Examine Brute Force - What do you see?

The most important idea you expressed was in the OP: "I’m not sure I had great reasons for my actions." Even if you are able to determine what V folded, that information is far less valuable than drilling down on 1. why you took your line, 2. whether you have evidence to support the reasons (or whether it was an emotional urge), and 3. if it's a decision that you should repeat or modify in the future. You're on the right path of thinking about your hand - just need a little tweaking.

Yeah, when he 3!s and pots the flop, sometimes he is bluffing and sometimes he has an overpair. In a 1/3 game, you are probably better giving him credit and letting it go. If you flat call, you are in a difficult situation. He may shut down with his bluffs and he may keep firing.

When you minraise, sometimes he will fold when he doesn't have anything. Sometimes he will shove / 3! and you have an easy fold, and sometimes he will flat call. When he flat calls and you shove, you get him to fold when you are ahead but he probably has outs. You also avoid maybe being bluffed off your hand. If he has a big pair, you get it in like 5% or 0% if he has a set of jacks.

Part of the reason you got some responses that appeared insulting was that you posted it like you were really proud of your bluff. However, 95% of the time you were way ahead when he folded.

The result wasn't bad in that you got him to put in more money and you didn't get bluffed off your hand or drawn out on. However, it may not be the best way to play against the whole range that villain 3! and pots the flop with.

I appreciate this sir
This is one of the best posts I’ve read on this forum. Hope to hear some more from you.

In his vlog videos, when he doesn't put the last raise in with a bigger PP, and instead just flat calls, Brad Owen will often comment something along the lines of "effectively turning my JJ (or in this case, TT) into 22."

As I understand it, his reasoning is that when we just flat call the last raise, we're capped, and can't rep top of range post-flop. So, whether we have 22 or TT, we're basically set-mining.

The thing I notice about people set-mining is that they often seem to forget what they were doing post-flop, when they don't flop a set. Logically, if we're set-mining and we don't flop a set, our hand is reduced to a bluff-catcher.

As a general rule, I don't think it makes sense to turn a bluff-catcher into a bluff, unless and until we have enough info to reasonably suspect our hand is no good, but we can get a better hand to fold, by repping something we could credibly have.

Because you flat called pre, you can't rep AA/KK. Maybe you could rep QQ, JJ, 99, J9, and 33. QQ wouldn't have a reason to raise here, because V could have AA/KK, or JJ. So you're mostly repping JJ/99/J9/33.

While it's possible to rep a straight or flush when the obvious draw comes in, it's harder to rep 2P or a set, because they're not obvious. It can also be problematic if we start out repping 2P or a set, and then the flush or straight draw comes in, and we keep betting. It raises suspicion.

At first I looked at this and thought it was just button-clicking, because there didn't seem to be any logical basis for this play. You didn't flop a set, it's not a draw-heavy board that would allow you to have a ton of bluffs, and you can't credibly rep many, if any over-pairs.

I don't think it's great, generally. But, all that said, if we're going to turn a PP into a bluff, I'd think doing it with a PP that can pick up a BD draw of some sort on the turn makes it somewhat better. I'd think it would be better if the board was two-tone and we had that suit in our hand.

Also, while we can't rep AA/KK, it seems reasonable that we could have JJ or 99 here, when we actually have TT. I wonder if a solver would do this with some lower PP's that have less showdown value. Maybe 88 and 77 make more sense. Maybe a solver would like doing this with TT, because a T that makes us a set also brings in V's combos of KQ.

So, maybe it's not terrible. We can pick up equity on a turn Q, 8 or 7. The board would seem to connect with our range better than our opponent's. It's not a play I would make all the time, but it may be okay to attempt it at a low frequency.

I agree you should leverage your image. I'm not sure this is the way to do it. I think it makes sense to increase your bluffing frequency when you appear nitty, but there ought to be some logical reasoning behind your bluffs.

Like, how many PP's do you have getting to the flop? Are you turning all of them into bluffs when you don't flop a set? Are there some PP's that make more sense than others, depending on the board texture?

How many suited connectors or suited gappers do you have here? Can you credibly rep many or any 2P combos? Are you going to raise all of your OESD's?

Does V's bet size change anything? Can we increase our bluffing frequency when he bets small, and decrease it when he bets big?

Do we have any traps in this line, on this board? Is this how we'd play our sets and 2P?

If you're raising all your PP's and OESD's here, regardless of V's sizing, you're probably over-bluffing, regardless of your image.

If you're always raising your sets and 2P, you're probably fast playing too much.

If you're always slow-playing those nutted hands, you're probably slow-playing too much, and you'd also be over-bluffing if you're also raising a lot of your PP's and OESD's.

I'm not suggesting you need to be "balanced". I'm suggesting you ought to be structuring your raising range in a way that makes the most sense from an EV perspective.

You're in position here. You have a good bluff catcher. We could flat call the flop, and then evaluate on the turn.

When the turn comes a 9, V may slow down and check. He probably should. We can check back with SDV and bluff-catch the river, or put in a little stop bet, to increase the likelihood he checks to us on the river.

If he bets again on the turn, especially for a small size, then we could raise as a bluff, and very credibly rep trip 9's or better.

Trying to express this thought without it being insulting...

Sometimes people find a good play by accident.

The proof of what happened here is that you're wondering what V folded, and wondering why it worked. If you knew your line had merit, that would probably be based on having a good idea of what V's range was, and you wouldn't be wondering why your line worked.

I see two possibilities here:

1. You had the best hand, and over-played it, effectively turning a decent bluff catcher into a bluff, likely costing yourself some EV, if V would have barreled turn, and possibly river.

2. You didn't have the best hand, but some combination of your image, the action, and the board made your line seem credible, and got V to fold a better hand.

It may be tempting to congratulate ourselves for making the best hand fold. But imagine we played JJ/J9/99 this way, and made V fold QQ+. Imagine if V snapped us off here with QQ+. Imagine if V had AK and would have barreled off on brick run-outs.

We potentially sacrifice a lot of EV doing things like this.

If I was in V's spot, you would have gotten me to fold some better hands. If I was in your spot, I wouldn't try to make V fold better hands. At least not by starting a bluff on the flop, by raising over his pot sized c-bet.

Did you come here for our advice, or our approval?

You came here for advice. Everyone told you this was awfully played. You also now realize that villain didn't have much on the flop and all you did was protect your hand and not get bluffed.

Yeah that was one hand pres, that I’ll never face exactly the same again. But I got your two cents

The hardest thing is not knowing what to do, it’s applying what you know. The decisions come fast in real time and every single situation is different.

I come here to listen to solutions and evaluate.

Trying to understand the people obsessed with who’s ‘right or wrong’, but I just don’t get it.

TT is simply not the best choice of a hand to bluff with in this scenario for a few reasons:

1. A solver has it as a pure call on the flop, so against a balanced opponent it has a fair amount of EV as a call that you're "wasting" by turning it into a bluff. Yada yada, this point might be less relevant at low stakes, but still:

2. You're blocking bluffs like QTs and KTs.

3. You don't have much equity against your opponent's calling range.

Now you can have some bluffs in most spots, although here facing so much strength you should likely have very few. Your opponent should be polarized between very strong hands and bluffs. There's no reason for TT to want to raise and fold out the bluffs.

Usually players I've known who make this sort of play operate on a set of rules for calling down. So they'll say something like, "I thought he was weak but I would have had to fold to his turn bet if I just called."

The thing is you can just call down if you think he's overbluffing. If he's bluffing you want to let him put his stack in. If he's "got it" you're typically going to lose your stack either way (unless you're playing against Doc 😜).

What are you trying to accomplish with this bluff? Are you really trying to get him to fold an overpair? I'm not trying to be insulting. You want to be thinking about what portion of his range are you targeting, and given that assumption what portion of your own range does it make the most sense to use as a bluff.

The point I was making wasn't about right or wrong. It was a direct response to your post below, particularly the part where you express your in-game thoughts:

That's not applying what you know. That's playing chicken, in a spot where brute force is completely unnecessary, and potentially very costly.

You've said here and in other threads that you listen and want to learn. You post hands, and then in subsequent posts, you often seem argumentative or defensive of your decisions. It seems like you actually resist learning, and instead want to convince others your actions are correct.

Every single situation is not always different. There are many situations which are straightforward and easy to understand, and a few situations which are subtly nuanced and subject to interpretation.

This one isn't hard to understand. It's way ahead / way behind.

Don't know why this was said. I'd never play this the way V did, with any hand imaginable, unless I was making an in-game adjustment specifically intended to exploit my opponent's observed leaks.

For example, if I knew FreeCard was capable of spaz-raising TT over a pot sized c-bet, and then spaz-jamming turn when middle card paired, I'd love to bet pot on the flop with JX+.

I was just giving you a hard time about being a nit and looking for reasons to fold your overpairs. It was tongue in cheek.

The problem with this post flop is that you have thrown a lot of money into the middle needlessly to end up with basically the same result.

Villian just never calls this jam with a hand that we beat, and equally never folds any of the j's in his range.

Pre is fine.
Flop is an obvious call. We are good here a lot. Villain has so many standard c-bet hands, keep that range nice and wide.

Turn,
I think your lucky lucky lucky. You will find very few low stakes players who will fold the turn after calling a raise on the flop.

My guess would be that he had KQ and the paired board made his straight draw look very weak.
That or just another fish losing far to much money with ak.

What ever villan had, he played it absolutely shocking, and your pretty fortunate to have got away with this one, 90% of Villans in this spot call your jam and your behind.