Turning my hand into a bluff. Did I punt?

Yes. Because he called you with Qx.

I am not sure (if this player profile if correct) he’s betting (or calling) much of his 10x on the turn.

He should pretty much never have a flush, but from his perspective, neither should we.

We can’t really fold turn with the OESD + pair, obviously it would be better if it checked through, but once facing the bet raising is probably better than calling to start to pressure his Qx holdings.

On river we should get a fold from him with all his 1p hands. if we can make him believe that we have the straight that we have a blocker for and get him to release Q9/Q10, then this is obviously a very good spot to be jamming, if he’s stickier than we thought and calls with KQ/QJ, then it’s a very bad play. I think this gets through more than half the time making it a good play on the river, and earlier streets seem okay, although if this is a raked game I’d just chop preflop.

Why would JTo be a marginal raise pre from the SB vs BB? Blind vs blind it's a very clear open. Maybe study preflop charts more?

Postflop doesn't seem like an absolute punt. I think our line is likely winning, but it does feel like there might be slightly better ways to play our hand. Maybe we deviate because of live reads though.

On the flop if our strat is 75% pot or check, I don't think our hand falls into the betting category. We have better Jx, over pairs, and stronger to bet if we're going to take a large size.

On the turn, we have a lot of showdown value and a lot of equity. We have a pair blocker, a club, and a straight blocker, so we have blockers to the current nuts and we have blockers to flushes and boats on different river runouts. With this much showdown, I would prefer calling turn and potentially considering turning our hand into a check raise bluff on the river depending on the runout. Depending on his river size, we may just decide against check raising river. We have hands with less showdown value that we could turn into bluffs here. Jc7c, Jc6c, Jc5c, Jc4c, AcJx, AxJc, etc.

Playing check raises on the turn is a bit tricky and it's villain dependant. Most aggressive players just bet their strong value here rather than check raise. But I have also seen people correctly fold a lower two pair in these spots when I actually turned a straight. One thing I don't love is that his betting 100 into 150 doesn't scream weakness.

Getting to the river the way we do, this feels like a mandatory jam.

In a vacuum I don't think the hand is horrible. If we were turning our hand into a bluff half the time on the turn and just calling half the time, we might be making a small mistake, but still winning money and not horribly imbalanced. The problem is, if we play with these players enough, we may find ourselves turning too many hands with showdown value into bluffs using lines that are unorthodox for value. Then we run the risk of becoming the player that people just have to close their eyes and calm against, and that can hurt us.

JTo is not a marginal raise bvb by any means, and if villain is as weak as you describe him you should be raising much wider. Flop looks good - not sure why you are x/r the turn against a weak passive player. A weak/passive player probably checks the weaker/middling parts of his range and might even check back draws, so his betting range is going to more strong hands/weak hands making a x/r not good. Once he calls your x/r OTT his range is relatively strong and can be nutted - he can have KJ,J8,QT,sets, maybe on the lower end Qx. Just a high variance line you took here that probably isn't good overall - against a weak/passive player you should be able to print low variance money so not sure what you're doing here.

Interesting hand.

Raise pre from the SB seems fine. I'd probably range check flop from OOP to let V stab at it, but don't mind a c-bet. Not sure if the 2/3 pot sizing is too big, but heads up with a vulnerable top pair, it's probably fine.

Not sure about checking turn, or check raising. Think I'd just continue to barrel, for 1/2 pot, to see if he raises. Our check raise size seems too small, giving him too good a price to continue with all his draws.

Not sure about river bluff when we were repping straights and the flush comes in. I guess if we're repping KcJc it's good to have the Jc in our hand.

I dunno. The hand seemed fine until the turn, and then started to veer off into the realm of unnecessarily fancy play.

The problem with the river shove is that this weak-tight player called the flop and liked his hand enough to call the turn checkraise.

His actions scream "I have at least 2-pair."

Do passive randos fold 2-pairs/sets to pot-size river shoves when a flush card falls?

I’ll skip the preflop discussion for now, but I acknowledge that SB vs BB preflop play is an area I need to study more. For this hand, the focus is on the postflop line: check-raising OOP preflop, betting the flop, check-raising the turn, and shoving the river. This line strongly represents premium hands and polarizes my range, effectively targeting Villain's weaker Qx hands, some two-pair combos, and even marginally strong holdings like QT in some cases.

The goal with this sequence is to apply maximum pressure and force Villain to fold the middle of their range, especially if they perceive my bluff-to-value ratio as skewed toward value. Given my line, Villain should expect me to show up with straights (KJ, J8) and flushes by the river, as well as occasional set combos depending on how my range is constructed.

Key question: What’s Villain’s minimum calling range on the river?

- Flushes: Clearly a snap call given the board texture.
- Straights: KJ and J8 should be mandatory calls, but villain could fold some percentage of the hand if he believes im only doing this line with flushes.
- Two-Pair and Qx: QT is the critical hand to consider. Does Villain find a fold here? If they don’t believe I have enough bluffs in my range, they might only call with the absolute top of their Qx range.
- Sets like TT, QQ, 99 are out of his range because he should have raised me preflop IP. 55 is on his range, but that hand MIGHT find a fold (not really sure).

The real decision point is on the turn, river seems like an auto bluff spot

There's a lot of wishful thinking above.

1. I can't imagine very many players, even weak-tight ones, are folding the river while holding the straight.
2. How many Qx combos do you believe he has here?
3. I don't think you can dismiss out of hand the possibility that your weak-tight opponent would have just called preflop with 99/TT in position.

I hate the turn x/r, I just barrel 1/2 pot. Also not sure why you think JTo is a bad open

Villain doesn't have to 3b 99 here. Some will and some won't. 99 and TT are mandatory 3b with rake, but if game is unraked, 99 is a call pre and TT is a mix. It just depends though, everyone constructs their ranges in these spots differently. But we do block TT and you would expect him to 3b that a fair amount. 99 and 55 are possible since we went big and he is in position on the flop.

Straights really should call. 2p+ also we shouldn't count on folding.

Honestly, QJ KQ, maybe KcQx might hero call here. Yes, clubs get there, but he can see that some Jx has missed. He may level himself thinking - did he really check a strong hand on the turn? Did he really start betting flop with a bdfd and decide to check the turn? Aggressive players usually just bet their strong hands and they tend to barrel when they turn a bdfd. Maybe even hands like AcTx, KcTx find calls here.

Bet flop, check raise turn is not a super common line and I think players will react to it differently. I have an example where I got a fold but had value, also blind vs straddle. V is my friend who is a rec. Flop K9Xr, I bet 1/3, he calls. Turn T bringing in bdfd, I check, he 2/3 pot, I raise 2/3 pot. We were still fairly deep. He says he folds 2p and we agree to show. He folded T9 and I show QJ.

Then there are other times where someone just can't give someone credit for a value hand and will call down light. Here is a hand I had as an example:

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/170/l...

I ended up getting check raised on flop vs a very agro player, turn check, check, on river flushes bricked but there is a one liner, he checks, I go 450 into 705 with an overpair for thin value as I think he never has a hand that beats me at this point. He check raises to 3,450. I end up calling and being good because I just really have to discount Villain playing a value hand by checking turn and river and now raising an egregious size. Even though in theory I am pretty sure my hand was a bet fold vs that size.

Other times a line looks super FOS but we just don't think villain is capable of bluffing.

What these lines have in common is that a player took an aggressive action (bet or raise) on one street, then checked once or twice, and put themselves in a spot where the majority of players are going to have either air or a bluff catcher, so when a raise happens, that puts us in node we rarely reach. Out of thousands of hours of live poker, we probably won't see a ton of these spots. Unless you are in a habit of playing these super tricky lines, I think it is going to be hard to know if these spots are over or under folded. It do think it is very player and image dependant.

Overall I still maintain my main points from my first post. Flop I don't think our hand is worth 75% pot if that is our flop size. Maybe if our flop bet size is 40% pot or 25% pot. Turn we have too much equity and showdown value to turn our hand into a bluff, but it will become a great check raise bluff candidate on a lot of rivers. We have many better bluff check raise candidates to choose from on the turn that don't have as much showdown which we want to have the betting lead with if we hit our hand. Unpaired straight draws, flush draws, and combo draws. River is a mandatory bluff as played.

I don't really like this line...

On this board where the nuts change on every street, I don't think that cbet-xr-jam line will be easily comprehensible to most villains as thick value. IMO xc-xr-jam and cbet-xc-xjam both represent nutted hands (straights and flushes) more definitively. I also think that you are bluffing into a fairly strong range as played, which is never a good idea versus fishier opponents.

Once he bets the turn and you x/r and he calls his range is fairly strong - most probably check back the turn with Tx so his range going to the river is like Qx,TT,99,55,Q9,J8,KJ, pair with clubs,QT. There's a good portion of his range that just never folds to any river bet - I'm not trying to get 2 pair or better to fold the river it's just lighting money on fire. Furthermore his range isn't capped - I think this spot burns money.

idk i think it got through tbh

It seems like you're ranging V without looking at this from V's perspective, where he's also ranging you.

First off - does V even have straights here, when he just flat-calls our turn check-raise on a two-flush board? Wouldn't a lot of his straights just 3B-jam turn? How often does he call with 2P, when there's 3 to a straight and a two-flush out there?

Secondly - you're hoping to fold out most of V's 2P combos, and possibly some of his straights, by repping a rivered flush. I don't know that I'd believe you'd jam the river with a hand worse than the 2nd nut flush, after V calls pre, calls flop, and bets 2/3 pot on turn, and calls our turn check-raise.

But if we look at our line from V's perspective, our line doesn't make a ton of sense, if we're trying to rep the nuts or 2nd nuts.

Like, how many and what flush combos do we have that raise pre, c-bet 2/3 pot on a T9-high rainbow board, check-raise turn to 3x over a 2/3 pot bet by V, and then jam pot on the 4c river?

Maybe we get to the river with with AKcc, AJcc, and KJcc. But do those combos check-raise turn? I'd think they're mostly just barreling or check-calling, not check-raising.

Maybe occasionally we get to the river with J9cc or J8cc, but are those combos really jamming river, after V calls our turn check-raise?

Like, what hands in V's range would we be targeting for value? Would we be hoping he calls our jam with straights, sets, and 2P? If so, then how can we jam here, as a bluff, hoping he'll fold those same hands? Are we being logically consistent?

When V calls our turn check-raise, he either has a strong hand, like 2P+, or he's drawing to the nuts. We don't block the nuts, but our JcTh blocks some of his sets and 2P combos, and some of his straights.

If we had the nut flush, we could target the 2nd and 3rd nut flush for value, as well as all V's straights, sets, and 2P. Holding a blocker to the 3rd nuts, V's range is going to be weighted towards flushes, all of which are calling, and away from straights, sets, and 2P we're hoping will fold when we jam.

When he's likely to 3B-jam turn with his straights, and possibly fold turn with some 2P, I think he's weighted even more heavily towards flushes. And if he thinks we're FOS with this line, he may get sticky with all his 2P+ that somehow gets to the river, and might even be curious enough to look us up with AcQx or KcQx.

When we're repping a super-narrow range for value, I think many opponents are going to think we have way too many bluffs, and will be more likely to look us up light.

I think the turn check-raise is where this one went off the rails. I think it would have been better to just barrel for 1/2 pot, or check-raise huge, to put real pressure on his 2P/sets and flush draws, while holding a blocker to the nut straight.

Once we check-raise and he calls, I don't think we've got enough stack depth or fold equity to jam the river and expect him to fold enough of his range that gets to the river.

V .."Seems uncomfortable facing aggression."

We have compressed his range significantly and V has called down the whole way. Sadly, V seems pretty comfortable so far.

So what is he folding here getting 2-1 on the river? H set up a bad spot to bluff with the turn xr which only left a pot-sized river bet. If we just call turn, we can bluff at all flush rivers and we will make some straights too. We would give him a way worse price to call with the pot at ~350 and ~980 behind.

The turn is the key point here and the xr seems really ambitious even when holding the Jc. Agree with Doc that when we do xr, it should be larger. Agree with Mlark's overall excellent turn analysis.

i would caution against trying to soul read / hyper exploit people you have never played against in rare spots (is more for the commenters in the thread who knows exactly how v is going to perceive and respond). line looks okish at trace frequencies (mostly bc flop is really subtoptimal sizing for our hand) bc of the Jc. river is a pure bet of some size (it wants to split large size with flushes and smaller w mostly straights

i would be careful how you're perceiving skill differences and what that means in terms of lines to take and deviations. my guess is you're probably largely overweighting your skill edge here bvb in particular. that said this guy very likely folds too much pre (and under 3bets) so probably atc show a profit opening. but can't give that ev back by blowing up post

This. Given that H thinks opening JTo is super loose pre. and is just blasting off post turning top pair into a bluff almost from the flop ... like okay the guy is almost certainly overfoling pre., but it's kind of an exploit given the fact that H doesn't do anything but blast off range post.

Maybe H's image is better than I'd expect and closer to what he said. Maybe it got through on the river, and the solver will even kind of back you up on river shove being fine ... but almost every hand OP posts it's like his random number generator always rolls 666 out of 100.

This is how the hand ended:

FWIW, I wasn't really even thinking about OP's read of V when looking at the turn and river action. I was just looking at the action, the cards on board, and hero's hand, and trying to figure out what story we're supposedly telling.

If V is bad, maybe he can't put it all together and realize hero's story doesn't make a ton of sense. If he's scared money, maybe he over-folds facing this line. If we're trying to make the bad or scared money player fold everything by taking this line, okay, fine. But...

OP described V as being weak-passive. How often do weak-passive V's - especially scared money V's - 3B pre, blind-vs-blind? They may not 3B with combos like A9s and A5s at the same frequency the rest of us might. V might not be 3B'ing KJs, probably never 3B'ing KJo. He might not 3B with TT-99, maybe not even QQ, probably never 55, K9, QT, Q9, J8, and maybe not T9.

It seems to me that no matter what the read is, V gets to the river with a fairly strong range when he calls the raise pre, calls flop, and then bet-calls a turn check-raise. Jamming river for a PSB and laying V 2:1 odds on a call, but expecting him to fold, is expecting a lot.

On top of the action, if we layer in the read that V is weak-passive, and assume he's not 3B'ing pre, blind-vs-blind, anywhere near optimal frequency, or with the right hands, then, yes, this line seems like a punt, because V has flushes, straights, 2P, and some sets in his range.

Even if we take turned straights out of his range when he flat calls the turn x/r, he still has a lot of 2P, sets, and flushes. It's asking a lot for V to fold river, getting 2:1 on a call, when he gets to the river the way he does.

If V is even remotely capable of figuring out that hero doesn't have very many flush combos when he check-raises the turn, he should be calling down with almost everything, because what hands worse than a flush would hero jam when the flush comes in, after V calls the turn x/r?

9cXc is another portion of villain's range. The thing about turn is that you have the best hand some % of the time (like you did here). You're open ended with middle pair. You potentially have a lot of outs vs Qx. Because you have the best hand some % of the time AND a lot of equity vs better hands, this hand doesn't need to be turned into a bluff on the turn. Especially when you can have unpaired hands like Jc7c, Jc6c, Jc4c, AJ with or without a club. Those hands will lose if the river goes check check a fair amount of the time while JT will win a fair amount of the time. Those hands, if they hit, also want to be able to jam the river, so gaining some fold equity on the turn while retaking the betting lead is nice.

I think it is fine to have bluffs and value on turn and river with rhe line you took. It's just that our hand has so much EV as a check/call that there is a good chance the EV of check call is higher. Your line is still probably +EV, but I wouldn't be surprised if it is lower than check-calling the turn.

OTT, you have a pair and OESD. You have to continue. I prefer bet and maybe x/c to checkraise. This is a wet board and he is likely to have something, so hard to get a fish to fold once he bets.

OTR, the backdoor flush came in, which usually will scare him, but your line seems inconsistent. It is hard for you do have the nuts on both the turn and river.

Looks like you were posting as I was typing my last response.

I think if you're going to check-raise the turn, at this stack depth, you need to check-raise bigger than 3x his bet size. That x/r size is laying him too good a price to call with his draws, and not leaving yourself enough stack depth to make him fold enough of his value range if you jam river, especially not if the flush comes in.

At your stack depth, I think you just need to jam turn, if you're going to bluff, and I think he folds a ton.

I think your specific combo is fine to check-raise as a semi-bluff, when you're blocking the nuts on the turn. You just chose the wrong size, and shouldn't have followed through on the river when the flush draw gets there.

If the river was a brick, I think your jam folds out a lot of the hands you were hoping to fold out - 2P, and maybe even some sets. Obviously he's not folding straights on the river, but he shouldn't have many, if any straights, when we block them with the J in our hand, and he just flat calls the turn x/r.

It's fine to have a bluffing range when you x/r turn and jam river, but I think it's better to have a combo that is drawing to the future nuts, blocking the current nuts, and / or blocking the future nuts.

So, AcJx would be a better combo, blocking the nut flush and the nut straight. Obviously AcJc would be even better, because we can actually make the nuts with it, and don't mind if V calls with Kc9c.

I don't think this is a good board to plan on stacking off as a bluff. It is QT95 2-flush. Connected middle to high cards. He can hit it and it is obvious you can be semibluffing with draws. Check/call the turn seems fine. Then you can maybe make a play on the river.