A tale of two dubious turn jams...

Hand 1 is bad until the jam, which is fine. Nothing else you can really do except bet smaller and pray for no diamond or paired board on the river.

Hand 2 is fine until the jam, although I probably just fold to the raise on the flop. I see no reason to bluff here. Not sure what you expect him to fold except a bluff.

You're being kind. Hand 1 was terrible until the jam. And I'm not sure the jam isn't terrible in this spot, if I'm putting him on 2P / sets, but he might actually have a flush.

Hand 2, I wasn't sure I actually was bluffing.

I unblock all his most likely bluffs - AKo with two of the suits on board, A5s of one of the suits on board, 88-99 - but I don't beat all those bluffs, only A5s.

There were few if any hands I could see taking his line for value, and all his most likely bluffs have equity against my hand, or are actually ahead of my hand, so I thought I'd be denying a ton of equity by jamming turn and making all those hands fold.

At least, I think that's right. I'm waiting for the theorists to weigh in.

I will give a bit of a spoiler preview, by saying both V's tanked for a LOOOOONNNNGGGG while before making their decisions in each hand.

OK, terrible! I doubt he has a flush, but it is possible -- I hope not 😉

There are just so few bluff check/raises on this flop -- and you 3bet pre. I mean, this is 1/3, not 5/5+. He's very rarely check/raising w/o some piece of this board or JJ/QQ maybe? I guess he might fold AT or a smaller pair, but does he check/raise the flop? So, he "put you on AK"? I hope he has a fold button and you have a respectable image at the table.

What I was thinking in game is that there are also very few check-raises for value on this flop, when he raises out of the SB, but then just flat-calls my 3B pre.

Part of my reasoning was the stack depth. If we started deeper, I think he's good enough to have a balanced 4B'ing range that includes some bluffs that will fold to a 5B. When we start out as shallow as we did, he either has no 4B'ing range at all, or he has a 4B'ing range that is just value, no bluffs.

I think he's good, but not good enough to resist 4B'ing AA/KK and AKs. I also think he's likely to 4B QQ from OOP, because he's good enough to know I could be 3B'ing light, even from the BB, given the set-up with the loose-passive bad reg on the BTN. I'm not sure what he does with JJ pre. Bottom line - I think he has a 4B'ing range, but it isn't balanced with bluffs.

I don't know if he raises 44 pre, but I'm pretty sure he folds 44/66 to my 3B pre. And there's just no reason for him to x/r TT on this flop, when he's just coolering me if I have JJ+, and I'm just folding 99 and worse PP's to his x/r, as well as a lot of my AX.

For the same reason, I don't think he's x/r'ing with JJ, nor QQ, if he just flat calls my 3B pre with QQ/JJ. Also, QQ and JJ are losing to my AA/KK. Check-raising those hands just because the flop is "safe" doesn't make a lot of sense.

So, I took TT+/AKs and 66/44 out of his range, but left in AKo, AQo, AJs, ATs, A5s, and 77-99. I'm actually behind a big chunk of that range (AK, AT, 77-99), but I think most of that range folds to my jam.

He can't call with 88-99. He'd be hard pressed to call with AK or A5 unless he has AhKh or Ah5h exactly. But I don't think he ever has AKs when he flats pre or Ah5h when he checks turn. Even ATs is going to worry I've got JJ+. If he x/r's flop with 77, and binks a set on the turn, but the turn also adds a BDFD, I don't think he's slowing down and checking.

If he wants to call with AhJh, or A5 of some other suit, he's drawing to 11 or 12 outs, so I'm cool with it if he wants to gamble and look me up.

1 seems (very) bad compared to betting small
2 is bad flop float with no bdfd. 1/3 doesnt make much sense on this board in general, and sb's range going to be mostly pocket pair heavy / tighter than traditional 3b pot scenario. you don't need to defend 100% of your range because you can't think of a hand it makes sense for him to play. you need to fold the bottom part of your range when facing aggression on every street and your hand has basically no playability / just increases the bloat of your range on subsequent streets. is ok to get bluffed sometimes when you don't have anything and just accept that its increasing the ev of the stronger part of your range. also if you want to continue vs this, i would jam not call

aaaa misread pre action in h2. still though everything i said mostly applies

id complete pre in h1 and i guess overcall the raise

Can you please clarify about H1? Are you suggesting I should donk out on the flop?

I do have some donks in some scenarios, but I'd rather donk here with a combo draw, because I can call a raise. With just an OESD, I think it might make more sense to go for a check-raise on the flop, but that plan was spoiled when the BTN raises.

Hand 1:

As the resident limp hater, i dont hate the limp (with exactly 1 limper at 1/3 its $9 pot for zero rake and a btn limp is super wide, EP limp maybe just fold). Probably fold to raise but whatever.

I hate the flop action, but what can ya do? I dont think 3! Has any sort of FE, so call/call makes sense.

On the turn, idk what youre doing, youre basically repping a flush.

Also i just generally dont love flop or turn jams period, like even if you wanted to get it all in, why not split up the bet? It makes your bluffs more treacherous to deal with since you can give up your bluffs on the river sometimes, and V will sometimes pot commit themselves when you arent pot committed. Even if you had a hand you wanted to donk ott, why not just bet like $125 ott and jam river?

I prefer check calling down, or placing a ~2/3 sized bet otr if they check the turn.

H2, id check back flop. As played you can fold to C/R unless you have a read, because even very capable players tend to underbluff raise significantly because the board is not incredibly wet where id expect a semibluff, and not incredibly dry where id expect a stone cold bluff, but im fine with the call i suppose, but if i did, id just check back turn and try to hit.

the flop is fine / whatever. i dont get why youd jam the turn for 1.5x pot vs betting like 60% and jamming the river, i think the ev loss is substantial

H1: preflop is dubious but Doc knows this.
We should should flop, but again Doc knows this.

V is very Ax heavy given preflop action and can have wheel redraws as well. So H has very few bluffs. I really don't like this play against an unknown. I would only try it against a reg with whom I have a lot of hours and who I feel can level himself into folding Ax on a lot of turns and can open wide.

AP turn: jamming is our only play here. V gets ~3-2 and I think has to fold his Ax without diamonds redraws.

H2: I'm probably folding the flop against the population AP. I prefer to x behind hoping to delay c-bet broadway turns.

In any case, by calling flop xr we're setting up a spot where V will get 2-1 to call our turn jam. Given MDF etc, we are only going to fold the bottom half of his range, a lot of which we're already beating. Again, I think this only works against a good reg V who has a fold button and can level himself into a Baluga fold here.

Overall, I prefer H1 because of the odds we offer V. Giving 2-1 in H2 is just too much and we're going to get called too often to make it EV+

I do agree with the others about betting smaller on the turn in H1 vs shoving. Maybe they will call w/ naked Ad or some other weird hand, though -- or maybe they will think you are bluffing w/ naked Ad?

You're picking up what I was trying to put down.

In H1, if I call flop and jam turn, most people in my spot would be polarized to a made flush or a bluff, with most of the bluffs being AdXx, blocking the nuts with a draw to the nuts.

But most low stakes recs don't play that way. They check their turned flushes, or at most they bet small, because the flush is obvious, and they don't want to scare their opponents off. But they jam with their AdXx bluffs, hoping not to get snapped off by 2P+ and made hands, because it looks obvious that they turned a flush.

I was somewhat banking on the belief that V wouldn't 3B a flush draw or any combo with the Ad in it on the flop, and that he'd think I wouldn't jam a flush on the turn, but that I would call flop and jam turn with AdXx, and therefore he'd call with 2P/sets.

You make a great point. I have a slightly different take than Doc. We have to continue a polar line here. We have a lot of bluffs along with our value. But all our value is vulnerable.

Our exact hand wants a call obviously, but our range has to jam I think.

It's a close EV decision. If we bet small, we can get some value on the turn but there are a lot of action-killing rivers and/or bad rivers for our range. V will not put more money into the pot on a diamond, 3 or board-pairing river unless he has us beat.

The Villain has xr the flop. This suggests he's at the top of his range. All of our value is either vulnerable (small flushes, undersets) or vulnerable/behind (two pair, rare straight). So our bluffs jam and our value jams too I think.

First, kudos to Doc for his candor on a hand poorly played. He deserves praise for being accountable while entertaining his readers. Even the best players make mistakes, and well played hands on 2+2 are so boring...

H1 fold pre, fold flop. While you lose to all the made flushes, you might get called by the sets, two pairs, AdXx, even AKo-AJo, A2s-A5s. Bad players call big bets on the turn on wet boards with these hands all the time. If your read is good, I'm good with the jam.

H2 pre is fine, check fold flop. Unless you have a read on that the "bad reg" V will fold, just click back the turn.

H1:

With the bad Button in the mix, I don't think our preflop complete is terrible. Not liking our calling of the raise though.

Flop is dicey. Kinda funny how it is a bet and a raise and yet we're still only facing a 1/2 PSB, lol. But with action open behind us, our 2 outs not having very good IO, OOP, and not knowing if we can rep the flush (as the guy behind might have it), I think this is a fold the first time. Lol @ all of the minraises in this hand, I think we're getting 4:1 the second time? I think the second call might be ok since it is more likely he's not on a flush draw and we can easily rep those outs.

Weird turn spot. I'd normally be ok with betting large to rep the flush here. But now that we've actually made the straight we don't want folds. But we also don't want the turn to check thru (which it always will). Seems unlikely he's on a single card flush draw, although another diamond will kill the action. I think (?) I bet smallish to get looked up by two pear+. I'm not sure what a jam accomplishes; are we expecting worse to call when every draw got there? ETA: We're attempting to rep the naked Ad when we called a flop 3bet? So we're attempting to rep as the biggest whale in the room?

GcluelessNLnoobG

H2:

With the suited AQ here I think I might lean to a preflop flat as we're very cool with inviting the bad Button along. With the offsuit AQ I'd be more in fold vs 3bet mode, and in this dynamic I'd probably 3bet to a slightly larger amount (cooler with ending hand preflop and easier to setup a more trivial stackoff postflop with TP).

Think I would often check this poor flop behind. Floating the check/raise seems very ambitious to me; we're going to have < PSB left, what's our plan?

I mean, AK is folding on the turn. But I'm not convinced we run into that a lot given flop. Otherwise I think JJ is just going to sigh call it off at these stacks.

GcluelessNLnoobG

Ended your own thread in the first sentence of OP. Both turn jams are bad, and you seem to recognize why that is.

Preflop l/c in H1 is also bad. Even the initial complete is probably -EV due to the rake and blind structure. I think just never completing speculative hands in the SB is going to be a very reliable strategy at 1/3, since your entire discounted share of the pot essentially gets raked.

Everything else is fine. They're both very stupid hands, but most of that is not your own doing up until the turn--which is maybe what got you making weird, unsound decisions in weird, uncomfortable spots.

In my defense, there are times when we bet hands for value that aren't likely to be best if we get called, and sometimes bluff with what happens to be the best hand.

I didn't think I wanted to get called in either of these hands, so I guess we can say I was bluffing in both, with hands that might have been best if my opponents fold.

The worst part of this is the flop in hand 1. It’s a bet and a raise and you aren’t closing the action and have six high.

Those scenarios don’t tend to arise on the turn after 2+ bets have already taken place postflop, and you don’t generally want to stuff 3/2p in those instances. I’m talking predominantly about H1.

Turn in H2 is pretty obviously a bluff, but it still just feels like one of the last hands we want to shove here. Ranges are super wide if we’re showing up with bare AQ-high here and a turn that helped very little of our range, so I’m looking for any excuse to check. Our hand has enough equity when turn goes xx to be inclined to xb while having too little equity when called to want to shove.

So even though it’s clearly a bluff, shoving is still a polarity mistake.

what better hands do u think ever fold the turn given the action in h1?

do you think its a good idea to bluff with a hand with 0 blockers and 0 equity vs better hands when the ev of check down and bet small are astronomical?

(fwiw i dont think you're bluffing, i think he is more likely to call w a worse hand than to fold a better one)

really think you'd do well to look at solvers / watch videos of people play and explain what they're doing / practice some online. your thought process needs to get trimmed down alot and i think because it's all over the place you end up spazzing in some of these hands. i don't mean it meanly or anything, you genuinely seem to want to improve, i just feel like you go back about it in a really inefficient way

I agee with this. Doc, you do seem to overthink yourself into trouble in your butchered hands. Which isnt necessarily a bad thing as far as knowledge base. Its like you know 50% of 10,000 different concepts.

I dont necessarily agree with the solution of “look at solvers/videos”. I do think solvers are an amazing tool to implement the approach im suggesting, because its changed my game completely and introduced me to incredibly interesting and creative plays i hadnt imagined, but I think looking at all of it tends to be more than any of us can chew at one time and would really just further complicate your thinking.

I actually think your best bet might be to simplify your approach, and almost “remove” some of the ideas you got floating around in your head until they are better perfected one by one, and then choose specific things to focus on. I try and do almost the exact opposite of 50% knowing 10,000 concepts, which is 100% knowing 100 concepts. The way id “remove” the ideas would be to basically just get rid of certain lines you are taking, and to also basically play a very simplistic ABC strat in other spots you dont feel you have a solid enough knowledge base. A pretty easy example, which wouldve avoided these errors would be to just never donk. I dont. I basically have a 0% donk range, not because I dont think having a donk range is ever profitable, but because I havent learned how to implement it effectively yet, because I dont put a high value on improving my play in spots where ive cold called preflop.

There are a huge amount of lines that arent incredibly useful or valuable against weaker players, specifically cold calling spots. how often are you HU OOP as the preflop caller vs a weak player anyway? Its just not that often, usually i have the betting lead, usually im IP, and usually my range is stronger and uncapped, so this is the situations I have studied the most and am the most comfortable with, and its why im even more inclined to fold 63s both times around, because overfolding the blinds will just simplify my strategy and let me play a larger number of hands in spots i am keenly familiar with.

To me there are two reasons to do it this way.

The first is because I think its the best immediate thing for your winrate. You dont NEED to know every aspect of poker to win. If you dont learn how to play OOP as the preflop caller very well, and instead take all that study time and put it into how to play as the preflop raiser, and how to play OOP as a 3 better, you can minimize errors by simply massively over folding the blinds when facing a raise, and can make back the money lost (and then some) by just gigantically outplaying your opponents when you have the preflop betting lead. If you have a huge edge in 3 bet pots from the BB and almost zero (or negative) edge in pots where you cold call, you can widen your 3 betting range, and fold out the bottom of your cold calling range to play to your strengths. You also arent very likely to be exploited. For example, lets say you dont really study how to play in monotone flops, because the fish play all their sutued cards, and you basically lose your preflop range advantage, so you just play ABC and dont get out of line, if you start going crazy cuz you hit the nut flush, nobody will notice that you are almist never bluffing here because youve shown creative/bluffy/loose/aggressive play on paired boards which you have studied extensively (or whatever), and they dont realize that your aggression is only in certain spots.

The second reason is because I think this approach makes you a better player 5 or 10 years from now. If you become an absolute crusher level monster when you 3 bet OOP and the flop comes with a paired board, that knowledge will stay with you forever, and 5 years later, youll be at a pro level in so many spots, rather than just being kinda mediocre everywhere and needing to focus on detail everywhere at once and not quite knowing where your leaks are.

And, going back to submersible’s suggestion, i think the best way to become a crusher at “3 bet pots while OOP and the board comes paired” would be to 1) study GTO solved outputs in this spot, 2) watch videos about this spot. 3) implement what youve learned over the next 100 hours of play, take note of Vs response, and adjust the strategy to be as exploitative as possible.

So, one of the reasons I posted these two hands was that I thought the reveals were interesting, inasmuch as I'd been severely discounting the likelihood that my opponents had what they did in fact have.

Along with these, there were two other big pots I played in my last session, all similar in that I thought my opponents were repping a very narrow range of thick value in spots where they could have worse for value or a fair number of bluffs.

The other two hands weren't interesting, because the opponents had exactly what they were repping. I got really lucky in one, spiking a 2-outer to river a set against my opponent's T2P, and really unlucky in the other, flopping trips on a 2-flush board, and my opponent drilling an inside straight.

Win some. Lose some.

Reveal:

i think both of their flop lines are ok tbh. 76dd is an equity favorite over the current nuts and probably has fold equity against anything. Axdd is the one he really wants to avoid but maybe he thinks button's minraise is weak. JJ is far and away oop's most frequent raise on this type of board. yeah you have a polar range that has him beat sometimes but that doesn't mean he just c/c entire range and let u realize equity / pound on him