1/3/6 Live – QQ in 3-Bet Pot, Turn Decision vs Capped EP Range

River check/raises are so rare at this level, even for value. You should expect to be good here a ton of the time.

I think you can find another bet/fold on the river. $150 feels right.

The 8d must be the 8s for the board to be double suited.

I think you've been here long enough to know that it's better not to post results until later on.

Now after seeing results. I'm going to say overbet jam the river with the nuts.

Ok seriously now.
I personally probably don't thin value enough.
I personally probably check back turn then bomb the river if it gets checked to me again.
Range wise, we don't have much 7x, I guess we have some JQ that cbets the flop that got there?

If you come up alot of thin value, sooner or later you'll get burned by those check/raises. Of course if your opponents only check/raises with better than this is the best +EV line. Some aggro villains are capable of check/raising semi-bluffs and random bluffs including marginal hands that has sdv.
Also, I find alot of villains has a x/c turn then donk river range. If this were online I'd snap it off everyday on a blank. But live, they seem to like to play nutted ranges with such line.

As for river, if you are sure you have the best hand, by all means go for a thin value. But the question then becomes, what happens if you get x/jammed on? Snap it off? Or puke fold? It's something you've gotta think about imho.
Of course if your opponent never does this with air or you'll never induce a bluff raise then by all means do what you gotta do to maximize your ev vs villain.

Your read at this table might not mean alot. EP is the villain not the table. It's better to have a specific read on the villain.
It's like I have a read on the table being aggro and they thin value alot. But vs a specific villain, that specific villain plays passive and nevers thin value. Table read doesn't apply here.
Such table read might influence our thinking especially when you show us the results immediately.
You didn't post any description nor reads on villain. So I'd assume V is an unknown?
You can say EP's range might be capped because you'd think they'd usually 4bet better.

Grunch:

PRE - if the game is splashy I'd size up with my raise. I might size up just because V opened from EP. If the usual open size has been bigger, I'd size up. Your sizing seems fine / standard, though.

FLOP - In a 3BP my standard c-bet is 1/3 pot. Might go a tad larger as an exploit, so your sizing seems fine.

I wouldn't plan to fold to a x/r before seeing the size. If we're planning to auto-fold our over-pair, maybe just check back.

TURN - I'd size down a little, maybe betting $85-$90. If we're planning to bet-fold, we may as well bet smaller.

RIVER - this is where our bet sizing on earlier streets comes into question. If we bet smaller, I'd feel better going for some thin value here, more confident that V is capped when he check-calls two small bets and checks again.

Even at that, when the board pairs on the end, and there's just over a PSB left, I'd expect a lot of low stakes opponents to donk with their thick value, so we can't check back.

Opponents tend to get more sticky with their 1P holdings when the obvious draws mostly brick and the bottom card on board pairs on the river. All his 2P are counterfeited, so I'd be targeting JJ and TX. With $375 in the pot and $415 back, I think I just stick it in and hope he calls.

1. I like a smaller bet, but betting is better than checking.

2. See above.

3. Tons of merit in going for some thin value vs a capped range of JJ/TX and counterfeited 2P combos.

Is someone at 1/3 really going to call 350$ with just top pair or a two pair that got counterfeited? Sounds like we’d be value owing ourselves more often than not.

At this point I don’t know what would actually call a bet on the river that we can beat. Suited broadways that have been x/calling speculatively that didn’t get there are folding. AT is folding to that. Counterfeited 2p thinking I could have an overpair is probably folding more often than not. Sets the are now full houses are snapping me off however.

The responses in this thread should be enough to convince you that there are enough fish in 1/3 games that you could easily get called by someone just assuming you have Ace King.

I guarantee you docvail would snap you off with A8 here.

The more hands you value bet, the more hands you can bluff. Also, winning the pot without showing your hand is not a valueless result.

Admittedly I need to work on my river value bets. So this is all relevant conversation.

Hey OP, was the straddle on in this hand? Why the raise to 15 instead of 18 or 20?

I would suspect a tight reg calls a 3bet oop with 20:1 implied odds mostly with TT-JJ, AKo, AQs maybe also 99 and QQ and AQo and AJs but rarely 98 or Tx. I’m assuming V 4bets QQ+.

I like the bet on the flop.

I like the turn bet. Maybe a bit higher for a river shove. I’m surely biased by the results but truly think hero has best hand on the turn. Hero will get calls from JJ and TT, also AcJc+. AK and AQ give up. I don’t know what Doc fears. I think we shovel as much money in as possible.

T is a shitty card. He calls a shove with JJ maybe and TT definitely, so I check back.

Elaborating on my earlier post, for the purpose of explaining the hand-reading I'd be doing here, and why I'd jam river. This would obviously be unimpeachable if we didn't get the reveal of JJ in the OP, but here goes...

PRE - If my understanding is correct, there's a $6 straddle on. V is supposedly a tight/solid reg type, but he's only opening to $15 from EP. What does that mean?

He may not be paying attention and missed that the straddle is on, and thinks he's just opening 5x, which is sort of standard at 1/3. Or he's not confident he has enough of a skill edge playing OOP, so he's opening for a silly-small 2.5x sizing, in a game where the pot is likely to get raked for $5-$10, and he's likely to get multiple callers.

None of that screams skilled reg or big hand. If every hand was getting 3B pre, I might think it was possible he had AA/KK and was using a small raise size hoping to induce, but it doesn't sound like that kind of table. It sounds loose-passive.

We 3B. He calls, from OOP. I'd say he's pretty capped. He's never going to have AA/KK, and probably not QQ. At best, he's going to have JJ and AK, maybe AQs. Maybe some other suited Broadway combos, like AJs/ATs and KQs/KJs.

FLOP - he checks and we c-bet a bit less than 1/2 pot on an insanely wet and dynamic board, and he just flatted. Since it's a 3B pot, he may have a few more slow-played hands in range when we bet 1/2 pot rather than a smaller size, but I'd still be discounting the likelihood of him showing up with 2P or a set when he doesn't x/r. If he's trapping, he'll likely spring the trap on the turn.

I also think that if someone is going to call a 3B with a hand that flops 2P or a set here, there's some frequency of donking that happens, to prevent us from checking back with our un-paired over-cards or over-pairs that want to protect their check-back range.

TURN - The Ts brings in 77 and QJ, but those combos don't make up much of our 3B'ing range pre, so his 2P and sets don't really need to be all that afraid to x/r here. His strong hands should want to build a pot, and may be concerned we'll check back on this card that's probably better for him than it is for us. So, again, there may be some donk frequency here. But, he checks again, we bet a little more than 1/2 pot, and again, he just flats.

There's still a FDFD on board. Now there's four to a straight on board. We're mostly repping over-pairs. If he can't beat ATs, but has any kind of draw, he should be x/r'ing the flop or turn as a bluff.

We know he doesn't have QQ+. We're discounting 2P+. What hands can we give him here that open from EP, call a 3B, call an almost 1/2 pot flop c-bet, and flat call a 60% pot turn bet? AKs with the flush suit? Maybe. What else? This looks a lot like JJ, or maybe ATss that flopped a good draw and just ran into TPTK.

Going back to pre, the $15 almost makes sense - everyone hates playing JJ. May as well minimize the damage by opening for a silly-small size, and going directly into a check-call shell when we get 3B.

RIVER - the flush draw bricks and the board pairs. If he's going to make a play for the pot with ace-high, this is his last chance. If he had a monster, he doesn't want to give us a chance to check back with our thin value, so he's going to donk. The hands that check here are likely to be SDV that's too strong to turn into a bluff but not strong enough to donk, and are just hoping to get to showdown.

Smells like JJ, or maybe ATs. Will he call a jam? I dunno. Maybe. He called our 3B and two more bets. Doesn't seem to me like he's in a folding mood. The FDFD bricked, and it's hard for us to have many 2P+ combos here.

If we bet 1/2 pot, maybe he sigh-calls, but often a smaller bet just looks like value, and he folds.

If we got here with ace-high, I wouldn't feel very good jamming for just over pot, trying to make JJ or ATs fold. I wouldn't be sure JJ or AT would fold. If we wouldn't jam as a bluff, it seems like a pretty good spot to jam for value.

Another amazing hand biased by results. Well played. Poor post.

Hey OP, do keep the posts coming. We obviously like them despite the reveal.

What's about to follow could never be called hand reading.

I'll save everyone the time. You're jamming the river because you like to play "gotchya!" poker. You're in this for the thrills and the flexes, that's it. Anyone with different poker goals - for example: making money - should steer clear of your advice.

It means that in a min-stakes game where preflop raise sizes are generally huge, straddling has little to no effect on game dynamics. Basic math. That's all.

WOW. You said you were going to do some "hand reading" in this post. But why worry about the cards when you can literally peer into a man's soul and uncover all his secret insecurities?

It doesn't scream anything. It's just a raise. They're pretty common in Texas Hold'em. They're not always gonna be eye-opening, soul-revealing moments where you can deduce a man's skill level, play style, and psychological vulnerabilities. But you've done ALL of that already. Amazing.

Oh, so it's a typical, commonplace, everyday 1/3 table just like the other 10,000 1/3 tables running in America right now. Whoa, that is some stellar deductive logic there. You are better than Yoda, Nostradamus, and Sauron combined.

NEVER?? Holy moly, that's a rock-solid read. Obviously you expect QQ+ to 4-bet us literally every single time. Surely you're correct because you have some supernatural Professor X type of mind-reading skills. But for the rest of us, we have to rely on math. QQ+ is 18 combos out of 1326 or 1.3%. That's 1 in 77 hands. With 8 players at the table, one of those hands will show up slightly more than one out of every 10 deals. That's pretty often. If those hands are showing up that frequently, then surely I'll be seeing 4-bet pots all the time, right?

I'm gonna say that doesn't comport with my two decades of live poker experience at all. I'll see a 4-bet pot where nobody is all in happen maybe five times a year. I see people flat 3-bets with those hands all the freakin time man. And since I don't have the psychic polygraph lasers blasting out of my eyeballs the way docvail does, I'm gonna assume that QQ+ is still very much in V's range. I'm not "capping" him yet.

Is the board really "insanely wet" when you consider it from the villain's perspective? It's a 3-bet pot in a game where most people just flat raises in position with 88/99. Villain can have all the sets, and we likely don't have any. Our range is mostly pairs which don't have flush or straight outs on the turn. Our unpaired hands are mostly AK and AQ. There are 32 combos of those hands and only two of them have flush draws. If I'm in V's seat with a big hand, I'd be thinking that board is really safe. I'd see no need to spaz-out and check-raise here.

V is still not capped.

That makes no sense. Would he donk to get value from our unpaired overcards? You probably think that because you're the kind of guy who would try to bluffcatch with AJ in this spot. But most people like money, so they wouldn't pay off a donk bet with unpaired overcards. If V had 2P+, he would check to the pre-flop aggressor and let us bluff. Cmon man, this is literally Poker 101

So you're saying if V was strong, he would donk because he would be worried about the off chance we forego obvious value bets with an overpair for sake of balancing out the range we might possibly be using to defend against a turn donk. He donks because he knows that we know that he knows what we know.

That's one hell of a pretzel you just twisted up there Doc. I'm dizzy

We agree the turn card is better for him than it is for us. So his range advantage became more of an advantage. He should not want to risk folding out our overpairs out with a nutted check-raise. Nor should he want to dissuade us from continuing to bluff by donking. Basically the turn card changed nothing, so all the same principles and dynamics from the flop apply here as well.

Here's some food for thought: I would argue that the most nutted line at live minstakes full ring hold em games is check/call flop, check/call turn, lead river.

You usually see check/raises from 2pair and sets in single raise multi way pots with wet boards. That's not what's happening in this hand at all.

No, we do not know that.

I'm not

All the hands that would take a line of check/call, check/call, lead river

i.e. Good hands. Some great hands.

V is still not capped

No, YOU hate playing JJ because you don't know how to bet/fold.

Minimize the damage???

Flabbergasting, really

Yes. Now you see why x/c, x/c. lead river is such a nutty line from typical loose passives.

Now that V has checked river, we can finally say he's capped.

Zero chance. He's capped remember?

So don't give him a reason to.

That's categorically untrue. Smaller bets get called more often.

So use a size that targets those hands. Those hands can only beat our bluffs, so they'll need some really good pot odds to call.

What a bizarre thing to say.

Same goes for you, you play 2nl. It's one thing to be a **** but good at the game it's a whole other thing to behave the way you do being a 2nl grinder in 2026, after apparently TWENTY years of live poker. Stop embarrassing yourself and show some humility, you're literally at the bottom of the food chain.

I'm usually checking turn then calling a decent-sized river bet, or value betting river myself if he checks again after I check turn.

EP's range that continues vs a 3-bet is full of pocket pairs, suited Broadways and some suited connectors, although weaker suited connectors likely don't open every time in EP.

On the turn yes we can charge draws, but we're not in great shape against the portions of his range that connect with this board. There are more combos of sets compared to over pairs we're ahead of. Most suited connectors have made either 2-pair or a straight. That's why I likely check back turn.

As played this is actually a great river card for us. It reduces combos of sets, two pair and straights (by blocking some suited connector combos). It also counterfeits two pair hands, so we're now beating T9s and 98s.

It's thin and my first instinct was to check back, but a river value bet may be in order. If I do go for it I'm likely jamming to try to represent a bricked draw, and get hero called by any two pair hand. This play kind of relies on having an image that you're capable of bluffing. I don't fault you for checking back though.

Check turn bluff catch river. We don’t want to fold to a turn check raise, we are not repping this board well, and we are beat plenty of the time. This is a 2 street hand and we are in position, let’s use it.