$2000 NLHE Full Ring: Top set on scary board

TenJack · Oct 5, 2018

Hero is LAG, 400BB

Villain is pretty new, seems normal. 220ish BB

Folds to villain in MP, raises 60
Folds to hero on bttn w/ AsAc
Hero raises to 250
Folds back to villain, calls.

Flop: Ah Jh Th Pot: ~500

Villain checks
Hero tanks, checks

Turn: 4s Pot: 500

Villain bets 250
Hero calls

River: 2d Pot: 1000

Villain bets 500
Hero calls

Did i play this to passivley? I had a decent read that he had flopped something, but i wasn't sure if it was, say, the royal, or maybe JJ or TT or AdKh. His bet on the turn sorta felt to me like "if i check, this guy is just going to check it back" .Felt like the river was a call because what calls me if i raise? maybe JJ, TT that i beat.

cs_rlewis · Oct 5, 2018

I think this is fine.
Your putting your opponent on royal flush on the flop lol?
There is merit to betting flop but checking is fine on a wet flop.

TenJack · Oct 5, 2018

As for putting him on the royal, not necessarily

that might be a bit over the top lol. But, it is the most likely flush combo I think... that would be the best flush combo, followed by K9, Q9, he really never calls a 3-bet oop with either K9 or Q9 (at least he shouldn't.) So if he has a flush he should probably have the royal.

Poker_Mike · Oct 6, 2018

TenJack said:
Hero is LAG, 400BB

Villain is pretty new, seems normal. 220ish BB

Folds to villain in MP, raises 60
Folds to hero on bttn w/ AsAc
Hero raises to 250
Folds back to villain, calls.

Flop: Ah Jh Th Pot: ~500

Villain checks
Hero tanks, checks

Turn: 4s Pot: 500

Villain bets 250
Hero calls

River: 2d Pot: 1000

Villain bets 500
Hero calls

Did i play this to passivley? I had a decent read that he had flopped something, but i wasn't sure if it was, say, the royal, or maybe JJ or TT or AdKh. His bet on the turn sorta felt to me like "if i check, this guy is just going to check it back" .Felt like the river was a call because what calls me if i raise? maybe JJ, TT that i beat.

Your read was good that he had something on the flop.

I put him on KQ or QJ with one heart. Something like a pair with a straight draw and also a flush draw. So he's thinking he's eager to get more money in the pot. I would have bet the flop to see if he liked hearts and then more than half pot bet on turn to charge for all draws and then bet smallish on river for value.

If he's not strong at all then he goes away. You said he was "straightforward" so I doubt you get a lot of bluffing out of him on this board...but who knows.

So......what did he in fact have?

Good luck !

elflake · Oct 6, 2018

Weirdly passive based on other posts of yours I have read. No way I check that flop.

TheBigFinn · Oct 6, 2018

Check the flop seems too passive to me. Why are you doing that? The board is wet and you're giving him a free card when you are 75/25 ahead of his range. Does villain have a straight? I don't think she is playing KQo so there are only 4 KQs combos The royal is a cooler, but you are only a 33/67dog to the others. How about a flush? The top of the range is with 3 of the broadway cars on the flop. What hearts can villain reasonably have ? 98, 87, K9? maybe 6 combos.

So Hero is losing to 10 combos, what is he beating that opens middle position and just calls the 3-bet? KK raises, but QQ, JJ, TT, 99, 88. then there are the case ace combo hands. AK, AQ AJ, AT. call it 35 combos. Hero needs to raise.

As played, Villain could be betting lots of things on . By checking the flop Hero's hand looks much weaker than it is. Raising the turn suddenly looks very strong and there are not many hands that Villain calls with that Hero is beating, JJ &TT? Same is true on the river.

Tuan · Oct 26, 2018

Wait, so we were playing as LAG, and we 3bet a MP open. The flop favor us, I said we should bet here, even if we got raised, we still have re-draw to a full house or 4 of a kind. So we checked behind, this check might means two things: first, we slow play with intention of betting Turn and River for value; or second, we can control the pot on the turn and river. On the turn, MP bet in front of us, I like to raise him here to build the pot. But we only called, and so, on the river MP bet again; here, we don't have a choice but to raise him on the river because this is our last chance to get value for our top set.

mtl mile end · Oct 26, 2018

From someone who has played from $.01/.02 all the way up to $1/2, I think you have to look him up here. This is a situation where you are getting 3:1 Pot odds on the call, so objectively, it's a call. To the primary question of did you play too passively? I would say; not if this is exactly the situation you wanted on the Flop. If you don't like this situation of having a relatively small pot where you must like 3:1 on the River call, then it was definitely necessary to fire on the Flop - bearing in mind that you might still have ended up in the same/similar position on the River in a much larger pot. It's tough because hands that you beat are legitimately betting for value after you check the Flop.*

*Edit: not to imply that they would call a raise here.

Matt Vaughan · Oct 26, 2018

The flop really doesn't "favor" us actually. First off we want to think about how this performs for our RANGE vs his RANGE, and from that perspective, the villain prefers this flop a LOT compared to us I think.

I don't know TJ's 3betting range exactly here, but he doesn't mention that he's 3betting everything under the sun, so I assume we don't have KQo (maybe not even KQs), and that we don't have 98hh and below suited connectors or gappers, whereas villain can conceivably have any or all of those hands.

So I'd be pretty okay checking our whole range on this flop and continuing from there. If we're going to bet AA, JJ, TT, and check everything else, we also kind of screw ourselves with our range construction because our check back range is going to be insanely weak. Plus if you want to pick even just ONE of the sets to check back, it makes sense to use AA since it blocks the hands we'd most likely be able to get action from and still actually beat.

After the flop I like how you played it as well. I still don't think our range as a whole has connected with the board enough to warrant raising ANYthing. We will have KK and QQ both with and without a heart that want to see rivers/showdown, and we still don't really ever have anything stronger than sets. We SHOULD be playing this hand fairly defensively imo.

I like how you played the whole hand. NH.

Edit: To be clear, obviously don't fold river. We have the strongest hand in our range. But for same reasoning as on turn, I don't think we should be raising either. That leaves call.

duggs · Oct 26, 2018

Scourrge said:
The flop really doesn't "favor" us actually. First off we want to think about how this performs for our RANGE vs his RANGE, and from that perspective, the villain prefers this flop a LOT compared to us I think.

I don't know TJ's 3betting range exactly here, but he doesn't mention that he's 3betting everything under the sun, so I assume we don't have KQo (maybe not even KQs), and that we don't have 98hh and below suited connectors or gappers, whereas villain can conceivably have any or all of those hands.

So I'd be pretty okay checking our whole range on this flop and continuing from there. If we're going to bet AA, JJ, TT, and check everything else, we also kind of screw ourselves with our range construction because our check back range is going to be insanely weak. Plus if you want to pick even just ONE of the sets to check back, it makes sense to use AA since it blocks the hands we'd most likely be able to get action from and still actually beat.

After the flop I like how you played it as well. I still don't think our range as a whole has connected with the board enough to warrant raising ANYthing. We will have KK and QQ both with and without a heart that want to see rivers/showdown, and we still don't really ever have anything stronger than sets. We SHOULD be playing this hand fairly defensively imo.

I like how you played the whole hand. NH.

Edit: To be clear, obviously don't fold river. We have the strongest hand in our range. But for same reasoning as on turn, I don't think we should be raising either. That leaves call.

Our range surely includes at least A2-5hh this deep, Im all for betting because if we have a are on the button 220bb effective and 3bet, id imagine our range includes AA-JJ/TT A2-5s 67s-KQs.

It feels like we have a distinct range advantage here, because we hold more flushes and also have some good hands to bluff with while he has alot of pair+draw. His range contains far more unsuited hands that can draw to flushes aswell.

I think at a guess id bet everything except KK QQ AK

Matt Vaughan · Oct 26, 2018

duggs said:
Our range surely includes at least A2-5hh this deep, Im all for betting because if we have a are on the button 220bb effective and 3bet, id imagine our range includes AA-JJ/TT A2-5s 67s-KQs.

It feels like we have a distinct range advantage here, because we hold more flushes and also have some good hands to bluff with while he has alot of pair+draw. His range contains far more unsuited hands that can draw to flushes aswell.

I think at a guess id bet everything except KK QQ AK

Hey duggsy! Not sure if yo misread board or what, but there's 3 hearts on flop so we can't have A2-A5hh flushes. Again not sure what TJ's 3bet range looks like, but I wouldn't assume it includes all SC's down to 56.

Not sure if that would change your thoughts on the hand though?

duggs · Oct 26, 2018

Scourrge said:
Hey duggsy! Not sure if yo misread board or what, but there's 3 hearts on flop so we can't have A2-A5hh flushes. Again not sure what TJ's 3bet range looks like, but I wouldn't assume it includes all SC's down to 56.

Not sure if that would change your thoughts on the hand though?

Yea misread the board, that makes it a bit weird, hmmmm. so we have 87s+ JJ+ A2-5s AK AQs AJs to be conservative. I think we check A2-5 AKh and AKo and check AJ since it blocks the most. then we can bet the rest right? or does that become too value heavy

Matt Vaughan · Oct 26, 2018

Well I think if nothing else, this hand definitely highlights how different this can be depending on how we construct our ranges.

It might be hard to find a lot of real bluffs on this board, as well as being difficult to find a lot of nutted hands, which is sort of why I liked checking range on flop. But that might be rather insane, live.

Honestly I feel like the hand could use plenty more analysis with additional tools, I just don't have the time or energy to look atm myself lol.

Alucard · Oct 27, 2018

duggs said:
Yea misread the board, that makes it a bit weird, hmmmm. so we have 87s+ JJ+ A2-5s AK AQs AJs to be conservative. I think we check A2-5 AKh and AKo and check AJ since it blocks the most. then we can bet the rest right? or does that become too value heavy

so we don't cbet any bluffs here? just check fold? I'm trying to create a bluff cbetting range on this flop because people overfold in such 3card FD flops. We can bet small & barrel turn to make them fold a huge part of their range. right?
can take the same line with our betting value range as well

duggs · Oct 27, 2018

Alucard said:
so we don't cbet any bluffs here? just check fold? I'm trying to create a bluff cbetting range on this flop because people overfold in such 3card FD flops. We can bet small & barrel turn to make them fold a huge part of their range. right?
can take the same line with our betting value range as well

I havent made any assumptions regarding their tendencies, and we currently contain 15 (87s 98s T9s QJs) bluff combos. But it really depends how wide we 3bet, with a conservative range its hard to find enough bluff candidates. If we widen it s bit then almost all those additional hands are bluffs

Ahoy · Nov 1, 2018

Interesting hand and some good players commenting on this.

My 2cents:

I think checking the flop is superior to anything because,
a) we block vast majority of his calling range here (we are only getting called by what, straights,flushes and some KhXx and sets?) - we just dont dominate that much of his value range (6 combos of worse sets) - I dont even count in the twopair combos cuz most of them will be AX and we block that heavily. There are some draws with Kh but overall I dont think its enough to bet and expect to get called by a dominated hand often enough.
2. I agree that player pool tendency on monotone boards is to HEAVILY overfold, as far as online poker goes. That being said, we are rarely getting called by worse (becuase there is not much worse really) and by checking we can induce some bluffs or thin value bets on latter streets
3. Check calling this whole thing down looks like the best play to me. Let him bluff some of the time, let him valuebet the few dominated hands he has and some of the flush draws. If he has the flush, with this sizing we are not going anywhere anyways. I also think he would be checking the river with the broadway. Might be wrong.

julianjjboy · Nov 5, 2018

Nice hand,
If villain have better hands,
I think turn and river betting size will be larger

John A · Nov 5, 2018

duggs said:
Yea misread the board, that makes it a bit weird, hmmmm. so we have 87s+ JJ+ A2-5s AK AQs AJs to be conservative. I think we check A2-5 AKh and AKo and check AJ since it blocks the most. then we can bet the rest right? or does that become too value heavy

Yeah, that's pretty conservative, especially considering OP is "LAG".

You should be betting this flop.There's really no reason to over think a spot like this in position and not bet w/ almost all of your value range, even if it becomes somewhat unbalanced.

I mean OP is questioning whether he should be raising river and concluding he shouldn't. Of course he shouldn't at this point, is that even close?

Bet the flop. Just my two cents, but you probably play deeper than I do on average duggs.

$2000 NLHE Full Ring: Top set on scary board

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