2/5 ~ PAHWM: AQs facing nonstop 3bets

This isn't perfect, but it's mostly true.

I don't think you want to have 3+ bets go in, UNLESS one of:

1. V is very likely to think you are trying to bluff him off 99-JJ with AK.

2. V will "bluff" it off after you check to him.

...so with AQs on on Q6436, I think 125 on the flop is a bit big, but not huge.

Then we'd want to check turn or river, can see arguments for both.

Turn 300 is a bit random half pot ... it's not terrible, but feels like either 200 or 400 has to be better and other sizes could be better too (again targeting one of the above points).

River seems like an easy check/call vs. almost all sizes (maybe all) ... again give him a chance to do whatever with a worse hand. I wouldn't be super shocked if we got coolered/owned vs. KK, but it's difficult to do anything else without good reads. If he bets 100 on the river, I probably still just call but I'd think about it a lot.

You can bet if you think he's much more likely to hero call you down than bluff, but the sizing is kind of weird and the constant 3bets would suggest he can bluff.

The thing I don't like about checking river is that I think he mostly checks back with hands we beat that would call a small bet, and he can put us in the blender if he bets big.

Possibly dumb question - how do you know he was doing crazy stuff if you didn't get a showdown?

We opened UTG, he 3B from +1, we 4B, and he called. Even if he's playing raise-or-fold pre, this has to be the tightest configuration possible.

Even if he's 3B'ing you light, and calling your 4B light, he's not going to be turning many SDV hands into a bluff on the river when you c-bet large and barrel for a large size. He's going to be happy to take his SDV and check back,

Even if he has AK, he probably won't bet it. He's not turning 99-JJ into a bluff, when he can beat AK. He just doesn't have that many missed FD's in a 4B pot, even if he's 3B'ing light and calling our 4B light.

When he calls our flop and turn bets, his range that gets to the river is going to be mostly PP's from 99 to AA, worse QX, and AK.

I think betting small and calling a jam is problematic here. We're betting small to get sigh-called worse, not induce a spaz-raise.

What worse hands is he jamming, when he can just call a small bet and win if we're bluffing with AK? What hands is he turning into a bluff here? AK? 99-JJ?

Do you think he's jamming worse QX? Why? To get called by our 99-JJ or AK? How can we call a jam with worse than TP?

I assumed he was doing the crazy stuff because I might have done the same.
Preflop fish limps, he iso'ed in btn Im giving him super wide range.

3way Flop was AQx hh fish donks something like 1/2 pot he flats, i assume he is wide here from Ax/Qx/kk/fd/gutshots etc.

Turn blank, fish continues betting like 1/2 ~ 3/4 he continues calling, I think his range narrowed a bit to more marginal showdown hand than draws.

River a 7h fish bets small like 1/4, V quickly raises 5x without much thought. Sure he could do it with a flush. But I think he was turning showdown value into bluff. It was a gut feeling in game. If I ended up river like this I might do the same.
He was raising fish small bets in hands prior as well.

Yea I was halluncinating expecting him to be crazy. Yet he was the one who expected me to be crazy in hand.

Do you think V is going to call off a PSB with a worse hand, in a 4B pot?

I'm not sure he would. Maybe he can't let go of KQ. Maybe he tanks forever and makes a crying call with QJ, though that's iffy. Hard to think he's going to call it off with JJ or TT when we go bet-bet-jam in a 4B pot, when he only beats bluffs.

Even against an opponent capable of getting OOL and 3B'ing light pre, he can still have AA/KK here. Maybe he's in the 10% who will occasionally call off with worse, but he'll always call with better.

Just doing basic combo counting with card removal, his range is going to have more AA/KK and JJ/TT than QX. I'd want to bet small, to target JJ/TT and the slivers of worse QX that may call. Jamming seems like an over-play, IMO.

Be wary of assuming opponents are doing what we might be doing in their spot. Without a reveal, we don't know that V didn't have the best hand when he raised the river.

Also be wary of assuming what opponents are thinking about us.

V said he thought we were giving up when we checked, but that doesn't mean he necessarily thought we were bluffing when he was calling our bets. He may have decided you were bluffing after you checked, and decided to check back because your bluffs can't call a bet.

There were two flush draws on board. If he was sure his hand was best, he might raise flop or turn. More likely, he wasn't very comfortable with a weak top pair in a 4B pot, and was just trying to get to showdown as cheaply as possible.

You 4B pre. You're just not going to have very many bluffs here. What few bluffs you have are likely to be AKs with one of the suits on board. That hand is basically a 15-out combo draw vs his hand.

So you either have him beat, or you have a ton of equity. He can't really do anything but flat call your bets, and pray you're bluffing but don't get there by the river.

The above seems like decent evidence of crazy stuff, no? I mean, are you calling QJo here vs a 4! if you're V? Against Dango?

I see your point, and of all of the posters here, if there was explicit evidence of shenanigans, it'd have been shown in a typical Dango 5 HHs before the action... But I think it's likely V was doing things that Dango didn't notice, but their brain did, if you follow my meaning.

Nh, Dango.

Yeah, it's possible our sub conscious mind registers stuff our conscious mind doesn't. I was just warning against assuming too much without enough info.

In this configuration, I wouldn't 3B QJo. Definitely wouldn't call the 4B, even if I thought my opponent was capable of 4B'ing light.

The main point to Dango is to not assume V is going to jam with his entire range in a 4B pot, after we've bet twice and then check a brick. In this spot, all his worse value combos beat our busted draws, and we could be checking over-pairs and TPTK, hoping to induce a bet, so he's likely to check back a ton.

We can bet for value to get called by hands that would otherwise be happy to check back, and probably fold if we get raised. If we check, and he jams, we have to guess if he's had us beat the whole way or if he's making a suicidal bluff, which is a $hlt spot to be in if we think V doesn't have a 5B range pre, and is capable of jamming a busted draw.

It just seems like an under-bluffed spot. V might occasionally raise turn with his high equity draws, and isn't likely to turn SDV into a bluff by jamming. I think he's going to mostly check back his worse value hands, and put us in the blender by always jamming with his better value, and only occasionally jamming with a busted draw.

So, first off, this isn't some "a bit wide" thing.

EP doesn't open QJo, ever. It doesn't even open KQo pure at 100bb, less than 50% of the time at 200bb (and AJo even less) and doesn't open it at all at 400bb.

HJ opens QJo about 50% of the time at 200bb.

V is not only 3betting like ~25-30% of range EP vs. an EP open, he's then calling 4bets with a lot of that range. Maybe he doesn't understand preflop at all and he's doing this with QJo and not K8s/Q8s/J8s but it's still insanely wide ... like maniac/whale levels of button clicking spew.

The description of V was "V is a reg, has been actively 3betting hero, over the past 3 hours at least 6+ 3bets vs hero specifically, some vs others. His strategy is 3bet/fold preflop." ... I would not describe V this kindly after seeing this hand.

Obviously all the answers of the form "lol, just pile money in and/or shove river and let V hero call our bluff" are absolutely printing here, and he doesn't have nearly enough high equity hands to make it bad even if we run into it occasionally. To be fair he also has to have a ton of absolute trash that "can't" call even half pot bets postflop, and he's less likely to adjust to GTO like bet sizes than if we start shoving money in ... but he only needs to spew call that QJo for 1k on the river once to make up a lot of our winrate.

I do sometimes think I study too much for some of the games I play, and I should shut my brain off and just pile money in with good cards more often ... but timing is everything.

This is an example of what I was talking about the other day when I said you are betting linearly (all with value, from stronger value to weaker value) in some spots where you should be polarized (strong value and air/bluffs).

This river is a good spot to be polarizing and betting big with value and bluffs. If you're jamming AQ that would be the bottom of your value range, and you're going wider than is standard due to the aggressive dynamic.

You're saying he has more combos of AA and KK than Qx, but does he really? AA and KK sometimes 5-bet pre. If they don't 5-bet pre they sometimes raise flop. If they don't raise flop they likely raise turn on a two flush draw board. It's actually pretty unlikely for him to arrive to the river this way with AA or KK.

Now JJ and TT can arrive to the river this way given the dynamic, sure. You're saying they would never call a jam, but they would never call against you because your betting range is all value that beats those hands. I'm betting with either strong value or a total bluff (which JJ would beat) so that gives him a reason to call sometimes to prevent my bluffs from all getting through. That's why you polarize with bluffs, so that he has to call you sometimes with marginal hands that can't beat any value.

The way I'd think about it is...

1. In GTO land OOP is mostly (almost always?) polarized when betting, unless range betting. (AIUI)

2. The main reason to do that is because you need to defend your checking range. Eg. if you aren't checking 2-3 combos. of AQs here then JJ is basically the nuts when you check.

3. V "should" (yeh, I know, I also saw the reveal) have a range which is roughly AA/KK/QQ/AK/missed-fd (combos of each unknown) and bits of JJ/TT/99. Obviously the reality is it's easy to be a bit wider, with full combos. of JJ-77, and he easy to fast play all KK+ (and AIUI solver never calls AA preflop).

4. So to play "well" I think we should be checking something like AQs/KK!h planning on calling, and that stops him from bluffing hands worse than AK which we'd also want to check and/or "thin value" betting JJ.

...obviously this is all stupid if V is super wide and needs (and wants) to call off 6 combos of QJ and we are playing 3d chess vs. a pidgeon.

Yeah that was pretty much my point with my first post. If we're 4-betting pre against this pigeon it's for value and we should be exploitatively going for max value by playing for all the chips here. Haha.

I think it's also really hard for even very good players not to fast play their best hands before the river. How many players are really calling the relatively small turn bet in position with AA when a second flush draw appears on the board? Yeah it's probably correct in theory to just call with AA in a 4-bet pot, but I seriously can't think of a single example of anyone actually doing that with two flush draws on the board in llsnl.

More likely I could see him showing up with KK that only called turn because it was afraid we had AA or QQ. Even with KK, a player like the opponent was described might fast play it at some point.

Anyway, regarding your numbered points. A couple gripes:

Re: #1: We're not always only polarizing from OOP. For example sometimes we're block betting with a wider depolarized range.

Re #2: Betting polarized from OOP is not just because we need to defend our checking range. We also generate more value this way with the top and bottom of our range. We leverage our bluffs to make him pay our value bets off more.

Re #4: I might try to look at this spot in a solver later to see how we "should" be playing this spot, but I think we're pretty far from "should" facing this borderline maniac. What you describe here sounds pretty reasonable against a "good" opponent. Although it's always hard to make comparisons, because if we were playing a good opponent would we have even 4-bet AQs pre? We're probably playing the hand differently at some point.

I may need some additional clarification about why you're quoting my post, if this is a response to it, and the point you're making, if it's in agreement with what I said or begging to differ.

I read the description. Reg. Apparently 3B'ing OP at a rate of slightly more than twice per hour. Was once spotted taking an aggressive action vs a fish.

Given that description, which doesn't exactly scream "look out, maniac on the loose," would you guess you're more or less surprised than me to learn he showed up with QJo in a 4B pot? What in the description makes us think he's showing up with QJo?

I was just ranging him as having some AA/KK that might not 5B pre, some 99-JJ and some KQ that might 3B pre and call the 4B. I think that's all more or less reasonable given what we were told about this guy.

Just to be clear (and I suspect you'd agree with me) - I said we should take a line of flat call pre, check-call flop, and check-evaluate turn. Once I saw OP decided to 4B, I advocated for a tiny c-bet size. Once I saw OP decided to bet 2.5x what I suggested, well, from there, I was just doing my best to try to find the right balance of betting for thin value and not getting value-owned.

Once we get to the turn the way OP did, I'm guessing what to do. I suggested a slightly smaller bet than the size OP chose. Would your smaller or larger size be higher EV or give us more clarity heading to the river? I dunno. Maybe. I got lost two or three times before we even got here.

That said, with two flush draws on board, and hands like A5s being open-ended, I think a lot of opponents are going to spring the trap and start raising turn with AA/KK, so when V just flats again, I think he's fairly capped. So the only question that remains is deciding the best river action.

Which of course bring us back to our read. For whatever reason, OP thought V would range-jam if we check. I was struggling to find any hands that would do that in a 4B pot, because I'd think every hand that gets to the river has at least a sliver of SDV when hero checks.

You'll get no argument from me that this V is out of his mind 3B'ing and calling the 4B pre. I'd never see the flop as V, but when he does, and flops TP, I guess I sort of understand calling the smallish bets to bluff-catch hero's AK, or over-played JJ and TT maybe.

You and everyone else will absolutely get a vigorous argument from me if we're thinking V is going to range-jam when we check, or call off a river jam with a worse hand. For the same reasons I think AA/KK would start raising on the turn, I think any hand that V thinks is good enough to call off a jam or jam for value when OP checks is likely to raise turn, when there are two flush draws on board, and A5 is open-ended.

If we check river, V seems unlikely to bluff or bet worse for thin value (and as we see from the reveal, he didn't). If we jam river, I don't think he's calling (if he's calling a jam, surely he would have bet thin when we check).

He said he thought OP was giving up. He thought he was bluff-catching. No way in hell he jams when we check or calls when we jam.

As for the shutting your brain off, honestly, if you find the switch, let me know where you found it. I might want to make use of it too (in my brain, not yours. Eww).

Sorry, I think you've misunderstood some of what I've said here and elsewhere.

In a 4B pot, what are hero's "bluffs" on this board? What would *MY* bluffs be, if I'm 4B'ing pre?

Like, this is 2/5. Even though we're starting 320 BB's deep, 4B's at any stack depth are unusual at these stakes, and the range that calls a 4B is generally going to be so tight that most people will scream at you if you post that you 4B 99-JJ or A5s here, even if those are supposed to be 4B's in theory, at this depth (with rake considered).

If we're only 4B'ing QQ+/AK/AQs, then our only bluff that gets to the river is AKs that bricked, and if we're only betting the combos with FD or BDFD's, it's just two combos. Some 2/5 players won't even 4B AK, much less AQ. They literally won't get to the river with *ANY* bluff combos in this line.

If you're telling me we should bet AK as a bluff if we arrive on the river with AK, okay. You don't need to tell me that. I'm fully capable and absolutely would (and wouldn't be shocked if many here told me I should instead give up and check-fold to a bet from V).

Is a betting range of QQ+/AK/AQs "linear" or "polar" in this hand? I don't know. I'm not sure it matters, if it's literally our entire range, which it literally is. We can just call it a range-barrel and not quibble over whether or not it's linear or polar.

The question was whether or not V calls off a PSB jam with worse than TPTK (our actual hand)?

You said he may 5B AA/KK pre. I said the same thing. You said he might raise turn with AA/KK. I said the same thing. Why are you all up in my kitchen because I said a jam gets snapped off by AA/KK? Are we disagreeing over the meaning of "may" and "might"?

Are you entirely discounting the possibility that V might not 5B any hand when he's IP, in a 2/5 game, where 4B's are uncommon and 5B's rare as hen's teeth, even at 320 BB's effective? Like, I rarely see 4B's at 1/3 that aren't just a jam. 5B's at 1/3 are 100% jams. At 2/5, this deep, I don't think many players have any 5B range at all, and if they do, when they're usually only starting 200BB's deep, and the opens are 4BB-5BB's, the 5B is mostly just going to be a jam.

So, if you follow me on that, then V can get to the river with AA/KK. If he has the heart + diamond combo, how often does he raise flop or turn when hero is blasting away? Like, he blocks hero's most likely bluffs. Hero's probably not doing this with TT or JJ, so hero's most likely hands are going to be QQ, AQ, or AKs.

Why would he raise with those AA/KK that block the FD hands? He probably only raises with the combos that don't block either of hero's FD's, or only block one of them.

So, yeah, at 2/5, where 5B's are rare, even this deep, I think V gets to the river with AA/KK, at least some of the time. When hero jams for $1k, literally the max BI at 2/5, and V's sitting there with JJ or TT, and starts counting all the combos of AA/KK/QQ/AK/AQs in hero's range, he starts questioning the wisdom of trying to catch hero triple-barrel bluffing with the 2 combos of AKs, at the risk of hero mostly just showing up with one of the 18 combos of TPTK or better.

Like, if hero ALWAYS runs it with AKs, it's 10% bluffs to 90% value. How does V bluff-catch with JJ or TT? It's hard for him to call with KQ, let alone QJ.

As for how much JJ / TT is in V's range, well...look, he got here with QJo, so who know WTF this guy is doing pre or post with those hands. Nothing makes complete sense in this hand. Maybe he does have a 5B range pre, and JJ is in it. Maybe he finds a disciplined fold with those hands on the turn, and only continues with TP+.

So, if that's true, his bluff-catching range on the river is just QX. Does he call a PSB with QJ, in a 4B pot? Does he never tell himself he could have a better hand and pitch it, rather than torching another 200BB's in this misguided little adventure he's been on?

Please don't make this about me and my range and what I'm doing with it. I'd never get here this way. This would have just been a 3B pot if I was hero, and I'd have scads of bluff candidates to balance my value range. Let's just keep it about OP, who'd have to look hard to find a bluff candidate that doesn't have some SDV and isn't exactly those two combos of AKs.

the solve i looked at bluffs AQ to try to make KK indifferent. it seems unlikely you should do this in games like this

the reveal kind of contradicts the player read lol

I mean...this hand is off the rails from pre. It's kinda hard to go back to pre, and start there, with a "correct" 4B'ing range for hero and a "correct" 4B-calling range for V, and then get to the river the way these two did.

As I've been saying - 4B pots aren't super-common at 2/5, and 5B's are rare, such that I think the ranges that get to the river tend to diverge wildly, where the 4B'er has almost no bluffs, and the caller's range shifts around a bit based on the board texture.

Like, here, hero can have two combos of AKs for bluffs, and the rest of his range is just value. V can have over-pairs, under-pairs to TP, busted draws, etc. But if the board has fewer draws and more mid- or high cards, suddenly no one has busted draws or under-pairs. It's all 2P+.

The range V "should" have is basically the range I was giving him, at least as far as the turn. Once he flats turn, I think he gets really condensed to QX and JJ/TT. I wouldn't think many V's are showing up with 77/88, or even 99 all that frequently. This guy might, but most won't.

I don't think a polarized check-or-bet strat works all that well if V's range is mostly just made up of hands that are going to check back or fold to a big bet, but occasionally will be a better hand that jams when we check and snaps when we bet big.

If we're mostly targeting QX and JJ/TT, let's just bet small to target those hands. If we need to also bet AKs for balance, okay, but let's bet big when we block AA/KK and AQ/KQ, so JJ/TT folds.

Are 2/5 regs going to figure that out? We're not showing AK when they fold, so...no, I don't think they're going to figure it out, when this spot comes up once a year.

A bit off topic, but I think it'll come more often if we face villain again. Or if we face another similar aggro reg who 3bets me all day IP.

There's a lot here and I'm getting ready to go play, so I'll just focus on one key detail.

The whole premise that this ultra aggro villain is then slow playing AA pre facing a 4-bet.

That is something a solver does, and maybe you'll see it occasionally from a strong reg who identified a spot where it's better to call and let us barrel off than to raise.

Mostly though everyone just always raises AA preflop facing a 4-bet.

Also, you asked if the range QQ+/AK/AQs is linear or polar. It's basically linear, although preflop the linear/polar distinction isn't always as clear because any hand can later turn into a strong hand. Still in general:

Linear= top of range only including hands down to a certain threshold hand. Like your example: QQ+, AK, AQs

Polarized= Top of range and weaker hands are included as bluffs in the range, but medium strength hands are excluded. Example: KK+, AK, A5s

Now I'm not going to get on you for playing linear pre flop ranges in live poker. That's often correct since people call too much preflop, but there are many postflop spots where you should absolutely be polarized.

You're not picking up what I'm putting down.

It's 2/5 with a $1k buy in. If opens are $20-$25, 3B's are $60-$75, and 4B's are $200, a 5B is typically just a jam for $1k, and it's always just QQ+/AK in this game, when it's for more than 100BB's.

The player pool is so rarely playing 5B pots that the players either always and only get it in pre as a 5B, or they don't have any 5B range at all, and they're just going to the flop with 1-1.5 SPR.

They don't contemplate how to structure a 5B range that will have enough bluffs and value to be balanced when they eventually bet river. There's rarely a 5B pot that involves any post flop decisions. If there's a decision to be made at 1-1.5 SPR, it's whether or not to jam or fold flop, or wait and jam or fold turn.

Even starting out $1600 eff, they may not have any 5B's, because the range that calls is only KK+/AK.

He wasn't described as ultra aggro. We decided he's hyper aggro after the reveal.

I wasn't asking if QQ+/AK/AQ is linear or polar pre. I know it's linear. I was asking if it's linear or polar on the river, if it's quite literally our entire range. If you're suggesting we bet our entire range, okay, fine, but we don't need to argue over calling it linear or polar if it's every hand we can have in this line.

If our whole range is QQ+/AK/AQs, we literally have a range that is 90% value, and 10% "bluffs" in the form of AK. It's all well and good to say we need bluffs in our river betting range, but we can't pull bluffs we don't have in our range out of thin air. We're not 4B'ing any other hands pre in this game, when we open UTG and get 3B by the player next to act. It's just QQ+/AK/AQs.

So, if we jam for a PSB, laying V 2:1 on a call, and V is able to count to 20 (the actual number of combos in our range), he'll see he's losing to 9 value combos for every 1 bluff combo. He'll muck every hand we beat, and only call with the hands that beat us.

He isn't calling a PSB jam with worse, in a 4B pot, ever, when our range is 90% value and only 10% bluffs.

I suggested betting a smidge over 1/4 pot, after suggesting a smaller turn bet. Even at 1/4 pot, we're only laying 5:1 on a call, and I'd be ecstatic to not get raised.

You won't be sitting 300+ BB deep, with this same V to your immediate left, opening wide, 4B'ing light, getting called, and going bet-bet-jam as a bluff when you literally only have 2 bluffs in range.

You play 2-3x/week? I was being generous. This may come up once every other year.

All day? By your estimate he 3B you a tad more than 2x / hour over the past 3 hours. Stop exaggerating. He's not picking on you.

I suspect the reason you felt as you did was that you were opening wide. If you weren't, you wouldn't have folded 5/6 times he 3B you prior to this hand. Especially not if your read was that he was borderline maniacal. You were almost certainly getting OOL, and chose to take a stand with AQs.

Quit opening wide, you'll stop worrying about the aggrotard 3B'ing all your opens, and wondering what to do with AQ that flops TPTK in a 4B pot This will go from being a once every year or two occurrence to a complete impossibility.

I understand what you're saying about slow playing aces, I just disagree with you. You're overthinking this. He's not contemplating his potential 5-bet range and how it will be perceived.

If he has aces preflop he's thinking, "I have the nuts. Oh great he raised. I reraise"

That's what I would expect to happen nine times out of ten in any game lower than MAYBE 5/10 NL. If you think most players are slow playing aces because they're not used to facing 4-bets and haven't contemplated their 5-bet range, we can agree to disagree. It is, after all, a population-based read and we play in different player pools. It's even possible we're both correct in the games we play in.

Regarding the linear vs polar discussion. My comments about your tendencies are not even mainly referring to this thread. I was referring to a pattern I have seen where you have advocated for betting a linear range in spots theory would suggest you should be polarized. Basically you're just never bluffing in a lot of spots.

For example, in the thread about a three Broadway board where a fourth Broadway card then comes and puts a four liner to a straight on the board. You were first advocating for ONLY betting with the nut straight in position on the river.

Then when I questioned what you would bluff with, you wanted to "bluff" with your best possible aces up two pairs. I was trying to explain aces up was too strong to use as a bluff in that spot, and had too much showdown value. I said you would be better off polarizing and bluffing with one pair hands like J9s, which is very unlikely to be good if you checked it back.

Again, I have seen a pattern from you where you advocate for ranges in many spots that include 0 bluffs, and it's not always as an exploit because they are never folding. In many cases you also don't want to bet big because you say a big bet will never get called. YOUR BIG BETS NEVER GET CALLED BECAUSE YOU HAVE 0 BLUFFS!

Anyway back to the hand this thread is based on. You say our opponent would never call a jam on the river because we have almost no bluffs, but that is YOUR hypothetical range you're basing that statement on.

There are potential bluffs. You just need to construct your range in such a way as to include them. A5s is an obvious one. If we chose to 4-bet with it pre I would be barreling off with it every time on this runout, after we turned an open ender.

If we don't 4-bet pre with A5s, we could also just bluff with AK combos beyond just those that include a flush draw. Against an opponent that is calling our 4-bet pre with QJo we should be barreling very aggressively and reaching for those bluffs. It will be very difficult for him to defend a sufficient amount with that weak range.

Now I will give it to you that in this particular hand it's challenging to find bluffs, since it is an EP 4-bet pot. Submersible said he looked it up in a solver, and against a GTO opponent AQ is actually acting as a bluff to try to get him to fold KK. Of course that's not really applicable to the spot we're discussing, since our opponent's range is way wider. His wide 3-bet range is why we chose to 4-bet this hand in the first place!

Anyway I'm rambling now but if I had to distill this post down to one thought, it's that your game would benefit if you found ways to work some more bluffs in.

Briefly - I said multiple times that I don't know if V has a 5B range. He might. He might not. I never said I don't think he has a 5B range. I said some players in the pool don't.

I can think of at least once instance I saw of AA vs KK that wasn't 4B pre, at 1/3, in a hand where an OMC put in a 3B with KK, and the opener with AA opted to smooth call to trap, knowing the OMC would fold KK to a 4B.

If they don't 5B IP, I wouldn't necessarily call that a slow play when the SPR will be <2 getting to the flop.

You are correct that there are spots where I'm likely only betting a linear range. It may be that I just don't have enough bluffs in range, or I'm making a cognitive mistake. Very often, I'm playing exploitably, especially in spots where I think the pool is making more calling mistakes than folding mistakes.

I understand and sincerely appreciate your efforts to impress upon me the importance of having bluffs in range. If I was frequently playing against better opponents, especially in a smaller pool where opponents could begin exploiting me, I'd absolutely be trying to play more theoretically correct.

Case in point, I would have some bluffs here, and I would size way up with them, because I think V is folding to a jam. I'd be entirely unbalanced in this spot, because I'd size way down with value, expecting V to raise with better, and occasionally sigh-call with worse.

I realize this is terrible in theory. In reality, it's like "Sex Panther" - 60% of the time, it works every time.

Playing exploitatively like that is probably good a lot of the time, but I still think you're missing out on a lot of bluffing opportunities. It's a pretty extreme adjustment to never bluff. I think more often it's better to exploitatively have a lower bluff frequency rather than having no bluffs. Case in point is this thread where you're saying he would never call a jam on the river, but you're arriving there with exactly 2 combos of potential bluff candidates.

I would also bet you would be surprised at how wide you're supposed to be continuing in wide range heads up spots. If you started looking at some solver outputs it would be pretty eye-opening to you. There are some spots where if you had never looked at a solver, the GTO strategy looks like something between a calling station and maniac. You'd be saying there's no way we're supposed to be calling that huge bet with middle pair there...

If you have a decent PC, GTO+ is only $75, which is like a fraction of a buy in. Just saying.