https://forum.pokercoaching.com/foru...hink-it-s-good

It kind of looks like a spewy line, I think hero is trying to play balanced and claims they have not advantage, then later in the post goes on to say jamming the river was a fine play if hero missed the river to push villain off “ most of his range “ . They discount hero having sets and overpairs I’m not sure about this logic can I get some thoughts plz, I left that page seeming quite confused

The play is definitely fine. When hero flats, you have to consider which hands are you going to check raise for value. In this particular hand on a Jc8c7h board the value raises would be 910, J8, 87 then sets of 8's and 7's which are very possible in a BB calling range.
So then to balance this value check raising range, hero needs some bluff combinations to check raise as well and Ah9h is actually one of the most ideal combos as it blocks 910 and then it also has decent equity with the over, gut shot and back door hearts.
I also would have liked a river jam if he didn't pair the ace.

I hope that was a clear explanation.

Yes it was thank you I understand what your saying , what about villain having overpairs and sets though if we jam river can’t we be called by good top pair hands , overpairs and sets? It is micros some ppl treat top pair or overpairs as holy grail, idk though maybe not

Yeh ofcourse we are going to be called by the top end of Villains range. However these are strong hands only represent a small portion of Villains overall range.
Poker is a game of imperfect knowledge, there is no way of knowing what the Villain has, so the best way to beat poker is to incorporate strategies and play a balanced strategy so that you can exploit others whilst not getting exploited yourself.

Do we want to play balanced at low levels like this?

Blocking this river out of position, is a good strategy in live game, against an LP range. You have the best blockers and your hand can now represent the strongest part of your range. They can only be protected from hj, some line of set-flop, set turn. From bb, you get a lot of advantage in this texture, betting on the river. The J protects you 62% of the time.
I like the x-jam line more on the turn.
Greetings.

I think hero line is fine but disagree 1/2 population overfold to check raise.

Originally Posted by Casey55

Do we want to play balanced at low levels like this?

In my experience, it is extremely hard to get a player off of a marginal hand in the lower stakes, where the blinds are .05 and .10 or under. If you're trying to win the pot at these stakes, we have to make sure our holding is pretty good at the end.

I like his line here too. I don't think we can consistently take this line as evidenced by the V making note of Hero's hands the rest of the session but in live 1/2 that flop does hit a calling range much harder than a PFR range. With the exception of AJ it would be really hard for V to get to the river with a hand that beats us most of the time. The river went x/x here, which I think is fine. If we missed, ripping the river is a separate discussion, it probably depends on what card actually fell and a lot of other info so I wont get into that. I think in general players over C-bet live and also over fold to a x/r. So we are getting tons of AK, AQ, KQ to fold flop and getting some TT and 99 to fold turn. Given our line OTR I think he's correct in that it's tough to get called by worse and since reads are limited we can take our showdown value.

And to OPs question about balanced play here. I think think this play is both balanced and exploitative so from either perspective it works well. Even hands like KK and QQ will have a hard time doing anything other than what V did this hand. We also probably get paid on the river if we hit our straight or flush in a lot of cases.

Seems fine to me. I don't think he's doing it to balance he's doing it because at 1/2 there are a lot of people who play extremely loose preflop and flop but aren't calling down for $200 particularly light. Also with the sizing ($10 into $21) I expect it to be a lot more 1-pair and/or draw hands than sets or T9.