NL10 - Facing a river shove with QQ

To start off, I think your 4 bet sizing here is a just a little to large. You could have went a little larger than 4x, perhaps 4.5?-- 6x is a just a little bit too large, in my opinion. I am leaning towards a call here as played, you might have considered check calling river instead of half potting it OOP, just to keep the pot smaller, and then folded if he jammed. I'm not sure why, but i kind of get the feeling like this was a bluff maybe 88- JJ or a missed Ax/Kxhh hand. He does have all the 9s in his range, but I feel like if he had really had the 9 he would have bet turn. Its pretty thin, but i think i would call most the time against most players.

3 bet, and kxhd my apologies, typos.

Sizing pre is good, you don't want both of them to call and you want value for your hand. 4.5x vs open and a call is defs too small.

I think this is a call for a few reasons:

1) Villain is repping very thin. They'll have T9s and 98s in range pretty much and nothing else, and even those probably fold at some frequency. 44 might be in there at some low frequency but is a pretty ambitious call vs. squeeze. There is one combo of 99 as well. 9x will also bet turn a lot, making it less credible they have it on the river.

2) Villain has a lot of floats by the river of which to bluff with. A lot of AK, AQ, AJs, stuff with overs + backdoors. The proportion of those hands massively outweighs their value (something like 10 to 1 I would say).

3) Your betsize may have induced. I haven't done much mass data analysis myself (so my source is second hand) but small river probes oop are overbluff raised according to data. This is probably still possibly true vs. a 1/2 pot bet.

All these things considered this becomes a clear call.

A few things you could do to improve here:

1) Size up on the flop. This flop is low and bone dry, you want to put overcards into a tougher spot and build a pot. In theory you also allow your bluffs to go through and get equity denial for hands like TT and JJ. In practice though it just makes sense on this flop to size up and get value.

2) You can keep betting on the turn. 9x is just super unlikely in villains range, and you can keep getting value from JJ, TT, some strong A-high, and of course other pocket pairs.

3) Once you check the turn and they check back, your hand has something like 95% equity. What beats you? You could easily overbet this river, and you might get some hero calls. The other option is to do kind of what you were doing (though I don't know what your reasoning was) - and that is to bet small to induce a raise from villain's weak range. I would say going into the 1/2 pot territory might already skew some villains to not bluff raise when they otherwise would have. So making it like 33% here would be nice. The other option is, like I said, a nice overbet of like 125-150%.

I actually came back here to type a more detailed review for him and you pretty much said everything i was going to say in your last 2 so ill leave him with your solid advice haha I was going to add the half pot lead oop after the check looked like he was trying to buy it just because of the sizing(half pot way overbluffed), and to either lead out really big or check call and realistically the only hands that would beat him there are 44 and q9s/k9s/a9s/T9s, which would have bet turn most likely. I 100% agree with you that his river bet induced a bluff here.

Thank you for your tips guys! I appreciate it. But I dont understand how villain never has 9 here when it checks behind turn. I would certainly sometimes check turn behind instead of betting if I had the hand locked to induce bluffs on the river?

In my mind, It really comes down to him calling the UTG RFI before your 3 bet, he shouldn't have called that with things like Q9s, etc. Had he opened from the CO for example it would be a little bit different story. The only hands he should realistically have done that with is a couple of combos of T9s, maybe A9 or K9s as well. He would most likely want value from his hand, while he can, and its unlikely a river is going to improve you much to start opening betting again after you check. Dont start blasting every board because I say this, but in general, you want to keep the betting lead on boards like that, and only consider getting out to a raise, when you are holding a strong hand like that. When you check there you are opening yourself up to get bluffed, or having a bad river card roll off that he smacks for free. I know it certainly LOOKS like a scary board, but try to think about what his entire range looks like in those spots, and not just the few hands that is beating you.

Opening utg and then facing a big squeeze, they should be folding most 9x off the bat. A9s maybe, 98s and 87s I would say are the most realistic. K9s and Q9s seem really loose. For the sake of this analysis lets give villain all combos of 98s, 87s and A9s. Note that this is already wayyyy looser than gto, and I would say clearly looser than how an average 20/20 plays (do they even open K9s or Q9s utg?).

Anyways, If you then think of the combinations of those hands on the turn, villain only has 6 combos of 9x. Of those, let's again say very cautiously that villain checks half of the time, we are now at 3 combos of 9x on the river (most likely in practice they have even less 9x to begin with and might bet something like 80-90% on turn). At the same time, they can have 12 combos of AK, 8 combos of AQ, 3 combos each of AJs and ATs (with backdoor). Then add some overs with backdoors and perhaps some lower pps that could be spazzing here. All in all, villain gets to the river with an overwhelming majority of air and worse hands over hands that beat you.

These posts gave me so much good knowledge to think about! Thank you so much! By the way... I was the river bluffer. During the hand I was shouting: "HOW COULD HE CALL WHEN IM REPPING DA NUTS AND THIS LINE IS UNDERBLUFFED". So I reversed the hand and wanted to see what people say. This was a valuable lesson for me.

And I know I should have folded (or 3betted) against the UTG and especially after the SQZ but I felt like Phil Hellmuth. I got what I deserved LOL!

SB: $20.23 (202.3 bb)
BB: $8.55 (85.5 bb)
UTG: $18.82 (188.2 bb)
Hero (MP): $10.39 (103.9 bb)
CO: $11.06 (110.6 bb)
BTN: $10.78 (107.8 bb)

Preflop: Hero is MP with 8

7

UTG raises to $0.20, Hero calls $0.20, 2 folds, SB raises to $1.20, 2 folds, Hero calls $1

Flop: ($2.82) 2

9

2

(2 players)
SB bets $0.90, Hero calls $0.90

Turn: ($4.62) 9

(2 players)
SB checks, Hero checks

River: ($4.62) 4

(2 players)
SB bets $2.20, Hero raises to $8.27 and is all-in, SB calls $6.07

Results: $21.16 pot ($1 rake)
Final Board: 2

9

2

9

4

SB showed Q

Q

and won $20.16 ($9.77 net)
Hero showed 8

7

and lost (-$10.39 net)

haha ya got me!

😃

Yeah that's a nice way of getting feedback for a hand! Glad to help.

I think the hand you showed underlines my and Outlaw97FTW's points. Seeing that you're getting to the river with even a wider range than what we mentioned, your skewedness towards bluff becomes even bigger. It's not just about how often you think someone bluffs (or in this case you), it's also about how many bluff candidates someone can have. If villain can have 100 bluff candidates and 1 value, they need to bluff about 1/200 to have roughly the correct amount of bluffs. I.e. it's very easy to overbluff in this case. And of course in this case it's also fairly easy for your opponent to realise that you are air heavy.

So if you land on a street where you have a lot of air and very few value hands, you need to either be very selective of your bluffs, or to have a very good exploitative reason why you think villain will overfold.

Anyways, I think not being gun shy is a good thing, so if you hone on your timing and hand reading you will do well. Gl!

Very well said. I really need to start thinking how many air hands versus value hands I through the eyes of the villain before I unload my CANNON!

And yes I have started practising bluffing more after watching some twitch streamers play. So far I think I have lost more than won by big bluffs. I think I am choosing the wrong spots in many cases. This is why this feedback is so precious! ♥

Yeah I agree, betting turn + betting river would have told a better story. But yeh, next time I fold preflop versus SQZ 😃

live and learn 😃

One more thing--
in theory, the only suited connector you should 3 bet HJ v UTG is 65s as you can make a better straight to his lower wheel aces 😃

I'll keep that in mind! 😀

Its underbluffed because you are repping very few combos and people are attached/stubborn with overpairs

Yeah I think I will try to play this month with 0% big bluffs. I will only semibluff and do small bluffs. I will probably print MONEYZ lol

I was going to say you've induced a river bluff perfectly here by checking the turn and it's got to be a clear call with QQ. haha

Yeah that turn smelled so weak!

Cbet bigger. Turn check is good if you think he will bet low pp for protection, ap you can bet bigger otr. Fold vs raise, ppl like to slow play FH and this would be weird way to bluff.

I read somewhere that on dry boards 1/3 cbet is okay. I have started practising that on possible trips boards and also on dry boards like A83r. Against regs. Against fishes I bomb 2/3 for value if I hit anything

I think hero should cbet big on this flop. He has all the overpairs. He can also bet QJs KQs type hands big as well. Hands like AK I think he's supposed to check most of the time

Okey, good to know!