Genius or Idiot? 3bet pot $2-3 No limit

Firstly, please make sure in the future to include the pot sizes on every street.

In addition, I don't know what you're representing by the turn shove, or what range you're giving to your opponent, but it's difficult seeing a weak, passive rec taking this line with a hand that's behind AA.

In fact, I'm tempted to fold to the flop c/r.

FWIW, I see the turn check as a slow play rather than as a sign of weakness.

This is a punt.

On turn H is repping AA-JJ given preflop 3 bet.

V calls 3 bet OOP. Makes small CR on flop. H is giving V a range of 99-JJ, Ax&Kx flush draws. Some sets of 88s, however the turn 8 discounts these.

I'm not familiar with the subgroup of tight, passive, weak players who raise-call from EP with Kxs and then c/r this flop with a flush draw and overs (which may not even be good) to a PF 3-better.

It's also difficult imagining this type of player c/r the flop with 99-JJ against a PF 3-better.

Either your working read on this player was incorrect, or you created ranges which don't fit your reads.

Weak passive players do sometimes CR.

The small CR screams 99-JJ. Perhaps flush draws would call the flop more often; and are also less likely to continue preflop. So the action is weighted towards 99-JJ, raising to see where they are at.

if this was a Nit i'd weight them towards sets and higher pairs. But your average passive weak recreation player is trying to figure out if they're good in this spot.

I think part of the problem is that weak tight passive players don't get frisky with over pairs very often. Most of the time, they are going to be happy to call a bet and are only raising if they have the near nuts. That isn't to say a player couldn't do this, but on a message board, we can only go by what the main tendency is. Raising by almost 3 times the bet on the flop is not a small raise.

Trying to "represent" a hand is often futile because the players are really just playing their own hand at this level. You'll too often hear them say, "I'm probably beat, but I have to call."

That said, the turn shove is only a 2/3 PSB. The villain knows you don't have an 8 in your hand, so it didn't help you. You're just pure gambling at this point. Hope you won.

I'm with the consensus here. This is Fancy Play Syndrome. Weak/tight recs very rarely raise to see where they are at, they donk-bet to see where they are at. And once you get to the point where your shove is a 2/3 pot bet, they'll rarely fold an overpair anyway, even though they hate calling. Unless you have a solid read that this guy folds hands he considers big, this is a bad line.

You have the hand recs love to put you on. I'd consider checking back flop, and if I did c-bet, I'd fold to the c/r.

I would probably go larger on the flop to represent an over pair, but you could check back. I know people like to go smaller with bluffs at low stakes and solvers like small cbets generally, but you want to represent AA.

I would fold to the flop x/r. Just an awful spot to make a play. If he flat called the flop, then you might have a decision whether to barrel the turn.

Given player description and JJ+/AK is probably a loose 3! range for 2/3, I would not be happy after the x/r if I had QQ+.

Only thing is that when you cbet less than the 3! amount, it looks weak, so might provoke a raise. He also could be afraid you will check back the turn after better small.

I don't see why all these threads about making plays stacking off against fish who appear face up strong.

It's 40 into 100, I could maybe get behind this idea if H had bet 25 into 100.

But I've tried a lot of small cbets in 3! pots (because solvers lol), and my read is that people mostly just call a lot. Like it works against better players because they are thinking about future streets and how it's better to fold now than to call small bets with 2 outs and then fold, but your average live low stakes fish will respond to small cbets pretty well by just calling a lot.
IMO they will mostly not raise JJ here, even to a small cbet but will overplay it on later streets.

To OP calling the flop raise looks like a huge punt even if you are playing JJ-AA this way, and even if you bluffed V off his equity.

Against a weak passive player's EP raise, I might just flat preflop. AKs plays fine multiway, we already have the Button, there's not huge dead money, we'd hate getting reraised / dumping our hand preflop. If 3betting, I'd go much larger to $60 to setup a more trivial stackoff postflop.

This guy mostly has an overpair, or perhaps AK (greatly reduced combos thanks to our holding). He's never folding an overpair to a single bet. But he'll probably fold a chopping AK. Honestly think I mostly give up on this nothing flop. Although a very small cbet to fold out AK might not be horrendous.

Calling the check/raise (and betting the turn) is setting money on fire. He's only going to have a 2/3rds PSB left so he's rarely going to fold an overpair at this price ("pot is too big", "if you have it you have it", etc.).

Gobviouslyinb4heopenmucksJJandsays"nicehand"G

Our ranging for this player type (weak/passive/tighter) is both too wide and not wide enough.

He rarely has pairs < TT (as those are limping hands).

The only flush draws he has is AKhh and perhaps AQhh/KQhh (but weak/passive/tighter players often don't raise or call 3bets with those latter hands, nor do they check/raise flops with just a draw).

And he can also still easily have QQ+ (tarping preflop or waiting to see if an Ace flops before dumping in the rest of his money).

So mostly this is TT+. And getting someone to fold an overpair with very little money behind (way less than a PSB) isn't a good strategy, imo.

GcluelessweakpassivetightnoobG

Hoping to be more helpful, less snarky than my earlier response...

PRE - your 3B is fine.

At low stakes, I'd probably go larger than 4x when there's an EP raise and a call. I don't think UTG1 is going to fold often enough when we just make it $50, and if he flat calls, there's a reasonable likelihood that the MP player will come along.

I'd rather take the pot down pre-flop, or at least get it heads up vs a capped range, rather than play multi-way post-flop, and have to figure out what sort of range the MP player has when he double-flats.

When V flat calls our 3B pre, I wouldn't necessarily assume he's capped at 99-JJ. Some low-stakes opponents simply don't have any 4B range, and will flat call with all their PP's.

FLOP - I'm guessing the pot is $110-ish after rake? Our $40 c-bet is a smidge large, but probably fine.

A 1/3 pot bet in a 3B pot is pretty standard. This board doesn't smack our range, so I'd be fine going even smaller.

However, when V x/r's to $110, I'd proceed with caution. All we have is two overs, and it's possible none of our outs are good. Folding to a less than 3x x/r seems a bit exploitable, but starting out $400 effective, folding is fine, and probably preferred, when calling will leave us with less than a PSB behind.

If we were deeper to start, I could see calling the flop, to see what V does on the turn, and possibly betting if V checks, depending on my read of V. A good player will have some bluffs that check-raise the flop, but give up on the turn when they don't improve or pick up equity.

In this hand, I understand your logic - you're repping nothing but strength pre-flop and on the flop. The problem is that you flat called the flop check-raise, which somewhat caps your range. If you had AA-JJ and wanted to go with it, you could have just 3B-jammed the flop.

When you bet-call flop and jam turn, maybe you have AA-JJ, maybe you're just bluffing because V showed weakness by checking. Maybe he flopped a set, and beats AA-JJ, and checked to induce. Maybe he has the flush draw with AKhh, is free-rolling you, and decides to make a "f**k it" call, because it's LOL-stakes.

Weak-passive players don't often raise pre from EP, call a 3B, then go for a check-raise on the flop, without actually having some sort of hand. Even if V just has 99-JJ, we lose to those hands, and V might decide that he can't let his big PP go after putting $160 into the pot, when there's a two-flush on board, we might be bluffing, and he might spike a miracle 9-J to boat up.

TURN - Once we flat call the flop x/r, and V checks to us on the turn 8d, there's just not much reason to bet.

We're behind all his PP's and flopped sets, and even behind his AKhh. We should just check back, and take the free card. Jamming probably looks like a genius play when he folds 99-JJ face up, but you'll feel like an idiot when he snaps you off, no matter what he shows.

If we had AKdd, or if we had 99-JJ, I could get behind betting the turn, either for value and protection or as a bluff. But jamming with zero equity is pretty spew-tastic.

All that said, if V folded to the jam, nice hand. But since you posted the hand here, I'm guessing V snapped you off, and you lost.

V checks turn and i'm ruling out sets and premium pairs.

When i jam he tanks for about 5 minutes. He asks me if i have Jacks or Queens and finally calls showing:

10d10s

Thanks for comments, definite spew by me. Lessons: Don't bluff the calling stations. Don't continue after raises with little equity.

Again, premium pairs are still easily in play (and actually pretty much 100% of his range as played to this point). He check/raised our ass with the overpair on a safe flop, got MUBSy that we had a bigger pair when called, but sigh calls our shove anyways cuz, well, he haz an overpair. This is how 98% of your opponents will play, so react accordingly.

Ggoodluck!G

As you proceed in your low-stakes journey, try to remember that many opponents make plays which seem logical to them, even if they don't hold up under scrutiny.

Case in point, "I'll just flat call this 3B pre with my TT-JJ, then blast off on any board with no over-cards, because my opponent has so much AK in his range."

Yeah, when we 3B pre, we have a ton of AK in our range. But we also have many PP's, and possibly some other suited Broadway combos. Blasting off on a "safe" flop by betting into an uncapped range can and will often lead to disaster.

But, the thing is - we actually can have over-pairs, and other hands here, if we're raising more than AA/KK/AK. Fighting stupid aggression with more stupid aggression is going to backfire often enough to make it not worth the attempt. It's easier to fold AKdd here when we know we'll sometimes have AA-JJ.

Think about it this way - we could have 24 combos of AA-JJ, but only 16 of AK. We're 1.5x as likely to have his TT dominated, even on a rainbow board with no draws. If we had AKhh on this board (or AQhh/AJhh), we'd have enough equity to continue.

Don't worry about folding the <40% of the time when we whiff, and don't try to make him fold by bluffing with zero equity, because we'll stack this clown the other >60% of the time when he snaps us off, thinking we're FOS with AK.

ETA - one other thought to keep in mind...sometimes we need to remember that losing the minimum when we're beat is a big contributor to our win rate, and likely contributes more than running big bluffs. I take an absurd amount of evil joy in seeing opponents dragging in a smaller pot after showing a strong hand that they over-played.

Think about how good you'd feel folding AK face up on the river after checking back the turn, and seeing the dejected look on V's face, when he starts to wonder if he'd have won more if he hadn't check-raised the flop.

Thanks for your comment.

QQ-AA are most likely not in play given tow actions from our opponent:

1. only called our 3bet OOP.
2. checked back turn on flush draw board

Opponent is clearly capped. That's why i made my punt.

However, as you and others have pointed out, this does not justify my sorry play at these stakes where few are capable of folding,

In general, I think "most likely not" is simply too hard a take of whether a big overpair ever shows up in a villain's range regardless of action. Overpairs can easily be played extremely passively / MUBSyily / tarpy / etc. and should pretty much always be included when ranging LLSNL opponents. Just something to be aware of, imo.

Gnothatin',justsayin'G

There are many Vs who play QQ this way, and a few who play KK this way, though I agree that even for a weak passive player, this is rarely AA. They only call pre because they want to see what the flop looks like/they are afraid you have aces or have AK and the flop will contain an ace. Then they go into call down mode, because they are still afraid, but their hand is too big to fold.

V is weak/passive, he's not betting the turn with an overpair just because you might have a FD. Even this V is probably betting AA, but the rest of the overpairs are still in his range. Given reads, I'd put V on half the 99 combos, all the TT-JJ combos, most QQ, about half the KK, and maybe one combo of AA. Of those, I'd expect him to fold to our shove with about half his remaining 99, and 1/4 of his TT, none of the rest. So V has about 15 combos in his range, and our shove might fold 3 of them, or work about 20% of the time.

Agree with Garick, and add that the small flop x/r could be a stop bet from a scared money weak-passive rec. He's doing it as a bizarre form of pot control, hoping to buy himself a free look at the river by getting you to check back turn.

This is why I would sometimes bet turn, but not with air, and probably not a jam without a very strong hand.

You are repping a big hand; the problem is getting the to fold anything 😉

Skim read comments and saw reveal.

Preflop is fine.

Flop cbet is probably OK on non-scary board but probably prefer checking back.

Snappity snap fold to the CR with your Ace-high.

If he would ask me if I had jacks or queens this is the perfect time to say you must have kings. I'll show either way... and flip over one card without looking hoping that the card you flip over is the ace but you still aren't in bad shape if you show a king which you might have k8 in your range.