Flopping the nuts in 3BP

I'd bet the flop. Is he really folding TP to one bet? And if he can't beat TP, he isn't likely to improve enough to call a turn.

As played on the river, call.

BB isn't going to start bluffing with 99 or A5. Just bet the flop. He's calling a couple of streets with top pair, a couple of streets with pair-plus-draw, and should check-raise 2p+.

Yeah I think that was mistake to check flop.

True. He won’t call with much worse either. I should have just bet flop

Bet your hand….

Grunch, and random thinks:

PRE - you should tell us what position you're in. Even if V is a maniac, if he's competent, he should be raising less when you're opening EP and more when you're opening from LP.

Regardless of your position, I'd give his 3B slightly more respect when he's in the BB, and could just flat call, closing the action.

FLOP - My first instinct is to bet here, but I can get behind checking back to induce, if we're very confident in our read, and believe V will start over-bluffing on the turn.

The problem is even maniacal V's won't find enough bluffs on triple-Broadway boards, because they know traps are everywhere. I think I'd rather just bet, and pray he raises, either with 2P+, or just trying to rep the hand we actually have.

TURN - This is why I'd prefer to c-bet the flop. Now a lot of flopped 2P are boated up, and our nut straight isn't looking as strong. Even if he just has trips, how much money will he want to put in here, when we could be slow-playing a monster?

As played, when V bets small, we're somewhat handcuffed. If we raise, he'll just fold out all his bluffs and weak value, and what continues is likely trips or better.

RIVER - I mean...if I'm doing the math right, you only have another $123 behind if you jam over his $60 bet? I think I just stick it in here, and live with the outcome. If he has a boat, nice hand, good game.

ETA - just read the other replies. I don't hate flat calling, because V could have some boats here. But I think aggro V's who 3B pre and turn a boat after the flop checks through are going to look for more value, by going larger on the river, if not turn and river.

I think the best hand he has here is trips, and he's not folding trips after we check back the flop, when he's blocking so many of our boats, and isn't likely to believe we slow-played 2P+.

Thanks for the advice. Sorry I actually thought I put my position. I was actually UTG+1.

I think I had some logic to checking. But in hindsight betting would be better. He is a good player but probably isn’t over bluffing

Yeah I think my main reason for calling was his sizing on the river if he gets small I think we always raise. When he bets large I was wondering how wide he will bet that size that would also call a shove.

More random thinks, in response...

C-betting vs slow-playing nutted hands on the flop - I think in general the low stakes population under-folds to flop c-bets, so we can do a TON of c-betting for value, and really don't benefit from bluffing anywhere near as often as most people do when c-betting.

I think the logic is part, "everyone's read 'the book' and knows they should c-bet as the PFR, so we have to float more," part "he can't have it every time / we can improve / he might give up and I can steal it" sort of fish-logic.

As a corollary, I think it's just good to get as much value as we can, as early as we can, with our nutted hands, before action-killing cards come out on later streets.

Also as a corollary, I think when low-stakes players are c-betting too much, they do tend to over-stab when the PFR does NOT c-bet, almost regardless of the board texture, configuration, or other factors which might bear consideration. But the exception is that they don't stab as much on "scary" boards where the PFR can have lots of traps.

When we can have a lot of really strong hands on a particular board, opponents just don't start stabbing anywhere near as often when we check.

Lastly - while part of hand-reading is "what hands beat me, what hands can I beat", which is fine, we should probably be doing more range-reading, and thinking in terms of "how strong a hand does would this action by my opponent seem to indicate, and do his other actions in the hand align with that range?"

Like, here, yeah, we lose to boats. But is he going to bet less than 1/2 pot with a turned boat when we check back the flop, and then only bet 3/4 pot after we call the turn? On this board?

Maybe he's playing QT cautiously, because we could have KK or KQ, but most opponents are going to try to get more value with a boat on the river, and at lower stakes, they tend to be less concerned about getting stacked boat-over-boat.

The river decision here is hard because of how we got to the river. Had we just range-bet the flop for a small size, V likely would have raised all his 2P+, and we'd be able to discount boats (at least somewhat) on the turn. We could have just gone bet-bet-bet, and possibly gotten stacks in, or at least kept ourselves out of the blender.

Your flop decision to check back, in order to induce him to start bluffing on the turn is within the realm of FPS - fancy play syndrome.

No way I donk this flop in real time. This board should have clobbered his range and I'm looking to get all the money in now.

I'm not sure what his range even is when he checks back the flop. AA? JJ, maybe 99, AQs, maybe some other random crap like mid-pairs and suited connectors that got frisky preflop but hate this flop? I doubt he fires the turn with an underpair/air — he's likely betting for value, but I think we're still good here enough to get it in. I'd rather do it now before his trips boat up.

It's a curious hand since you'd expect Villain to bet this flop. I mean, he can check AA, AK and AQ and maybe a few whiffs such as 99 (you do say he 3bets wide, so perhaps some 87 etc just check-give-up as well). However, only AQ really improves on the turn and perhaps some QJs. Not sure if there's a bdfd on the turn but he doesn't really need to protect with AK etc, so it's possible he could be trapping with KK and KQ, and for this reason, I probably just call river. I mean a shove really only targets AQ unless you believe our xb on the flop would level him to calling with AK or AA.

In respect of the flop, I'd favour a bet, since I'd Villain has more natural x-calls than pure whiffs, but I could be wrong (i.e., if he's very wide pre). You don't need to get value from inducing a bluff given the sheer strength of your hand, plus you have a bunch semi-bluffs (ATs, QJ, JT, KJ etc) in your 3bet defence range.

Based on the comments you are right My check on the flop was not the best idea, There is still a lot of hands I can get value from and most of his hands that are very weak are probably not going to stab turn anyways

Another thought occurred to me, a good tip courtesy of Bart Hanson - whenever you're considering checking as a slow play, just bet small instead.

As for how often we'd be flatting KK pre - it depends.

The low stakes population tends to reflexively 4B-jam with KK pre, but that's often a mistake when we're IP and can just call. If we 4B-jam, it's hard to get called by worse than AK/QQ, and often we'll be up against AA.

I don't think it's a mistake to 4B jam when we'll be OOP post-flop, but IP, we can just flat call the 3B and let our opponents take themselves to value-town post-flop. We also save ourselves a lot of money when the flop comes ace-high.

Also, look at the configuration here. This is why I asked what position you're in. The earlier your position, the tighter your raising range should be, so when he 3B's from the BB, the stronger his range should be, when he could just flat call closing the action pre.

So, to answer your question, how often are we flatting KK here - when we open UTG1 and get 3B from the BB, I'd be flatting a bit more than I would if we opened from a later position, or if the 3B came from someone on the BTN or in the SB.

When you add the read that BB is quite aggro, I like flatting with KK even more, if we think he's going to be c-betting and barreling off at a high frequency.

I said he might be playing QT cautiously, because we could have KK or KQ. Even if we don't think KK figures to be in our range all the time, we could still have all the KQ combos here, if V is aggro and we're not folding to his 3B pre.

And really, I don't know how often he has QT when he 3B's from the BB over a UTG1 raise. Probably not all that often, which is why I think it's more likely he has QX, KX, or he's turning something into a weak bluff on the river. If you say he's aggro, maybe he 3B's pre with AQo, KQs, and QJs.

And like I said, if he has a boat, be it KK, KQ, or QT, nice hand, good game. We were going broke if we bet flop and he check-raised, so what difference does it make if we jam the river, when our hand is so under-repped, and it looks like we're capped at AK?

In theory, this flop should be good for his 3B'ing range, and we'd expect him to c-bet. When he checks, maybe he's trapping some of the time, but often he'll just be checking a weak hand, like 99 or AX, or playing pot control with a marginal hand, like QJ.

If that's his range - strong hands that are trapping, weak hands that will fold to a bet, and marginal hands that will call a bet, we should bet our hand for value, unless we think he'll start bluffing turn with a lot of the hands that would have folded to a bet.

The problem is that he's not always going to start bluffing or betting his weak value on the turn. And if he does start bluffing on the turn, he'll probably bet once and give up when we call, so we're only getting one street of value from his bluffs.

Okay, that's one more than we would have gotten had we bet the flop and he folded. But we lose a street of value when he's got a marginal hand that would call a bet, if not two or three bets, and we lose value when he's trapping.

When he's trapping, he'll be happy to raise when we bet. When he's pot-controlling, he's checking to check-call. When he's trapping and we check back, instead of betting large on the turn, he'll probably bet small, because we look weak when we check back this flop in a 3B pot.

When he bets small on the turn, do we raise then? Doesn't that tip our hand strength more than just betting the flop?

Like, he 3B pre from the BB, when we opened UTG1. Is he folding AA here if we go bet-bet-bet? AK? Is he folding flop with AQ? AT? AX? QJ? Is he folding 2P or a set, or check-raising if we bet 1/3 pot or less? If he's aggro, he might decide to check-raise with QJ, because why not? He's got middle pair and an OESD, and he could have all the sets on this board as the PF 3B'er.

Even if he's worried about us having AJ, he's NEVER folding a flopped set before the river. He's probably not folding 2P before the river.

Your OP says you checked flop because he's aggro and you thought he'd c-bet when he hits the flop, or bluff turn when he misses and we check back. But what hands does he have that will 3B from the BB over a UTG1 open, but DON'T c-bet this flop, but then suddenly start bluffing turn?

Even if he's aggro, how often is he going to get here the way he did and start bluffing with 99, or AX, or whatever thin sliver of his range was good enough to 3B pre but not good enough to c-bet?

All that said, I think his bet sizing is likely a tell. I'd expect him to try to get more value if he had a really strong hand. When he down-bets to 1/3 pot on the turn, and 3/4 on the river, his line looks like Qx, likely AQ or QJ, or a bluff he's not willing to fully commit to. Yes, he's betting 3/4 pot, but the pot is small relative to your stack depth behind, because he didn't size up on the turn.

It looks kind of mergey to me, like he's trying to find the right size to get a loose call or a tight fold when we have KX. If he's bluffing, he's obviously folding if we raise. But if he's doing this with trips, I don't think he's folding if we jam.

Appreciate your taking the time for such a good write up

I think the advice from Bart was good Its first time I have heard that.

Another question then, based on what our range should roughly be in this situation, What range of hands would you bet on this flop? Are we going for a small sizing with all of them?

Yeah thats why I wouldn't have raised turn as I didn't want to show strength when I was trying to show weakness on the flop.

Yeah I get your point he will have a lot of hands he will check call or check raise I will have missed some value on that part.

I think the betting range depends on how often we think he check-raises, and how strong we think his check-raise range is.

The more he check-raises, and the stronger his check raise range, the more polar I think we'd want to be with the range, made up of our strongest hands that can continue, like straights and sets, and low-equity hands that don't mind folding, like all our low-middling PP's and SC's.

If he's not check-raising a lot, or if his check-raise range includes enough bluffs that give up and check a brick turn when we call the x/r, the more merged our range can be, with some moderate value, and some semi-bluffs - all our 2P combos, plus hands like AK, KJ, K9, AQ, QJ, Q9, JJ, and JT.

If we think he's going to be sticky and check-call with some middling PP's or ace-high, or he might start a bluff with those hands on the turn if we check back the flop, we might want to mix in some lower-frequency bets with our better under-pairs, like 99 and 88, so we have some showdown value if it goes check-call flop, check-check turn, and he checks to us again on the river, and we don't end up folding the best hand to a turn bluff.