Can I get more value here HU vs aggroish reg?

Villain has been somewhat loose and aggressive so far in the match there has been some 3betting established with only one memorable showdown of Ad7d so far.

Raise preflop to $1.50 with AJo
Villain 3bets to $5.00
Pot: $10 and change.
Hero Calls
Flop
Villain bets $5.50
Hero Raises to $12.00
Villain Calls
Pot: $34
Turn
Villain Checks
Hero Checks
River
Villain Checks
Hero Checks

Given our pretty splashy images so far I think raising the flop for value is pretty safe here and a little better than just calling maybe the sizing should have been bigger. When he calls I estimate his range as draws, AQ, KdKx-TdTx type hands and weaker Ax hands. I think he probably ships AK, and two pair or better. Given this, I probably should have just jammed the turn......

Thoughts?

I'm no HU player but I think raising the flop is pretty bad for your range and I doubt you have enough hands which want to bluff-raise to justify adding it to your raising range on the flop. I think the flop raise would be especially bad if your J were a diamond or if the match dynamic were such that you weren't normally 4-betting AQ. By which I mean that if your value raising range were set, two pair, AQ and AJ for value, that would be far too wide and leave your calling range too capped on blank runouts.

Keep in mind that the flop raise is a leveraged raise that will allow you to add a muitiple of semibluff combos, something like 2-2.5 to 1 for each value combo. At that rate your might be raising the flop with 25% of your range which seems kind of ridiculous on a fairly static equity board where your top 20% have his range in really bad shape and need little protection.

That's a good point. If I am getting your point about AQ and 4betting, even with a spewy image AxJx falls at the very bottom of my value range and is probably worth a simple call in that sense. That being said, do we find a fold if he barrels blank turns and rivers? Donking again on the turn may be weaker than a c/r but on a wet board it seems pretty close.

If I call the flop are there any non diamond, non J turns that we raise or am I looking to just call down and dodge villain's outs here.

How deep are you guys? If you post the starting stacks next time then I can give some input.

Originally Posted by Donachello

That's a good point. If I am getting your point about AQ and 4betting, even with a spewy image AxJx falls at the very bottom of my value range and is probably worth a simple call in that sense. That being said, do we find a fold if he barrels blank turns and rivers? Donking again on the turn may be weaker than a c/r but on a wet board it seems pretty close.

If I call the flop are there any non diamond, non J turns that we raise or am I looking to just call down and dodge villain's outs here.

I don't really understand what you're asking in the first paragraph. Who's donking? If you call the flop, clearly this is your hand that almost never folds unless the run-out is really bad, i.e. something like Td 3s or similar. Basically the texture shift needs to be so severe that straights and flushes are a reasonably large part of ranges in order for you to be justified in folding this hand at some point.

I asked the question about AQ because in NLH, frequencies are a big deal. If you flat AQ preflop, then AJ is lower in your range than it otherwise would be and makes even less sense to raise. And if you 4-bet AQ preflop, AJ still might be just a call on the flop even though it is higher in your range for the simple reason that your range is now more capped since you cannot have AK or AQ on the flop. When your range becomes that weak, it doesn't make a lot of sense to have much of a raising range at all other than sets. Indeed, even A5/A4 make a lot of sense to slowplay in that situation.

I think I already answered your last question mostly, but yeah, you would just continue calling down if you called flop with this. Raising turns would be a drastic adjustment to big leaks in your opponents turn game, and you didn't establish the reads necessary for such a play. Try not to concern yourself too much with "dodging villain's outs," as for every time he has a flush draw he'll sometimes have a hand that dominates you anyway. You should be much more concerned with allowing him to bluff the widest possible range so you can make more money that way.

I'm pretty indifferent to raising or calling the flop, I think if we're talking GTO we'd probably see a mixed strategy here, and I'd just decide what to choose based on game flow and image. I think you actually played it totally fine, and I don't think there's any value on the river.

Max, I'm not sure I totally agree with your indifference point. It's probably a part of optimal play to raise the best Ax in our range some of the time and the second best Ax rarely if ever. So I think it has a lot to do with how often we're 4-betting AQ pre. And also I think the GT-informed reasons for raising AJ or AQ here would be 1) to be able to more easily defend to a flop clickback bluff and 2) to balance the times our raising range has to check the turn and face a river bet. But I think the need to protect our calldown range is a greater pulling force than that and will have us flatting AQ and AJ more than the majority of the time.

It is actually kind of interesting to think of from a GT perspective how to best play it. Personally, I don't believe there is a need to raise with any part of your range on that flop 100bbs deep.

Optimal play wants to have a raising range in spots like this because the aim is to shift his indifference thresholds so he's not betting the flop nearly 100% of the time. A high cbet from him is bad news for much of our range. There isn't a specific "need" to get value with sets with a raising line, but raising the sets in a balanced range will reduce the frequency and size of his cbet. And if it doesn't, he will be either be putting too much dead money in or we will be making more raising our sets than we would have made by calling. Yeah, once he adjusts to a balanced raising strategy, raise and call will be very close with our nutted hands, but other parts of our range gained by forcing that adjustment.