Hero call with AK on Q-high board vs LP.

Little confused by your hand here—do you have a Diamond or not?

I’m fine calling without one, but if we’re calling this with every Ace-high we’re clearly gonna be calling too much.

Well, irrespective of if you have a diamond… So v is passive, has just shown absolutely zero aggression on a previous fd, and for some reason you wanna call 2 barrels with ace high?

Bet or check/fold turn (i lean check fold), fold river.

I also think checking flop is fine, but betting is fine too.

Apologies: it should say hero dealt A♥ K♠

Hmm, I think you can bet big on the turn and be done with the hand. Betting around $100 might make him fold pairs. Maybe he even folds 67 or A4 to that sizing.

As played:

It's a fold. Holding a diamond reduces your equity significantly.

You should fold all hands with a diamond or club A-high. For example, AJ♣ should also fold here.

Call with AK or AJ that don't have a ♦ or ♣

This is a situation where the loose-passive description can be limited. I'd been at the table for over an hour and saw villain get to the river nearly as often as he got to the flop. I was thus in a situation where betting turn would mean betting many rivers as well. I was prepared to x/f the turn but his sizing was small, plus there were a few timing/live tells that kept me interested. I find against this player type, there's a tendency to bet larger when you check and they've got a pair.

I don't believe I'm calling with all Ax here --- probably only AT-AK. Villain will stilll bluff with Ax (mostly busted flushes) even though he shouldn't. I struggle to find much value for Villain. He's betting larger on the turn with a Qx, 3x and 66-TT. On the river he's not betting 5x for value. He doesn't have much 9x aside from busted diamonds and I believe he's taking showdown with most 9x anyway. We're talking about a player who's playing nearly every hand and just wants to hit flops, turns and rivers. I'm not sure how interested he is in betting thin value, unless he's certain he's got the best hand. I still have have 88-JJ in my range, too, after squeezing from the SB.

The optimal play here is to call with 88-JJ and some Aces, but without a diamond or club. However, if you start folding these hands, the strategy shifts toward an exploitable approach. Whether this is good or not depends on your reads and notes on the opponent.

What were the the "a few timing live tells?"

I think the problem is that sometimes V is "bluffing" with 44 or 52 or whatever, so your read is correct but you lose.
Also just the any2 loose passive probably isn't bluffing enough to call down A high.

Also FWIW the third pot turn and half pot river does not scream bluff to me. Eg. V has lots of the 3x combos. on the flop, and might well play them like this.

I could see myself calling here. You’re getting a good price and Villain has obvious bluffs in range. I actually think low stakes live Villains are way more likely to be bluffing for small sizes (like half pot) than for large ones, so this line is consistent with that.

The other factor - do loose passive villains bet this river for thin value with a hand like QJ? Obviously that hand should be betting here, but I would expect this player type to check back a lot of Qx to get to showdown. Also feels like Villain would want to go bigger with 3x or a boat.

Difficult to put into words. Villain was not overly seasoned, let's say. During the previous hand I mentioned (where he called with a gutshot royal-draw) he literally grimaced when the river bricked and then auto-checked. On the turn, in the hand in question, he seemed surprised that I checked, so there was this delay/ad-hoc nature to his bet (can always be a reverse-tell of course). There was some sudden eye-movement on the river when I was reaching for my chips etc.,. I'm not going to pretend I'm some live-tell guru (I get this stuff wrong on a regular basis and it doesn't feel great recounting it tbh) but with players who are playing a very high VPIP you get to observe them a little more. This villain didn't seem particularly guarded in his body language --- of that I'm confident.

There aren't many slowplayed value hands on the flop: just 33 and 55. I didn't believe the "surprise" was a reverse-tell, in this case, but like I suggested I wasn't 100% confident.

I tend to agree about the river bet being polarised (a value bet with a good Q+ or a bluff). But doesn't this mean AK without a diamond is a call? I can't see much of a nutted value range.

I don’t think the blocker matters. Since there are so few value hands that would play this way, if Villain has enough bluffs to make any AK high a call, we’re not sweating the blocker.

The question isn’t about bluff combos vs. value combos. It’s about whether Villain is going to pull the trigger on a double barrel turn/river bluff. This is something we should be asking ourselves before calling the turn. The turn to me is the main decision point, not the river.

Calling turn and folding river only makes sense if: we think Villain is capable of bluffing one barrel but not two, or, we know calling the turn was a mistake and we don’t want to compound it.

EDIT: I didn’t see that you mentioned Qx as going in his value range. Now all of a sudden I think both calls are big mistakes. Combos of Qx that this player could limp/call with add up quickly to outweigh busted draw combos.

It doesn't seem like a Q or 55. The line is probably more consistent with 3x. He's definitely calling flop with a 3. If I bet turn he'd likely trap with his trips, so betting small, when I check, kind of makes sense.

Don’t hero call loose passives, ldo.

Turn feels too early to explo fold against this size unless you’re really confident in your read, though. Betting is also fine.

PRE - what's the typical open size in this game? Why are we opening to $36 here? That seems a little big, no?

FLOP - we're OOP on a board that doesn't necessarily smash our range. I think I'd just start with a check, and see what V does. We can make a delayed c-bet on the turn if he checks back. If he bets, with no diamond in our hand, we might check-raise.

TURN - the 3s is mostly a brick, unless we think V gets here with a lot of 3x in his range. If we c-bet the flop, I think we could / should barrel here, rather than give up the betting lead. AP, a check-raise on the turn wouldn't make much sense, and folding AK to this bet size seems a little too nitty, so I guess we have to call.

RIVER - against a loose-passive player, I think we can mostly check-fold here.

Generally v 2 limps I'm squeezing at least 6-7x OOP in this game. 9x was targeting Villain given his high VPIP.

I see the argument for checking flop but versus this Villain I regarded AK as a value bet (I'm not joking).

The question of the turn is interesting, for, if I regarded my flop bet as a value bet then shouldn't I be betting turn for value/protection as well? I guess it was x/reassess. Versus a low-sizing/some timing and live tells I assessed it was better to call (x-raising not making sense).

A few have suggested that the river is a fold largely because Villain is loose-passive, which, in theory, makes sense:

It is interesting that I departed from the norm here:

The question to me is when and why do LPs bluff? Keep in mind that I'm confident this villain was a classic loose-passive, but I could be wrong.

Generally, I'd say LPs have the tendency to:

• mostly bluff busted draws (i.e. don't turn pairs into bluffs).
  
• occasionally stab with draws when checked to on turns (especially when losing).
  
• panic-bluff rivers, with non-value sizings, when checked to twice.
  

It seems like we set ourselves up to get bluffed on the river by checking turn. If we think AK is a value bet, I suppose we should just continue to barrel?

Just to add to the above...

My LAG instincts suggested we might be ahead the whole way here, which is why I think I'd prefer to barrel turn on what I'd view as a brick.

But when we check turn, V bets 1/3 pot, and then V takes 1/2 pot sizing on river, I feel like we need to have a very strong read to bluff catch with AK. The loose-passive read doesn't really seem to jive with him taking the betting lead on turn and barreling river with a total air ball. It seems more like he has some value hand that he knows is good and is just trying to milk us.

If he's actually somewhat aggro, in the sense that he'll frequently start a bluff when action checks to him, that's different. But even if he's that type, he could be bluffing with A5dd, or ran into 9Xdd, or just bluffing with some middling PP that's getting out of line, and we still lose.

Yes, perhaps. But then again we often B-X/C-X/C with the weak part of our value range, although we typically do so because the board texture effectively devalues our hand. I still don't mind a turn bet, but in the end AK was a bluff-catcher because our opponent decided to bet-bet.

This player was not aggro, as far as I could tell, given the hour or so I'd been at the table. Against a player who planned to bluff river after (semi)-bluffing turn, we'd be facing a larger river bet, unless the player had the smarts to target A-high with their cheeky 9x.

I would've been surprised to call and lose to a 9, especially a 5, which he might bet on turn but not on the river. This is a player who plays nearly every hand and just wants to (finally) drag in a pot. Betting thin doesn't cross his mind and turning a low pair into a bluff doesn't make sense (he'd just check knowing he's a chance of raking in a pot without the stress of wasting more chips). I'd expect to mostly lose to QJ+. Hopefully I would've still posted this hand if I did.

What does passive mean to you? To me it suggests he does not bluff as often as he should. How do you feel you should play against and opponent that puts in money most of the time and does not bluff as often as they should?

These questions sound a little rhetorical to me but I’d answer that

• passive means players tend to be reactive and generally only bet themselves when they are seeking clear value for their hand
  
• we should therefore exploit them by betting value hands and folding to their rare moments of aggression unless we believe we have a better value hand/or can bluff them ourselves.
  

Of course my italics are there because we’re talking about an imperfect category. A player can be passive and still bluff. This is not a contradiction because of how they bluff (without much thought about blockers or what value hands they’re representing), a type of bluff that isn’t a fully aggressive action. A LP’s bluff is more “a last ditch effort” to avoid defeat. In this sense it should be easier to bluff catch them than some other player types.

Yes, worse players have a worse understanding of when they should put money into the pot.

Yes, they can see the "bet flop; check turn" line and decide it means they can bluff for cheap on the turn, and then when called decide to bluff bigger on this river.
But they can also make the same kind of mistake and decide 66 is probably good on the turn, and they can value bet again on this river. And, given their description as passive, are more likely to make this kind of mistake than decide to start bluffing turn+river.

They are also allowed to have at least the two combos. of A3s.

We can exploit both of these tendencies by playing QT/JJ/TT or even 88 this way.
AK feels like a hand where it'll be good some of the time, but not often enough to be a good call. And we are allowed to get bluffed sometimes.