1/3, flopped flush, but this Rock is cooking something

Sorry, one more thing to add, which I just now remembered. The high hand promotion that week was actually $1k, not $500, as stated in the OP. Parx increased it in the lead up to a big tournament going on the past week or so.

I don't think it changes much in the analysis, other than most players getting a little looser pre-flop and slow-playing more post flop.

V did not win the $1k for this hand. There was already a higher hand on the board.

Do they have to go to showdown to win the high hands? If this were the case, they'd be more inclined to just check/call high hands instead of bet/raise to get to showdown.

Or can they just show their hand after opponents fold to their bet/raise?

You can just turn your hand over if they fold. But if you're drawing to a high hand, it definitely pushes you more to take a chance and flat call.

A few weeks back I raised pre with AQ, got two callers, and an old man flatted from the SB with KK. After the hand he said he just plays for the high hand / bad beat.

I wanted to kick over his oxygen tank.

Wow??? I guess if he's flatting with KK then he's flatting with AA.

If that were the case, no one 3bet premiums. lol

I play the hand the same way including the river call. I’m just not going to fold.

Just out of curiosity, since we block the straight flush, do we ever think this guy folds to a jam here? (Obviously not with this hand, but is he cry-calling or cry-folding a queen or jack high flush?)

Also, by far the worst part of the hand was the table talk afterwards. I am never ever EVER giving a player I respect insight into my thought process of a hand I play against him, unless we are genuinely friends and there’s information reciprocity.

I think any competent player will fold all flushes besides maybe the nut flush.

We repping boats/quads/st8flush when we ship on top.

But I think we rather bluff with a polarized range(nuts/air)

How are we even arriving at this point with air?

Also, polarized doesn’t necessarily mean that the bottom of the polarized range is air—it just means the range is missing stuff in the middle that we are calling with. In this case we can be polarized to boats and small flushes that block the straight flush (like what we have) while we call with big flushes and maybe the worst boats like 43.

We could maybe floated 2sts w/Ax 1 heart, or turning A7 A4 into bluffs. But its a risky play.

I think my value raising range on river is 44 or better, if I had A3 i might think about it but probably flatting because it's hard for villain call with worse.

No, he's never folding to a jam from me.

Two nights ago I jammed river on a three-flush board with the nut blocker, and he tank-called with an over-pair, no flush suit. I called his 3B pre, called his somewhat large flop c-bet, raised his turn barrel when the FDFD came in, and jammed river for over pot.

We have meta here. He knows I'm capable of jamming river as a bluff, even if it requires me to have some sort of showdown value on flop and turn.

This guy has a major leak in his game. He's so tight pre that he over-values hands post. The KK vs QQ and this hand showed me he's nitty pre but LAG-ish post. He doesn't know how to hand read or range read, and so he doesn't know how to fold or slow down.

If I have the nuts, he's just paying me off.

I like the guy, and we're friendly, but I wouldn't say I respect his game. I don't. He's playing like it's 2004.

You had the right read, so I'm not sure why you called... . We've all done it, though.

Thinking about this more in the past few days...

I've played 3 big pots with this V in the last 3-4 sessions. The hand in this thread was the 2nd. It's taken me this much experience to solidify my read. Prior to that, I just didn't have enough observations, because we simply never got entangled in big pots or tough decisions prior to that, and he doesn't play enough hands with me at the table for me to gather additional info from hands I'm not involved in.

I think it's usually a mistake to generalize that an opponent is always or never doing something, and making an extreme deviation or adjustment because of it, unless and until we have enough experience to be extremely confident in that read. We'd be risking over-adjusting and / or making it easy for a competent V to exploit the $hlt out of us.

I think it will be +EV to over-fold against this V when he takes this sort of line. However, if we're being logically consistent, even with the updated reads, I don't think it would have been correct to raise flop or turn here. I think my decisions on those streets were correct, regardless of what he actually had (I'd say the same thing if he showed a higher flush or 2P).

Whether or not I should have folded the river - I still think it's a close decision, because the fact is this V is capable of over-valuing worse hands, and I could come up with more than enough of them that would make sense (more than 1 worse hand for every 2 better hands, getting 2:1). Knowing he's capable of barreling off here without a nutted hand keeps it from just being a snap-fold.

Clearly I can't bluff this V with anywhere near the same frequency I can bluff most other opponents. I already know I can make hero folds against him when he shows aggression. Spots like this, where he can be over-valuing worse hands are probably going to require me to be closer to the top of my range, so I'm not calling too light.

Without reads that I didn't see I don't think the flop bet means weakness and the line as a whole looks a lot like A2s/A6s that flopped the nuts, or a 77/44 that has a FH on the river.

I don't think many people bet this much on the river with NF blocker when they hit top pair, but for a lot of people I could see even Q2s deciding they'd flopped close enough to the nuts and just betting all three streets.
With your read that you think he'd bet AA33x for value on the river, that changes things a lot.

I almost certainly play the same until the river ... and then it just sucks, I would assume it's a bad call even if V has lost his mind 5% of the time, but I've certainly done worse due to "too many reads" and/or not wanting to fold a flush 😉.

FWIW if the river is a brick and he bets over half pot, I'd very likely shrug call and if he checked I'd probably bet 55-75. If you can get stacks in there, that's a huge win IMO.

Just today I had a hand that reminded me of this spot. I had a small flush facing a bet that I considered strong on the river. I called and was shown a straight.

This is why I’m not folding. There are certain spots where folding a strong hand is a bigger overall strategic mistake than not dodging a cooler, and I think this is one of them.