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https://www.weaktight.com/h/561ce60ad3904383558b47fc

The villain has 22/18 stats over 276 hands, from BB call open 32% (25), 3-bet 8.8% and no 3-bet from the BB in 25 opportunities; fold to c-bet 44% (9), aggression 4,3, river bet 25% (12), turn bet vs missed c-bet 67% (3).

This is how I see his pre-flop range:

I took the premium range hands with a 50% probability. Since the villain has never 3-bet from the BB, there is a chance that he could be calling with these hands. Although considering the effective stack depth of 22 BB, I think the villain would often shove 99-66; I took pairs 22-55 with a 50% probability as well.

Since I open-raised widely, I guess the villain is often supposed to shove the bottom of the pocket pair range, although he would not always play them like that. In addition, I might be somewhat inaccurate and the villain’s range could be wider.

The flop is good for a c-bet and we have two options for playing this hand. On the one hand, we do not make the villain fold his best hands but can make him fold hands with equity, for example, QJo.

Another option is checking behind. Wwe have a pretty strong A-high, but the drawback of this play is that we let the villain realize his weaker hands’ equity for free and we would often have to make rather difficult decisions later in the hand. Besides, after our check on this two-tone texture, we will almost always have a capped range and most opponents would start barreling into this check.

At that, it is not the worst-case scenario if the villain bets half of the pot. The real trouble begins when we run into overbets. I also think I would hardly ever get check-raised on this flop since it fits my range very well. Hence, I prefer the first way to play this hand.

I think c-betting one street would already be a +EV decision. Let us try to imagine the villain’s calling range on this flop:

I think this villain would call with A-high with backdoors and weak pairs inorder to turn them into a bluff later on or to check, hoping for a free showdown.

Given all that, it turned out that the villain folds to a c-bet in 41% of the cases, which makes my bet a +EV one. I like the bet-sizing I picked since betting exactly half of the pot or less does not have almost any effect on the real fold equity.

The turn strengthens some of the villain’s hands. My plan was to bet only one street because I’m sure the villain would seldom fold second pairs and weaker hands to a second barrel with SPR=2.

The river is a very good one for me since the paired 5 slightly lowers the number of the villain’s possible made hands, which increases the equity of my bluff-catchers. Let us see what the villain might bet on the river:

I need 25% equity for a breakeven call. As you can see from the screenshot, I have 30% if the villain bluffs with all hands that had equity on the flop, excluding A-high, which makes my call a +EV one.

With that, I did not add any A-highs, I just think that the villain would turn them into a bluff sometimes since he can make me fold some better A-highs from my range. Such a play by the villain is reasonable because my c-bet frequency on a texture like this would be high. Possibly this is why the villain would call the c-bet slightly wider. In this hand, he showed Tc9c.

Conclusion: I don’t really like the villain’s play against a regular here. Nonetheless, on this texture, the villain would inevitably have an exploitable fold to c-bet, which means that I should not aim to decrease my c-bet on this texture significantly otherwise I’m liable to have more complicated decisions on later streets. I think a move like that is only possible against opponents you have a history with and whom you know to have obviously exploitable post-flop tendencies. For instance, a rare second barrel on the turn and a high fold to a river bet.