$2/$5 NL with 99 in BB

The turn is a snap fold, but your betting too much otf. Try to bet around half pot, sometimes a little more and sometimes a little less but hp is a good starting point.

I would easily fold. We're not strong enough to gii for 2,500 (500 BB's) with an upper med. PP and a gutter.

So he plays fairly tight PF and overbets when he has a seeming lock on the board or a draw (assuming these hands are actually reliable predictors)?

This is a gross spot, since I assume he could easily have TT/JJ. You block upper straights, and it's difficult to find him a srt8 draw unless he would have coldcalled a hand like 65s next-in for $50--seems doubtful.

You're basically hoping he cold-called with Bdwy clubs or A8s and decided on the turn to get jiggy with them. Is he really going to make a 5x pot overbet with A8 or a draw?

My general experience is people are far more likely to have draws in flop raises, than when they "call flop, raise turn" which tends to be quite nutted. I also think villains are just reluctant in general to make turn semi-bluffs at the 500BB level.

I think I just fold this given that.

And plus one to bet flop smaller.

Preflop standard. Flop: Maybe it's slightly too much, but we are pretty deep. I probably go 80 here.

Turn: His semi-bluffs are 6c5c, Tc9c, AcXc wheel draws and 66 if he has real nerve. Maybe he can have Ac6c too. I suppose he raises preflop with AcQc/Kc/Jc.

Hero is uncapped here. V can have sets but you'd think V would just go to value town against our perceived range of overpairs.

V gets 3-1 to call the turn bet so he's getting ~direct odds and excellent IO with a lot of his semi-bluffs. Why jam?

His line is very strange. If I'm playing my best game, I'm calling here. But I'm not sure I could find the call live in this situation.

Someone with a VPIP <15% shouldn't be cold-calling a large PF raise next in with any hands except for big suited Bdwys and larger PPs.

Fold turn. He is shoving nearly 3.3x pot.

I think we are leaving some money on the table on the turn by betting half pot when we could go 2/3 pot or full pot. If anything, we generally start with small bets on the flop but turns and rivers are often spots to check or bet big, like 2/3 pot, full pot, or overbet. I think going 80% pot on the flop is fine as an exploit though. I just think turn size could be bigger. One of the things I see a lot is is people leaving money in the table by not sizing up turns and rivers.

V has been shoving a lot, against I’m assuming 100bb or less stacks. Is there any chance V forgot or isn’t aware of how deep we are in this hand?

Nasty spot but I think it illustrates quite well some of the difficulties of playing deep stacked NLHE out of position. I ran a solve for this out of curiosity and PIO is checking 100% of its range on the flop:

Note that the EV of checking with your hand is 77.70, and the EV of betting 100 is 68.72, so - at least at solver equilibrium - checking is clearly the better option with this hand on the flop.

One of the issues is that on the 8♣7♥2♣ board villain can make your life very difficult on many runouts. When you bet 9♦9♥ and get called, the turn is going to be an overcard or a club about 50% of the time, in which case you should generally check-call. Many three-liners to a straight can come out too. Then the same thing happens on the river. So it's important to appreciate on the flop that although we have a solid overpair that likely is best for the time being, it can become a very awkward spot later in the hand and if villain decides to get laggy it's going to give us headaches and put us in difficult spots. One solution to this issue is to check 100% of hands when out of position, even when you're the preflop raiser. The more "normal" way for this to happen is for you to open the pot and someone in position to call the bet, but the same principles apply in your hand. Marc Goone has some great videos about this on Youtube that show how even really good players play worse against a check than they do against a bet in this situation. Ultimately, when you're out of position - at least in general - you need to play a lot more defensively. So personally, I think there is a lot to be said for checking this flop. In the solve, when hero checks and faces a bet, 9♥9♦ is almost exclusively check-calling, rather than check raising, as "vulnerable overpairs" sometimes do.

Once you bet $100 on the flop and the 5♦ comes on the turn, PIO again recommends checking your whole range:

But the EVs are much closer this time. Again, if you check and face a bet, you should just call with your hand. Villain is jamming about 3% of his range facing your bet on the turn:

And believe it or not, all combos of 99 have a profitable call:

It's interesting that all combos of 99 are calling, but many of the other overpairs are folding. Of the overpairs that do call, in general they want to have a club in their hand (as they have more EV as a result).

So, that's what the solver thought. From a human point of view, you've seen this villain put in these massive jams several times already. He's shown down twice, once with a flush draw and once with a solid top pair. Jamming with a flush draw is obviously one of the oldest tricks in the book. But if he has a flush draw, he's had it from the flop, and he didn't jam then when he had the chance to do so. It doesn't mean he can't have a flush draw of course, but it's something to consider. His jam for presumably hundreds of big blinds with a solid top pair is also kind of intriguing. What's behind this? Fear of getting outdrawn? Overvaluing his hand? Simply not understanding how the game is meant to be played? It's hard to say, but what we know for sure is that he's definitely an unorthodox player doing unorthodox things. The fact that he's only playing a couple of hands every three orbits is definitely concerning because in general tight players are value-heavy and that makes me less inclined to believe that his jam is a bluff. It sucks that you've invested a fair amount in the hand when he jams, but again that's simply one of the issues with playing out of position. I don't think you want to play a huge pot with your hand and as mentioned would definitely recommend checking from the flop forwards to try and keep the pot more manageable (and to allow him to blindly attack your "weak checks" if he wants to do so).

On the turn the pot is $325, you bet $165 and villain jams for $2025. This means that the pot is $2,515 and it's $1860 for you to call. This means you need to win 1860/4375 x 100 expressed as a percentage (42.5%) of the time to break even on the call. Sure, he can be semi-bluffing here with hands like flush draws and 66 that peeled the flop, but I have a very hard time believing that you're ahead 42.5% of the time here. Playing live poker, as a general rule - unless villain has shown themselves to be capable of making plays like this as a bluff on a fairly regular basis (which is very rare) - players tend to be significantly value-heavy, and this is a situation where I would make a live poker adjustment to the solver solution and fold a plus EV calling hand here. It really sucks to put in $300 and have to fold, but the reality is that you're rarely good here.

Do you know the famous hand that Phil Ivey and Brad Booth played? Brad Booth ripped the flop for a 6x pot raise to $300k with a gutshot, and after tanking for a while Ivey folded with a KK overpair:

https://youtu.be/RC3ddhyKFOo

There is an interview of Phil Ivey talking about this hand where he says "there are easier ways to make money in poker than to make those calls". That's Phil Ivey's experience and natural talent talking, and I certainly agree with him. I'm letting this go almost always.

I'm shocked the flop is a check when you don't block fdfd!

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I agree with all this — it's not surprising solver is checking range on the flop, but vs an unskilled live opponent who won't apply pressure correctly I'll often bet (small -- betting large only really makes sense vs a super wide range calling all pairs, all draws, and maybe some overs).
I'm folding the turn for sure. I'm surprised at just how profitable a call it is in the solver, but that is based on a somewhat unrealistic (IMO) raising range for V. He's probably going to be raising his flopped bottom/middle set way more than the 15% or whatever the solver is, and no one is finding raises with 98/97/A6, even A4/A3 without a flush draw probably not so much. The main thing is that if this opponent IS making these raises, he's not doing so because he knows it's "correct", and we can expect him to be overbluffing with all kinds of weak hands.

That said, without super strong reads, I'm just folding and trying to get him to show his hand, maybe open fold the nines, ask him if it was good and so on

Well, the EV of the call is 195 in a pot that's over 5000, so it's not that profitable at all, but still more profitable than folding.

I agree that one can 3bet more OOP against weak/passive opponents, but checking is also fine in those situations (and is often very similar EV to betting in the flop and turn nodes). In this solve, I was surprised to see how big the difference in EV betting checking and betting was; it's not usually that large and I'm unsure why that's the case in this hand.

Definitely the raising range of the solver on the turn is completely unrealistic in a live low stakes poker environment. Of course, this is because the solver is balanced with value hands/bluffs, and live players most definitely are not. For sure it's a fold against the vast majority of the low stakes poker player pool.

I made a mistake here. Should read as follows:

"On the turn the pot is $325, you bet $165 and villain jams for $2350. This means that the pot is $2,840 and it's $2185 for you to call. This means you need to win 2185/5025
x 100 expressed as a percentage (43.5%) of the time to break even on the call."

Agree that flop bet should be a little smaller. No need to scare him off with a big bet or have to fold to a raise this deep.

Turn sucks, but it's a fold. I'm fine with the bet, just so many hands that beat us or could beat us on river. I'm not risking my stack this deep.

FWIW, what do we call with? Sets or a weird two-pair / straight that we raised with pre from OOP? Of course, that makes me realize our hand is usually an overpair or AK/AQ. Maybe V is good enough to shove us off of a hand he knows we can't/shouldn't call with.

Normally yes, but we are 500bb deep here. I don't play this deep and I doubt most of us ITT do either.
Anyway, big pocket pairs don;t need much protection on this board. I agree big suited broadways might take V's line here.

500bb's is only 2,500 eff in 2/5, when everyone is buying in for 1K so it's really not that out of the ordinary.

We don't need to play deep to evaluate a poker hand.

No, V is well aware of both our stack sizes

For sure, no offense intended. I definitely respect your analysis!

I brought up the 500bb depth because I think it impacts our evaluation of V's preflop range. Maybe I'm mistaken here. I think he has more SCs and lower pairs because of the higher IO from the depth.

Sorry if I misinterpreted your tone, but playing high stakes or deep stack does not imply anything about one's playing style, unless it's a private game with a "no nits" policy 🙂

However, Villain was described as he plays on average 2 hands every 3 orbits, so unless he's just been card-dead, he doesn't sound like the type of player to cold-call with a crappy RIO hand while being forced post-flop to act directly after the PF raiser.

V sounds like the kind of player that's a bit weak-tight and mortified about being sucked out on so they overbet to either get to see 5, or end the hand now. Thing is, that kind of V would push a big flush draw on the flop vs whatever premium H squeezed 6 people with. Not the turn.

Alternately, the 5 gave V 2P+. Some sort of 75s, 65s, 55 hand. But there shouldn't be very many 2p combos here for V. H shouldn't have any of the sets or completed straights. If we assume V wanted to play bingo with 75/65ss at 20-1 SPR with that hand vs a premium.

I can't imagine a set slamming the door like this. I would think JJ-TT x-r's H on that flop. Ditto 87s.

I'm talking myself into calling. Good thing I don't play this deep.

If villain is very aware of how deep they are with us this is just a fold. He's going from betting 50 to 100 to 2350. This line is fishy as all hell but I don't think it's a bluff.

I would range check flop OOP.

Interesting hand and read. Assuming this is 9-handed and the 2 hands / 3 orbits count is accurate, he's only VPIP'ing around 7.5%, which qualifies as somewhat nitty, I guess. But then he's over-bet jamming with a 9-high flush draw and TP2K, which seems to indicate a willingness to gamble that the table respects his jams.

I'd want to know more about his pre-flop tendencies. Does he have an opening range pre, or is he limping in with any hand he wants to play? Trying to figure out what his limp-call range is in the HJ, when we raise pretty large in the BB.

Assuming he does have an opening range, and that TT+ is in that range, then we can rule out over-pairs to our 99, and think about what his value and bluff range looks like.

Hard for him to have 96s, with such a low VPIP, and two 9's in our hand. Have to think he might raise flop with his sets and 2P, at least sometimes, even when you bet so large. Hard to think he's calling that size c-bet with 55. Maybe A5cc.

So...

PRE - $50 raise seems fine, though I might go a little bigger, this deep.

FLOP - I probably just check, or c-bet smaller, like 1/3 pot or less.

TURN - I'd probably over-bet the turn, given how few better hands he's likely to have here, and how weighted towards draws he'll be. But as played, I dunno. If we know he has bluffs in him, this feels like a pretty bluffy line. I think we mis-played this by betting so large on flop and just 1/2 pot on turn, but folding can't be terrible, given the SPR.

I think I probably just fold.

lol idk what ranges we are putting V on for limp/calling a 10x raise, but the output is worthless unless we have proper PF ranges.

GTO does a huge amount of flop range checking OOP as the PFR, because it incorrectly expects V to have a tight extremely strong capped range.

That kind of jam looks like a snap turbo fold. I think flop and turn are fine but i personally woudkve gone like 33% on the flop and 125% on the turn.