Hi,


We are on an early stage of an online deep tournament with a slow structure. The blinds are 80-160 and my stack is 11,384.


I open-raise from UTG+1 to 330 with Kd Ks. Everyone folds except for the BB who calls.
Villain is an online pro who streams his games live to twitch. His stack is the effective stack: 9,156.


flop (868)
2h 3d 6h
I bet 400
Villain calls.


Turn (1,668)
5c
Villain leads for 500
I call.


River (2,668):
3h
Villain bet 2,200
Hero?


Some thoughts that went through my head:

- Why would a skilled professional player donk on this turn?
- The board hits villain's range much more than mine.
- Villain is a great player and knows that the river card is a great one to bluff on.
- I don't block either value hands (I have no hearts in my hand) but neither block bluff hands.


Tells: While I was tanking and the clock was ticking, villain asked me on the chat: "what do you have?"

Very tough spot. Very suspicious situation for bluffs given your positions, especially since you know that he 's a good player. He can have anything literally.
I think we need to give him the credit of a good play and move on to the next hand.


- Why would a skilled professional player donk on this turn?

1) Maybe for value, because he has a made hand and at the same time he knows that this board has nothing to do with your range and you will check because you know that it hits his range xD.
2) Maaaaaybe he tries to see the river in the price he wants in case he goes for the flush. If he hits or miss he goes for the last bet (value or bluff) His bet maybe will even win the pot right here.
3)He bullies you xD. Has decided to bluff you starting from the turn.

Preflop
By essentially mini-raising you are giving a good professional player fantastic odds to defend his big blind with almost any two cards, so you are literally asking to be put in tough spots like this. You are still deep stacked, so just go bigger, and do it with your entire range. Mini-raises are for later in the tournament, when stacks get short.

Flop
Not hating the bet, but against this particular person I might lean towards checking and using KK as a bluff catcher. You could even check your entire range. He has a huge range advantage, and he knows it.

Turn
His lead makes sense, because the texture of the board changed dramatically, and he now have an even larger range advantage. He is simply way more likely to have a 4, than you are, so he will lead with a 4 for value and with a lot of other hands to represent a 4.

River
Now the flush draw got there as well, and 3X also, if he somehow has that. As someone said already, its probably time to congratulate him for either drawing out on us or pulling off a nice bluff. I think, it was Doug Polk, who recently said, that when your opponent has a huge range advantage, it is ok to just let him bluff you.

i think you can probably call because it is a great spot to bluff with the range advantage for him on this dry board also most twitch pros defend very wide so he has a lot of weak hands here and you beat all of his bluffs and some value hands like A5 A6 even A2s and also smaller overpairs 77+( except pocket aces) so you win way more hands than him and with an equity over 50% you have the price to call by a wide margin here

Originally Posted by fundiver199

Preflop
By essentially mini-raising you are giving a good professional player fantastic odds to defend his big blind with almost any two cards, so you are literally asking to be put in tough spots like this. You are still deep stacked, so just go bigger, and do it with your entire range. Mini-raises are for later in the tournament, when stacks get short.

Flop
Not hating the bet, but against this particular person I might lean towards checking and using KK as a bluff catcher. You could even check your entire range. He has a huge range advantage, and he knows it.

Turn
His lead makes sense, because the texture of the board changed dramatically, and he now have an even larger range advantage. He is simply way more likely to have a 4, than you are, so he will lead with a 4 for value and with a lot of other hands to represent a 4.

River
Now the flush draw got there as well, and 3X also, if he somehow has that. As someone said already, its probably time to congratulate him for either drawing out on us or pulling off a nice bluff. I think, it was Doug Polk, who recently said, that when your opponent has a huge range advantage, it is ok to just let him bluff you.

Thank U 4 Posting

I agree 100% with fundriver's points.

We have the advantage of knowing that our villain is a strong player for the field.

So what data should we already know preflop and can use in this situation.

This villain is calling 80% + from BB vs this sizing.
V plays better than average OOP
Deep stacks favor good players.
V does not need to make a hand to fight for the pot
V has hand range skills.
V should have range advantage knowledge
V has HUD stats on us or notes or both.
V as demonstrated will use advanced betting strategies.
V will balance nuts and bluffs
V is very unlikely to give us 3 streets with a hand that KK is ahead of.
V should know that chip protection is in your mind.
V is streaming so we know this V will entertain their viewers by bluffing this spot almost 100% of the time. What better spot to show off how great they are with Js7s than to call this flop and attack turn and river.


Again fundriver is correct there is no reason for us to not be bluffed out of this spot with this run out.

The last thing we want to do is give this V even more chips to battle us with.

Hope this helps

Originally Posted by fundiver199

Preflop
By essentially mini-raising you are giving a good professional player fantastic odds to defend his big blind with almost any two cards, so you are literally asking to be put in tough spots like this. You are still deep stacked, so just go bigger, and do it with your entire range. Mini-raises are for later in the tournament, when stacks get short.

Flop
Not hating the bet, but against this particular person I might lean towards checking and using KK as a bluff catcher. You could even check your entire range. He has a huge range advantage, and he knows it.

Turn
His lead makes sense, because the texture of the board changed dramatically, and he now have an even larger range advantage. He is simply way more likely to have a 4, than you are, so he will lead with a 4 for value and with a lot of other hands to represent a 4.

River
Now the flush draw got there as well, and 3X also, if he somehow has that. As someone said already, its probably time to congratulate him for either drawing out on us or pulling off a nice bluff. I think, it was Doug Polk, who recently said, that when your opponent has a huge range advantage, it is ok to just let him bluff you.

Agree on preflop, on these effective stacks 2.3x is probably best.

I reckon you can go both ways on the flop (x or bet), but either way I'd size down a bit. Turn call is fine. River probably an instant muck. It's an horrific card for us, and especially not having the Kh.

As for OP's remark about Villain knowing it is a great card for him to bluff on. This is probably true, however this also works the other way around. This card allows him to bluff more, especially because his range hits this way harder than ours. V should have all sets, straights and more flushes in his range. As such yes, indeed he could use this card to bluff us off a hand like KK, but inherently it also means that he has got us beat pretty often.

So for the river decision: are we good here 31% of the time facing this specific line? I don't think so. And if we do need to call every now and then, do it rather with a hand having a heart than not.