PAHWM OOP vs sharp TAG...I def messed it up :(

Calling to keep unknown fish in the hand since he'll prob call near 100%.

I'm more interested in what people make of the river overbet donk in HH3...not sure what a solver makes of that

You're allowed to call some hands from SB (or BB with straddle) but given minraise sizing, what do you know about BB? If BB is inclined to get involved fairly wide then I'd be inclined to 3bet OOP, but if BB is more ABC then I could get on board with a call. Probably call in a vacuum more often than not, but I think you can go either way

Edit: didn't see that BB is fish, if he's the sort of fish who will call with ATC then by all means bring him in with a call, what you don't want is to get squeezed light

what I make of the 2x pot overbet is that 1. V has stones and 2. He is probably a decent hand reader

OP, any reads on utg+1?

also, what is V's opening range here likely to be and how sticky is he?

tbh, I think it's close between calling and raising, but I think raising is best. Raise to 110

Sorry about 12$ straddle...

Reads on UTG+1: We don't know him but he looks vaguely familiar. We had one scrap when I first sat down and he raised me OTT and I beluga theorem'd and folded top pair on a scary board. My read is that he's a standard loose passive but perhaps thinking about the game. He also covers our 700 but just barely ~800, V in MP has 2k.

LOL. This looks insane but is "GTO approved", for 2 blinds and 100bb, on every street (assuming GTO sizes). TBF GTO mixes raises on earlier streets, and only donks 150% pot on river. But still.

FWIW solver prefers 125% pot on turn for H, rather than 75% pot ... but turn/river plays same for V either way.

Again, 2 blinds and 100bb ...
Solver mixes roughly 10% 3bet ... but pure call seems fine.

It just looks so natural to call from the big blind. Why jack up the pot OOP?

In this situation, why isolate the strong player with a hand that plays well multi-way & a fish likely to call?

^ Because he made it 2x pre and we have a pretty hand 😀

We make it 85, fish folds straddle, V calls HU OOP.

Flop 180 - T♠ 8♦ 7♣

....

PF I think there is a lot of merit in calling to let the fish into the pot. Driving him out so that we can play a 3 bet pot OOP against the only other competent player with only AJs doesn’t seem to be our best option.

OTF I think starting with a check is best. We wouldn’t want to get raised off our equity here.

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I'll join the others that calling is probably best. I'm not a fan of 3!ing AJ without confidence that I'm getting frequent folds because it's usually in bad shape in a 3! pot, but sometimes dominating in an SRP.

OTF, I think it's an obvious check call most bets. I see no merit in donking this flop with anything. Check raising could be an option if we think V will nit up, but vs V as described I think x/c is best.

Pretty simple c/c on the flop imo

Check

So we are in a game with one player that we think is strong and a group of fish. Our play should be very binary. Hands with the strong player we play mostly very tight trying to limit risk as in all other hands we have a skill advantage and fish as a rule are terrible at reading mixed strategies .We do not try to make fancy moves when we think V is a strong player if one of his strong suits is hand reading.as that is how we lose and we are in a game where we only have one competent opponent. Hands with only fish we play however this school of fish pays you off for playing. You both should be very wary in pots both of you are in as assuming you are correct in other pots you both have a large skill advantage vs all the opponents.

Not exactly shocked by the Stupidbanana line.

Solver HU 100bb etc:

As I said above there's a 10-15% 3bet with this combo. ...

On flop H's range checks 76% of the time, and almost all the rest is in b75 ... AJs is almost perfectly mixed in the same way (75% of the time checks, and the rest of the time bets 75% of pot).

If we check V is supposed to b20 ~63% of the time and then we almost pure raise 55% pot with this combo. (clubs and diamonds call a decent amount).

If we b75 V mostly calls/folds but does have some shoves, and AsJs specifically pure calls that shove (all other suited combos. pure fold).

I think this is more of a consideration than people realize. In a game of fish and one strong player, I will simply stay out of the way of the good player, unless I have a premium.

Most good regs understand this - we don’t want to sit around coolering each other, when these other players just want to give us their money.

OTTH
I call, but you 3bet
Now, you have to bet the flop and keep the story going - bet 50

This dangles the opportunity for better hands to raise/and we fold or Villain caps himself with a call, opening up bluffs

I understand others checking here, which would be fine had you called, but keep the initiative until you meet resistance. Bet/fold is one of the best lines in Hold’em.

You have no fold equity (or future fe) unless you bet. Some say they always call the flop bet, so you learn nothing, but I disagree

It’s the meta-game
The story you tell

3bet is a strong play and though it’s concerning to get called, pre-flop is the most inelastic street. Then checking the flop allows villain to gather that you’re weak (much weaker than he thinks) and play correctly against you. You’re living in a runner-runner world.

Grunch:

Of the prior hand histories, the one that seems most telling is HH3. Clearly V is capable of effective ranging of his opponents and running big bluffs.

PRE - meh, I think we can 3B or call. Probably slightly better to just flat call.

If you want to 3B pre, consider going bigger. We don't mind taking down the dead money when we're OOP with a hand that has some RIO.

Now that we're here, I think I'd mostly check, planning to call if he bets big, and possibly raise if he bets small,. It would suck to c-bet and get raised by a player we know is capable of effective ranging and running big bluffs.

V isn't going to raise J9, TT, 88, 77, JJ with 100% frequency. V has relatively low incentives to raise with his value because he won't want to fold out bluffs, and banana's draws are drawing very thin- banana shouldn't have a ton of 9x, so his draws are mostly Jx looking for four outs. Banana's strong hands like AA will bet most turns and failing that will have a really hard time x/folding to a call/bet line. As a result, V gets to construct his range pretty freely and can either flat or raise with play for stacks and bluffs.

With bluffs, V is just going to fold or raise, so leading wins the minimum from those unless we are willing to call or jam over a raise. Which is probably a thing in solverland at some frequency, but isn't something I'd recommend IRL as V probably isn't finding as many bluffs as he "should" in theory.

So a lead we are getting called by better, we fail to cap our opponent (V can flat with both nuts and draws), and if V does raise us big, we can't really defend because we're OOP and V's range is well protected with plenty of nutted hands that we probably don't have. Hands like KJcc that we have dominated get to win, whereas we can x/c pretty easily.

If V has identified that we just barrel all 3! pots (which you seem to be doing and is actually a very common leak), V can and should raise this board with all his misses because Banana isn't nutted often. It's actually a very common leak that you should be looking to identify because many people like you get in the habit of just c-betting to "keep up the story", this is a board that isn't all that comfortable for AA/KK/QQ if large amounts of money start going in and there are a ton of turns that make it worse for AA/KK/QQ. This is the kind of spot where a good aggressive V can really punish you for c-betting too much.

If you're only checking with misses, then yes. But you should definitely be checking with TT here and other strong hands sometimes. Other hands you probably want to check sometimes would be QQ/99/Tx. If you feel like you don't have FE on future streets, then you probably aren't protecting your xb range adequately. Start checking some stronger hands, and if you really don't have FE, then you're making bank when you rip it in on future streets. Against passive Vs who aren't going to find bluffs and will just play faceup, then we can just bet everything, but this V has demonstrated an ability to find bluffs.

Really like a lot of Yami's post here, particularly the V range discussion and subsequent actions after an H cbet. Minor quibble from the cited HHs that this V does appear to have a solver stuffed into their skull, so probably will be as wide and as aggro.

(Which leads to the question of why in God's name is H iso'ing the really good player while H is OOP and trying to boot out the fishy straddle, but I digress.)

X-call something modest AP. The idea of x-ripping 615 into 180 + another 150+ if V decides to bomb here, has some appeal too. Unlike many Vs at Banana's table, B has shown he'll iso big with things like 77/88, and I think this V realizes that.

One thing I'd like to point out with all the "solver says this so this is also my opinion" talk...these models are incredibly sensitive to inputs and are really out of their element in live play.. no one is calling, raising or folding at the "correct" frequency so the solver's outputs are basically out the window. Tell the solver V is going to call at a higher than average frequency and the bluff combos plummet (for instance)..or in this case tell the solver V is opening too wide UTG and see how often it wants to raise AJs when folded to.....just an aside.

Flop 180 - T♠ 8♦ 7♣

We check, V bets 20...

Yeh, pretty much everyone says that when sub posts ... and I mostly agree.

Except against this guy with HH3, where he's doing solver approved stuff that almost nobody at 1-3 is doing ... so I think it's pretty valid to say the best thing to do is roughly what a solver would be doing, and if you are going to be weak/tight vs. something approaching the solver strat. then you should understand how it's better to be weak/tight. Like don't be aggressive earlier in the game tree and then weak/tight later.

As others said, it's also worth something to keep the straddle in even if you have the best (but a vulnerable) hand now.

So, yeh, like roughly nobody in any 1-3 game I've played is betting this size (much like they aren't playing HH3 that way). Solver does bet a bit bigger at like 35, but still unless he's doing random things that happen to be very close to correct I'd kind of expect he "knows" he should bet very small with a wide range in this spot.

You know the solver always raises here ... and if you didn't/don't want to then I'd heavily suggest not 3betting preflop. Would be much happier calling here with TT, or even AA, calling AJs is mostly going to tell V what kind of hand you have and hero calling will suck a lot if he starts blasting.

Hmm thats interesting, what kind of boards are solver approved micro-bets like this? One's that smash your range I suppose. T-8-7r obviously better for him than me.

Query: First, why is raising V's b25 better than just calling? H having 3! pre, doesn't seem like their range has enough value on T87r to either raise for value or deny equity. E.g., is H really bombing something like KK here vs pot-controlling and seeing what the turn brings?

Assuming I have the logic wrong, and raising is what should be done, what sizing, given the tiny bet? Pot-sized raise a la PLO would be 240 total. I'm guessing that's too high?