Weird spot out of nowhere versus splashy villain

Thanks for the posts, and the sims. Really helpful to read through, as usual.

My initial thought when reading your posts was that you were overrating V's skill by a fair bit (perhaps in part because I held back a bit in my OP) but the reality is that this guy knows what he is doing (at least to an extent) and knows how to put a lot of pressure on opponents, which makes him significantly tougher than probably 95% of the people that I play against regularly. The fact that he plays MS $5/$10 (no idea why a rec would choose to play this game unless they were just rich/degen/trying to tilt some regs) and that you view the AQ v QT hand as well-played by him also makes me question whether he is actually a better player than I give him credit for. To the point that you made later on, he also found the 1.5x pot size on this river, which the average $2/$5 fishreg would not find.

For the flop sim, I am coming around to the fact that flop should be a check. I made a bit of a live misclick in-game as I had it in my head that I was going to bet a b33/b40-type size and just grabbed an extra chip at the last second. It's interesting that solver checks KK a lot on river, but bets my specific combo a bunch, for a bunch of different sizes. Basically since I played the hand and talked with my brother about it, I have been thinking that blocking river accomplishes the same thing as checking -- basically a "bet small to induce" size that gets him to bluff his missed straight draws while also potentially calling stuff like 99 and TT.

Going to hold off on the final river decision analysis because I can't find a way to respond without spoiling my decision, but that was interesting to read as well.

flop

turn

river pt1

river pt2

as him in the aq hand. in reality i think he should pure fold his hand because lets face it you are random nit taking a shot at 2/5 and not bluffing here, the bluffs are also incredibly unintuitive. add in that hes at the bottom of his actual valuebetting range whatever that may be and i think his hand is wp. again i dont know what information wasn't included in the op but i think the people who read the same op that i did and concluded this guy is a massive whale that you can stack 20x pot on 872r with KK in a multiway srp vs his cold call range are delusional. i dont think loose splashy means he tries to take tricky lines repping fractional amounts of like 5 combos for a 150% psb vs guy who obviously has an overpair lol. if the river is a 6 or j or something im significantly more interested in calling vs this player

sorry i messed up the sim a bit and didnt give oop ~b100 size otr. more or less same result. probably 2 sizing spot and AQ is going to go in the smaller one. i think if anything your iso in that hand is the most iffy decision made by anyone, though his decision to play flats, esp w something like AQo is interesting too. most likely he thinks you are tight and the recs are worth keeping in the pot though

jury is still out i guess until we get results but if he shows up with a valuebet in this hand (which to me would indicate he isn't bluffing this line / size) i think he played both hands potentially better than op and i would be careful about underestimating him. should just reveal results though, realistically you're not going to get more out of anyone else's responses here than mine and i think depending what he has it can lead to further conversation

the issue too is when u see b65 in the aq hand in conjunction with b150 here is you have to realize he understands bet sizing and knows what hes doing. if he went b65 in both spots i think you could conclude hes just random clicker and just bets 2/3 otr but theres obviously at least some amount of thought where he understands AQ is going to be an overplay by going x/r b jam and is a thin vb otr and he sized appropriately, where he is repping very narrow / polar range and chooses to go large. again i dont know the guy or anything, and its conceivable he just happened to get really lucky picking random numbers in his head, but i find it unlikely that someone that understands to x the turn w AQ and overbet the river here doesn't understand that a) you have a pair when you bet 872r 3 ways after raising pre and call his flop raise, b) that he decides to try to bluff vs the stronger part of that region by choosing b150 otr instead of targetting your auto folds like t9 / 65 / idk Ax with bdfd either w b65 or by betting turn and c) that he's buried and likely perceived as tilting and going to get called when he reps nothing. am maybe overthinking all of these things but the river call looks like more or less a bluff catcher - the Kc really isn't all that relevant to much that he could be valuebetting or bluffing with and our combo is worth little at equilibrium given the size of the pot so am relatively happy to either fold or call at lower freq than sim would suggest. the big thing calling w KK compared to other hands does here is it prevents him from inappropriately valuebetting Qx for this sizing. i just don't really see that happening given 3 ways otf and bdfd getting there, id be open to it on a nonfc queen maybe.

AQ v QT sim is interesting to read, too. I am not going to defend myself against the nit allegations insofar as I agree that river should be a snap fold versus me (and basically everyone at MS $2/$5) and I was actually surprised that he tanked so long after he revealed what his hand was.

I also agree that QTo iso is questionable from me. I imagine if V knew I was that wide iso-ing the button versus two fish he would be more inclined to 3b pre, but I agree that it's somewhat reasonable to flat BB to keep in the two limpers. He never revealed his combo, just that he had AQ, so no clue if it was suited or offsuit.

I'll put the result behind a spoiler tag.

I'm trying to think about who it could be that might be here and is one of the bad regs.

If it's the person I think (older middle eastern guy, short dark hair, does rolling shrugs fairly often, likes to laugh/smile a lot and show a bad card when you fold, I'm not sure he plays 5/10 but I know he plays casino games and doesn't care about the money) ... I would call river, as I wouldn't be shocked if he had any 8 or 7 on the flop, but I'd never expect him to be here. The turn check back and river overbet seem in line with what he'd do.

Can't think of any others where I'd like to see the turn check back and river overbet though. As I can see a few of them randomly raising flop because it's not good for your range, but checking turn which is a blank for your range and then firing river when you can have QQ feels pretty bad.

There's one younger guy with blonde hair who I've seen do this kind of line a couple of times, but he had big overpairs and was PFR at least when I saw him do it.

If you haven't played with V much I'd be tempted to call more often, but a non-trivial part of the value would be seeing what he won with.

Nah, he's white, somewhere mid-30's to mid-40's, average build, wears a baseball cap, might have a beard or goatee, jokes around with the dealers and other regs. I know his first name and initials but obv won't share publicly.

Something weird happened after this hand where I went card dead for two orbits and one of the dealers made a joke to me like, "Joe, how did you get all those chips and I haven't seen you play a hand since I got here?" I made (what I thought was) a clear joke that, "Obviously I am just locking it up right now," and this guy started berating me, trying to get me to leave the table so they could get someone who was actually going to play a hand.

The vibe got pretty toxic, and it was already my biggest winning day of all time, so I did end up leaving shortly afterwards. I made a joke that I hoped they got a huge action whale to replace me, but after I cashed out I noticed it was that nitreg older guy who uses a walker and limpraises a bunch lol.

EDIT: btw if the older guy you are talking about is the one I am thinking of then he is basically a whale. Dan and I both have hands against him. I have actually run into him a weird amount of times IRL too.

Yeah, he's terrible. Degen fish. Spazzy-spewy-splashy-punty. If he held onto his cards and actually had a missed draw, he's worse than I initially thought.

It does seem like he kinda sorta understands some basic concepts enough to apply them in some spots. But he's not stringing together coherent thoughts across multiple streets.

Like, yeah, when you check the river, it is a good spot to bluff, when he has no SDV. But he had no SDV on the turn, when he checked back. It's kinda obvious he's not thinking ahead when he raises flop. And KK is exactly the sort of hand you'll have in this line, and the sort of hand he might be able to make fold by the river, if he barreled turn.

interesting results.

i think regs hold their cards not because they have sdv but because they don't want to give away information but still want to get it. ie not show their cards but see yours. if hes rec it could just be hes embarassed about getting caught bluffing. personally if its reg whos going to be a douche to me afterwards i would make them show, and i would never make a rec show. you can also kind of make a joke about it. tell him you are willing to show 0,1, or 2 depending on what he does and you guys can flip them over one after another dramatically like a yugioh battle. if you do this and then he complains that you have kings tell him you thought he had aces.

would keep a note of this hand but its not clear me to what to conclude yet. is this his normal game? does he just think if he b150 people will fold everything? is he tilted and angry and doing something out of the ordinary? id also be curious what his value sizing looks like in these spots. my guess is his line is better when flop is hu than mw. usually this is under bluffed size and line in just about every single population ive ever played in (vs regs, although fish too this sizing is usually death sentence), and i dont think its as easy as level 0 hand reading vs regs that put in some amount of work as they tend to generally have balance and not just do stupid stuff like this. is also possible hes degen / bad etc, but i dont usually associate b150 otr in these spots with being a weak reg. 2 other considerations re poker skill (esp among "regs") is people are always improving so he might have either gotten better since your brother played with him or watched like a video or had a conversation he misapplied re overbetting in broken lines or something and also its incredibly hard to rate peoples skill subjectively by observing them at the table. you don't always know why people are doing things, or if theyre tilted or whatever, and people tend to see one thing wrong (without understanding why / ev behind it) and assume theyre the worst ever.

is good call though, having seen a bluff here would change my assumptions and play vs him dramatically

if people start hounding you for not playing hands, i would try to come up with a clever way to calm things down and defuse the situation or at least get them off of you. you could be like playing hands is dangerous, look at {this reg}, hes playing every hand and getting murdered. but if you just sit there in nit rage theyre going to keep going and you end playing worse or feeling bad or quitting or whatever. is very lord the flies esque ime

Sub, you’re obviously 100x the NLHE player than i’ll ever be but I think you missed a glaring tell—at age 60, I have never played with a “still begging for a reveal a few hands later” type who wasn’t a complete blow monkey.

How do I know this tell is 100% accurate? Because on my worst drunkest most tilted days, I did it, albeit much more subtly & cleverly imho than this guy, haha!

Perhaps in your haste to start simming—to maybe find evidence supporting a contrarian theory that the AQo hand was somehow 9-D chess, thus reconfirming how much smarter you are than everyone else here?—you overlooked the drool on v’s chin. Happens to the best of us.

Obviously small small sample size/results oriented, but I’ll take my broken clock victory lap on dango’s B3B flop-jam turn bandwagon.

can you explain why you guys think he is a bad player based on the description?

all i really see is he's a loose reg that gambles when he plays the lower bound of stakes he plays and he's stuck. neither this hand or the history hand really change that perspective for me

Everything he did with the AQ hand, and said after the hand, combined with what he said during the hand, though that info came later in the thread. It wasn't needed, but did solidify that V is just button clicking. Also the read that he's gambley, loose, and splashy.

The AQ hand was atrocious. The two limpers were still uncapped when they naturally checked in flow to hero, who c-bet into three opponents. Then V x/r's with TPTK on a board where his opponents can have all the straights, sets, and 2P, or an OESD to the nuts that comes in if V's hand improves to top 2P.

On the turn, he slows down when he improves to the best hand, yet he clearly doesn't see how his hand could be good, despite the two limpers folding on the flop, and hero only flat calling. He got the best possible card, and yet he suddenly doesn't know where he's at vs hero once hero calls his raise.

Then on the river, when some of the hands he was beating on the turn boat up, he bets super-thin for around 1/2 pot, with no apparent consideration of what he's targeting for value, in a spot where few if any worse hands would call.

V loses to AA, KJ, J9, QQ, TT, 88, QT, and T8. Hero probably isn't c-betting the flop, calling the x/r, checking back turn, and calling river with AK, AJ, KK, JJ, KQ, QJ, or Q9, when he can't beat anything that V raised for value or as a bluff on the flop. The only hand V could be targeting is Q8s, which is pretty optimistic after hero checks back turn.

In hand, he doesn't see that hero could just have AA, QQ, TT, 88, QT, T8, KJ, or J9. He's fixated on AT and hero possibly turning JJ into a bluff. Like, how the hell does hero have AT? He thought he was ahead after hero checked back turn, but he can't see how the river downgrades his hand significantly. He doesn't see all the hands that beat him on the river, because he couldn't see them on flop or turn.

i posted the solve to the aq hand. every action he took is solver approved at least 3 handed and i think he played it well. i doubt ip has much kj / j9 / qq / aa in this line and his hand is strong enough to value bet. the river downgrades his hand significantly less than ip checking the turn upgrades his hand. multiway is tricky and you end up doing things that don't seem intuitive alot of the time because it's so hard to realize equity multiway / sandwiched. he could also just be yapping to either get a read on hero while he's tanking (with a hand that is indifferent and supposed to mix call at some frequency) or get free information after the fact, which he succeeded at.

i think if you want to find a hand that is suspect its the kk one, but he's allowed to have some amount of bluffs in that line and if he actually had 96 that's the hand class he's supposed to be drawing them from

idk i think he just sort of ran bad in both hands in terms of what part of range he ran into. think you should be open to the possibility that he is decent. i usually think everyone is pretty meh but its really hard to find b150 here otr by accident, i also think the vast majority of people would auto barrel the aq bc protection or they improved or whatever.

I have the feeling that players like this can find their way to "studied-looking" bets without studying charts and solvers, thru trial and error. A good player learns and conducts reasonable experiments. Like in past hands maybe he has tried bluffing 2/3 pot and after getting snapped off or even tank-called too often, decided a bigger bet was needed.

He missed the fact that the turn check was odd, so maybe he learns from this unsuccessful bluff and tries a turn b150 overbet next time. Trial and error. Or a smaller turn bet followed by a river shove. But I have to figure that cheaper trials are the first ones tried.

If he is in fact a good player he must be having a very bad day, probably affected by outside factors.

Because imo the sum of the two hands plus the between hands chatter adds up to “I don’t see any method at all, sir” rather than “sacrificing the f5 pawn leads to a forced exchange of queens followed by forking his king & rook three moves later.”