5/10: bottom set against a tight pro

Ouch. This is one of those spots that you're loving all the way up until when he jams river. Given that your line somewhat under reps your hand, I'm not folding a full house vs the river jam.

He could definitely be turning a missed draw or worse made hand into a bluff. That being said you're going to run into a bigger full house a lot.

Flop: There's an argument for raising, but I think a call is also fine.

Turn and River: Your sizing is too small. You're leaving value on the table. With bottom set you should probably be sizing turn to set up a river jam. Get the max when he has trips.

If your reasoning for sizing down is that he is tight, that's not the solution. The solution is to bluff more to force him to defend.

I would go larger on the turn and river.

You have to call off, although when he shoves the line makes sense as a slow play. JJ is the only likely hand that beats you. Only one combination of KK, two combinations of KJs, and three combinations of JJ. He is tight, so probably not raising KJo. Not really sure what he is turning into a bluff though or raising worse for value. Not happy about it, but you can't fold a boat here.

Gross spot. I mean, seriously gross. You played it fine, but his shove on the river is extremely strong. You could easily have JJ or KJ -- or 77, and he does not care. At worst he has AK. Not sure that I can fold, but vs. described V it's probably wise.

Brutal spot. I just don’t even know what villains bluffs would be:

AQhh/QT that cbets into 5(!!!) opponents but then doesn’t dbl barrel turn, but then decides to try and get his opponent to fold trips/small boat?

Turning AA/AK into a bluff when they’re getting a really great price to just look you up?

Sounds dumb to narrow an opponent down to a single combo, but it feels like exactly KJ. Cbets into a million opponents, checks turn because he has the board crushed/is invulnerable. Tank checks river because he’s strongly considering leading 🤷‍♂️

If he’s 3b SCs I think it’s fair that he would also iso the offsuit combos of KJ

Maybe add AThh too. But I agree, V may not 3! KJo, but they probably iso OOP limpers for bigger with it. Then cbet >half pot into the world.

So 10 combos that beat H like a gong, and maaaybe 3 combos that're bluffing vs calling and taking their Aces up/trips showdown? And being very optimistic that H can fold despite committing 40% of their stack?

I don't think I call here and I'm usually lol at folding a boat guy. Agreed, I'm expecting to see some variety of KJ from V.

How are we perceived? Are we a nit? Loose? Do we have any history at all?

I mean it's kind of a great turn for us to put a lot more money into the middle than we just did. Which then leads into a river shove, which again, I'm feeling great about.

As played I have no idea because river bet-sizing. If we have AK and we're facing a 40% river bet, what are we doing?

He might be raising it for value targeting Kx that's not KJ of which hero SHOULD have some because of the small-ish river size. This might be incorrect thinking and for those who disagree, feel free to tell me, but if I was villain, I'd expect hero to put a lot more money into the pot with 77.

Really dislike river sizing , b40-b80 should be indifferent for Kx which is what you are targeting. I wouldve b75, to target Kx and comfortably fold when you get jammed on.

Now with b40 you’re not sure if V is overvaluing AK thinking you have some KQ, KT, K9

He could be value betting worse, just seems like a weird line for V to take as he’s more likely to get called down just going bet/bet/bet when targeting a worse K

call I think. It's possible for him to jam worse for value (not likely, but possible), and it also makes a ton of sense for him to bluff trying to get you to fold a weaker King.

It also makes a ton of sense for him to play JJ and KK and KJ this way (which he can have, he raised MP). But you're getting a really good price here, so if bluffs make sense, you're kinda obligated to call. You can only really fold this if you're saying that Villain is not capable of bluffing. Like I think >50% chance of being beat here, probably KJ, but still call because of the price.

So I've been thinking more about this spot and checked it out in a solver.

I still think you probably have to call, but now it's looking closer. I might be convinced that a fold is best.

One of the main factors I wasn't considering was how few potential bluff combos he likely arrives here with. That's after him betting into 5 people on the flop, then check calling turn.

If he was bluffing here, I would think something like Jx would probably be a good candidate to bluff with, but I don't know if he arrives to the river this way with many, if any, combos of Jx.

The same is true of draws. If he was going to continue past the turn with straight or flush draws I would expect him to be barreling more than check calling, especially considering the board paired and draws could be drawing dead. Bet folding draws on the turn from his perspective probably makes more sense than check calling with them.

All that being said he could still be bluffing or value raising with worse, especially because the small river sizing could have induced this. In a heads up pot the solver was check raising all in with AK in villain's spot when you use this sizing. I'm still not sure that line is very likely for our opponent to take with AK though.

A few other takeaways from the solver. I looked at a heads up spot with HJ open vs CO call, so keep in mind this isn't solving for your exact multiway spot.

1. Heads up solver strongly prefers raising flop with 77, although calls are mixing at extremely low frequency. I think there could be more merit to calling multiway? I'm curious if anyone else has an opinion about the flop call?

2. The solver actually likes your smaller turn sizing, and is never betting big with anything. When you look at the full ranges it makes sense because he still has an advantage at the top end of his range, but you have a lot of decently strong hands that want to put money in the pot. Your strong hands sort of protect your weaker betting combos so you don't want to split your range into larger and smaller sizes (yet).

3. Your river bet needs to be bigger with your hand. Solver has 77 always overbetting, and the vast majority of hands that are betting are overbetting (40% of hands that arrive here). The solver does use your sizing occasionally (6.7%), but it's with stuff like AJ thin value and some KJ nuts that have the board locked up. Even KJ is overbetting the vast majority of the time though, and just small bets a sliver to protect your marginal value. Again this is a heads up sim so considering your actual situation these thin value bets probably aren't a thing. You've just got to go big.

If you made it this far reading, congrats your poker career is going places! 😉

sizing looks bad to me by you (ev loss). havent solved but u dont block kx or jx and u have spr 4 ott with polar range of missed sds and good trips?+, travesty to do this

this one i think u win a bit more than the other recent xjam otr hand but still looks eh. think u realistically only lose to kj / jj. do believe he jams 77 though so your hand doesnt seem irrelevant blockerwise, dunno will solve but can only do 3 not 6. you *could* check the turn, would rather do that than whatever this sizing scheme is.

Hand reading is an art I’m not sure a hand history can reflect, but it looks enough like AA to make me want to call. He paused on the turn, then convinced himself you didn’t have a king, and decided let’s go.

But the reason I’m NOT calling, is his label. If this guy is a pro, he’s not bluffing off his stack in this situation. Now if I labeled him differently, might have a different opinion. But with this reasoning, he paused on the turn deciding whether to check-raise and put the money in then or wait for the river.

People forget to tell Hero’s image, but if he’s bluffing, I think it’s a tailor-made exploit and he thinks Hero folds too much. Otherwise, your line is too strong to ignore. He may have checked the turn thinking you would fold to pressure with that scare card (king) and then was delighted to see you attacking his nuts.

Tough spot, I’m not overly critical of anything you’ve done so far and it will be difficult to criticize either river decision. Really would have had to experience it myself to know what I’d do, but decisions like this are more than just pot odds. Once you make a decision, don’t look back - results happen

turn

river

river b/c suggests you are making 80+bb which i am dubious about, but i think you can just jam the river urself. like when i look at your sizing it looks like u r playing vs AA and you want to be playing vs trips here. sim has him value jamming AK always if he arrive here like this and bluffing AA sometimes both of which i think happen less in practice than reality (particularly the AA, though if he value jams worse would prob never fold). it also wants to bluff fractional amounts of teh weaker kxss which i think wont happen from avg 5/10 reg and its unclear to me that he actually cbets realistically any of those 6 ways esp for this sizing

this does strike me as a line people bluff in though whereas the k22 hand really didnt. the hardest thing for me here is finding hands that want to cbet for 55% into 5 people that dont just call the river when qt / aq / at / t9 miss and op likely fish. like idk man r he really targetting like KQ to fold getting 2:1? probably not. but who knows. could begrudgingly be convinced to fold this one honestly given op is not reg and flop is 6 ways, but think too much hinges on how v plays flop / turn ranges (how many ak vs kj / jj does he get to river with) which we're never really going to know. would say id expect him to bet and bet this size w jj / kj more often than ak otf, but to have AKo pure whereas probably not KJ given 2 limpers. idk man tough one, use better sizings earlier would be biggest takeaway

This might be a bit uninformed on my part, but I do note a very strong solver heuristic to fast-play bottom set, and I think it's driven by how quickly things can go wrong when the board pairs (compared to holding middle or top set). You are much, much more likely to end up on the wrong side of a boat-over-boat scenario than with the other sets. (And of course you're unblocking the higher pairs.)

To that end, my inclination is to raise flop even with the rainbow board. But I don't know as much about mw theory and also am probably colored by playing lower stakes where the likelihood of a school of draws overcalling is much higher.

When solver recommends fast-playing, you always have to remember that solver assumes you're bluffing at GTO frequency, and (what actually matters) opponent knows you're bluffing at GTO frequency. Given those assumptions, you can just fast-play bottom set and your opponent probably calls down because you have so many bluffs.

In the real world, people bluff much less than GTO, raises are more value-heavy, and people fold more if you raise. Especially pros-who-don't-think-you're-also-a-pro. If you don't bluff like GTO, then you also can't just fast play your value hands like this and expect to get called down.

I'd argue turn and river are huge mistakes and this is speaking from a purely exploitative/everyonecallstoomuchatlivepoker perspective. Kx is just not folding to what ever size we use on the turn and same for river. Going 50% and then 40% just seems like you're leaving an awful lot of $$ on the table.

I can't think of any bluffs that play this way but I could convince myself this is AK often enough to justify call. River sizing just makes it impossible to determine.

Flop call seems fine/standard. Wouldn't argue with the solver but IP I don't mind trapping.

This is one of those spots where we want to deviate from solvers and just go for max value. Regardless of villain being a 5/10 ''pro''. People aren't folding Kx here. It's fair to question if AK/KQ/KT/K9s checks the turn and I'm not sure, but I'd imagine people probably do.

Woohoo!

Thanks everyone for the feedback so far.

Yeah, agree that my bet sizes are pretty bad, especially on the river. Unfortunately, this reflects a frequent mistake of mine: not being polarized enough.

Thanks also for all the solver works, although I suspect that GTO goes out of the window given the flop action, unless we heavily node-lock.
I mean: V c-betting half pot into 5 opponents is crazy strong. I'm close to 100% sure that he doesn't have any semi-bluff here, this can only be fat value, targeting Kx and QT, maybe AJ.
The hands that make more sense in theory are JJ and 77 (which obviously he can't have), followed by AA and AK. I am not sure he always cbets with KK and KJ (and very likely he hasn't KJo in his pf range) because those block most of the calling hands he is targeting. Really doubt he cbets with anything worse than KQ.

Fast forward to the river: yes, my bet is way too small, and it might look indeed like KQ targeting AA or a worse KX (although V has't lots of worse KX, if any).
Anyway, otr my range is made of trips (almost only KQ), KJ, 77, plus maybe the single combo of QThh.
Don't think he is raising with AK, this seems quite thin to me, and V is definitely on the tight/conservative side.
So, imo it all boils down to whether he plays AA like this until the river and he is then capable of turning them into a bluff.

That was my first thought too when I advocated for sizing up turn/jamming river in my first post.

After seeing how the solver plays the spot it had me rethinking that though. I still think in this particular multiway spot what you're arguing for could be best.

It would be different though if we were heads up in position with our opponent heading to the flop. I think the small turn bet followed by large river overbet would have a lot more merit then. The reasoning relates more to the weaker portions of our range and our opponent's range.

Yes with exactly 77 it makes sense to want to go for max value from Kx. However solver's line of betting smaller on the turn then over betting river still achieves that goal.

The benefit from betting smaller on the turn comes from other portions of the ranges. We can also make some thinner value bets with weaker hands, with the intention of checking back river. To do this we need to keep our strongest hands in the small bet node as well, otherwise we're vulnerable to check raises.

The smaller turn bet puts a lot of pressure on weaker portions of our opponent's range. If they have something like an open ender or flush draw they likely fold to a large turn bet, but could continue against a smaller one.

If they don't continue with a lot of weakish hands in their turn check line they will end up overfolding to the small bet. This will enable us to make profitable bluff stabs with a lot of the weaker hands in our range.

Many of these benefits are less relevant in a multiway spot where the ranges both players arrive to the turn with are just so strong. Still it's good to look for takeaways that we can apply to future spots.

you got way too many assumptions here when your read is a pro who has 3b suited connectors. if you think he never has a worse value hand and his only plausible bluff combos are AA you should fold. but again this is way too much conjecture

the reason we spend so much time on theory / study is to avoid doing exactly what you did here imo

If you are absolutely sure he isnt value raising AK then this is a snap folddd

If we node lock JJ, KJ, KK only and like 10% bluff with AA (thats me being generous, i actually think its closer to 0 lol) then calling with 77 is an absolute torch lol

Fair enough.

However, what is the theoretically correct range for a half pot cbet into 5 people, on a relatively dry board?

My guess is that it is extremely narrow, like TPTK+, and partially discounting top set and top 2p.
But I am just somehow extrapolating from 3-way ranges, would be happy to read more sound arguments.

Had you used reasonable bet sizes, I'd be inclined to agree but would you EVER put someone on a boat, on this run out, who uses the sizings you used?

Alright well as Sub and Joe said. If it's just AA he can turn into a bluff, nothing else and he never raises AK for value, this really isn't an interesting hand and it's a fold.

Grunch:

PRE - 3B to iso that dead money.

FLOP - V c-bet 1/2 pot six ways. He's not bluffing. Probably not betting thin. This smells a lot like JJ.

TURN - check back. Give him a chance to bet worse on the river, if he somehow has worse.

RIVER - check back. Snap fold to the check-jam.

You called me out in the other thread, and rightfully so, but now I've got to also respectfully call you out here. He makes one half-pot sized bet on the flop and you immediately put him on one of the only two hands that can beat us? That doesn't seem like reasonable hand ranging.

I assume the reason you said JJ and not KK is because you're thinking KK often checks flop or bets smaller, and I would tend to agree. I also agree that his range is likely strong in this spot.

He could have JJ. He could also have 77 (if we didn't block it), KJ, AA or AK. I would say that would be about the tightest possible range you could put him on for the flop bet specifically.

Then there are slightly less likely but still quite possible hands like KQ and QT open ender which are still somewhat likely followed by increasing unlikely hands like KT, K9s, AQ bdfd, AT BDFD, QQ, Jx. Some of the hands listed towards the end are increasingly unlikely, but it wouldn't shock me if he bet some of those on the flop at some low frequency.

Now by the time he shoves the river we can put him on a smaller range of hands. KJ possibly seems most likely to me, or maybe KK or JJ.

KJ does seem like the one hand that gets to the river this way at close to full frequency. Value bets flop. Check calls turn to slow play after they have the board locked up and are blocking other strong hands, then goes for a check raise on the river. KJ makes a lot of sense.

I would expect KK to play the flop differently sometimes, and JJ to barrel turn often but those hands are also still relatively likely.

So at this point it's looking like a fold. The question is whether he could ever jam river with AK worse value? Bluff with AA, Jx (unlikely) or maybe something like QTd might think they could get you off of a K?

Also a wise man once told me to always make a 10% allowance for random spew. Maybe 5% allowance because it's a pro.

Anyway I'm curious for the reveal, but not sure if the OP wants to allow for any more discussion first. I'm hoping there was a showdown and he didn't fold, since the more deeply we broke the hand down the more reasonable a fold started to look.