25NL 77 hand review
Hi Romario2223. I'll try and analyse this hand in depth. I'll make a prediction for villain's hand at the end (I promise I'll only look at the spoiler after i post).
Pre-flop: So, the raiser here (CO) makes it 2BB to go. We don't have any reads on him, except that he's not got a full stack and he raised very small. This gives me an idea that he's a recreational player, and not very good. We'll assign him a standard opening range from the CO of 22+, A9o+, A2s+, KTo+, K6s+, QTo+, Q8s+, JTo, J9s+, 54s+, 97s+. It's pretty loose because he's in LP and seems like a weak player.
Now, the BTN makes a 3-bet (3x) of a standard size, and we have no information on him. He may be trying to isolate the weaker player, so we should assign him a fairly wide 3-betting range for this reason, and also because he's IP. Let's go with (at its widest) JJ+, AK, AJo, KQo, KJs+, A8s-ATs, AQs, A2s-A5s, 54s-76s. This is so wide because he's often trying to isolate the weak player here. Often he won't have the weaker
hands in his range but I like to keep ranges as wide as possible so we don't exclude any hands, at least until we have more information on the villain. I've added some 3-bet bluffs in as well, because it's quite a good spot for that. In total, it's about a 9% range.
Now, we have 77 in the BB. I really want to talk about this spot, because it's a spot so many people get wrong. I recently watched SplitSuit (YouTube him, he's really great) video to do with pretty much this exact spot (it was TT instead of 77), and you know what he advised? Fold. That's right, folding TT to a raise and a 3-bet from the blinds. Raising is bad, because either of these players could have a strong hand (the 3-bettor probably does) and we'd essentially be trying to 4-bet
bluff two players out of the pot with a weak hand. Not going to work that often. The problem with calling is we have to fold if CO 4-bets. Even if he doesn't, we're not getting the right price to set-mine (you want to have good implied odds and we simply don't have enough here) and we're going to hit 2nd and 3rd pairs a lot on the flop, and we're going to have to fold them to a bet in a multi-way pot (and often HU too). We're also OOP against two players here. There's just no profitable move here apart from folding. As played, we go to the flop HU.
Flop: Obviously it's a great flop for us, we hit a set. It's a very dry board, with very few realistic draws. We should check to the raiser here, because he will c-bet this board with most of his range. The BTN bets very small (30%). This to me, looks like he has a hand he wants to value bet, or a draw he wants to see a cheap turn with. I don't expect him to ever really have complete air here because he would bet bigger to get more fold
equity. Since there are no draws he can really have, my money is on him having JJ+ most of the time, occasionally AJ, KJ or a hand like 76.
Usually on a dry board, I like to slow play, because there's not much the opponent can have. In this spot however, the BTN has a strong range and we should raise to the money in now (if he has a hand like KK and an A comes on the turn, we might not get his stack). I like your sizing, I also make it about $4-$4.50. We'll get called by AJ, KJ and overpairs. We lose to JJ, but we can't do anything about it if he has that.
As stated, I expect villain to call this raise with about 80% of the range he makes that small flop bet with, so I'm not surprised.
Turn: The pot is now $11.68 (I think, word of friendly advice, it would be helpful if you posted the size of the pot on each street in your hand history). I think you make the correct move by shoving, we should get called by all overpairs, and AJ, KJ as well. I don't think villain ever really folds to this bet, so just go all-in and get max value.
You played this very well, except for the call pre-flop. May I suggest you put some study time into playing from the blinds? It's probably where most people make their mistakes pre-flop. I think he has AJ here. Out of 33 combos in his range, 9 are AJ. I think his small flop bet is most likely AJ, KJ or JJ because those are the only hands that have the board crushed (he could still bet more with an overpair, because we would still be able to have Jx more often then). By process of elimination, there simply aren't many combos of JJ (3) and he's less likely to 3-bet KJ pre-flop, and he sometimes folds it to the river shove as well. Could be an overpair though.