Difficult River

Feels like V has an overpair to the 7 when he pots flop. When he goes half on turn, I’m putting him on 88-KK. Unless you think he’s turning 88-QQ into a bluff, you probably should fold river. I know it’s not very many combos, but I think most Vs only have 99 or KK here

I don't understand calling a PSB OTF with bupkis. AP, turn is fine, and I don't mind the small value bet. Now fold. Sure, his story doesn't make much sense and maybe your small bet induced, but I'm not going to war with only TPGK.

River size seems a bit small. Flop call of a PSB from EP with two overcards (both with mediocre kicker) and a backdoor non-nut flush draw seems...suboptimal.

There are no busted draws. Typically hands which are check-raise bluffed on the river are medium-strength ones with showdown value that would be quite happy for it to go check-check. As flopshove says, yes he COULD be turning QQ-88/7x into a bluff, and maybe should, but whether he will is another matter, and you can't completely rule out hands like AK. When there are no missed flush draws and barely any straight draws, at low stakes I wouldn't assume most people are turning medium-strength hands into a check-raise river bluff often enough, so I'd fold

Looks like you are playing street poker on the flop, so I guess call river with your turn read? Assuming read is good you should only lose to 99/97s. He might even be doing something stupid with TT-QQ assuming you have the 9.

Non-street poker:

Floating this flop seems meh, as V is going to barrel a lot ... we have all the sets and he's potting on our board, so would rather raise or fold. I don't hate raising AJs with BDFD here, sometimes. But KJs with BDFD seems too loose.

I would much rather raise turn than thin value bet river, and I don't mind the river value bet.

Small bet river seems fine to get crying calls from hands like AQ or 88. I fold to the raise.

Preflop I think we should 3bet or fold although if we can call anywhere its here or BB. I would 3bet > folding.

Flop: calling a PSB with 2 overs and a backdoor non-nut flush seems just bad to me without a well-defined plan to exploit known weakness. Our continuing range can be narrow here to this bet size so assuming we flat all kinds of stuff preflop (arguable if we should but w/e) then we have hands like 65s, A4s, A♥7♥ ,77, 88 etc. that can be calls.

Turn: nothing to argue with here.

Yes, I folded as it was the logical choice
But I think I was bluffed

Was the only OMC at the table playing tight (except for this hand) all day. If he had value, I think he bets smaller - the jam wants a fold. Everything was lined up & couldn’t make the call. This guy might have targeted me as someone that would back down.

My instincts are much better than they used to be. I think he had something like QQ. But the problem is that flinch I saw could have been AK. Villain likely expects 2pair from me, since I’m still hanging around. He might think he’s bluffing & have me crushed.

I do get out of line on the button some, but probably should have 3bet. I know I didn’t play it well, but I wanted to see if anyone thought I should call the jam. When do you rely on your instincts?

The worst part of my play, even though I might not see villain again, is the loss of information. The $40 of thin value I went after is not worth the info that I lost. If I had checked back the river, instead of trying to be cute, I would know if my instinct was on target.

I would call based on your turn read, he has that "wannabee" look, you bet only 40 on the river, his line makes no sense. Do players in your pool spazz out on these smaller sizings? If so use smaller sizings accordingly and be ready for stuff like this. Seems like an odd line to take with AK - the river raise is massive you'd think if he had AK/set/whatever he'd go with a smaller sizing. If people are capable of this then I think this would be the spot you call.

Overpairs to 77 make a lot of sense, and flinching at KK would def. imply something near it that wasn't worried about many overcards (so 99 less likely and QQ/JJ more so). Even something like JT/98 makes some sense, if he's turning those into bluffs on the flop and is now drawing dead on the turn, if you called with a K. Even 77 makes sense, if he thinks you are an OMC who doesn't 3bet KK. AK makes no sense, IMO.

In general if I make huge deviations on earlier streets because of reads then the other player has to pry those reads from my cold dead hands. So here, after the flop call and then the turn read I'd need a lot of new information to be folding.

If I was wrong initially then fix that in future hands, folding river now means you have a second point where you could have made a mistake.

This is fair, even with the reads I might play it "weak" ... although get/calling the river might well be a lot better than checking back.

If you were beat, it was probably by AK or KQ that checked river intending to c/c (maybe afraid of 2pair?) but decided to jam due to the size of your bet.

Pre-flop and flop are fine with position. You have two overs and a back door flush draw. You need to call the flop frequently enough to prevent someone from just running you over, especially if you have a slight read that the villain is capable of cbetting two napkins.

You have show down value on the river, but not a great hand. Easy check back. As played, his line makes no sense. I'd have to reluctantly call.

Not loving facing an UTG open with this hand, but on the Button and for this rather cheap price to what will be a large SPR, I'm ok with preflop.

Calling a PSB on the flop with pretty much nothing is pretty speculative to say the least. EZ fold for me.

I mean, each to their own with tells, but personally I put zero stock in them. Maybe he flinched cuz he just hit top set. Maybe he flinched cuz he got a card he knew he could bluff on. I personally have no clue. But I do know we've got TP on a scare card that any non-ABC player is going to rep for a reasonable 1/2 PSB, so I'm calling too. Against anyone remotely nitty I make a nitty fold here but I don't think this is that guy.

I also now go for value on the river and bet a small amount that he can sigh call.

Weird, I definitely didn't expect to get jammed on. I understand the temptation to call because his line makes very little sense. My guess is we're giving off OMC vibes where we'll check back TP like 100% of the time and bluff a busted draw (of which there really isn't any) like 0% of the time, so checking a big hand to a player like we're probably resembling is horrible. But it's just like 99 always until we see some HHs that show otherwise, so I fold.

GcluelessNLnoobG

Pretty much no one we play with ever has AK or QQ here. Like, ever. Everyone is MUBSy as **** and is scared we're slowplaying a monster on a bone-dry board. Will they call a small river bet with these hands? Absolutely. But they're never lol shoving with it.

River is a must value bet, imo. We're simply giving up way too much value for information we'll likely get just watching him showdown hands against others. If we somehow got bluff/raised out of this hand, it's a unicorn situation that shouldn't cause us to often auto-check behind with TP like every other OMC does and lose massive value, imo.

GcluelessNLnoobG

I mean I confidently flipped in the thin value bet and should have called what I think was a bluff. I guess I came here to feel better about folding. He didn’t make sense

Each situation is different, I don’t think I’ll ever auto-do anything

Grunch:

PRE - seems fine generally. If we suspect V is a reg but he's also playing somewhat short, we might want to tighten up pre or play fit-or-fold on the flop, especially if he c-bets big.

FLOP - This is what I'm talking about. V is potting it on the flop, on a board that doesn't favor his UTG RFI range. With just two overs and a BDFD, it seems like a marginal spot to float, when we can expect V to size up on most turns.

TURN - yeah, I don't know what "flinched" means, necessarily. Maybe he didn't like the card because he has a set and knows he has to size down rather than size up if he wants to continue getting value from all our 1P hands that just got downgraded, because the K is better for his range as the PFR than ours as the PFC.

Hard to fold TPGK for 1/2 pot, but also hard to see what we're beating that barrels, especially if V is a reg. He might check all his 88-QQ here.

RIVER - I don't hate the thin value bet. I also wouldn't hate a check back. There aren't many hands we beat that will call a bet. Hard for a thinking reg to check-call TT-QQ or worse KX here.

Even if we have the best hand, we may be approaching the point where the pot is getting too big for our hand, and we should just take our showdown.

As played, when V x-jams, it's a $hlt spot. If V is truly a reg, he may be capable of turning SDV into a bluff, but it's hard to find the SDV hands that open UTG, pot it on this flop, barrel the Ks turn, and then go for the x-jam as a bluff when there are no draws that came in. He'd have to be doing this with something like A5s that flopped a wheel draw and wants to try to rep AK.

The "WTH" speech play might induce me to snap-fold. Really doubt he's speechifying if he's bluffing.

Even good regs aren't likely to find this line with worse value at low stakes. I'd think this is going to be sets a lot, usually 77, sometimes KK, occasionally 99 that was auto-piloting on the turn.

I'd be curious if he snap-checked river or if he mini-tank-checked. If he snap-checked, I'd be more curious, and probably slower to fold. If he mini-tank-checked, I'd wonder if he had 77 and was thinking about whether or not we might get here with 99 or just KX.

The tank-mumble-jam looks a lot like 77 that doesn't think you have 99 anywhere near as often as you have KX.

Thanks doc
Been going round and round on it, but I am starting to think it was an act. Seemed like a pretty dramatic type player. Think he was trying to make me think he was making a ‘what the heck’ move and get the call.

Things get stuck in your mind, but I have to let this go. Probably never see him again, but I won’t forget him because he looked exactly like Ryan Routh.

We all get hands stuck in our heads. I find posting them and discussing them helps me let go of them.