no no no...IIII have the queen

I would fold the flop, but your approach trying to get trips to fold is probably better.

Probably not the best bluffing candidate, I'd rather have non-heart K or J. But now that we're this deep we're rolling with it. At least V has proven to have a fold button and K is a good card to continue bluffing.

We're targeting 7x and 88-TT and FDs. $75-$100 should get us a call OTT and maybe save us from ourselves if she x/r Qx. Leaves us enough that we can jam river and expect everything not Qx to fold.

There are some problems in that if you make your flush, you can lose to a higher flush or a boat.

When he small checkraises, it looks like trips. Not sure what he is raising and calling your 3! with, accept trips, a boat, or a higher flush draw. If he doesn't have trips, you can often make him fold. I good player might fold bad trips, but not many will do that in a 1/3 game.

You have the best villain descriptions, it helps.
However, your image is another thing. I’m not sure how players see you from day to day.

I’m never excited about raising in the big blind, so I would never make this play. It’s implied that because she folded to a 5bet, you can pressure her off her hand, but what does she have?

Probably no one on this forum drives a semi-bluff flush draw more than I, but I don’t like this spot. Going to check it back and hope to hit the flush, which I don’t think hits her.

When she calls the 3bet, I think she has value that I’m not sure will fold to a bluff.

If the river bricks and she checks to you again, I might consider a stab, but not if I think she’s waiting for me.

You broaden my learning doing things I wouldn’t do. I truly think that most losing players would win if they stopped playing suited connectors. I like 5h6h better than most, but only in an unraised pot or from late position where I might raise with it.

My take on this hand is that you're undervaluing priors.

As played, we think Asian girl has trips. In most cases, trying to get people to fold trips is a terrible idea. But against some people it's a great idea because they wouldn't think you'd try it. She's representing trips, you raised, so you must know she has trips, so you must not be bluffing.

So the question is, do you have enough evidence that she's in the second category? And as far as I can see, the answer is no. And that's not because you have no evidence; your description does make this play better. I just don't think it's enough to overcome the prior. I would only do this if I have seen her make a fold in a more related situation. (And preferably don't tank-fold because that suggests it was close.) I mean you're literally just representing 77 here, which is three combos. You need a really strong read to think someone folds if you're only representing 3 value combos. I guess AQ as well, maybe. KQ is already a stretch.

So yea, directionally correct reasoning, but too ambitious, imo.

I think the problem with a stutter step is when we check back turn, V gains confidence she is ahead. If she has TT and we x turn, is she folding to a jam on a brick river? I wouldn't. I called with TT because you're a banana, then you made me feel that's the right decision checking turn, and now that the flush misses you're jamming - that's an easy snap call because it looks like a whiffed flush draw. If she's calling with TT, 99, 7x that's exactly the line she wants. People are much less likely to fold if they believed they were ahead the prior street.

I think it would be better to just give up than stutter. But that makes the original 3! really bad because that bet was never folding anything (she had to call $50 in a $140 pot). Folding 7x OTF vs banana would be a blunder.

It is a dicey spot because there are brick walls and I don't think Qx is ever folding. But I think she's a good bit wider than Qx. The original 3! was probably -EV, now we're just trying to make it lose a little less.

Grunch:

PRE - seems standard.

FLOP - I don't know what to make of our line. What are we repping here? 77? Q7? Just QX? I don't think it's very credible that we're going to re-raise over a check-raise with those hands.

And what do we think she's got? Is there any chance she's folding trips now or on a later street if we don't make our hand?

TURN - take the free card.

Plan to fold if she leads on a brick river. Call if we make our flush and she bets less than 3/4 pot. Bet 2/3 pot if she checks, whether we get there or not. If she check raises, fold.

Alternatively, bet small on the turn, like $90, to look like we're trying to milk her for value while we have KQ. If she calls, I'm probably only betting river if we make our flush, and not for a huge size.

You drunk again banana? We are repping AQ+? Once we rep so strong and she continues it’s time to abort.

You are not going to make your money at 1/3 getting people to fold trips. She is kind of face up trips or a boat when she x/rs. If she is bluffing, she is probably semibluffing with a higher flush draw.

When people play face up strong, you can exploit them by folding or calling to draw. If they are face up weak, you can bluff them.

I am not sure if it is a call or fold on the flop, but don't like the 3!. Doc's advice is good for what to do as played.

My inclination is to take the free card, but I really do like this line of thinking.

Biggest issue is that I really struggle to see any underpair or 7x deciding to x/r the flop, especially with V2 as described unless this is a typical reverse read and V1 sees V2 as "monkey stabs small on these flops with draws".

I think V1's range is just FDs and trips+, so I still think it might be better to take the free card and try to bluff off the missed draw OTR for a smaller size. But your line at least makes the flop 3b seem like it had a purpose, and I'd worry about getting heroed down with A3hh or whatever with my line - not to mention the Kxhh combos that turned a good pair.

i think squeeze might be good when sb flats given v2 description. am unsure about flop but i think you can size the 3b smaller. im not totally sure what bb strategy looks like here vs sb x/r tbh. am inclined to think you could just fold and maybe cold call is better than 3b (are you really cold 3bing something like QT here?). would give up turn. will solve though

filtered for hearts as bb otf

strat in general as bb

We're not trying to get trips to fold. Vs range is wider than just Qx. You just named that she might be semi-bluffing with a higher FD. We beat higher flush draws because they aren't calling the river and V only has a 15% chance of hitting it since we block two of the outs.

AJ, AT, A9, A8, A4, A3, A2, KJ, KT, K9, JT, J9, J8 hearts are all very plausibly in her range and might raise the obvious c-bet then is priced in to call banana's small 3!. There are 24 combos of 88-JJ. I think those play this way too sometimes. Does she ever do this with 7x? Hard to say, but that adds more combos if she does.

How many combos of Qx does she have? It greatly depends on how deep she goes into the Qxo territory. If she plays QTo+ and Q8s+ that's 36 combos. If we assume she 3!s pre with AQ/KQ, now she only has 20 combos of Qx.

So there are plenty of combos in her preflop range that could very plausibly raise the small c-bet a small amount. She raised a $10 bet to $25, that's small for the game, small to her (she's normally a $2/$5 player) and only 80% of the original pot. Banana then 3x it putting her in a position to call a small 3!. Again, $50 is in absolute dollars small for her, not exactly huge for the game and she's getting 2.8:1 on her money (needs 26% equity). So I don't see calling Banana's 3! as screaming strength from any player mildly competent at poker math. She is getting the right odds to call with a FD if Banana turns KQ face up. And if she's seen Banana at all, she knows he doesn't only have Qx here.

She has made no action that is polarizing in this hand yet. I think we can argue about whether $1/$3 players in general are capable of x/r and calling a 3! that wide, but she is primarily a $2/$5 player. At the minimum, I think we can give her credit for being capable of having the larger FDs in her range. And certainly JJ/TT I think is there frequently enough. 99/88 and 7x that's really player dependent and more questionable. But it's very possible that Qx accounts for less than half her range.

Especially if we think that she 4!s Qx sometimes. There is a FD out there and is Qx really flatting and then checking the turn to let hearts draw for free? We're far from solverland, but in general, Qx OOP isn't slowplaying, and I think IRL, people are generally piling money in probably more aggressively than the solver.

I agree Qx is there. Especially Q7. And 77 is there too. There are brick walls, and I'm not crazy about turning this hand into a bluff but I think you significantly underestimate how much other stuff there is in Vs range. And with the 3! we already started the bluff, and abandoning mid-bluff is usually a bigger mistake than starting a bad bluff in the first place. When bluffing with complete air, you bet like you have the nuts. This is a complete airball bluff.

while this all sounds great, its a winning tag that called a 3.3x from utg in the sb. i would start by looking at basic pre ranges. i think postflop hand reading is a bit out there too but this is a spot where she probably has idk 5-8% of hands? and you are analyzing like its 25-35%

In case you haven't noticed, a lot of folks don't play solver preflop ranges in live low-stakes poker. Or live high stakes poker. Or live midstakes poker. Or in live poker anywhere. Not sure how many 7x are there. But if someone was telling me a hh and told me the SB flatted with A7, I'm not going to be "OMG I CAN'T BELIEVE SOMEONE DID THAT!!!". And I'm sure not deleting 7x from their potential range just because the preflop chart on GTOWizard says it shouldn't be. In general, people shouldn't be flatting much at all from the SB, but its safe to say that live players over flat call from all positions preflop.

Using the same logic, SB is supposed to be 3!ing most of their Qx preflop and shouldn't really have many flats with that either, but V probably has a lot more Qx than solverland.

I think 7x does raise the btn a lot, but does it call the 3! from banana? Probably a sliver at most. That depends on her opinion of Banana.

best case scenario i can see on the flop 3bet

utg is opening a bit too wide and cbets range and only continues with trips + facing this (~15%)
sb is leading flop with some hands and is check raising depolar and will fold everything but nfd / trips+ (18%)

even then you're risking 75 to win 65 so it needs to work around 55%. yes you will have some amount of equity but i think we have decent rio too so im unsure how to value that. maybe absolute best case scenario this is like +2-3bb? and as soon as ep doesn't cbet range or sb isn't xring depolar or whatever it ends up becoming either not good (ep cbetting like ~60%) or a torch (sb only x/ring good hands)

you said this in another thread where i said something similar. while you can make this argument, what is the point of hand reading or talking strategy at all if you don't look at the hand history and try to put them on a range based on what they do. it should be obvious people flat tight in the sb, signif tighter than basically any other position. most people play 3b or fold and when they don't its a very defined narrow range. thinking she has full combos of qto or q8s seems like extremely poor hand reading to me vs someone described as a winning player who also plays higher

13 combos of FD + 24 combos of pps + 20-36 combos of Qx + 3 combos 77. That is 60-76 combos or 4.5%-5.7% of existing combos. As the gross starting point. I then narrowed it down a bit because I think not all 88-JJ pps play this way and I think some Qx 3!s pre and/or 4!s flop. Obviously, anytime you start narrowing down the frequencies there's going to be a lot of subjectiveness to it that is entirely dependent upon the particular V. But to the extent we can narrow V's preflop range, that's a postive in this spot because the offsuit hands account for a ton of Qx, while Axhh, Kxhh and 88-JJ are more likely to still be in a tighter preflop range. We are in super bad shape against pretty much all offsuit hands that call our 3!. So the fewer offsuit hands in existence, the more her range is skewed towards hands we can bluff. We want her to have hearts.

If she has 8% of hands, then Banana is even better off. I don't think her range is anywhere near that wide. Gross, I think its around 5% and then if you narrow it down to reflect she probably isn't x/r 100% and she is sometimes 3!ing pre and she isn't always playing QTo or maybe A3hh she probably ends up here about 2.5% of the time. But that's beside the point. We're just trying to figure out whether there are hands we can bluff in her range and if she does have those hands in her range how do we get her to fold. To the extent that her range is wider and she is going bonkers with 87 or its tighter and she doesn't have QTo, thats a benefit to us. We have to consider 7x because its relevant to the board whether it should or shouldn't be in her preflop range. But I agree with you, 7x isn't the primary hand we're trying to bluff.

The most logical hands we can bluff off are FDs and pps between 88-JJ. Are those in her range? Because if they aren't then we shouldn't be bluffing. Is it plausible those are in her range? I think so.

Maybe people aren't playing solver-approved ranges. And maybe she's OOL when she x/r's.

But it seems unlikely she's x/r'ing with a wide / weak range, with hero still having an uncapped range, and then calling his 3B with a bunch of hands that are going to fold to further aggression.

I think Sub's right - she's probably only x/r'ing good hands here. And she's probably folding the worst hands in her x/r range to our 3B. I'd think she gets to the turn with a pretty strong range.

Maybe continued aggression can get her to fold some of the worst hands in her range by the river. We may need to fire three times, and even then, I think she still calls a lot.

Thanks for running the sim. Can you post it without the heart filter?

I'm just wondering how much 77 or QX either of the blinds has here, and what those QX combos are. I'm guessing both ranges' QX combos are clustered around Q7-QJ, and the Kd on the turn is mostly a brick.

I dunno. Maybe we can make her fold Q8-QT and whatever busted draws she has by the river. It just seems like we're repping a super-narrow range that she likely heavily blocks.

Don't ever change, Banana.

@ Banana - This hand reminds me of a couple that were featured on Bart Hanson's YT channel recently, and one I played within the last year.

The flop comes out with a pair and a two-flush on board. What hands get raised? Do we ever raise quads? Bottom boat? Trips? Our draws?

Obviously we don't have QQ here. But say the board was 7s7h4s. You raising 77? 44? All your 7x? 65ss? What hands are you raising on Td8c8d, etc?

I'm asking because on boards like these, it's hard to structure a balanced raising range that has very many hands in it. The range is so narrow that most people end up having no raises at all.

Sure enough, we can see in Sub's sim that you're only raising around 2% of the time, and it looks like less than 20% of your raises are bluffs. I reckon we can simplify to just folding 85% and calling 15%, with 0% raises.

In this hand, the best hand you're likely to have on the flop is Q7 or 77. It seems unlikely that you're going to wake up with Q7 or 77 in the BB, and the SB is going to x/r, and then you're going to 3B, and then she's going to call your re-raise with a hand that doesn't block any of the hands you're repping.

If we're only calling 15% of the time, how often is she calling our 3B? What hands are in that insanely narrow range?

Yes, maybe she x/r's with a heart draw, and maybe she calls the 3B, and maybe now she'll fold if we barrel off. That's a lot of maybe's, making our line seem puntnecessary.

i dont raise the flop on paired boards with anything ever.