J3 takes down Aces!

I think i was very lucky here, but I also think that flat calling the flop and turn (rather than raising) probably helped me in terms of getting called on the river? I’d been running really bad, so this was a welcome outcome and got me back on track!

https://www.replaypoker.com/hand/replay/410860714

I concur you played it perfectly and then got lucky as well. But, if that river card had been an A…
Your opponent should’ve raised preflop, even if just a minimum raise. Would you have called a raise with J-3o? He/She was trying to do to you what you ended up doing to him/her. Good outcome for you, though. Nice…

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There was a pre-flop min raise. But yes, most players would probably push a bit harder with AA. I wouldn’t have called more than about 3/4BB with J3, even heads up, so in that sense the technique was effective (pre-flop my opponent was around 87%). I like to think that if A had dropped on the river I’d have ran a mile…

Preflop

What (if any) was your read on how your opponent was playing?

J3o is junk but you’re heads up so pretty much everything is playable. Limping or open-raising yourself seems fine to me. I would only open-fold if Villain is very aggressive.

Facing the raise, you could consider folding J3o. This is very dependent on the opponent though.

Flop/Turn

Heads up you have a monster hand. Slowplaying is good. There aren’t any draws you have to worry about and you’re in position so can always choose to bet if your opponent checks.

River

I like your raise all-in. At this point Villain most likely has a either a pocket pair (giving them a full house) or a total bluff. If it’s a bluff you won’t get anything more from them anyway. If it’s a pocket pair then it’ll be hard for them to fold.

Question: would you ever bluff on this board on any of these streets from the flop onwards? If so, which hands would be good to bluff with?

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I can understand the player with AA only min-raising; they feel confident they have the best hand, and want to suck the opponent into building a big pot, and don’t want to scare them off by showing a lot of strength.

It backfired in this situation, but in a lot of cases, this will pay off for them. But heads up, it’s way better to do this when you hit a set, or top two pair, or flop a disguised straight (where you hold two of the middle cards in the straight). Even though the AA hand eventually improved to a Full House, with 3 Jacks on the board, a full house is not as strong a hand as it seems, as the showdown proved. There was only one card in the deck that could have beaten him, and you happened to have it. Great time to get paid off.

You had this hand from the flop onward, although you couldn’t have been absolutely sure your opponent didn’t hold a stronger Jack until the last Jack in the deck showed up on the river.

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@[love2eattacos]: Didn’t really have any read as such, as a min raise doesn’t convey very much information. Right up until the river it would have been possible to have put them on a better J, especially given the action.

Re: bluffing, this is not a board I would feel comfortable bluffing at any stage without at least a promising drawing hand with a high number of outs. A river bluff clearly would not have worked (QED), and it’s difficult to see what a player could represent (short of a monster hand) at any point on the way?

How about from any previous hands you’d played? For example, was he raising frequently preflop?

I think many players feel the same way and this type of board (where there aren’t many possible good draws) is one as a result where many players will not bluff. Similarly on the river it’s very polarized - you either have a very strong hand or nothing. The problem is that if you never, ever bluff here then it becomes possible for stronger opponents to just fold everything but the nuts and you won’t get paid off.

Clearly not in this specific case when your opponent has exactly AA :smiley: However, when thinking about bluffing you need to think about not just the specific hand they had this time, but all of the hands that your opponent might possibly play this way and whether you can get them to fold some of the ones that beat you. For example, if they held something like 99 or A8, might they have folded to your river raise?

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The more interesting question is if your opponent could’ve gotten away from the hand. Obviously with pocket aces that’s incredibly difficult (and on replay I would never fold it, though I call junk here for fun a lot lol). I did once in a live tournament fold in a very similar situation (full house vs quads) with a similar board texture (trips on the board) - though my pocket pair was weaker JJ. My opponent was nice enough to show me the quads so I felt good about the fold heh. But with aces this is hard to get away from.

It would have been tough for the player with As to get away here. Personally I would have checked the flop, rather than making a CB, in the hope of getting some much-needed information. As for the river though, I would have probably thought, “If she had a J, wouldn’t she have raised rather than called before now? If not the flop then at least the turn?” Most players on Replay seem to bet decent hands quite strongly!

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IDK, I thought it was one of the pretty standard way to play trips - particularly when you have so much behind. You have position and if I’m just betting into you and you just flat call, I’m assuming you are either on a draw (depending how much I bet and the board texture) or you have some monster and don’t want me to run off. Yeah, you can get more sophisticated if you know your opponent and can isolate their range effectively, but that’s really context dependent. You played trips the standard (and I think most profitable way in the long-run), at least if you don’t know your opponent better.

Realistically, the only hand you could’ve had here that you played the way you did is either a full-house or quads. Quads are usually nearly impossible to put someone on and you usually just have to take the L. But if there were ever a hand where I thought you had quads, this would be it. I mean jack full of aces is too strong to lay-down anyway and you just have to take the loss, but as I made the call a decent part of me would expect a jack in your hand.

The main tell is your shove on the river after his super-valuey-looking raise on the river. You read correctly (I think) that he had a really strong hand and would probably call the shove. But here’s why it would raise red-flags for me if I were him.

If I’m your opponent here is my thinking. This isn’t a bluff, only someone really reckless would bluff with a board like this. You aren’t doing this with a flush. I block the nut-flush, you made a negative EV call on the turn, and this board is too easy to have a full-house on. You aren’t shoving. If you have a weaker full-house by pairing the 8 in the flop, I would’ve expected a re-raise to protect your hand. You might call if you just paired the 5 on the turn not wanting to shut down - but why would you shove on the river after a value-y re-raise. The opponent could easily have a 8 or a higher pocket-pair. The only way this game makes sense to me where I have you beat is if you had pocket 8s or a high pocket pair like TT/QQ/KK - but the latter hands you probably would’ve played differently in the flop to protect them with a re-raise (and you might’ve raised pre-flop). So, I would conclude, your hand only makes sense if you are holding a jack or pocket 8s. And I’m not sure you would shove here with pocket 8s since a lot of higher pocket pairs beat you now. I mean, it could happen for sure, but my preference is I don’t like to shove with that much behind unless I’m nearly certain I’m not beat.

Like I said, I would probably call just because of the hand strength, but the hand played out exactly like quads.

But yeah, I think you played this hand about as correct as you could. The only major mistake I saw from anyone was Jorge kinda goofy min-bet on the flop. Min-betting the flop tells you nothing, it just trivially inflates the pot for no reason and lets your opponent improve.