PLO5 HU 3bp was this a correct bluff versus a reg?

He has definitely something more than just a flush. Don't put people on strict things, think about their whole range.

River is not the greatest card, but as you have only A high and there is still a lot of hands in his range that should fold it's fine to fire the river.

what youre saying doesnt really make sense besides the CO range. first of all you think you have blockers but thats not true. you said you a4 blocker but a4 is a shitty straight to have here. to be able to say you got blockers you need a 4. the Ace doesnt do anything. on the river youre saying youre blocking 78 which is true but you want to hold a7 here. the 8 is such a weak blocker. back to the hand, on plo 5 bluffing is almost always bad. if villain has lets say 34 he will never ever fold at any street. your semibluff is also really bad. your hand is on c/f on flop and turn. the t-high fd in a multiway pot is worth nothing. just brings reversed implied odds. when villain calls turn he most likely has a set or a straight already. and on that specific river many of his set hands will improve to a straight as well. on top you block two flush cards that villain can hold so hes less likely to have a fd himself. all that makes your play really bad. A and 8 are really weak blockers, i wouldnt even call an Ace a blocker here anyway. and as i said on plo 5 blockers are worth shit. people will never give you credit. on another note, you raise from utg and call the 3bet. what hands will you have here that hit that board well to lead turn? maybe a hand like kkxx that has a straight. but even then. imagine you flop a set. you should lead all your strong hands here on the flop. imagine you got a set or osed+fd+pair. you always wanna lead those hands. co range will have high pairs/high cards and mp can hold whatever. your check on the flop is always weak unless you flopped nuts with redraw and want to slowplay. youre present nothing the way you played the hand besides the nuts but again if someone here has the 7-high straight its never gonna be folded. and i would even go as far that villain most likely will never fold a 6-high straight either. so with basically no blockers and the fact you block flush cards that villain should have to have a better chance of getting folds makes this hand a pretty bad bluff attempt.

River is not the greatest card, but as you have only A high and there is still a lot of hands in his range that should fold it's fine to fire the river.

wait what? what hands on that limit will fold river while calling turn? anything else but maybe sets and mostly flush draws will always call. and he blocks the fds himself.

I have to disagree on couple of things.

First, bluffing is a great way to make money even in the smallest stakes. You just have to pick up the spots. That is based on defining ranges and understanding how much you have FE on certain situations.

Second, blockers do mean something. They change the range distribution, and affects the estimated FE for bluffs. Ace blocker is shit, as no one folds a flush at micros. But straight blockers change the frequency how often opponent has a straight.

Example: In this hand in the current situation we estimate that opponent has 78xx 14% of times. If we remove 8 from hero's hand the chance for 78 goes up to 20%. If we remove 9 also, it goes up to 28%. I used 20% preflop range for calling for opponent, where there aren't that many 78 hands. With 8 and 9, hero blocks a lot of combos that might have 78 in them. If we give AT77 for hero, the chance for opponent to have 78 is 12 or 14 (depending if hero has 7h).

Those are based on assumptions that opponent's range preflop is FI20, he would 3bet Aces, and on the turn he calls hero's donk with 2pairs or better, 78 with a flush draw, A-high flush draw or 789 wrap. So you can see that depending on blockers opponent has 78 from 12% to 28% of times. Blockers can change the way that opponent range is distributed, and often it is the deciding factor if we estimate to have enough FE or not to bluff.

Btw, in this hand with that range on the turn (and opponent would raise 47) he has a straight 74% of times. If he folds everything else, you have 26% FE. And to make that bluff you need 27%. The key is in your estimation of his turn calling range. If he has some bare-ish flush draws at all (besides naked Ahh) then your bluff is easily justified.

He will fold all of his 2 pair hands and flush draws imo. That situation is an interesting one, cos it's all about how one estimates his calling range for the turn. On the river he needs just 27% FE to fire the bluff. In some estimations, that is easily achieved. In some, it's not. And no one knows the absolute truth. We just make estimations and then base our decisions to that. And in the end, the one who makes better estimations wins the money.

Turn semibluff is a nice one. 3bettor rarely has AA+fd or a straight there. And MP has 23+ only 15% of times.

i know that straight blockers are more valuable than flush blockers but this spot is just too bad on the river. hero has basically no straight blockers. do you really think villain will ever fold 7-high straight on plo5? like seriously? even 6-high he will call most likely considering the amount commited. the 8 is a bad blocker. yes it does block some rundown combinations that makes it less likely for villain to have connected cards close to the 8. the only relevant blockers are 4 and 7. you completey disregard the fact that two pairs on the turn automatically qualify for a straight on the river and therefor villain is more likely to call than to fold. if you think hero has 27% fe on the river the way the hand played out and given we block possible fds that villain will fold to a shove youre making a mistake here. we dont block any cards from 2-7 that all are straights if villain got two of them. on the other hand we block flush draws that villain can have and you think this is a good spot to bluff. cmon... then again we talking about plo5 and you act like its plo100 where double bluff barrels atleast get folds here and there. your assumption is way off.

Guys thanks for the insightful comments first of all, especially Kyyberi since he obv took the time and put the hand into PJ, I'm really grateful for such a community.

One thing is that I would never do this against someone who's stats didn't look like he's a reg(I did have a small sample in this case but I knew he's a reg from previous sessions) so I actually expected him to fold decent amount OTR meaning anything but the nut str8(considering 47 would raise turn anyways) but to be honest I didn't think that 67, 57, 37 was in his range but ofc to some extent it was and I don't think he'd fold that. I expected him to fold a 6high str8 which may or may not be true but I don't think it matters that much without reads anyways because the point is to test the opponent and adjust after seeing showdown.

Considering turn bet @Lasso looking from a balancing perspective I think you're def right I am not balanced considering my flop actions etc. but I don't think I need to be since like you said it's plo5 and players rarely think "oh he didn't bet the flop for sure he's range is really weak here ott" (especially since some players are passive and really do check strong hands otf here even tho they should've donked) therefore I still really like my turn bet for the same reasons Kyyberi said.

In regards to river bet now knowing that I'm basically close to breaking even with him calling ALL of the straights(consideing Kyyber's range he gave him preflop and ott which would be interesting to see how the ev would change if we changed those) I think the bet was good since any 6high str8 or lower he might decide to fold I profit + I gain info on him what are his calling frequencies for the future if he calls with a weak str8. BUT thinking now most regs are call happy in this spot considering how the spot played out like Lasso said so I shouldn't pull the trigger so fast but the reason I did it was due to many successful 2 and 3barrels that happened during that session versus scared regs so I was more inclined to think he's one of the scared ones as well. All in all considering Kyyber's results the hand actually was played well according to those ranges and I was either b/e or making profit but that's not that important.

What is important is that I think more about this spot and a few things you guys pointed out so that next time I'm in similar situation I am able to make a better decision. I will think more about the blockers and their value and actually about balancing my range at least to some marginal extent(so that when I'm in a certain spot I don't think only of my current hand but my whole range in that spot which I already know will be hard but thanks Lasso for pointing it out it's a weak spot of mine) and lastly when in a 3bp I need to take a deeper look at the board texture and also think twice about my premade assumptions on the villain.

TLDR: you guys are awesome and I need to learn a lot from this hand

ps. one thing tho about the turn range of the guy if we assume he calls any 23+ ott then we have to assume he also calls all 6high straight otr I think so not sure how would it looked like if his turn calling range was tighter

At first I thought that bet turn and river isn't a good line. But after working with the numbers, I kind of changed my mind. At least it's pretty close to being +EV.

First, I don't think opponent folds any straight on the river. For the bluff to work, he needs to fold his 2 pairs (and rare sets).

The key is in his range. He calls preflop UTG open from MP. That range should be pretty defined to strong hands (=connectivity, high cards). Emphasis on SHOULD. In that range he doesn't have that much combinations that contains a lot of small cards. And CO who 3bets is really strongly weighted towards AA, and if he had AA4x or similar he would have bet some of the time on the flop.

So the most important thing here is MP's calling range. If it is what it should be, the line is justified. If he is kind of reg who doesn't really have solid and conservative preflop game, then I would just skip the bluff.

how do you come to the conclusion that villain is a reg? because of the 11 hands you got of him and him not having 50vpip yet? sorry thats just stupid to assume someone is a reg after just 11 hands played. also theres no regs at plo5 because they know better. hispreflopcallissobadanyway.idk how you think this guy can be a reg. if you think barreling in this spot with barely any blockers is good keep doing it please. i dont wanna start the hate train but i shared this hand on two plo discord servers im on and they thought especially river bet is burning money. some agreed that turn bet can be good but would go either big or small. but anyway thats it from me.

One note: often when you ask PLO100+ players about PLO10< hands, there might be problems. As their view on the game is different. In stakes where most opponents understand a bit about poker and PLO, river bet is bad because of the ranges and understanding of ranges. When we come to PLO5, opponents don't think in a way "if I fold this, then my turn+river ranges are really off balance and it's so easy for opponents to exploit me" or "I am somewhat capped here and my opponent can have a lot of missed bluffs that he barrels. So I am going to bluff catch". They just think on the turn "I have 2 pairs, I could make a full house or he checks the river" and then on the river "Damn, didn't hit my hand and he bets big. I have to fold".

To overcome the 15-20bb/100 rake at micros, we need to exploit the %&%/#& out of our opponents. Good news is that we can do it, as so many of our opponents doesn't realize what we are doing. When we go up in stakes, we can't.

If we say that river bet is burning money, then the assumption is that opponent is calling wider than just with straights, or his turn range is a lot different than in my examples. Good news is that if we can give him a range that he has on the river, then the goodness/badness of a bet is just a mathematical.

"Good news is that if we can give him a range that he has on the river, then the goodness/badness of a bet is just a mathematical." yup

Although I think if we change his turn calling range to only top2p+ and weaker any2p only cuppled with fd or oesd meaning his non str8 combos on the river go down then I think it's more of a clear -ev spot and I would also think that this is more of an appropriate range for some reg as I don't think he calls bare weak 2p ott. On the other hand considering he's overplaying hands preflop he might do that as well postlop and who knows maybe he even has some Khigh flushes and Qhigh+gutter type hands in his range ott that call and then based on math I assume it's a +EV spot to barrel since he has more air otr but again hard to estimate for me based on nothing obv. So imo it's more close decision than Lasso seem to think and it just depends on what kind of range you give him on the turn(and pre).

I'm leaning towards this being a bad river bet now but I don't think it's a huge minus ev or burning money.

As villains do not necessarily have solid preflop ranges, I also would skip the bluff even ott. I dont like to make barely +EV decision in spots that are new to me in a high raked environment. You also have reverse Implied odds with only T-high flushdraw. If you want to steal, I would say bet 33% otf as an exploit. and make another bet ott when you improve. but dont do that against regs as a default.