KK 5/10/25

what is your read on Villain's play, tendencies?

without any reads, I fold this and am relatively ok doing it

It is unlikely he has any set. QJ/QT/JT/AT/98 are hands he could play, and are about all he has for value. There are draws that missed. It isn't a snap fold.

The optimal play here is to open to 145$, check/fold flop, bet turn 267$, bet river 964$.

Huh, this is all bizarre.

[emoji736]

I think we have to fold the River.

Villain donked 3 times into two opponents (a fish and a reg) so he is obviously not expecting many folds here and it is almost impossible to construct a proper bluffing range, esp. on QJT board where you as the BTN have a ton of sets, two pairs and straights. This gotta be the most underbluffed line in existence.

Why aren’t we semi bluffing flop? He has no sets or AK, while 2 pair and 89 will have a tough time hanging on. We have outs if needed. Raise flop and barrel through.

What did we do on the river?

Trying to get him to fold 2-pair? If we can a set or straight, why would we just call down on the wet board?

PRE - no idea what the standard open size is in this game. Can we go bigger?

FLOP - he's just donking into two opponents, for over 1/2 pot? That's weird. Don't think we can do anything but flat call, with the BB still involved, though raising is an interesting idea, when we're double blocking a lot of straight combos.

TURN - starting to feel like we should consider folding. Hard for V to have bluffs here, and WTF does BB have when he over-calls the flop? I feel gross mucking, but... I might.

RIVER - yeah, time to eject. If he's bluffing or betting worse for value, good for him.

All that said, if we think V is tilted for some reason, like being up-stuck, we have the best bluff-catcher. I don't think I could find a call here, unless I had a very strong read or some sort of gut feeling he was just FOS.

I think the reasoning would be that we'd be repping AK, and it's hard for either V to have AK, or even K9. There was no flush draw on board, and we might play AK this way facing a donk from the player in the middle.

I'd be more concerned about V having 98, and just not letting go, when he unblocks all our sets and 2P. I'd think he'd slow down with 2P here, and it's hard to imagine he's flopped a set.

But why would hero check/call the flop and turn with AK on a wet board? The river raise of a pot sized bet represents only AK, maybe AT.

Hero didn't check-call. Hero is on the button. V donked into multiple opponents for over 1/2 pot. Why would we want to raise flop or turn with the nuts when V is betting into us and BB is over-calling?

IMO flat calling with AK on the turn is bad. Most of the cards mean you no longer have the nuts a 3-flush, the board pairs, or A or K makes a likely chop.

It is true it is hard for them to have AK. To have a set, they need to flat call with QQ/JJ/TT. No one should call the flop with a small pp.

Yeh this is an interesting line especially if he always 3bs AK - I would think we can fold his whole range on the river.

What is he betting 80% pot with on the river? Seems like a straight for value. He shouldn't have a set, and is not doing this with 2-pair. Question if he will fold a straight when hero's line doesn't really make sense for AK.

You asked why OP raised river, and I gave you what I think would be the logic.

I think the urge to raise turn with AK is understandable, but I'm asking why. What would be the goal?

If we have AK and we're worried about someone making a boat or a flush on the river, are we trying to make those hands fold, so we just take down the pot now? If we're just charging them more to see the river, all we're doing is bloating the pot, which we're likely to lose, if most of the river cards downgrade our hand.

If we're worried, why not just flat call in position, see the river, and then either bluff catch when it'll cost us less, or put in a chunky bet if action checks to us, or a chunky raise if V bets a brick?

If we're just raising the best hand for value, fine. We can target a lot of 2P and draws. But then wouldn't our opponents' continuing ranges mostly be made up of hands that can improve to beat ours on a lot of rivers, basically bringing us back to the same problem?

For the sake of discussing this hand, where hero has KK, not AK, the idea of raising any street is interesting. The question we should be asking is if the river raise is credible, when hero flats flop and turn?

It's a tough spot with KK. Either opponent may have flopped some 2P+ that may not fold if we raise flop or turn, and we'll have to barrel through, effectively turning KK into a bluff unless we make a straight. But raising flop or turn and barreling off probably looks more credible than flatting two streets and then effectively jamming.

Then again, if I'm one of the two opponents, sitting with 2P or 98, all my warning bells would be going off, telling me hero has the nuts and slow played it.

You aren't that worried about being beaten by the river card when you have AK. However, you can play it more strongly when you have the nuts. If you slow play and the board pairs or a 3-flush hits, you can't really play the hand strongly on the river. Plus you want to build the pot with the nuts. You don't usually slow play on a wet board like this. You slow play JJ on J72,r or something when you aren't worried about anything beating you.

There is some point to a river raise, as they can't have the nuts. However, it looks a little weird to call down on the wet board and raise on a blank river card.

Any line where hero raises at any point is going to look like hero has AK. It’s completely reasonable for villains to assume hero just calls down and raises river with the nuts. That said, I’d rather start plowing on flop while we still have decent equity against some of the made hands.

On the flip side, if V is bad enough to donk out on a board he should have no leads on, he might be had enough to station us down.

I don't play this high, but I'd think V 3!s all the potential sets PF to a BU open/fish call, plus I'd think V would expect H with either made straight (or any set) to raise either ~1/2 pot bet MW before river this deep. Not so much fear of losing with AK, but H'd like more $$ from their made hand, and an A/K/9 bringing in a chop would suck.

Keeping SB in is fine, but there's only 480 to start the turn, only 1230 with everyone calling, and we started with 4500. Especially a H with 98.

It's also why I don't think V has it either. They'd 3! pf w/AK, and they don't like everything 9+, or a club, to show up on river if they've 98. I tend to think they'd overbet turn with a made hand, vs a fish who we *know* is drawing, but I don't play this high. So V might be drawing too, even though H blocks half of the KQ-KT stuff, and wouldn't this player 3! a lot of those anyway?

I dunno; V has something like Qx? Which of those call pf closing the action? QJ, QT? Q9s?? JT? Was going to say, H might be bluffing with the best hand here, but I think there are more 2P combos then, than realistic 1P.

So sure, high variance, into someone bombing away, and I'm not sure H is telling a convincing story, but why not raise river then? How likely do we think this V folds 2P and maybe 98 lol? (I think SB bricked out, and isn't going to be an issue.)

Yeah, it wouldn't work in a 1/3 game, where people flat AK/QQ, etc.

There is a problem raising on a wet board on the river when a blank hits. It sort of represents what you have, a busted draw.

However, villain's line does not look that strong. Why donk the flop instead of seeing what hero does? He should know hero has all the nut straights and probably all the sets.

So, we know hero has KK, but if we're imagining he has AK, notice he found a way to get it all in by the river, without having to raise flop or turn. Whereas a flop or turn raise may have folded out some hands worse than AK, we're all sitting here now, debating whether or not hero's river jam is credible, worried V might not believe it, and could call.

The point is, if hero did have AK, this is an awesome line to take vs the donk line V has taken. If V is capable of getting to that level, he could fold, and this becomes an amazing line with KK.

I'm with everyone else saying we probably would have raised flop or turn with AK. I probably would have raised turn when the BDFD appears, but I'm impatient, and prone to fear the river suck out.

But the fact that SB is in there over-calling makes me think this line from hero is ok, because it would suck for hero to raise flop or turn and get 3B. If we did have AK, we'd want SB to continue calling when V is betting 1/2 pot from middle position. If SB calls down to the river, and V bets again, we'll be in position to jam for less than 2x pot.

I dunno. If V is good enough to put all the pieces together and decide hero is turning KK into a bluff, he's very good, and deserves to win. If hero gets this through, good for him.

Sitting here, putting myself in V's position, I'd be in the blender, with all my instincts saying hero flopped the joint and slow played it the whole way.

I understand the desire that we likely can't/shouldn't call with KK so maybe we can turn it into a bluff ... and it does double block AK/K9. But I'd be pretty suspicious of what hands we are folding on the river, and probably 100% of range has some kind of blocking effect ... also V's line/range looks a lot more like two pair, which we unblock.

Would be worth knowing how he lost QQ vs. AA ... did all the money go in pre? What were the positions etc.
Also that seems like it was probably a "normal" line, so just because V doesn't want to pay off that again doesn't mean he's going to see this tricky line the same way.

If we are going to raise I'd rather do it on the turn, it gives us a lot more leverage and is more likely how we'd play AK (yes, in theory we can call turn with it ... but we want to get all the money in and our line left 1k on the table that we can more easily get by raising turn). Also we are in position and can decide if we want to bluff river.

I'd guess that if river gets folds often enough it's because of the image H has vs. V.