What’s Your Play? Turned an Underfull

10 thoughts on “What’s Your Play? Turned an Underfull”

1. First time poster, long time reader.

   I have him at AA-JJ,99-88, AK-KJ (discounting AA, AK, AJ, AT, QQ, and 88- AA QQ AQ for card removal, AK, AJ because I think he’d more likely bet something on the flop and 88 as a somewhat less likely 3-bet). He could easily check the flop with full or a draw, IMO.

   So on the turn I bet 11BB- hoping for a call from a heart/broadway draw or checked bare A. If raised on the turn, I still think I’m good. Hand that beat us (AA, QQ, AQ, AT) are more likely to flat.

   I see blank river/low heart as likely a bet-fold. Hard to image a raising range on the river that doesn’t have us beat.

   Caveat: this is what I would do in live poker. No recent experience with Zoom.

2. I think he’s showing a pretty wide range – 11% 3bet & particularly ranging towards the power position spots + blind defends. Clearly broadway Aces are in his 3bet range, but KQ, KJ, KT, QJ, QT, suited connectors and mid+ pocket pairs.

   There’s a heavy weighting towards Ax hands, clearly. I would probably take initiative here and bet the turn hoping to get some money out of his 2 hearts, but the hands that will call a bet here are a heart draw or Ax. I’d also want to get an additional bet and money in the pot when/if he’s scared of the 3rd heard that potentially falls on the river.

   Of note, there’s only one combo that has you beat – AQ – and it’s hard to put an 11% 3bettor (given that it’s only 160 hands) on precisely AQ or whatever Ax where x is the small river card. Moreover, an 11% 3bet to a 18% PFR says that he’s 3bet more than half of the raises he’s put in (if memory serves me, PFR includes 3bet raises), so 11% of his 18% raises have been 3bets; ~16 hands. (Caveat: my memory has faded with regard to how 3bet is calculated, so I’m going off ~3 year old memories of HUD poker 🙂 )

   • Thanks for the comment. Just to clarify a few things:

     The 11% 3-bet means that he’s 3-bet 11% of the time he’s had the opportunity, not 11% of all hands. It doesn’t say anything about what percentage of his PFR number is 3bets.

     Also, there are 12 combos that beat Hero: 6x AQ, 2x AT, 3x QQ, and 1x KhJh.

     • There’s also AA that has you beat, which is also a prime 3bet candidate (obv). However, he’s 3betting you from his favored spot, which is why I can discount down the likelihood of him showing up with AA, QQ. Realistically, AQ (and a less likely AT, and precisely KhJh) is the hand that has you right now, with X on the river to boat his Ax potentially. He can also show up with suited connectors as a 3bet.

       What is his cbet flop %? He checked through in position; [given it’s only 161 hands] is this typical? Also, what is your steal %? If your steal % is high and he 3bets BTN / blind defends, he’s in a prime re-steal spot.

3. If he is only 3 betting from 3 positions, doesn’t that mean he is 3 betting from the button @ 20%?
   If my assumption is correct then his range is relatively wide pre for his 3 bet (most A’s, broadway’s, pocket pairs, and suited connectors)
   With your call pre, I think he is going to perceive your range as heavily weighted to mid to low pocket pairs.
   So I could see him checking back most of his made hands, both those that are better and worse than your hand, and bet many of his wiffed and drawing hands.
   So on the turn, I think his range is mostly JJ+, any A, KQ, QJ, so you are either way behind or ahead with him having outs.
   I think if you bet, he could raise when both ahead and behind, and you have a tough decision.
   If you check I think he is betting almost his entire range, so a call is easy as you are ahead of most of his range.
   I think he’ll perceive the call as mostly a heart draw, so on a blank river, you can check and call another bet, but on a low heart you’ll need to bet yourself, probably about 1/3 of a pot to get him to call with Ax.

4. What do you make of Villain’s range at this point?

   Preflop, I think his range is mainly

   JJ+, AJo+, Axs+ some suited and unsuited broadway hands and a few suited connectors

   On this flop, he is either giving up with the misses, pot controlling the marginal pairs and aces, or slow playing a monster. His c-betting stats would help but in a vacuum, people 3-bet lighter from the BTN so expect him to have a fair number of misses on this flop. Plus if he has a nutted hand and intends to get stacks in with Qx when would have to bet the flop.

   So, I think he has either air with no equity or some marginal hand like JJ, KK, Ax, or a draw he doesn’t want to get blow off of.

   How do you want to proceed? Try to say a bit about your plan for both a blank river and a low heart river.

   Flush draws are only a small part of this range so I wouldn’t value target them. I would bet small on the turn to get a call from JJ, KK, and Ax. I’d probably call a raise in case he has a slowplayed Qx

   If the river is a blank, I would bet small again.

   If it is a heart, I would check raise because he is folding a large part of his range to a river bet in this case, but he may feel the need to turn his weak showdown value into a bluff or value bet a flush once we show weakness.

5. Villains range could be any AceX hand from maybe Ace 5 and probably any pair 9’s and higher. With some suited broadway hands for a 11% 3 bet percentage. I don’t think we can eliminate AQ from Villains range just because he checked, or AA. I would think QQ would tend to bet the flop more in case you have AX, and Villain is scared you’ll draw out on him.
   The problem with this hand is well get value from AceX hands that we beat, and maybe Kings, Jacks, King Jack, or a flush. Hero’s hand is too good to check, so I like a 1/3 to 1/2 turn bet, followed up by the same bet on the river. If hero gets check raised on the river though it’s most likely a fold. I think Hero’s hand is too strong to not bet the turn and river, as most of the time he’ll be ahead in this spot than behind. However, I don’t see many villains turning a hand hero beats in to a bluff on the river if he’s raised.

6. I run into this with Bovada a lot since the HUD only gets stats from the current session. You really can’t read too much into his 3 betting range from the HUD. It’s probably safe to say he’s not just 3betting aces and kings, and he’s probably not with any 2 suited cards, but that’s about it.

   So I tend to look at what his check indicates. Monsters and medium strength hands make sense. Monsters being AA,QQ,AQ,AT, and he probably feels he has the deck crushed with AK or AJ (maybe even down to A9s). Medium hands are KK,JJ,and QK,QJ,and QT (maybe 99 and 88 but I don’t are really just bluff catchers on the turn). I don’t expect him to have KJ,KT,JT, flush draws and air because he would probably bet those on this board texture.

   My plan would be to bet somewhere around 1/3 to 1/2 pot on the turn, same amount on blank rivers and 3/4 on heart rivers. It would be really hard to get away from my hand on the turn or blank rivers. I would re-re-raise on the turn because he could be protecting his hand from a flush card and there always the possibility he’s doing with a KhXh hand he played weird and that’s the only way to get value from that. If he calls the turn then does something like ship it (or just make a large raise) on a heart river I may have to fold. It would look too much like he’s trying to get value from a potential flush, and my hand doesn’t do too well against his hands that can beat flushes. Analyzing the hand I can say that would be the best move, but in the heat of the moment I may try to convince myself otherwise.

7. Given Villain’s stats, he leans more on the aggressive side, so his not C-betting this board means one of two things:
   1) He’s flopped a monster (Ax/AA/AQ/QQ)
   2) He is pot-controlling and trying to get to showdown (e.g. KK, 77-TT)

   I don’t quite understand why he would check his airballs and gutshots/flushdraws (especially with his laggy stats). For all he knows, we could be sitting with 88 or 7s8s and be ready to give up.

   Now that we have his range pinned down, we have to devise a plan how to play against it and what our goals are.

   I can’t imagine extracting more than one bet from the showdown potion of his range, so leading the turn wouldn’t make much sense. But if we checked, we could potentially get him to value-bet thinly.
   Fourt-heart or brick, I’m still leading river if it went check-check OTT, with the only difference being my sizing. I’d size it bigger on brick rivers and smaller on a heart. Getting raised OTR would suck, of course.

8. I plan to b/f turn and river on most runouts, I think its a reasonably unusual line to 3bet, check back, raise and on this board I dont expect him to have many flush combinations, firstly due to Ah being out there, and 2ndly because they have enough equity to bet flop. Hands I see in his range that would slow play/Pot control after 3betting pre are AQ, AA, Ax (sometimes as strong as AK but more often the light 3bets with Axs that elected to bluff catch. other hands that might be checking include KK/JJ.

   Since he elected to check back the flop his air hands are a combination of hands he deems too weak to cbet and are just giving up. I dont expect him to bluff turn on this board when checked to often, nor do i expect him to thin value bet wider than he will call turn and river, since our range still contains air since our percieved range has more SDV than air if we decline to bet turn. on a 4th flush river, I feel that c/c can be a good line v a reg willing to turn weak hands into a bluff, unfortunately I dont expect a zoom regular to be turning trips into a bluff on this runout very often so i would just bet both turn and river around 2/3 pot and hope to get looked up but KKh/AKh/AJh or a naked Ax. on a dry runout I think betting for value is better than checking for the same reason that he will bluff catch wider than he will bluff/value bet with worse.

   (some rivers like Jh and A/Q/10 would alter this plan) 10 I would c/j river and A/Q i would c/f, Jh i would probably also c/f river)

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