Should I call this river raise after the turn has checked through?

PRE - opening T8s in the CO is okay. I'd mostly be folding when a solid player 3B's me.

His sizing doesn't matter very much, when it's close enough to 3x to not make me think the $5 difference means anything. I'd be more concerned about the fact he's 3B'ing off a $500 stack at 2/5 than the fact that it was only $70. At this depth, he shouldn't be 3B'ing overly wide, even CO vs BTN.

FLOP - Why not x/r, after flopping 2P, at this stack depth? Especially when we called his 3B so wide, and shouldn't have very many nutted hands on this board?

How many bluffs does he have that are going to barrel turn if we flat call here? Very few. How many bluffs can we have when we x/r? A fair number, apparently, according to your chart. We can have J9s, 97s, and a lot of spade draws or combo draws.

I'd totally be check-raising here, on this board. We don't even have to go that big. We can x/r to $150, and jam most turns.

TURN - We kind of muffed the flop by not check-raising. As played, I think I'd donk lead this brick turn, at least some of the time, for around 40% pot ($100), just to make sure he doesn't check back, which seems fairly likely when we raise-call pre, and check-call flop.

Doubtful he's got a big enough hand to want to play a huge pot on this board. If the plan was to check-raise, was it in the hopes he'd fold, or call? Turn check-raises tend to generate a lot of fold equity. Much more than flop check-raises, when we'll have more bluffs in our range.

Because we didn't check-raise the flop, we need to make sure that money goes in on the turn, so we can set up a river jam for a PSB or less. If we bet $100 into $240, he might spaz-jam, and we can call. Otherwise, if he flats, the pot will be $440 going to the river, with $280 behind.

RIVER - Why bet 1/2 pot, if we weren't planning to call a raise? Why not check to induce, or bet bigger?

Once we flat the 3B pre, I think the better line would be to x/r flop to like $150, and over-bet jam the turn. Just play a two street game, starting on the flop, when we flop top two after being out of line pre.

Our line of raise-call pre, check-call flop, check turn, and donk river for 1/2 pot looks like a busted draw hoping for a fold, or some weak value hand that will fold to a raise. He can flat call with his thin value, so his raise is pretty strong.

I think I mostly fold this river, as much as I hate doing it. I might take my time and tank a while, to see if I can pick up any tells. But if not, it's a sigh-fold, or at best, a sigh-call.

You may want to start asking yourself these questions before acting:

1. What does my opponent's range look like?

You don't need to know every hand. Just bucket them into groups, starting with value and bluffs, then think about how weak value plays compared to thick value, and high equity bluffs compared to low equity bluffs.

He 3B you pre. He's going to have a lot of over-pairs and high equity bluffs that want to continue, even against an x/r. His weak value and low equity bluffs are likely to fold to an x/r, but they weren't likely to call the turn or bet the river anyway, if we flat call the flop.

We should be targeting his thick value and high equity bluffs with a x/r on the flop.

2. What is my opponent likely to do next with the various parts of his range?

If V is a solid TAG-reg, he's probably not going to be barreling off very much on the brick turn, with anything in his range, once we call his flop c-bet, so we can go ahead and donk out with our thick value and high equity bluffs.

3. Before I bet, am I prepared to continue if V raises?

We shouldn't be surprised if V raises the river. We should have considered that possibility before we bet, and decided before we bet what a raise likely means, and how we'll respond.

I agree, this should be a call.

The problem with checking behind on the turn to bet big on the river is of course that you don't get any value from the draws/peels.

Definitely he can put me on AQ/KQ and raise for thin value on the river with overpairs.

Yes good point about players only calling the river probe with AA/KK most of the time, that's what I would expect most of the time too.

Sure, I agree it's a thin call preflop vs a 3bet and most of the time I'm folding.

He can only really raise for thin value on the river with AQ and overpairs, under the assumption that I'm betting a worse queen for value.

Yes you're right that there aren't many bluffs. A5s and pocket nines come to mind, as these are the bottom of his range/have good blockers.

He's definitely a good enough player to 3bet wide and play aggressively.

Certainly I'm only beating bluffs and thinly/badly played AQ and overpairs on the river.

Range for iso-raising limpers is indeed tighter in the C/O than it is when RFI from the C/O, and as a result I am defending tighter vs a 3bet - but T8s is a nice hand to do that with as it's rarely dominated and has the potential to flop big and in a disguised way.

MPT assumes this range in BTN vs C/O open:

For sure the general population is not 3betting this wide, but this specific villain was clearly a competent and studied player and it was clear that he's 3betting a decent amount. Against an OMC 3bet of course I am snap folding T8s.

MPT assumes a 3.4x raise size for 3bets and villain in this hand raised to less than 3x, so I can continue a little wider, although ranges are probably somewhat condensed due to the fact that I was raising a limper and not simply raising first in.

I'm not sure of how much rake MPT assumes, but probably slightly less than this game, which is 10% up to $8. Of course I should play tighter when the rake is higher.

I mostly decide according to the villain with regard to how to continue vs a 3bet (and I don't use any randomization). If villain is unknown or new to the game, I play tight as the player pool massively under-3bets at $2/$5. In general I overfold to 3bets, especially when out of position, due to the reasons that you mentioned and simply because I am an experienced player who understands the difficulties of playing out of position with a capped range. If I used the ranges I use in this $2/$5 game in a full-ring game of GTO bots, I would certainly be exploited through my overfolding. My opponents do not exploit me in this game in regard to 3betting/folding to 3bets because in general their 3betting ranges are very narrow and therefore it's correct to overfold. However I made an exception with this villain because he was clearly a capable player and his raise sizes in previous hands indicated that he had studied with GTO Wizard.

Yes, I've seen other preflop charts for similar spots and they are much the same. The manner in which subtle differences in assumptions affect the solver's strategy depends entirely on the assumptions to which you're referring.

I agree it should be a call.

Yes good point about considering a river check-raise to target Qx that fired flop and checked turn, I like that.

Whether or not the call preflop is +EV or not is a good question, and you're right that my range is tighter than a standard C/O range.

Sure I totally accept that this is a looser than normal call preflop. As I have stated at least once in the thread, I would usually fold. I'm fully aware of the difficulties inherent in calling 3bets and playing hands out of position with a capped range, and in this instance decided to run the gauntlet.

The preflop size is huge because I raised a limper; these sizes are not normal for the table.

LOL

Sure, I accept that playing OOP with a capped range is going to be challenging; I was willing to take that risk in this hand (and usually I fold overfold here and agree that sacrificing a small amount of breakeven EV in such situations in no great loss).

Sure, thanks for the input.

by Telemakus P

Range for iso-raising limpers is indeed tighter in the C/O than it is when RFI from the C/O, and as a result I am defending tighter vs a 3bet - but T8s is a nice hand to do that with as it's rarely dominated and has the potential to flop big and in a disguised way.

MPT assumes this range in BTN vs C/O open:

For sure the general population is not 3betting this wide, but this specific villain was clearly a competent and studied player and it

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It's kind of an important aspect. It changes the ranges quite drastically as your rake is quite high. Also why is your cap lower at 2/5 than at 1/3? Is that a thing?

I didn't check-raise flop because I wanted to keep his bluffs in, although I'm sure it's a fine and solver-approved play. He didn't hit a turn that he can keep barelling with very frequently here, but a lot of the time he will - and he's also going to barrel when an overcard comes and gives him top pair.

I'm never the donking the turn but my intention was to check-raise. If I check to him and he bets then he likely has an overpair and isn't folding. If I donk into him, then he folds many of his bluffs. My take on villain was that he's not folding overpairs to aggression (as in general solvers show them to be plus EV call downs, even though one obviously needs to adjust in those situations vs value-heavy villains). But I certainly take your point about flop check-raises getting called wider because they are more likely to be bluffs.

I bet half pot on the river to ensure I got called by Qx. Of course, I am hugely incentivized to bluff the river after the turn checks through, and I would use the same size for bluffs too. I agree the size should be bigger for value/bluffs here and I downsized a little as I wanted a call (an exploitable adjustment, I know). I agree that check-raising river is also an excellent option.

Thanks for the tips, those were useful. With regard to "His weak value and low equity bluffs are likely to fold to an x/r, but they weren't likely to call the turn or bet the river anyway, if we flat call the flop." - sure, but in that case I miss value when he decides to double-barrel.

I certainly did not expect the river raise and had to reassess at that point of the hand.

forum is not very open minded lol

is worth looking at how solver constructs range here and why it does it. if you really think he's cbetting range here you want to be applying aggro fairly aggressively. i see t8 basically pure xring vs almost any size whereas itll slowplay sets at some frequency depending on the set blah blah, at least at 100bb.

i ended up looking at 50 bb sims bc spr is closer which is admittedly not a stack size i have a ton of exp studying. few things, the 3bet is smaller in theory so we see t8ss getting defended more at 500nl rake (makes sense these fringy hands are going to be very rake / sizing sensitive), however in high rake (50nl) it gets pure folded. is really worth looking on gtow quickly bc we call 3x as many hands at low rake vs high.

assuming you call his sizing looks pretty good and i see mixing with t8 at this depth which is interesting (is pure r deeper). it also does a good amount of xring with our tp hands which i think most people miss in this context. fwiw i didnt notice stacks initially, if this is all in i think you're more likely to be dead vs river r but still wouldnt fold.

the way it approaches river for u is to just block a huge amount of hands (we dont have many slowplays and we want to be able to bet one pair i guess). regardless though its going to b/c t8 with the assumption that you see some aa / aq type hands jam over it. does that happen? im not really sure. i suspect using something like 10% will make them raise those hands but idk if in practice random low stakes guy is going to jam one pair over 60% pot. would still call bc whatever, top of range and calling at least in simland is worth so much ev you need some kind of evidence beyond "people dont bluff raise rivers" to make this level of fold.

even on like a brick river its using this combo to block (i guess blocks hands that would call larger bets / charges ace high / forces him to raise whatever tp+ slowplays he has)

think its actually a pretty interesting hand to go down the rabbit hole on

Small differences in rake do not affect ranges that drastically, compared to for example tournaments vs cash games.

The cap in 1/3 is $400 and in 2/5 it's $800. I always buy in for the max; villain just had $500 starting this hand.

Meant to comment about this but for some reason forgot.

Not sure why you didn't include this tbh. It's kinda important lol. The OP says he has been playing a pretty solid game so far. That's wildly different than he's actually a good reg.

I want to fold a lot less now that I've read that. He might be attacking a capped range now. For example, if we take some of the advice in this thread, some people suggest flop is a c/r. Villain might believe you c/r all your 2 pair/sets on flop.

They're not small differences in rake dude. That's the point/question. Your solver might be wildly understating rake.

I don't mean bi cap. I meant rake. Your previous thread you said 1/3 rake is 10% $10 cap + $2 promotions and now it's 10% and $8 cap at 2/5. That's odd.

Thanks, I'm glad you think it's an interesting hand.

I imagine villain is cbetting flop close to range, yes. Sure, I understand that I should be aggro in response but in this instance it was too tempting to slow-play, and to be honest I don't have many semi-bluffs etc on this board so I believe I need to be more measured in check-raising value too, right?

Yes I did look into how rakes affects defending ranges and found that T8s is very much a borderline hand and often simply a fold.

vs an OOP block bet on this river, in this $2/$5 game, opponents are playing pretty straightforwardly and just calling with AQ etc most of the time. I would estimate that 90% of opponents are betting overpairs on this turn, so they are not in range after the turn checks through.

In any case, I agree that my hand should be a call on the river.

I said solid player; that means a decent reg.

Yes, I wanted him to assume that I'm raising two pair+ on the flop, that's why I only called.

I don't agree that my range is capped when I probe bet the river. On the contrary, I'm betting the river with a polarized range once the turn checks through.

it wants to bet 10% with your hand. id imagine people raise AQ+, maybe kq vs that and also spaz quite a bit

this isn't preferred here, which is surprising to me too. use gtow or pio or whatever u use to solve stuff and look at how the river plays. your actual sizing is also not indicative of your strategy (polar range)

I took a look at the 6-max section of MPT and it says that the rake is assumed to be 5%, capped at 1.5bbs, which to be fair is significantly less than my local $2/$5 game (10% capped at 2bbs).

The rake in both the 1/3 and 2/5 games is 10% capped at $10, with $2 taken for promotions (I got it wrong in the previous post, my bad). The promotional part of the rake is effectively zero though as I have a chance of winning that back.

Hmm, interesting. So is this a case of including strong hands in the blocker bet range in order to protect the overall range?

English is my third language, so perhaps there's a language barrier there. But that does not mean the same as ''but this specific villain was clearly a competent and studied player'' to me.

As for the rest, just reread what I said. You just want to argue to argue. That's not what capped means. If villain thinks you can not have 2 pair or a set because you would c/r them, that does in fact mean your range is capped. It obviously isn't, but it's about PERCEPTION.

Thank you. Fold pre.

Also, what is MPT? I don't recognize this abbreviation.

Sure, I will do a solve for this hand using PIO later today.

I know and accept my river sizing is not indicative of a polarized range. I made an (exploitable) adjustment and used a smaller size with a value hand. I would use a much larger size with bluffs, and I know that that is imbalanced and exploitable.

So what was the outcome?