Bluffing against passive nits

1. He's probably not a "nit" if he's calling a lot PF with "speculative hands" (whatever this means), although he may be passive.

2. River bet seems pretty spewy, since I don't see him calling with worse, or folding better (other than AcJx).

3. You wrote If this player is passive, it means he'll bet only a small portion of his range on the flop, and his checking range will be unbalanced. This means that every time he checks, I can put pressure on him with aggression.

If passive villain checks back the flop, you've basically learned nothing about his hand, since I don't see m(any) auto-bets on this flop for a passive player.

Do you really need to bluff with 99 here? It feels like it would be the best hand a good percentage of the time, even when V calls your turn stab. You have so many low- or no-equity hands to bluff with here.

Also, anecdotally, I have noticed that fish will call down way wider on monotone flops. There are a lot of intuitive bluffs (hands with one club) and it is difficult for them to conceive of someone checking a strong made hand on this flop.

I see him betting 90% of his flushes on the flop.

The purpose of betting the river is to force him to fold Jx type hands.

This is a turn and river bet in any case. I just feel like a bluff through a check is better than firing three barrels

I feel like by checking, it's much easier to cap his range. Most players will always bet their flushes here. Sure, some might trap and check back, but 90% of the time, they fire. And nits usually don’t fight for these pots if they miss. But if I decide to bet, this guy might call all my bets with a flush in position, and I’ll be worried about that on every street.

Then why even ask us? SMH

If you're gonna bluff, I think it would look a lot stronger if you bet the flop rather then a brick river.

I mean, I don't have any problem with checking the flop personally, and I think your logic makes sense. I am just saying that I have noticed fish will call these spots more than many others.

My biggest problem with the hand is that we are turning a hand with decent showdown value into a bluff, which means we are probably significantly over-bluffing. Are you planning on bluffing all of your suited connectors AND your small-medium pocket pairs AND your 6x AND your ace highs just because a passive fish checked back the flop and might have second pair?

Yes, with that plan, I'm basically super unbalanced. Now I bet small on the river with AJ and QJ, and I bet big with all my bluffs like AT, connectors, and pocket pairs 99-77.

Yes, why not.

He must check back the flop with a lot of flushes to balance.

He must bluff with a lot of hands when I decide to check on the flop.

In reality, nits bet almost 100% of their flushes and sets, and maybe some A♣, while checking back the rest.

Theory: No.

Street poker: You can do what you want with any cards on any flop, I guess. But playing reverse poker on 5% of flops seems like it'll get found out eventually.

He has to balance what now?
What's plan B if he calls all Kx?

line makes no sense, I'd call with a lot of 1 pair

This may be true, but it also means he gets here with lots of hands like AK, KQ, KJ, K6s, maybe AJ, etc. that are just never going to fold.

I also think we are underestimating our opponents to some extent. Even players with no conception of theory will recognize, "Wow! This guy tries to bully me every time I check" and start calling. Then you end up in this spot with 87hh or whatever later in the session and have no chance of ever winning the hand.

Well, I'm not worried about Kx because I'm not overbetting here. I'm targeting Jx and weaker hands. But yeah, if this guy gets sticky, then I’ve got a problem. If he starts calling with any pair like Banana said, then I’d definitely rethink this strategy.

A 3/4 pot bet is good if I think he's capable of folding Jx or at least half of them.

An overbet works if I believe he can fold some Kx.

But if neither of these scenarios play out, then the strategy becomes pointless.

How does the average passive live player typically react to these bets on this type of runout?

Well - you could, but you wouldn't be playing good poker. Observant opponents are going to notice this pretty quickly, and start adjusting.

You need to think about the whole hand from flop to river. Matthew Janda breaks down very clearly in Applications of No Limit Holdem the necessity of betting a large percentage of your range on the flop, which should be a ratio of about 2 to 1 bluffs to value, so that you get to the turn with enough hands to be able to bet at a ratio of about 1 to 1 bluffs to value, followed by 1 to 2 bluffs to value on the river. If your range is instead "all strong value hands" from the flop, then of course you are imbalanced and players will quickly stop giving you action and treat you like an OMC or whatever. Those things said, you are out of position in this hand and therefore should be cbetting at a significantly lower frequency. 99 is for sure a hand that is meant to check this flop.

Think about how it appears to villain when you check on the K♣J♣6♣ flop, he checks back, and then you bet on the 2♥ turn (a complete blank). What hands could you possibly play this way, that would check the flop and then suddenly start betting on this innocuous turn? Not many at all. Perhaps some slow plays, if he thinks people slow play - but realistically he's going to expect you to bet all big hands from the flop. So this bet on the turn must have appeared strange to him. Similarly, if you had checked the turn and he had started betting, it would also have been mighty strange, and you could most certainly get sticky here with 99 and see what he does on the river. After checking the flop and villain checking back, I'd be happy enough to see this turn, as I would assume that he's going to check it back as well, which gets me one step closer to my goal (showing down the 99).

Sure, maybe if he checks back he's weak when he's only going to bet the flop with strong hands. He would be imbalanced as a result, and you could certainly remove most of the really strong hands from his range. You certainly could and should put pressure on him if he's going to play in such a a straightforward way (assuming that he'll fold) but in my opinion 99 is the wrong hand to do it with on this board. You have a middle-strength hand that in general just wants to get to showdown as cheaply as possible - it doesn't want to bloat the pot for value, and it's too strong to use as a bluff. So I would just keep trying to check this down and hope that villain does the same.

Sure, that's fine and you should do so - as mentioned, these are generally middle-strength hands that don't want to play a big pot and for the most part just want to get to showdown. These specific hands may be somewhat vulnerable to aggression from your opponent, but that's an issue that you can't escape, especially when you're out of position, and sometimes you will just have to check-fold your hands that whiffed on the flop. You should also be protecting your checking range when out of position with hands like your weakest top pairs and pocket pairs immediately below top pair, like QQ on this board. Having those hands in your checking range when OOP on the flop means that it's much harder for villain to start blindly attacking your checks on the assumption that those checks mean you have a weak hand. Many players will still do that of course, but a lot of them will freak out and slow down on the turn once you call the flop.

Not sure if this answers your questions, but here goes...

I think checking range from OOP as the PFR is fine, especially against a passive player and on a monotone flop with two overs to our PP. I don't think it makes sense to split our range. I'd prefer to just check and delay c-bet the turn.

I could go either way with the small probe bet on the turn. I think it's fine, but checking again to let him stab at it is also probably fine. If he bets big, we can make a trivial fold. Otherwise, we can check-call, or possibly check raise at some very low frequency.

The question is, are you betting river for value, or as a bluff? If we're not sure, then we're probably making a polarization mistake.

The way you've played this, it appears that you're turning it into a bluff. If so, I think we should over bet the pot, like 2X.

I like the line overall, just think the river bet needs to be bigger. This V could get curious and sticky with TP+ for this price.