[SH] Questionable preflop, horrible, horrible turn, and a scary river bluff

What is your reason for 3 betting with this hand vs almost unknown UTG ?

Originally posted by nitrol
What is your reason for 3 betting with this hand vs almost unknown UTG ?

Yeah, that's the questionable part. I strongly suspect that he's a nit, and so I think I kinda know how to make money in this situation. He will fold all his deceptive hands, if he has any, and he will also fold small pockets. With his 3% range he will 4-bet to what we fold, and with the rest he will call. Now when he calls he basically has either TT-JJ or a big Ace, so it's really easy to play against him in position, and with a hand like A♥3♥ we can hit a strong hand and win his stack against his strong range. Plus, I haven't been 3-betting on that table for 25 hands and I sort of felt like I have a tight enough image. Also, he knows we know he raised from UTG, and we know he has a strong range, so our 3-bet looks strong as well. And our ace blocks some of his 4-bet hands.

It's still kinda questionable, I agree, I would prefer to 3-bet a CO or even MP more, but I still think against a bad nitty opponent we can make some money here. And either way once I see that he plays back at me looser than I think, I will just stop raising him with these hands. But if he folds, I will be doing it until he readjusts and either opens only premium hands or starts playing back at me with medium-strong hands.

PS: please note that what I proceeded to do postflop in this particular hand is probably not the way to make money.

A3s totally fine default bluffing range vs unknown UTG. Mostly UTG is going to be flatting a lot of pocket pairs, AQ/AJ which we will often get to fold on flop and good turns. If we're not bluff cbetting flops often (especially perfect bluff flops like KK6) then there is no point bluff 3betting. You don't have showdown value against virtually any hand in his range, therefore passive lines postflop means you're burning money pre.

So, I would cbet this flop with bdfd and barrel any heart turn, and any turn T or higher. xb turns non heart 9 or lower and A. The reason for this is that he will probably not fold hands like 88-22 on this turn, and these pockets are a significant amount of his range after he calls flop (this guy I imagine is folding AQ etc on flop here). Whereas if the turn is a J, he is a lot more likely to just give up the 88 etc.

Alternatively, if the turn is not good to bluff, and you check it back after cbetting turn, you can then bluff river if he checks and you will look like AA/QQ/JJ and should get folds from PP

one-liner opinion: i dont think your line looks that weak, as long as you bet two streets. also why would you bluff people with strong ranges, much easier to bluff people off weak ranges

I would cbet this flop because expect alot of folds (probably anything without K will fold often enough to justify our bluff) and we have a backdoor nut flushdraw and one over. Since we check back, I don't mind delayed cbet, but now we will get much more calls from pocket pairs, so I feel that its' fine to plan bluffing the river. When I think about it, we will probably need to make two streets of bluffs there in any case if we want him to fold pocket pairs (flop and turn or turn and river).

Cbetting is fine but still I do not see JJ-99 fold that much.

JJ-99

is callin at least one street, than hand is going through x/x an that is it..i guess lower pairs like 77-88 are calling also..

Originally posted by nitrol
Cbetting is fine but still I do not see JJ-99 fold that much.

I believe they are folding enough times vs 2nd barrel, considering positions and preflop action. If we bet something like slightly higher than 1/2 of pot, we need it to be arround 35% of time.

I don´t 3bet this vs UTG without reads but it could be OK.

As played: I think it could be OK. You have some Kx hand which is OK to x/b OTF. In fact I´m not sure what hand I want to cbet here for value. After his check OTT I believe his strongest hand can be often QQ which he may fold vs 2 bets. But if we bet turn I believe we have to bet river too everytime.

I agree with the double barrel turn+river if we want to achieve something. JJ-99 are calling turn on this runout.

I would cbet flop, the agro monkey inside me wants to tripple - but I don't like bluffing off unknowns really

dont triple. its not even like he never has AK

You guys make a lot of sense. I never actually thought about my light 3-bet postflop bluffing against strong ranges.

So to sum it up, what kind of flops do we C-Bet here?
> Anything with K or Q or both (or a J sometimes), but not with an A.
> Anything where we have a strong draw.
> I kind of think that a very connected and draw-heavy board like 8♠9♠T♣ is not ideal, because the villain is likely to flop a set, an overpair, or OESD.

What do you think?

normally K high and ace high will favour the raiser and queen high will favour the caller, this is usually true given later positions where the caller will usually 4bet AA,KK and AK so that leaves KQ as the strongest calling hand with a king in it. However in this spot given vUTG villians can call with AK and ranges are stronger because of initial opening ranges are stronger

Originally posted by mattyvx
normally K high and ace high will favour the raiser and queen high will favour the caller, this is usually true given later positions where the caller will usually 4bet AA,KK and AK so that leaves KQ as the strongest calling hand with a king in it. However in this spot given vUTG villians can call with AK and ranges are stronger because of initial opening ranges are stronger

It's AQ.

I think the whole idea of bluffing here is that the villain will often call with medium pockets, maybe 66-JJ or 88-JJ. Some can even call QQ I guess, but then it will take at least 2 barrels to fold it our on a K-high board, if not 3.

AQ doesnt have a king in it....

the reason Q high where wider ranges are at play can favour the caller because they have more AQ,KQ and the raiser will have more AA,AK,KK

The whole idea is that if we bet turn, we should be ready to bet river too.

Originally posted by mattyvx
normally K high and ace high will favour the raiser and queen high will favour the caller

I agree that this is good rule in general. I tend to bluff more on Khigh and less on Qhigh as aggressor in 3bet spots.

Originally posted by Th334
... and in the end clicked the wrong button.

Hi, Th334,
This is called mis-click equity, and is one of the most powerful weapons in a poker player's arsenal.

The problem is, you can't fake it -- it must be a genuine misclick. This has happened to me countless times. Maybe as many as 2.

The only time this strategy fails is when you mis-click the fold button when holding the nuts. Doh!

Best of luck,
VS