Bluffcatching river vs 5x overbet

Can I hero call river from GTO perspective (opponent is quite maniacal, so he does not have KK and TT or AK in his range). I called because I block QJ and unblock backdoor spades, diamonds or club floats). Hand #818186719 · Replay Poker

When he bluffs does he snap raise? I noticed he hesitated a bit on the turn to Hollywood then called. I wouldn’t be able to make that call on the river unless I had a soul read on him.

Also, your bet on the flop was too small - he could call with a wider range thus making it harder to put him on a hand. If you made a large bet on the flop and he called, you could probably put him on a king more easily (unless he’s one of those guys that calls any c-bet no matter what).

From a GTO perspective, as bets get larger, there are fewer hands in your range that you need to call with. Note that I don’t know what cards you actually had, as you never showed in the hand.

You raised pre-flop, and so a KT2 rainbow flop certainly favors your range. It is also a fairly dry board that is not going to connect strongly with very much of your opponent’s range, and so I think a smaller bet like you made is very standard, and creates a difficult situation for villain with the large chunk of his range that is complete garbage.

Betting so small on the turn looks weak, and I’d prefer to check or size up at least somewhat. The second king brings a flush draw, but mostly doesn’t change the range versus range matchup much. Your range is still ahead, both in equity and in nutted hands. But at the same time, villain’s range is still fairly weak, leaving you with a bit of a question with hands like JT without the flush draw, or middle pocket pairs. I’d still probably mix checks (which you want to do a bit more frequently out of position) and bets of about half pot or slightly smaller. You could also polarize with some of your range, picking KK, KT, perhaps TT and a few bluffs like 54 suited with the flush draw.

On the river, even against a maniac, I’m not going to call with much of my range. I’ll get better opportunities than most of my hands will provide. Note that his being a maniac does not keep KK, TT and AK out of his range: it just dilutes those holdings since he’ll make this play with many other cards. That he didn’t raise pre-flop is a stronger indicator that those cards are less represented in his range.

With KQ or better, against a maniac, I think I’d call without much thought. KJ and some other weaker kings are a closer call, but if I feel that he has more bluffs than value, then ignore my advise in the prior paragraph: if you have the cash to cover the volatility, and really think bluffs outnumber value, then you can start calling with hands like T9. I wouldn’t rush to judgment with something like that, though, and would want to see a pretty good sample of weak over-bets before calling down that light. Again, with a 5x over-bet of the pot, you are not forced to call with many hands at all.

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Sorry for not providing my hole cards. I thought that they were accessible to everyone in replay. I actually had AhJh, checked this with solver with reasonable ranges (flop bet is ok, but ~9% frequency, turn bet is ~70% frequency with larger sizing and ~ 12% will smaller. Noticeably AcJc, AdJd, AcJc are 100% check on turn due to blocking backdoor floats. River is 100% call with QJ, sets and KT+, Noticeably AJ is 15% call with and it better bluff catching candidate that low Kx). P.S. Played this hand while drunk.

AJ is a snap fold on the river bro.

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I dunno the GTO solution there, but you have to have the best hand almost half the time, and I highly doubt he has that many bluffs.

His last second calls on flop and turn were timing tells you should have picked up on though. Yes, timing tells can be faked, I do it all the time, but that one is rarely faked because so many people don’t understand what it means.

Considering his line and his timing, AJ is a fold there.

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I did know about this timing tell, I usually make last second calls with bottom of my range not with top (:. Thanks for that