Top 2P facing a nit-reg from OOP

I would just fold preflop. You are OOP and have an easily dominated hand. Would prefer to 3! light with suited cards. Also, don't want to isolate against a tight reg. Tight reg is calling a lot with AK/AQ/AJ/TT/JJ/QQ and you are asking for trouble playing a competent player OOP. You will make top pair and lose a big pot a lot.

I would cbet. The flop hits your range. AA/AK/AQ/TT/Axs. If you had QJs or 76s, you would bet it as a bluff. You protect your hand and build the pot so you can shove the river.

This is a hard hand to play even from the button - obvious fold pre-flop

Looks like the spot to put my dumb play of the week. Promotion is flopping 4 of a kind. It started with aces and becomes increasingly bigger as it works its way down.

It’s on threes for a win of a couple of grand. So, I get 33 in early position and raise to 10 as I normally do. Everyone folded and I will never know if I would have flopped four of a kind.

I have to say it’s weird that you say you’ve been card dead, but are perceived as a LAG
Strange that you 3bet from the big blind with a folding hand
Strange that you flopped 2pair and checked

If there’s ever been an over-thinker it’s you doc. I kinda feel like giving you the GTO answer - “You didn’t play GTO, so I have no solution for you”. Seriously, it’s hard for me to contemplate your best play, when I would absolutely never play it that way.

Your posts remind me of another important poker skill: Be a good listener!

Not only can you extract information, but everyone likes to talk and sometimes it’s a friendly thing just to listen. I read all your posts doc and appreciate the time and effort you put into it, even when I don’t agree.

I forgot to include in my OP - when V raised pre, I'm not sure exactly what I noticed, but for some reason I got the feeling he was weak, and raising a more speculative hand. When he didn't 4B or snap call my 3B, that just reinforced the impression that he wasn't happy calling a 3B from the BB.

If we're folding AT pre, I wonder if we're over-folding. I tend to mix with AT, but generally I'd probably flat call more with ATs and 3B more with ATo. Here, when my read was that V was weak and opening wide, AT seems like much more of a 3B.

I think he's generally tight, at least early in a session. I'd noticed he was showing down some surprising hands as the session wore on, so again, I think AT is likely to be ahead of a decent chunk of his opening range here.

I don't play many hands from OOP in 3BP's where I'm the 3B'er, so I will admit I'm probably making the most mistakes in these situations. I'm not certain I would be betting QJs or 76s on this board. I think my c-bet range is going to be built around value hands and higher equity semi-bluffs. It's possible I'm not betting enough of my range.

Like I said in my OP, I thought that if I started out c-betting the flop, he'd end up over-folding a ton on the turn, and I'd only get one street of value, but if I checked, I'd be more likely to get two streets, and we might be able to get stacks in if he improved to a 2nd best hand.

I may need to spend some more time reviewing pre-flop charts. ATo seems like it's strong enough to play from most positions, certainly from the BTN. From the BB it seems like it could be a flat call or a 3B, but probably shouldn't be a fold.

My suspicion that V sees me as a LAG is based on a combination of past encounters with him, and how I was playing earlier in the session, when I was dealt a lot more playable hands. I've been somewhat card dead the last hour or two leading up to this hand.

I do have a tendency to over-think in some spots. But in my defense, it's something that only becomes relevant in maybe 5% of the hands I play, some of which get posted here. The vast majority of the hands I play are pretty straight-forward, and don't merit consideration of our reads or making big deviations.

I appreciate the kind words.

I see why you checked, but if you're viewed as a LAG, on a fairly dry board, and you bombed it pf, wouldn't down-cbetting make V think you're really FOS?

Both the 5.5X 3! and a small cbet (b30-ish) would make me think you specifically didn't have an Ace, or at worst, a weak one. Might induce an aggro response from a bleeding V, getting more and more angry they didn't leave an hour ago. And if they fold, you still added >1/3 onto your pile. Since he's sticky, you say, give him something to stick to.

Anyway, go a smidge higher on turn (or bet flop for 50 & turn can be smaller) and it'd make the river bite easier for V to swallow. Now, I probably just stick it in.

Edit: I didn't think the 3! was OOL, though most of the charts I've seen have that as a call instead. Yes, the rake is different. Yes, there's an initial limper and BB doesn't close the action. Yes, the open was to 5X. Yes to all of that, Mom.

I'd have made it 60-65 instead though

Pre - a bit too large, but you want to 3b bluff, sure. I would go with at least ATs with very low freq and knowing V is weak though, for example he opens 20 with AK+ and 12-15 for AJ, 99 etc. Even A5s is better in this case.
Flop - always cbet small on this dry board which hits your range AND V's. He could not fold any Ax, and you said he is sticky.
Turn - If bet on flop you can check to pot control, sure. If not betting is fine.
River - Bet small and fold to aggression.

Any chance to catch you at Parx? Would be good to have someone to discuss poker.

Against anyone described as somewhat tight preflop raising from MP, and with a laggy image ourselves, I think preflop is a pretty easy fold, no?

SPR is just over 2, so we can get stacks in whenever we want trivially postflop. So with this in mind I'd either bet very small (like maybe 1/4 PB) or check the flop. So I'm cool with our flop check. He'll likely bet all his Ax for us, perhaps even his underpairs when checked to, and perhaps even start bluffing against our show of weakness.

I'm cool with our turn bet to setup a trivial river jam.

Lol, might be the nutlow river card. AK/KK/QJ all gets there and now QQ/JJ/etc. will have a really difficult time paying off. I might deviate from my original shove plan and just bet small to eke out some value here. Although I guess you could argue we're missing massive value from AQ/AJ, so I still don't hate a shove (unless we're possibly considering a ridiculous fold if jammed on at this stack size, but man, it almost seems warranted).

GcluelessNLnoobG

Are the charts made for robot on robot play?

Or for a somewhat tight player raising an EP limper out of MP?

I dunno, maybe we have different ideas of what "somewhat tight" means and something is getting lost in translation.

GcluelesslostintranslationnoobG

Yeah, I also think that this is a very easy fold pre versus a tight player's MP open. I would never flat in this spot, and would only consider raising if I had a legitimate reason to believe that V was opening too wide (i.e. a very out-of-line showdown or two). You don't have to worry about "overfolding" from OOP facing a 5x iso in a raked game.

Flop and turn seem reasonable, although you could obviously make an argument for betting flop. On the river, block bet seems good, but shoving is also probably fine with your image. I would not check.

I'm not 3betting ATo into a tight, somewhat sticky player.

Flop is a candidate for a range bet. I would bet out $50 or $60 with anything I 3bet with, with the exception of exactly AA. Additionally, this guy is sticky so some sort of bet seems mandatory. Also also, not approved poker theory but I tend to think that when we make a dubious aggressive preflop move and we hit the best flop we can reasonably expect, we should bet that sucker.

Turn fine.

River I dunno lol. I probably shove in game and hope he has AQ/AJ.

If I decide to 3bet a hand like this (I don't vs this player), I'm getting money in on the flop when I hit as good as I've hit -- especially if V thinks I'm LAG.

Turn is fine -- definitely have to bet now. Shove river and hope he is sticky w/ an A.

I guess if you have some read he is weak preflop, that partly explains the 3! and thinking he doesn't have AK/AQ/AJ much, which would pay off on this board.

One problem is that most of a tight reg's raise/calling range should dominate ATo. If he is a professional player, he shouldn't be giving you reliable information on hand strength by his manner. There are also reverse tells, where acting hesitant could mean his is strong.

I would preflop 3-betting a stronger hand like AQ or something like QJs/76s. Then you will not be as directly dominated if you hit. Solvers like Axs, but that is better late in tournaments when you are not getting flat called much.

On the flop, you are only beaten by one combination of TT. He shouldn't have AA or 33. AK/AQ/AJ have 3 outs, KQ/KJ/QJ have 4 outs, and pps have 2 outs. It isn't that much, but if they hit, they will stack you, so I don't like giving a free card. If you cbet, it also becomes easier to shove on the river.

Why would V think we're really FOS if we bomb it pre and then down-bet on the flop? Because the down-bet looks weak? So this is supposed to look like one of those raise pre with KK and get scared of the A situations?

The thing is, even if I have KK, that still beats all his worse 1P holdings, so when we actually have AT, we'd only be targeting worse AX for value if we bet flop. My thinking was that if we check flop, and then bet turn, it REALLY looks FOS, and we can get called by more than just AX.

If we thought V could be induced into spaz raising by a down-bet, it would make sense. I wasn't sure this V could be induced to take aggressive action by betting small. I'd only seen him attempt a bluff when an opponent checked.

Not arguing against your logic. It's somewhat similar to what I was thinking on the turn. When he checks back flop, I started to narrow his range towards weaker hands, and thought a bigger turn bet folded out too much of that range, but a bet that wasn't much more than 1/2 pot might make him think I wasn't all that strong, and get him to call with more of that range.

No spoiler, but in hindsight, I think I did look weak, which was what I wanted. I was somewhat surprised with what V ended up having.

This hand and some other studying I've been doing recently have me somewhat focused on the playability of cuspy hands when we're in the BB.

When I played this hand my thinking is that ATs can be played as a raise or flat call, but ATo should probably just be raise or fold. More recently, I think it's okay to raise ATo occasionally, but it may be better played as a flat call than playing raise or fold.

I was playing at Parx weekly up until the past few months. Since then it's been more sporadic. I travel a lot for work, and I frequently have other demands on my time on the weekends. My sessions aren't planned. It's just whenever I have the opportunity to break out of jail.

If V raised to $20, I might have found a fold. Don't think I would have raised. Definitely would have folded if he raised more than $20. But when he opened to $15 over a limp, and whatever I saw made me think he was weak, it seemed like a good spot to 3B.

Everybody seems to be hating on ATo. I didn't think I was getting too far OOL in-game. But maybe I need to rethink things and pick better spots.

I mean, it's kinda right there in the thread title: we're up against a nit-reg.

GIfoldAQopreflopwithoutasecondthoughtagainstanyonedescribedevenremotelynittyG

I'm afraid I'm also in the fold preflop camp, but the flop check seems worse. Don't expect any pair worse than an Ace to bet for you and the weak Aces might check back as well. By all means keep it small to keep in the underpairs, the gutshots and the backdoor flush draws. We're you hoping to check-raise? Would rather keep things simple and bet-bet-bet

Yeah IMO if you want to play ATo as 3b bluff you could be either too wide or have a preflop range that can be optimized against regular 1/3 audience, i.e. there are better hands to use as a 3bet bluff when you know they call down with AKo, QQ, JJ, etc with high frequency. I am not a good player but I am guessing A5s, 56s would be better.

My logic was---and I go back & forth on it, because I realize now a LAG image like yourself can go chunky with your fat value pf and still get calls---big raise pf OOP = "please don't call or only 1 of you call, and I have a meh hand, with maybe a blocker." I didn't think you'd bet so big with AQs/AKo/JJ+. So, your A4/A5s hands caught your ace, but your various offsuit broadway trash and whatever else aren't liking the flop ace vs a nit's raise-call range. I perceive there's more non-ace combos in your range than not.

So if you down-cbet flop, I (as V) would be interpreting that as, 'H's range can beat an weak ace (supposedly), and H thinks they're supposed to bet this kind of small because their range wants a call by dominated aces/underpairs," but I'd think H having an ace is pretty unlikely. Clear as mud?

I didn't think you'd bomb pf with something as strong as KK. You want a call at that SPR. You just don't want a bunch of them. So a smaller raise, totally on board with. Bigger? You're polarizing.

As it happened, you want to play for stacks with an unlikely top two, so H wants calls. The nit expects you to bet an ace, so do so small, and they'll either call (making the required turn bet smaller), raise (yay!), or fold and H adds over 1/3 to their stack. I don't think they'll fold to a "normal" looking cbet, and b33-b40 is normal now. Get b10 cute with it, and they might.

I definitely wasn't planning to go for a check-raise. I also didn't expect him to bet much when I checked. In game I was just considering how to get the most value for my hand on a fairly dry, ace-high flop, and came to the conclusion that if I bet the flop I might only get one street of value, if that, but if I checked, even if he checked back, I might get two, and the SPR was low enough that I could size up on turn to get it all in by the river.

I don't specifically remember considering bet sizing on the flop. If I was going to bet, it would have been small, 1/3 pot or less. I suppose it's worth considering an even smaller bet size, not expecting it to induce a raise, but maybe just as a better way to get max value for my hand.

With this player type, and especially with this guy specifically, I think if I go bet-bet-bet, and he's calling the whole way, I end up running into top of range on the river. That might be AQ/AJ on a lot of run-outs, but it may also be something unexpected that improved at some point, and didn't raise, because that's how he plays - super trappy.

I don't want to sound defensive of how I played the hand. I think it's worth considering just folding pre, or maybe flatting rather than 3B'ing. When I give the reveal, I think people may think differently about my flop check, which I think is fine as an exploit of this player type, against his entire range (whether we were right or wrong about that range).

Once we get past the VPIP pre, the turn and river decisions are likely to be the ones most people would find challenging, based on how we range V and how our hand is doing vs that range. The reads pre ended up being more important than I realized.

I don't want to risk tipping anyone off before the reveal by saying too much about it.

You are right with this player type getting two streets of value is good. Maybe you know him but in general I think calling stations can call all three streets with weak aces occasionally. Also if you are determined to get two streets of value, IMO b-c-b could look weaker than c-b-b, as so many players just do automatic cbet while many of them are passive&trappy making c-b-b actually looks strong.

Not directed at you, just a general observation - there are a lot of pre-flop police who'll scold someone for VPIP'ing this or that hand, and they're not always wrong that some hands shouldn't be played as a raise or call or whatever. But we've all had the experience of VPIP'ing a hand we "shouldn't" be playing, and smashing the flop with it.

If I 3B pre with AQo, and the flop was AQ3rb, no one would hate on playing AQo as a 3B. If the board ran out the same way, 6d on the turn that brings in the BDFD, and an offsuit K on the river, the questions about how best to play the hand remain the same. So "fold pre and you wouldn't be here" doesn't really help. It only stops us from actually learning anything useful.

I mean...you all should be thanking me for playing all the trash hands you guys won't, so I can report back with how it works out.

You're welcome, internet people.

So...yeah, piling it in on the flop may be logically defensible, if we think our table image is doo-doo and we're going to get a ton of loose calls from a V who's sticky and possibly tilted from being up-stuck.

Not sure if I botched the description of V, but my general take was that he was sticky post, calling too much, bluff-catching too much, but also fit-or-fold, meaning he actually has to have a hand he thinks is good enough for him to bluff-catch. That was what cost him so much money - bluff-catching too much post-flop.

Like, if we had AA/KK and the flop is T72rb, we can blast off, expecting him to call down with all his JJ, Tx, probably a lot of his 99/88, and maybe even some 7x. He might have QQ/AK that didn't 4B pre. But when it's AT3rb, if we blast off, we might get called once by AQ/AJ, and maybe JJ, or AK/QQ, but I think he starts over-folding everything worse than AQ/AJ on the turn, and he's not calling a big river bet with AQ/AJ if we just go bet-bet-bet.

I thought it was possible he could get to the flop with TT. It's just one combo, but if we start blasting off, I think it becomes more likely we're running into it. I wasn't sure if he'd call pre with 66+, and so the turn possibly gives him another set to worry about.

He'll bluff when an opponent shows weakness, and I think he tends to bluff-catch more when opponents start out by checking to him. So I thought checking flop gives him an opportunity to start a bluff, but more importantly, it enables us to get a bigger bet called on the turn, and possibly a really big bet called on the river.

I definitely thought he was weak pre-flop. He only opened to $15 over a limp, and he seemed uncomfortable doing it. He definitely didn't seem to love it when I 3B pre.

In-game, I wasn't completely ruling out AK. I thought he may or may not 4B AK pre. Against me, I thought he might 4B AK a little more, probably with a preference for 4B'ing with AKs more often than AKo. But I also thought he'd bet flop with AK at some frequency, and raise turn with AK, because of the BDFD.

The one combo I thought he might play this way would be AKdd. But there again, I think he might have some 4B frequency with AKs pre, he might bet it on the flop, and while he might think AKdd is pretty invulnerable on the turn, I could be bluffing, and I'm not going to barrel river or pay off a big bet if the flush comes in.

He's a tight reg, but he's definitely not a crusher. He has some pretty obvious leaks - he's too sticky, too trappy, and bluff-catches too much. He built a huge stack snapping off silly bluffs from the rec-fish, and occasionally running a late-street bluff when the fish gave up and checked.

What I saw definitely wasn't a reverse tell. It was so slight - his eyes darted around the table when he raised, then he turned his head away from the table, but kept his eye on the action. He looked genuinely disappointed when I 3B. He looked at me, like he was trying to get a read for how strong I might be, or if I was just FOS.

There's a hesitation when they're strong, but it's different. They look at our chip stack, or their own. They look up and away, like they're trying to remember something or do maths in their head. They don't eyeball you. Then they 4B. They don't flat.