Turn Semibluff against re-stealing villain

Villain had 3bet me a few times when I stole blinds and I always folded. In general he had played tight, never noticed a show down from him. This wasn't a big re-steal so I wanted to call IP and see if I could put the pressure on him with a hand that could play well post flop depending on the cards.

I felt the flop was a call as He could have 3bet with TT, KX and I could be good here.
Turn hits and gives me more outs so I dont think he is strong here, even thinking he would lay down AX if x=mid to low kicker.
His flop bet felt incredibly weak and probably put me on a draw, which is why he bet a stronger % bet on the turn but I still feel he isnt super strong here often.
Was this a good spot to semibluff? I usually like to do it on the flop, but thats not how this hand played out

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $0.05 BB (6 handed) - PokerStars Converter Tool from http://flopturnriver.com/


BB ($5.54)
UTG ($10.75)
MP ($4.69)
CO ($2.65)
Hero (Button) ($5)
SB ($5.30)


Preflop: Hero is Button with 9, J
3 folds, Hero raises to $0.10, SB raises to $0.35, 1 fold, Hero calls $0.25


Flop: ($0.75) 5, J, A (2 players)
SB bets $0.28, Hero calls $0.28


Turn: ($1.31) Q (2 players)
SB bets $0.85, Hero raises to $1.85

It's a loose call but probably ok mixed in with folds and the occasional 4bet. If I was getting tired of being 3bet, I can call this for sure.

Flop lol easy call. His downbet is a little weak but it could also indicate much strength, a hand like AKdd is quite happy to bet small here. I can see JJ/AA making this bet too; as much as the flush draw is a little scary you do feel a bit better about it when you're also drawing on a boat. Of course it's really nice if he can bluff this size too and get folds, so no way we're folding middle pair here.

Turn, this is a sizeable bet as the board gets scarier. He could have improved here, he's certainly repping a hand like AQ or QQ with this downbet / big bet line. Or he could just be stepping up a gear with JJ/AA.

I'm not sure I like this raise. I don't see how we can call a jam. We'll likely be around 20% when we're facing a jam, nowhere near enough to justify calling around $2.50 into a pot of $7 max (I'm lazy). I can't really see what villain is folding that beats us other than KK, and is he really firing this turn at this size with that? I mean AK really hates being raised here but I don't think it's folding often enough to justify turning our hand into a bluff. Maybe if AK calls and bricks, a pot size river jam will do the job, but it's risky.

For me it makes more sense to call this turn. I don't think a turn bluff gets through with enough frequency, and when he jams we're in a horrible spot with a hand we really want to see a river with. Chances are we make a terrible call, knowing it's bad, because fuck it. It's incredibly difficult to fold this turn to a 3bet jam, we're just inviting pain.

The simple fact that they know how to 3-bet as part of their blind defense is good to know. Your sizing may be on the low side if the blind you're against is this sophisticated (which isn't saying much). I mean... that min-raise on the btn is pricing in a very wide range of starting hands from the blinds. Their bet to pot ratio is higher. They can make looser calls more profitably. FYI.

SB responding to a min-raise needs 30% equity against your range to call profitably.
BB responding to a min-raise only needs 22% equity against your range to call profitably (assuming SB folds).

SB responding to a 3x raise needs 36% equity against your range to call profitably.
BB responding to a 3x raise needs 31% equity against your range to call profitably (assuming SB folds).

Min-raise opens from the BTN are fine when the blinds will treat them the exact same as as a 2.5x or 3x open. In that case, you're risking less to steal and they're not calling more to compensate.

In the case of a more sophisticated blind, you prob. shouldn't be offering them deals like that. If they already call too wide, you're pricing them in. If they respond by adjusting and calling wider (unlikely at these stakes, but not impossible), then your exploit doesn't work, anyway.

Note this reasoning is modified in tournament play, when stacks are shorter and even small risks in chips may correspond to big risks in the event.


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I don't think we get much other than stone-cold bluffs to fold OTT. Bluffs that may fire another barrel OTR if we feel like risking a call.

Villain 3-betting back from a blind steal 3 times in a row isn't necessarily indicative of villain picking battles with you. It's not beyond reason at all that they just happened to get hit over the head with the deck when in the blind a few orbits in a row. That def. happens. I find it's best to assume they're just on a hot streak than to assume they're messing with me unless it happens 5 times or so in short order. Maybe that's too soft, but I just don't think too many people could possible be that good at blind defense that I don't just clean their clock sooner than later with them behaving like that.

So assuming their range is sensible: this board has slammed it. They have AX and AXs in there, KXs, all broadway starts, and other PP and suited connectors in there, prob. The majority of their range is all over this board. Their worst bluffs are 5X and diamond draws, and they don't have many of them in there, and why are they firing 2 barrels with those?

So their range looks very polarized to me between beating you and having a stone cold bluff, basically. I would expect them to have TP + redraw at bare minimum a lot of the time, here.

Villain folded - I felt pretty good about myself for 5 seconds until I asked myself what I think he had and couldnt really answer it.
I felt, at the time I bluffed, that mid AXs would 3bet, bet small on the flop, and on that board, would probably fold bc it hits my range too, esp 2pair hands and a AX isnt happy to stack off here if x is a 6 or 7 for instance. But I didnt really know how much of his range made up that type of hand compared to AJ, AQ, AKs etc. So I felt like I got lucky more than anything

I am getting 3 bet a shit tonne from the blinds to BTN steals. Way too much for it to be for value. This is in general, not meaning this villain in particular. I float between 2-3x from the BTN and they typically push it up to 9-12x on the 3 bet. It happens a lot against the regs. And I'm not very good postflop against 3betting regs and have a hard time putting them on ranges and dont like playing in bloated pots unless I have a strong hand preflop.

The only adjustment I make is to tighten up and steal a bit less and add some 4bets if I have AXs, QQ+, sometimes JJ. Otherwise I'm folding a lot, bc I dont know what else to do lol.

This depends on whether the villain in the blinds is always 3-betting to continue or if they sometimes call and sometimes 3-bet. Obv assuming they fold about half the time. I forget the GTO calculation for blind defense range percentages, but I kinda remember it being a lot wider than I'd have guessed. Maybe as wide as 50%-ish, but I kinda doubt it.

Thing is, against a min-raise button steal, it's not technically wrong for the BB to call with any 2 cards - but that assumes you can play weak hands perfectly OOP post flop. So if you're min-raising your steals, then they're priced in to call wide - very wide.

But not to 3-bet. So that's a big leak in their play if they're only continuing with a 3-bet.

If they are... then treat the 3-bet like what it is - a shitty bet that is trying to exploit your habit of over-folding to pressure when you blind steal. This works even if you're folding post-flop to their pressure. Respond by becoming less exploitable. Don't fold against their ridiculously wide range. Don't fear the swinginess in those bloated pots. There will be big swings if they're willing to bet so big on marginal holdings and just bluff at you for multiple streets. You can't be folding on those streets when the bet doesn't represent strength. It just represents aggro. Your ranges are tighter than theirs. You're IP. You will clean their clock sooner than later.

Chances are your jack was good and he's just 3betting light. idk what I do on the river facing a jam if I don't improve, I'm probably folding the best hand when he jams his bluffs. Maybe you got this right on the turn if you're folding a pair of jacks to a river jam, though I'd say you need to raise more so you have an easy call when he 3bet jams the turn. If you're leaving yourself a $2 call to win $8+ you're probably ok. The difference between calling $2.50 into $7 (less than 1:3 ratio) and $2 into $8 (1:4 ratio) is huge. You go from needing more than 35% to 20%. And if your bigger raise is getting more folds from his weak Ax hands and KK, then all the better.

Turn raise could be fine, I might be wrong to call because if he's bluffing he's kind of got to jam the river, which is horrible if I don't improve and I might even fold to a river 9. Setting fire to that equity is costly.

I'd call turn.
What do you want him to fold?
It would really suck to get jammed on here.

There's some merit in raising some percent of the time here, but this hand overwhelmingly prefers to call and realize its equity. You can think about turning it into a bluff in some spots OTR, but even then probably not because people aren't making big enough folds at 5nl to justify running big bluffs on 3-broadway boards.