Flop bottom set on a suited flop

Based on 1 hour of table time I’m never finding a fold versus this villain.

Is v1 likely to call or 4b/shove pre flop? Base on description and him opening from UTG, I might be folding this pre in order to not get squeezed out. AP, you made the best hand you can, can't fold.

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V1 was very likely to fold. He was terrible in a very weird way.

I'm folding pre, especially in a rake-pot game. You don't have the odds to set-mine vs. V1, who remains uncapped when you first act, and you're not deep enough to try to stack V2 in a side-pot...never mind the unlikelihood of both having good enough, second-best hands to get in stacks when you happen to flop a set.

I think that folding preflop would be fine, but I think calling is fine also. It's close. I suspected that V2's range was relatively wide because V1 was quite bad and quite likely to fold to a reraise. If that's correct, with position, I'm going to win a small pot against V2 a fair percentage of the time, sometimes against a hand that has a lot of equity against 77. Also, we aren't crazy deep, but we aren't super shallow either. V2 has 260 BBs and I cover him.

Here are the hands that I thought V2 might have and might conceivably play this way on the flop and the river:

AA, JJ, AxK♣, AxQ♣, , AxJx, Ax7x, K♣Qx, KxQ♣, Q♣Tx. I also thought KxK♣; Q♣Qx, K♣Tx or 9♣T♣ were possible, albeit less likely than the hands in the first group.

I obviously can't entirely rule out the possibly that V2 raised randomly preflop with low clubs or was barrelling with air, but didn't have any reason to believe that he did that sort of thing often at all.

Of these combos, how many would you expect to shove the river after I have called the flop and turn.

Pre: Cold calling a 3! typically isn't great, but given your read on V1 which proved correct is optimal. We want to call if we are highly confident V1 isn't going to jam. Sounds like that was your read, and you were right. So I'd ignore the nits. If we're going to cold call, a medium pp is exactly the kind of hand we want. V has 17x behind, that gives us plenty of room to set mine IP.

Flop: It is natural for us to fear the flushes, but V doesn't have flushes on this board often because most of his 3! range is going to be Axs. Maybe he is 3! KQcc maybe KTcc, if he was getting frisky in what is otherwise a tame game by your description. If he had either of those flushes, does he lead on this board? I think those check most of the time looking to either x/r or rope you in.

What is going to lead for value? AJ sometimes AA sometimes. JJ sometimes. A7 if that is in his 3! range. I think all of those can be lead or check. JJ probably leads most frequently. For bluffs, AKo, KK, QQ, TT that include one club. In theory, V should have leads some of the time with AQhh here, but I'd say on average most people don't. If leading on a monotone board, people either have one club, thick value with 2-pair+, or complete air.

Given that, I see no practical option but to call.

Turn: It's a brick, and the story is really the same as the above except that V probably gives up with some of his air and might slow down with KcKx or AxKc looking for an easy x/c. If continuing to barrel with QQ, TT with a club, we have better equity if V calls a big raise with those, but I think V folds a lot of the weaker stuff we can get value from later. IP, I don't think we deny enough equity, and on brick rivers we still can get value from AJ, A7, AK, QQ either calling down or betting when V checks. Again, I think it is a pretty straightforward call.

River: V makes the right play jamming this card. He should be jamming with a lot of his range. Now we have to ask ourselves, "Is V capable of jamming light or as a bluff?" He went half pot, half pot, then jam 1.5x on a river that is really scary for a hand like AJ. If V has AKc here, is he jamming? If he is, we have to snap call.

Note that while the river looks like it changed the nuts, it really doesn't. If V beats us here, he had us crushed since the flop. (Actually since pre-flop). If we were ahead the whole time, we're still ahead. If we are going to give V credit for being a good player, this is a call. We can only fold if our read is that V is incapable of running a 3-barrel bluff or value shoving with Kc.

I'd call expecting to lose quite often. If he has AA or JJ, nh & top off.

This was more or less my thinking during the hand. I honestly hadn't played with Villain enough to know if he was capable of a 3 barrel bluff or value shoving with K♣. I hadn't seen him do it, but I had only played with him for an hour and I wouldn't expect to see that sort of thing often.

Value shoving the river with the K♣ is dicey. What hand is he expecting to get called by? AxQ♣? Q♣T♣? Maaaybe QxQ♣, although I probably don't get to the river with that last hand. Against a relative unknown, there may be more combinations of hands in my range that beat K♣ than losing combinations that call a river shove. Admittedly, he doesn't know me any better than I know him, so maybe he thinks I would call down lighter than I would.

Grunch:

PRE - I don't like cold-calling 3B's pre. I can understand making an exception here, when we think UTG is a bad player, and we have a hand that isn't really strong enough to cold 4B, but flatting really caps our range, and we'll have to fold if UTG 4B's.

FLOP / TURN / RIVER - I'm not folding, just calling the whole way, praying we're not getting coolered.

I understand the point preflop. As I've explained, I didn't have any nuanced read on V2, but i was 99% certain that V1 was bad, and 99% certain that V1was folding or calling (mostly folding) a large percentage of his opening range. I know that means he is terrible, but i was quite certain. For that reason, I belive that calling preflop was at least neutral here. And for obvious reasons, I almost always give action in live games in spots that I judge to be at least neutral.

I am surprised that no one thinks the river was close. I agree that the decision would not be close if the river had been the 3♠, but the fact that it was a club arguably narrows V2's shoving range on the river.

Boats are hard to make. I made the absolute best hand i could have hoped for. I understand that calling in this spot can never be a huge mistake. But surely I am losing at least 50-60% of the time here. If I am losing 50-60% of the time, this is still a call, of course, but I'm not making a ton of money by doing so.

I mainly was curious whether anyone thought I was losing 75% or more of the time on the river.

FWIW, I'm not trying to defend a big fold that i made on the river. I didn't fold. I called, more or less based on the reasoning in Yamihere's post.

Meh, I wouldn't look at it that way. V either had us the whole way with AA/JJ or he didn't. Or he flopped a flush, but now he's toast. Or he was drawing and thinks he got there.

I think the river widens his shoving range to include a lot of hands that were bluffs until the river. Not really a close decision at all.

What hands was he bluffing the flop and turn with and then shoving the river?

Jamming a Q high flush seems like more of a dumb bluff than a value bet. What hand that loses to a Q-high flush am I calling it off with on the river?

Dude, you cold-called a 3B pre. So you got to the river with a collapsed range, and a hand you probably shouldn't have, or one that your opponent isn't likely to give you.

You're either losing to a bigger boat, or beating a worse hand, which could be a hand V bet for value, or something he turned into a bluff. Either call the jam or don't, but don't ask what hands you beat when V jams after you play your hand this way.

To answer the OP's ?, "Which hands do this?" I'm giving V all AA/JJ (6 combos), AxKc (3), KcQc, and dunno if I should throw in KcTc too. We lose to 6 and beat 4 or 5. Add others if you see fit.

We need 975 to 975+685, or 37%. Even our worst case of only 4 flush combos meets that. If 5, then we're almost at 50%.

Ofc, this is set over set, now boat over boat, and we feel like idiots for donking off 260 bigs to an obvious overset, but I still call.

It's a great shove by him if he has AA/JJ thinking you most likely have the nut flush at this point. This is a really tough spot as you should have tons of nut flushes yet here he is jamming. I think we're just calling in a live 2/5 game - there's enough nut flush combos to make up for the AA/JJ hands and given it's a live 2/5 without specific reads calling is the only option imo.

The place to fold was preflop.
Honestly don't care about your read on V1, even with it being good enough that V1 folded this time (but I'd also fold a lot if CO 3bet 3.5x and BTN cold called when they are both deep).

V likely plays most, if not all Kc hands this way ... esp. with you cold calling 3bets.
Yes, he can play all 6 combos. of set over set this way too ... but again, the time to stop that trainwreck was preflop.

You can certainly argue that some Kc combos. play flop/turn for different sizes, but then I'd say the same thing about AA/JJ.
Wouldn't be shocked if V thinks you are bad.

You could get a bunch of theory out and give V discounted Kc combos. and all AA/JJ combos. and decide it's close ... but it's so exploitable if you are wrong and what's your plan just call JJ? If you call even KcQc preflop, do you ever just call it down to this spot?
KKc seems like the sigh fold, not even sure I could do it with AxKc.

Let me try this a different way. Hopefully you're familiar with the concept of hand-reading, or as it may be more accurately described, range-reading.

On the flop, what is the best hand anyone can have? That would be the nut flush. It's certainly possible either of you could have the nut flush. When V 3B's the UTG1 raise, he might be doing that with some KQs, KJs, etc. Likewise, when you cold-call the 3B, you might have KQs, KJs, maybe KTs, etc.

If you're not 4B'ing KQs pre, then you're probably not 4B'ing QJs, or QTs, or JTs, or T9s, etc. So you could have all those worse flushes in your range.

After the nut flush, what are the best hands anyone can have on the flop? That would be all the worse flushes, followed by AA, JJ, and 77, in order. Perhaps you might cold call a 3B with AA, but that seems unlikely, or at least, it would be unusual, inasmuch as it would be unorthodox, because you'd usually 4B with AA.

If it's unlikely you have AA, then maybe you could show up with JJ that cold-called the 3B pre. Maybe you could have 77, which we might look at as not quite strong enough to 4B but also hard to fold.

After that, your best hand on the flop would be AJ, which is a hand you could have that would cold-call the 3B pre. Maybe you also could have A7s, or if you're really splashy pre, J7s.

Assuming no one is showing up with 33, the board-pairing river makes AA the nuts on the river, but AA was far from the nuts on the flop and turn.

When V bets the flop, he can rep the nuts if he has the Kc in his hand. He can also credibly rep AA, JJ, and conceivably, 77, as well as AJs.

When we call, we're saying we have a piece of the board, at least AX or some decent size PP with a club in it, or a draw to the nuts with the Kc in our hand. But obviously we could have some flopped flushes, and some 2P or sets that aren't going to fold before the river.

If you look at V's range, it has all the super-strong hands in it - AA, JJ, 77, plus nut and 2nd nut flushes. If you look at our range, we're not going to have AA, JJ or 77 all that much, but we will have some nut flushes, and many worse flushes, and maybe some 2P that got sticky.

If V doesn't need to worry about us showing up with 33, AA, or JJ, then the best hand we can ever have is 77. After that, we just have a lot of flushes or worse. If V flopped the nut flush, he can just go bet-bet-bet for value, and win way more often than he loses, because our range is so heavily weighted towards hands he can beat.

The fourth club on the river makes it even easier for you to have a flush, because all your PP's with one club and off-suit combos with one club got there. But the board pairing also makes it possible for V to have a boat, if he actually has AA or JJ.

The thing is - would he take this line with AA or JJ? Would be 3B a UTG1 raise pre? With AA, definitely. With JJ, maybe. Would he c-bet 1/2 pot on a monotone board with bottom or middle set? I dunno. Maybe sometimes, but maybe not always. Would he barrel turn for 1/2 pot again, after we call flop? Maybe he'd barrel, but maybe he'd slow down and check-evaluate. Would he jam the board-pairing and 4th flush card river for 1.4x pot? Maybe.

With AA/JJ, I wonder if he wouldn't start with a check or a smaller bet on the flop, and either check or barrel smaller on the turn.

Now ask - would he take this line with the flopped nut flush? He might 3B some KX or QX combos pre. He'd probably have no fear c-betting and barreling turn, and 1/2 pot sizing seems like a size that isn't going to scare opponents away. The key is the river. If he's not putting you on 33, AA, or JJ, then the only hand he has to worry about on the river is 77. The way this was played, he probably feels pretty good jamming river, to get value from all the worse flushes in our range.

Now let's say he just had KcKx, and decided to turn his hand into a bluff on the flop, or was just suffering from entitlement tilt after being dealt KK and seeing this horrible flop, but then he got there on the river. Would he take this line? Yeah, absolutely, I could see some low-stakes players taking this line. He bets 1/2 pot on flop and turn, scared to bet more, hoping you'll just go away, then sees that miracle fourth club on the river, and now thinks he's nutted, so he jams.

But, honestly, we really don't need to do all that range-reading when we get to the river the way we did. We cold-called a 3B pre, and flopped a set on a monotone board, then rivered a boat. Unless we're cold-calling 3B's with AA or JJ pre, or floating the flop and turn with 33, we've got the best hand we can possibly have here, so the only way we can fold is if know with certainty that V always has AA or JJ.

Even if we had hours and hours with V, and knew he was a bit of a nit, I still don't think it would be correct to fold here.

Your earlier posts seem to be defensive of your pre-flop call, because of how bad / weak V1 was. But we're past that. The only reason the pre-flop cold-call matters is that it condenses our range such that our thick value is going to be 77, followed by a lot of flushes, both nut and non-nut flushes.

V can jam his boats and his nut-flushes for value. We lose to 6 combos of AA/JJ, but we beat 3 combos of KcKx, 2 of KQcc/KJcc, some other KXcc combos that may have been getting OOL pre, and some other flush combos that he might think are good enough to jam, either for value, or thinking he has to turn some sort of showdown value into a bluff, and is spaz-jamming / button-clicking.

Are we winning often enough to make this call profitable? I think so, but again, I'm not sure it matters when we have the best hand we can possibly have.

I joined 2+2 in 2004. Is it likely in your opinion that am unfamiliar with these concepts?

I agree with most of this. I'm just not sure about the merits of V2 shoving with the Kc for value. I don't have many combos that beat the nut flush, only JJ or 77. But I'm pretty sure I would have folded all worse flushes, and probably the nut flush as well. This is a live game in a town that I don't live in. I don't really have to worry about the possibility that I will be exploited if it becomes common knowledge that I am willing to fold if put to the test in this spot.

I wasn't remotely defensive about the preflop call. I said that I understood the arguments for folding but that I personally thought it was fine/neutral under the specific circumstances. I didn't criticize anyone for having a different opinion.

The hand that made the most sense for V2 was JJ. I thought that at the time, and I thought that after thinking more about the hand. But I also thought it was possible that he was shoving with AxKc, KcQc, AxJx that he decided to turn into a bluff on the river, or random hands like Tc9c that he got frisky with preflop and then decided to turn into a bluff on the river. (Even if I am unsure about the merits of V2 shoving with the Kc for value, I obviously can't rule out the possibility.) That's why I called. But I didn't think it very profitable to call. I thought it was only slightly profitable.

On the last point, it always matters. If I made a mistake in getting to this point with this hand, and I realize that I made a mistake and cannot call profitably (even when I have made the best possible hand I can have), I should fold. I didn't reach that conclusion, but it always matters.

I don't assume what other people know.

I don't know, man. You're trying to get inside your opponent's head, which is fine, but doesn't override the range analysis based on the action leading up to the river. Everyone who's posted in this thread has tried to explain how and why V could be jamming with a worse hand, and why we should call.

We can fold, of course, but it would be a very nitty fold, given the action.

And as I've said a bunch of times, I'm not trying to defend a fold. I called. I was interested in whether anyone had a different view.

I don't know why you think I am trying to "override" anything. We are both talking about the same thing--by the time we get to the river as played, how many combinations in V2's range beat us, how many combinations do we beat, and how many of the combinations that we beat does he shove with on the river.

The consensus seems to be that I beat enough, which was the same conclusion I reached in the moment.

This is hard simply because the information I think I'm lacking is frequency of action information out of villain that would narrow down how to identify. As described I feel like I weight them towards card dead TAG or somewhat nitty. Looser aggro opponents would take advantage of situational opportunity moreso and push those edges revealing their operating strategy more quickly.

There are potentially other non zero possibilties as well.

So I want to attack it from this angle:

Villain 3bets pre, down bets flop, and only 1/2 pots turn roughly before shoving.

Theoretically speaking, V2's downbet/smaller sizing line means they would be shoving into a wider range as more hands would reach the river, so the part that doesnt make sense are: if they hold K high flush, do they expect to get called by weaker flush? If they hold lower flush card, do they expect to get a better flush to fold.

The thing villain might see PF as limiting the # of sets potentially in the ranges opponents. If they operate on assumption that AA and JJ would 4bet, And J3, 33, and A3 being unlikely due to no BD FD present, it seems like their shove range here could be more than just Aces or Jacks full and can be a situation of value or trying to get a slightly stronger flush to fold. Hero could have a fair amount o Kx and Qx flushes that flat here along with V1 but V1 as described has way too much that sees flop.

Villain might also expect Hero to pop it somewhere (flop/turn) with a hand like bottom set given general tendency for most players to not be willing to check call what is perceived as a vulnerable but valuable hand.

Villain's perception of Hero would be critical, going off your inclusion of perceived image being slightly more active, they may assume the tendency to see and play more hands comes with a higher aggression factor and so potentially could be taking this line with that as a guardrail furthering the idea that while 77 and 33 are both in your range, they are discounted against the range of flushes they are ahead of or could potentially get to fold.

So the above still doesnt provide a complete enough picture -

you need 37% equity to B.E., if we give villain AA, JJ & 3 KcXc combos you have about 33%, with 4 KcXc you have about 40% - if the person is jsut the most disciplined mf'er in the world I'd say we're still shy of reality which would fall in our favor er; equity differential, which says to me this is a clear call.

Last important point:
If you call turn, you're obligated to call the river.

As for raising prior to river, I think in most cases I am inclined to raise somewhere but IP and if my understanding of villain's strat is correct, i'd want to argue against raising. BUT this is all deduced based on 3 streets of action which defines their range. In game, I'd probably estimate their range wider and want to raise bottom set on the flop more often than the turn for the following reasons:
1) turn cards will slow down OOP villain moreso
2) tendency to ch/raise bluff after you raise flop would decrease whereas I think our decision could become more difficult the deeper we are with 5 cards especially the times we dont fill up.

If my analysis is anywehere close to correct, i dont think there's a better line. So my conclusion is raise flop with a mixed frequency. I honestly dont know how to calculate that individually exactly though as I assume its deduced across the entire spectrum of possible actions within your entire range.

I am curious to plug it into a solver though and see baseline optimal and then adapt changes from there.

Sizing of raise i need a little more time to think and am getting distracted by some other **** but much of my sizing is player dependent/situational (2.5x to 3x or higher. the more of a religious type they are, the bigger i'll go in sizing - by religious type i mean: belief in the absence of evidence type player who will level themselves into wild conclusions etc)

i was really curious about raising, and I think in game against opponents sub-optimal strategies I can see an argument built around raising (flop or turn I feel less and less confident which street would be ideal but assume that could be based off where opponent deviates from solid strat)

I was able to run an approximate sim 200bb with an early raiser, CO 3bet button call and earlier raiser folds scenario. But the bet sizing options of 1/2 pot which villain uses here were not an option so i kinda fudged those. It does have a frequency for villain to shove river as an overbet though and regardless of the specifics of what the GTO range is, 77 is a call, additionally, if villain doesnt shove and bets anything less than pot on the river, solver has 77 shoving over top.

So that said, raising somewhere might be less important against an optimal strategy - where it could become more profitable outside obvious situations like "opponent is showdown monkey who will take any XclubYo to the mats on flop or turn", I'm not quite sure yet. basically a more nuanced application. the low hangin fruit is easy to discover, its the complex or subtle uses, if they exist, that I'm not absolutely certain about.

Couple other quick points:
1) folding PF isnt terrible, I just hate folding so I would encourage calling. Raising makes no sense Flatting is actually what that sim suggested surpisingly - i'm gonna look at it again and make sure i'm not misinterpreting something though.
2) i think i lacked some clarity in some of the above responses namely "raising with mix frequency" at the time I wrote that what i meant was I dont think raising is critical to the hand without evidence to suggest our villain will fall off the hook too often or they're 3bet range is tight enough that it lacks some suited Kx gappers necesssary for our equity calc to achieve that B.E. (yes, hindsight supplying the answer to a station point earlier but hey, we're in a vacuum when we do this part yeah?)

3) I think all of the above shifts dramatically if we are not at least 200BB's or more deep with main villain. The IO's are necessary to offset whatever EV loss (or im wrong and there isnt one) cold calling may create PF. At 100bb's folding pre may become the majority frequency action