so many worse value hands in both our range and V's range, it wouldn't be a terrible call.

This player probably would have donked flop, and/or gone bigger on turn, with a set or straight. Decent chance he's overvaluing a worse hand

He doesn't sound like the type to bet small because he thinks your range doesn't hit this board