almofadinhas said

Foucault said
If you are having trouble ranging an opponent, try thinking about your own range. What hands could you have here, besides A9? Try putting them into two buckets, the calls and the folds. In other words, just looking at your own range, you should have some hands that call, and some that fold, and neither bucket should be vastly larger than the other. That might help you to get some perspective on where this one hand fits in your range.

Ok, lets break this range down

I assume I call a mini raise with somewhere near to 34%: JJ-22, AQs-A2s, K5s+, Q7s+, J8s+, T8s+, 97s+, 87s, 76s, 65s, 54s, AQo-A9o, A5o-A2o, K9o+, Q9o+, J9o+, T9o, 98o, 87o, 76o

OTF My range to Check/call: JJ-22, AQs-A2s, KhQh, KhJh, QhJh, KhTh, QhTh, JhTh, Kh9h, Qh9h, Jh9h, Th9h, Kh8h, Qh8h, Jh8h, Th8h, 9h8h, Kh7h, Qh7h, 9h7h, 8h7h, Kh6h, 7h6h, Kh5h, 6d5d, 6s5s, 6c5c, 5d4d, 5s4s, 5c4c, AQo-A8o, A5o-A2o
I think I am check raising flop with 4h5h and 6h5h, A2 and A3 most of the time as well. 22 and 33 usually check raise turn.

With this range to call OTF, ck/ck Turn, OTR:
I lead with AQ, AJ, AT, A9, A6, A3, A2, KhQh, JJ-22, about 50% pot.
I lead with Kh6h, QhJh, QhTh, Qh9h, Qh8h, Qh7h, 7h6h, about 1/3 pot.
I check call a normal bet with A9, A8, A7, A5, A4 (~50%pot) A9 is on the line to bet or check call small bet.
I check fold the rest, maybe I have miss some hand here, I think not.

OTR there is 11880 on the pot, and hero have 23665 in stack, I don´t have any hand that I check call the river for overbet like V did here, or I lead half pot targeting weak Ace or Queen, KK JJ TT, or I fold to overbet. AT I guess if I check, I call bet pot OTR, but that will be like a crying call.

How do I balance that range? Is necessary to balance playing micro stakes ($2 to $11)? Today I was moving up stakes lol ($5 to $20), I will wait to see how to work better this range now. Take me almost one hour to do this analise, but absolutely worth, I am actually surprise to see this range, and how I can be exploited at the tables.

Andrew, you are my hero!!!

🙂 You did a good job!

Is it necessary to balance? No. If you believe that you can exploit an opponent in a particular way, then do it! The exercise I suggested is useful if you find yourself in a spot where you have no idea what to do, such as here. You don’t want to be folding your entire range, nor do you want to be calling your entire range. Rather, you want to be calling roughly in proportion to the what Villain risked on his bluff.

Here, V’s shove risks 19K to win 17K, so you want to be calling a bit less than half the time to make him indifferent to bluffing. You need to look at the hands in your betting range and see which are best for calling and which for folding.

What’s tricky about the exact hand that you have is that it’s a pure bluff-catcher. In other words, in an equilibrium strategy, you probably are indifferent between calling and folding. I tend to to default to folding such hands, because not bluffing enough is a more common error than bluffing too much, especially in a spot like this.