1/2 bluff this river?
1/2 bluff this river?

1/2 bluff this river?

1/2 500 effective , 9 handed

MP raises to 10 , CO and BTN call . I am in BB w/ A3 raise to 45 ... all call

FLOP (180) - J72
I check, checks around

TURN (180) 5
I bet 65 , CO calls, others fold

RIVER (310) 9
I bett 105

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villain tanks, and calls with 78 :/ I feel like I maybe only played the flop correctly here.... My river bet kind of make sense to me to target lower PPs and pairs.. but maybe should have gone bigger , like 2/3? Also maybe should have gone bigger on Turn...

08 April 2026 at 09:11 PM
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11 Replies



You aren't repping anything other than maybe JJ - at the same time your opponents shouldn't have much. I think if you're going to bluff go bigger like 200 - not a fan of the bluff regardless.


Don't put results immediately, others might be influenced by your results.

Preflop is too small if you want to 3bet. The "standard"/normal size is at least 60-70. Also I wouldn't 3bet such hand live, I rather 3bet AJo/KQo than this trash.
Flop is fine.
Turn your bet sizing is too small, either size up to like 90-100 or check. Check doesn't mean give up we can check/jam if someone bets very small like yourself here.
River sizing is really small, you are targetting folds from what? draws? but your hand beat draws.
River sizing probably go homongous, V's range probably capped after checking flop and calling small turn bets, we can even pot/jam if wanted to. But thing is some villains are very sticky even when they're capped and you didn't bet flop so villain might be capable of looking you up.
So either check river or go big.


Pretty much what Mango wrote. H closes the action pf, this is 1/2, H didn't give a read that Vs thought him nitty, and it's gotta get through 3 Vs. Just call.

J72r is as dry as it gets and you rep a small range by betting out on flop. X is fine. Also agree with betting out bigger with our 12-15 (if the ace is good) out draw.

Bet bigger on river if you want better to fold. B50-67 or so. Bluffing was my first choice, but pf65 makes a decent point. V called, checked, called: they may not have anything that beats A-high, and if they do have a 7, 2, or 5, are they really folding at 1/2 unless H goes nuts? It's helpful to know they can fold before sticking in 75-100 bigs on a river bluff.


Don't put the reveal in your first post.

Grunch:

PRE - I wouldn't raise this hand from the BB. Just flat call and see a flop.

FLOP - definitely check.

TURN - don't bet. At least not small. Either go for an over-bet, or go for a check raise.

RIVER - way too small to fold anything. Jam all in if you want anything to fold.


what are you repping exactly?


Jamming river might not make a ton of sense, basically repping AJ-AA and JJ only, but in practice it performs beautifully.


Just don’t like the story
You raise from the BB (I would not have done) so the action says you’re strong.

Then you check flop indicating you missed everything. If you bet flop, seven likely goes away.

Then you bet a brick turn, I guess because you picked up a draw. Your mixed signals has villain thinking you’re fos and he calls down.

Unfortunately, there are many players that will not go away if they catch any piece of the board as you found out here.

I would strongly suggest that if you insist on raising OOP preflop, you follow up with a cbet to continue the story of strength

If you had called pre, then check flop looks natural and now your turn bet takes it down.

The most important thing in poker is how villain reads you. Many of these posts don’t contain that info, where if I knew hero’s image, it would change my opinion.


Haven't seen other responses or result.

Preflop I would default to a fold more often than not, however suited Aces are perfectly OK to squeeze sometimes and when you are somewhat deep it's a better time to increase that frequency; I'd go a touch larger. You could also overcall.

Very dry flop OOP which you have completely missed albeit with a sliver of backdoor equity. Is there any merit to making a very small bet to fold out Ax which could get you into trouble on later streets if you hit? The original raiser might feel uncomfortable with a hand like 88 as well with two players behind. Checking also seems fine, things haven't gone our way since the squeeze. You could also check some strong hands here.

Turn once it checks around you would probably bet those strong hands, and the 5h shouldn't help anyone (obviously it's pretty much the best card you could hope for your hand) so the delayed cbet is natural. The checks behind have kept ranges wide so small sizing OK I imagine?

CO is presumably on the weaker side (preflop call-call not last to act, as well as passive postflop play) and you have already folded out his Ax. Given passivity he may check behind those rare flush draws that you beat. He probably won't fold a Jack unless you go big, so you're targetting a pretty small range of hands. A check-raise bluff is a little tempting against a weak opponent even if your story doesn't make sense, but I'd probably just check-fold here, expecting to win very occasionally.


OP, welcome to the forum.

I’m never 3betting A3s in the BB, probably never 3betting it on any street. I would rather use A5s as a bluffing hand. If players are transparent calling stations, I’ll happily call pre in this spot. I’m mostly folding to unknowns.

Flop is whatever

I like the turn bet, but the bluff failed. Now you have to check fold.


You 3! and then check flop. Would you do that with QQ-AA? No. Would you check Jx? No. When you check, Vs going to put you on Ax. When you are the pfr, it's odd to go for a x/r, so people aren't going to expect it. Your check screams small pair or Ax.

When you bet turn, if you have a small pair that checked flop are you going to bet now? Probably not. You'd check again and bluffcatch. The only way you pick up equity is Axhh. So from Vs perspective, you pretty much always have a FD on the turn. No value makes sense. Even if you had JJ and were trying for a weird x/r on the flop, you would bet bigger now to extract value from a FD.

OTR, you're bluffing small when the obvious draw missed. I think a good player would call a jam light. With a small bet it's a trivial call for V.

If you want to bluff this hand, I think the path has to be small c-bet that you could make with any Jx and AK type hands. Then leverage your draw with a big turn bet. You had back doors galore OTF and the turn was perfect.

So two paths, bet very small on flop like $30. Then bet $150ish on turns you pick up equity and jam river. It's a bit forced, I'd rather do that with $1000+ so the river can be big enough to clear Jx.

Given stack sizes, I think cbetting something like $65 and jamming turn as a slight overbet when backdoors come in, checking turn when they don't is probably the best line. If you're going to check flop, I think checking turn is best, maybe you can x/r on the strength of your draw. X/b/b from OOP is a line that's going to get a ton of calls and is rarely a good bluff.


If we’re going to squeeze here we need to go a lot bigger than $45.

The only hands folding to our river sizing are busted straight draws that we beat

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