AQo Double pair

Thanks all for your comments.

Final result: Villain shows 66 with a flopped set. Takes all Heros money.

What did you learn from this hand?

This may seem results oriented at first, but I think there's a good takeaway in the reveal. We know he flopped a set, and didn't x/r flop. It seems very likely he would have x/r'd the turn if you'd bet.

Imagine if you bet around 1/2 pot or a little less on the turn. With the BDFD appearing, and with 2 Broadway cards on board, including the ace, he would very likely x/r big.

Could we have gotten away from our hand? Maybe. Maybe not. When they x/c flop and x/r turn, it's not usually a bluff.

But even if we didn't get away, we'd be getting more value from his occasional bluffs. And more importantly, if he did NOT raise turn, we could be fairly sure we have the best hand going to the river.

Even if he just x/c's another 1/2 pot bet on turn, he's going to donk river at a fairly high frequency, after we bet small and get called twice, because we'll be checking back a lot of rivers in that line. If he comes out and donks river, even for a large size, we can fold the worst hands in our range, and just flat call with 2P, and not get stacked. He's probably not going to donk-jam 1.75x pot when we look weak.

That's the big takeaway, IMO. By checking back the turn, we make it much more likely that V will take this sort of line on the river, and we make it much harder for us to fold top 2P, because we did under-rep our hand. He can have some better hands and some worse hands in this line.

Thanks a lot for your analysis. This definitely makes sense in this way. Lesson learnt! A bet in the turn would give us more info.

Hey, I am a little late to the party, but I still wanted to drop my thoughts. I am an amateur, by no means an expert...

OTT, I am definitely in favor of betting, but I wanted to give a different perspective on it.

Let's say your analysis is correct and V will fold all non Ax hands. What are you doing with air? For 1/2pot bluff to be profitable, you need V to fold more than 77%. If he is folding all of his non Ax hands, you should be pure betting air there.

Now, if Villain is the kind of passive one that will fold more than 77% OTT, it might make sense to slow down with such robust value. However, is this the guy we are really trusting to put money in for us OTR? I think even in that case, we should be betting ourselves

Obviously, I think, like many have said here, you will get overcalled both on turn and river (especially at this SPR) but the mental test here is - if you aren't confident enough to fire this spot liberaly with air, rest assured you will get called with your value.

Regarding the river, it is, in my opinion, the interesting part of the hand.

First, I don't think that the fact that you x turn made it harder for you OTR. River is a difficult spot because you have a very strong hand, yet not the nuts, and someone jammed into you. There are other reasons to bet the turn, better, more constructive ones.

To emphasize my point, let's say you filled up OTR.

What if:
- board ran Q63-8
- You x-back turn (I would still bet this turn here).
- The river brings an A.
- Villain x you overbet and get jammed.

While a bet is still probably the right move OTT, you can't claim that you are betting turn to make life easier with a nutted hand OTR.

We need to be able to handle this situation in a vaccum.

And, like others said here, and like you said, this spot is severely underbluffed.

It makes much more sense for a Rec V to just come out and bet with a bluff himself as opposed to x/r bluff, also, the speed in which he did it means he planned this ahead - is he really going to come up with a bluff that fast, without internalizing the meaning of your bet (you mentioned your bet looks bluffy, no way V was able to internalize this that fast and decide to shove). Again, is he really planning ahead to x/jam a bluff over just coming out and bluffing himself? Makes IMO more sense that this is a trap from a Rec.

Also it is worth noting that you overbet the river which even further reduced the likelihood (in GTO too BTW) of V finding a bluff here. If you bet 33% pot OTR the chances he is bluffing probably increase (but they are still not high).

Is he never bluffing? Perhaps he is, but it is so rare I think, like others here, we should be more interested in figuring out if he is doing this with worse.

Regarding his strong hands:
- OTR he could have 33,66,88 that beat us. He has a filtered pile of them since he would x/r flop/come out and bet river.
- He could have A3,A6,A8,Q6,Q3,Q8. You need to figure out here if he is ever raising river with one of them. You need to also decide if his calling pre with offsuit combos of these/only suited. Also he has a filtered pile of these as some of them would also raise flop/come out and bet river.

But looking at the combinatorics and the fact you need to be good ~30% vs that river jam if there is even a small chance he is ever bluffing here/jamming worse you can probably call.

However, and this is hard to do at the moment, especially live when you can sit for hours and not have anything happen - when you finally hit you are mentally seeing yourself scooping a large pot and it is hard to let go of that thought and will at the moment, it can also be embarrassing to fold such a strong hand, ask yourself if you were in Villain's shoes and you were facing a scary bet like that OTR are you really fist bump shoving A6? Are you SNAP shoving A6 without at least taking a moment to figure out your relative hand strength?

I think most Recs will never shove a hand worse than a set on this river, the only hand you beat that maybe maybe a Rec will shove is A8 - and A8 also gets filtered on the flop (he will fold A8o, only call with BDFD and depneds on the board suits he could only have 1/2 combos of A8 OTR) and A8s also gets filtered OTR as he will sometimes come out and bet A8 OTR.

In my opinion a Rec will NEVER, not sometimes, NEVER bluff this - especially giving his timing and your size, and in my opinion will NEVER, not sometimes, raise a worse hand for value - especially giving his timing and your size.

You know your table best and like I said this is a VERY hard spot as you really only need him to either bluff or jam worse a sliver of the time. And against certain profiles like maniacs or clueless players it can certainly be a call. But I think that in most places and tables at this stakes this is a fold.

Also and this is important IMO, even in the scenario I invented where the A comes OTR, IMO THIS IS STILL A FOLD. Yes your hand is under-reped but there are stronger factors in play here, the fact Villain jammed on top of your overbet is far more prevalent than the fact you x back the turn. Everybody hates getting bluffed and when you trap there is always that feeling that you opened the door for Villain to bluff you but when you look at the bigger picture yeah you perhaps look weaker than you are OTR but you still overbet and he still jammed on top of that - it is still a very very (if ever) underbluffed line.

After having said all of that, at the pressure of the moment I can't see myself finding a fold :p even though I think it is the right thing to do if we fill up to top-two OTT or OTR.

I would size up this flop (or size down more). Going bigger will still get calls from 77-JJ as well as Qx given how dry it is. Alternatively you could go even smaller to get calls from Ax, gutshots etc.

I'm not going to say much about the turn because it's all been said but you absolutely must bet here. Yes SB may have a lot of Ax and Qx here but that's all the more reason to bet; you may feel pretty invincible with top two but Qx won't feel that way at all. You don't have to go massive but you do want a size where you can get stacks in.

You give some reasoning for your river overbet sizing but in cross-examination I would suggest to you that the true reason for the overbet is a rising panic inside you that you've got top two and have missed out on a huge amount of value, and your sizing is a knee jerk reaction to this. What hands are you targetting? Would those hands not bet the river?

Tricky to work out what hands check the river here, most people would bet. Including single paired Ax and A6/A3/rivered two pair hands. I mean yes you have to bet the river but there are no bluffs apart from 54 (do KJ/KT call the flop?) and very few players turn hands like Qx into a bluff here, even if they should.

I like the way SB played the hand btw; the river check takes some nerve but he should expect you to bet your Ax hands and to stab your air, and obviously he played it perfectly against your actual hand.