AK in 3bet pot - Facing river shove - Clueless

No info on villain. This was probably my 3rd-5th hand at the table. All I can say is he hadnt been limping pre or seemingly spewey by shoving preflop, so that doesnt tell me much.

I decide to call 3bet preflop with AK bc I have position and I have little info on villain.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $0.05 BB (4 handed) - PokerStars Converter Tool from http://poker-tools.flopturnriver.com/Hand-Converter.php


Button ($14.96)
SB ($5)
BB ($5)
Hero (UTG) ($5.50)


Preflop: Hero is UTG with A, K
Hero raises to $0.15, 2 folds, BB raises to $0.55, Hero calls $0.40


Flop: ($1.12) 6, K, 10 (2 players)
BB bets $0.65, Hero calls $0.65

I'm happy with the flop, I dont raise bc I dont want him chased off with JJ or QQ or AQ, hands like that


Turn: ($2.42) A (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $1.16, BB calls $1.16

I probably should have bet more, I dont really know why I bet less than 50%, but I have a hard time believing he calls with QQ, JJ, but I'm haing a hard time putting him on a hand other than AQ, TT, KK etc but I would expect a raise from KK and TT


River: ($4.74) J (2 players)
BB bets $2.64 (All-In), Hero ?

Gross. QQ gets there, but again I cant see him calling turn with QQ to try and hit an issd. So I'm putting him on a flopped set or AQ? Even flopped sets probably raise turn. So Im putting him on only AQ? Doesnt seem right.

I mean he just always has QQ/AQ here.

This is a horrible spot. You know it's a fold and you know that it's a really exploitable fold. You're torn between making the correct lay down or making sure he and the rest of the table know they can't bluff you off the top of your range when the board is scary.

It's possible he has no showdown value and he's trying to steal the pot, but what is he 3betting vs an UTG open that has no showdown value? 99 maybe? Why wouldn't he just fold that on the turn? Did he plan to shove any club, any diamond and any queen or jack? That would be an outrageous float on the turn. I guess I can imagine universes where AK is good here but often enough to be making this call? I doubt it. But it's a horrible fold.

I'm snap folding AJ fwiw. That's still pretty gross but much easier. AK is the bottom of my potential call range. But I still think it's a fold. If we know villain can float and make huge bluffs in scary situations, then it's a call and we played the hand perfectly, even if he has the Q. But against an unknown who hasn't got out of line yet, it seems like he just always has the nuts.

I figured AQ
I folded. If he had done something unruly before I may have called but I gave him the nuts and folded
I just didn’t see what I beat other than a bluff and that’s a tough river to bluff

btw I will say I think people at these stakes are a little more likely to call a gutter with JJ-KK than if they don't have a big pre flop hand. People can mentally add 2 more outs even though hitting a set means there's four-to-a-straight on the board, and people just have a harder time folding JJ-KK, especially when it's drawing on the nuts. So I don't think QQ is folding turn bet all that often, and I think your turn sizing is good because it tempts hands like this to make a bad call. Maybe we can go precisely half pot to squeeze a bit more value but I'm ok with the turn sizing if we're getting called by pair+gutter combos.

Nice hand, fold river. Sucks but you're bluff catching with anything but Qx.

In theory, you should bluff catch some percent of the time and blocking AQ and KQ makes this hand as good as any.

Whether you actually have to pay players off in this spot in your games is another question entirely. Pretty safe to say that the more broadways there are on the board, the more likely it is to be an underbluffed spot.