Over-folding and Bluff-catching (Live 2/5)

I think 6 hours into the session we should have a little bit more of a read on both villain (btn) and big blind and have a plan for why we're iso-raising KTo to 6 big blinds. Pre-flop this isn't a particularly great hand to do this with if we're often going to go multiway after raising to $30 here. The weaker part of your iso-raise range, and KTo is definitely in the weaker part, if I have a feeling either BTN or BB but especially if both are likely to be players that call this raise size wide, I'm just going to fold this hand because this is not a hand you want to be playing a $150 5 way pot with and also not really a $92 pot 3 ways with either.

The big problem with this hand is you did this preflop you got cold called in two spots and the limpers actually folded so now you don't rly know what to do postflop because the combined postflop range of BTN and BB is stronger than your actual hand strength, like you say BTN can have KJ or KQ in this hand.

As played flop is definitely a cbet but we can cbet smaller because this hand went multiway and we just want to narrow the hand to heads up so I think a bet of $25 works.

As played facing a flop call I think we have to really heavily weigh hearts combos esp if villain is both titled and on the button, with only that read to work on his range here could be all of "it was suited".

The turn is kind of a dicey spot. It doesn't really improve V's range but V also has a pretty good amount of better hands in his range that called the flop. It's still a pretty clear bet to me though. We can still represent bluffs and get called by worse (A8s etc). And a lot of the range of "better than our hand" that V has can't raise because we're still representing better (KJ/KQ won't raise here in case they're value owning themselves against AK). They will bet in position if checked to though a good chunk of the time.

As played we have to call a guy who is tilted and is going to be drawing a lot when he bets $100 on the turn in a red chip game. This is a no brainer snap call. I don't like that we did it, because we're kind of announcing our hand as one pair top pair when we do it, but as played we're never folding to this bet and raise is not a good option either.

River action just sucks it's terrible and since it feels like with how we played this we probably would have taken the same line with KJ and maybe KQ this is just a low pip and we can fold it, it's grosser when we have KJ.

Sorry for this unorganized response.

I agree that I really should have just laid down river without even too much thought, if even just due to how underbluffed/weighted towards value overbet river shoves are. Huge leak for sure.

I did neglect to mention that I was recently moved (< 25 hands prior) from a broken table.

Spot on about KTo being too wide of a CO open against such a loose field. I was playing a standard full-ring positional open range (with KTo being among bottom of my CO offsuit broadway opens along with QTo and JTo). IÂ’m definitely going to adjust by tightening it up a bit.

On a different note, generally speaking, a 4x (even 5x) BB open is considered standard in live CA 2/5 games. My raise to $30 was a reflection of a 4x raise + 2 limps. All said, I am new at live and I definitely do not consider myself too familiar with the dynamics of such games. This is just my understanding. Some notes on this would be much appreciated for sure.

I absolutely agree that sizing down the flop Cbet to 1/4 - 1/3Â’d pot is undoubtedly the move, and IÂ’m not sure why I went 2/3Â’ds Cbetting into 2 people here on a disconnected K high board with a FD.

What majority turn sizing should one take here? Size up to around 2/3?

Such spots are very villain dependent and depends on your reads.

He's probably not shoving light with KQ/KJ on river. His shove on river means his range is polarized to 9x+ or bluffs. What 9x does he have? 89, k9, 9Thh, 9Jhh, 97hh, A9hh etc. I guess it's also possible to have some slowplayed 88/22 on the flop in position.

Then the question becomes what bluffs does he have? Naked flush draws, does he bet them on the turn when in position when he can take a free card?

Most people live rarely overbet shove river with air unless they're very aggro and/or they've learned from Marc Goone.
At the end of the day, no one has a fixed answer. You should know villain more than us so probably ask yourself is he aggro enough to shove river with bluffs.
I myself tried overbetting rivers live, opponent either has to be a super station or has a super strong hand to call, they're -ev with value hands so far. Maybe my tight image is also a factor. Yet, it works wonderfully online(10NL-20NL).

I appreciate the replayer, but I would include (correct) pot and bet sizes in your written HH because the average age here is 63 years old.

In response to the thread title, you can overfold a lot of spots and have zero bluff-catching range. The indifference principle means the profitability of those calls are extremely sensitive to people bluffing at the right frequency, and even in the absence of clairvoyance or even particularly good player reads, population reads for most spots against most player types are that they're overfolding and underbluffing.

Overbets in particular are underbluffed, though shoving for a little more than pot isn't exactly like seeing a unicorn. It might not have even been clear to him that he was overbetting depending on how much he rounds pot and stack sizes.

All that being said, given an obvious frontdoor draw blanked and the turn/river runout only helped random pairs and flush draws with a 9 in them, it's not a total torch to call this high up in your range.

All things considered, though, flush draws are the only one that blanked and even some of those sucked out on you, so I don't think you're getting the 35% or whatever you need to call.

Fold pre.

1. Don't put results in your first post of the thread. It changes the responses you get, and keeps us all from arguing with each other., which is why half of us are here.

2. It's okay to fold KTo pre. Probably preferable. OK to occasionally flat if the players in front are limping too wide and really bad post-flop, and the players left to act aren't squeezing too much. But mostly, just fold pre.

3. Your math is...there's no other way to put this...terrible. If you opened to 30 over 2 limps, and got two calls, the pot should be around 100, making your 35 c-bet 35% pot, not 60% pot.

Terrible math aside, this roughly 1/3 c-bet size in a multi-way pot, with top pair, crap kicker, is actually OK. Checking it would also be okay. C-betting more than 40 would be bad, IMO, because you're probably only getting called by better KX and draws to the nuts.

4. Doing my own math, there's $170 in the pot on the turn. Checking after V calls our flop c-bet is OK. Barreling for a small size, like 1/2 pot to cap V's range would also be OK. Once we decide to check, and V bets $100, calling is pretty meh.

It's not terrible, but not great. V could have better KX, 98, 99, and maybe occasionally some front door flush draws that now picked up equity by making a pair (like A9hh) or a combo draw (like QJhh, QThh, and JThh). Against that sort of range, our hand isn't doing very well. We're either way behind, or at best only slightly ahead.

I'd prefer to either barrel for 1/2 pot, and fold if V raises, or, when we get here with a crap-tastic hand like KT, check-fold to this bet size.

5. We raised pre, c-bet the K-high, two-tone flop, check-called turn, and now V is over-bet jamming the river when the board pairs the 9? And....you beat what here?

Yeah, all his turn bluffs missed, but do you think he's taking this size with his busted draws, in this line? If we got here with AQ or our own missed draws, we're likely to fold if he so much as breathes on the pot. Is he doing this with 8x, or worse Kx? Probably not.

This is going to be 2P+ a lot, very often some 9x combo with the 9h in it. What worse hands bet this way for value? I can't think of any. What bluffs take this size, when all his bluffs unblock our value range, and block our folding range? All his bluffs are hands he wants us to have.

i think turn is ok, dislike every other street tbh

also question classifying v as a reg when he calls 6x here pre w k9o

KTo 1 pip too wide to iso unless any of the limpers are super belugas.

River shove looks like a snap call. KJ/KQ/KT are all equal, since live players are very unlikely to shove KQ here. Maybe once in a while you run into AK. Really good to not have a heart in live poker since fishes/bad reg bluffs here are missed flush draws. Ks epic card to have blocking the only combo of K9s. Suit runout only leaves one combo of 89s that you lose to.

After seeing showdown - you gotta update your tag on btn. Calling 6bb on btn with K9o is pure spew. Like -150bb/100 type **** in a common reoccuring preflop spot. I still don't mind the call fwiw.

I think most of the hand is whatever. Preflop seems too wide (if it folded to us and we opened 15, I'd be 100% fine with it) and flop too big, but eh it's your money.

Saying that "some lower Kx holdings" is doing a lot of work here. This is K7s-K3s ... which of those do you think V has a significant amount of the time? And then bets it to charge your flush draws?

There are a few flush draws that interact with the 9 (and 89) that might bet now to get folds from maybe TT or value from bigger flush draws. Then on the river anything that has a 9 might now decide it's the nuts ... so you need "things that interact with a 9, but not actually have a 9" range to be big enough you can hero call.

Our T cuts down on the things that interact with 89, but also the 60% pot bet should also mean random JT is folding anyway.

That's called the "Kevin", and almost every Kevin I've ever known was an a$$hole.

I gotta agree with Nh.gg on this. KTo is completely standard RFI in GTO from the CO. It is at the bottom of your opening range, but still reasonable.

He's also right that the BTN should be folding K9. That's within V's opening range from that position but it's not within a proper calling range, so it should have been folded. This supports why you were ahead on the flop and looking good.

Write this hand off as an exception. I was in a huge hand this past weekend where a similar hand played out (no paired board however) with a slightly tilted player who bets $200, I reraised to $500 and he insta-shoved for $2K. I thought I was good the whole way with my top pair, but the quick shove at the end made me think that I missed something. I went into the tank for 5 minutes before ultimately folding and the guy showed that he missed a flush draw. Had I called I would have had it, but if 3 out of 4 times I'm wrong, then it's not worth it.

it isn't a co rfi though. there's 2 limpers and you're opening to 6x instead of 2.3-2.5 that you see in preflop charts and are very unlikely to take the down pot preflop (even more so when button is doing this pre)

post, i think flop is too big and would either bet like 15% or x. river bare minimum you want to be randomizing here leaning heavily towards fold when he goes 570 into 360. in practice you probably just don't ever see a bluff here often enough from random lowstakes guys but sure. im open to blocking turn after blocking flop (smaller) too

i dont really think reads of reg who might be tilted but might not be and is quitting after this hand leads to pure call river range or anything drastic in that regard. i do understand he doesn't rep much. i think the ten is basically entirely irrelevant to bluff catching and im not convinced the king does much for you either (prior to seeing his hand). even if you think he has Kx hands that play like this, that would still make you want to approach calling the river with Kx hands linearly

Agreed, it's not RFI, hence me asking whether the two limpers made that much of a difference. Charts for an OL audience also aren't that applicable to $$, agreed, for a variety of reasons, not least of which is sizing. But everyone previously was acting like KTo was a lolfold, despite being in CO. MP, LJ, sure dump it. I just thought if it was a mistake, it's a borderline one, not a no-brainer.

Is BU calling everything H raises here? I mean, they did call K9, so... Agreed that a lot of why someone opens KTo is for FE/buying the button. If BU never folds though..

How does b15 work in your games in $$? What's the purpose of it? It's like waving a red flag at a bull here, even more than a x would be. Checks are normal, microbets often get the lolwut reaction. Which manifests as either a puzzled call by everyone or a pot-sized bet from the more aggro. And yet they never spite raise when I try flop b25 on a two-tone board with a set. Shrug.

I guess the lesson to draw is river overbets are nutted unless we have a read otherwise?

So first off, bad OP has us all confused/mislead due to bad math and not putting the pot size anywhere:

Flop size is much better now, although not sure the extra 5 makes much difference, still don't pure bet for this size but it depends a lot on the players etc.

Turn I mostly sigh call as well.

I think a lot of players respond to 25%-33% bets in terrible ways ... and I would classify "spew raise" as one of those ways. All terrible responses can easily be exploited if you are betting small with an okay range. Just don't do terrible things like bet small with weak hands and bet bigger with good ones, or check most hands but lead 25% with sets.
Also helps a lot to do things like go big on brick turns with a decent range.
Saying that, I think the default response at 1-2 to less than 25% is to call almost everything ... which isn't that bad. So I don't go that low much.

Also, as always, I would caution against drawing conclusions quickly ... humans are terrible at understanding randomness without help (very easy to bet 25% a few times and run into air or nuts).

the reason for me suggesting b15 is because you are multiway so mdf is drawn from both ranges. theory may not matter in your games (it does not really appear to vs these opponents) but it's at least a good place to start from. regardless you should assume 6x has narrowed their ranges from what we'd expect in solver land / facing a more normal 15$ open, and you have a marginal hand on an extremely dry board. you want to choose sizes that force them to continue with the wider parts of their range. i don't really ever b15 or 20 in practice but i think it makes sense here.

Echoing what others have said against raising KTo pre - it's over 2 limps. If we were RFI'ing from LP, or raising over a single limp, it would be marginally better. But at low stakes, most players aren't limping in just to fold to a somewhat smallish (relative for the game and pot size) raise from the CO, and we still have the BTN and blinds to get through.

If we knew ahead of time that we'd be getting looked up by at least two opponents - doesn't really matter which two - would we love having KTo post-flop, almost regardless of what the board is, unless it comes QJ9, KKT, KTT, or KT2rb?

On any K-high board that doesn't also have a T on it, we're going to be dominated a lot, either by AK/KQ/KJ, or some whack 2P like K9/K8. We'll almost never be in a position where we've got a super strong and super-disguised hand AND our opponent has a hand that's strong enough to want to dump tons of money into the pot.

As for the rest - agree with submersible that if we bet at all, on any street, we should be betting small. I said 1/3 pot on flop and 1/2 pot on turn in my post above, but those are MAX sizes. He's right that hero really could and probably should be betting smaller here, multi-way, and up against the BTN and BB specifically, when they could show up with almost ATC.

I don't know about c-betting 15% of the pot, if only because betting 15 into 100 after making it 30 pre may induce some weird $hlt, and our hand isn't strong enough to want to continue facing a $50-$60 or bigger raise. My gut feeling is that a $20-$35 bet is in the right neighborhood in live low stakes games.

On the turn, anything from 1/3 to 1/2 is probably enough to avoid inducing bluff raises, but still small enough to trigger 2P+, so we can get away without thinking about it too hard.

If we bet small on flop and turn, it's hard to imagine how we'd get stacks in with such a marginal hand on the river.

dunno what games you guys play in but theres no population that i have ever played on either live, online, public, private, at any stakes where im not absolutely thrilled to call a flop raise with Kx here. (this does not mean you call off entire stack on subsequent streets with entire range, although there are people you can do that against too)

Not sure what comment you're reading which implied otherwise.

Assuming a small flop c-bet gets raised, yeah, I'd be fine calling with most Kx, assuming we don't have every possible Kx combo. And I wouldn't love stacking off on later streets, depending on the run out.