Play it the same?

[Monty Cantsin]

Interesting situation.

Let's start by giving the villain a range of 3-betting hands, what do you think of this:

AK (12 combos)
AQ (12 combos)
AJs (3 combos)
ATs (2 combos)
KQs (4 combos)
99+ (25 combos)

That makes for 58 combos total.

Now let's work backwards from the river.

For argument's sake, let's assume for a second that he plays all of these the same way, including betting the river. In that case, the river is an obvious call. There are 27 combos that beat you, 4 that you beat (KQs), and 27 you split with. Making the river call worth about 1.5BB.

Now let's assume that on the river he only bets the hands you beat or split with 25% of the time. In that case, the river is still a call, but just barely.

It doesn't seem too unlikely for him to bet most of these hands on the river, hoping to take half the pot away from another A without much risk, or making a desperate last bet with KQs.

So it looks to me like the river call is close to breakeven. And depends a lot on whether he 3-bets KQs and whether he bets that hand on the river.

The turn call is obviously good, you could probably make an argument for check/raising the turn. I'm not smart enough to figure out how good that is, but I know for sure I would do it occasionally.

On the flop, after he bets, the pot is 4BB. You're behind about 90% of his hands, with something like 3.5 outs, counting your backdoors. Implied odds don't look good for you, so breakeven is somewhere around 8 outs. So yeah, like everybody says, fold the flop.

/mc