Can You Make the Hero Call Here?

[amts]

Hand Setup (Cash Game - $1/$2 NLHE):​

• You’re on the button with A♠ J♣
• Preflop: You raise to $6, BB calls
• Flop: J♦ 4♠ 5♥ — BB checks, you bet $8, BB calls
• Turn: 9♣ — Both check
• River: 7♣ — BB shoves $65 into $28 pot

Thoughts:​

You’ve got top pair, top kicker... but now face a massive overbet shove.
Flushes, straights, even weird 2-pairs are possible — or is it just a missed draw turned bluff?

🤔 What do you do?

• Call and risk your stack?
• Fold and live to fight another hand?
• What kind of player would make this move?

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Drop your thoughts — would love to see some different lines people take here. 💬

 

[SPANKYSN]

There are a few details I would need before making an assessment...1) Have you played at this table with these players long enough to assess their tendencies? 2) What are the stack sizes?...if BB has a massive stack, he may be trying to bully you. 3) Is BB all-in with his $65? 4) Is your stack still sufficient to mount future attacks if you call and lose to J5, the Motown hand?

With the answers to the above questions, I would have a better idea of what action to take.

 

[MatheusANF]

Simple mode call, but you have more details to ask before a decision

 

[primrose]

I don't need more details. This is a pretty easy fold.

You shouldn't check back the Turn though.

 

[blueskies]

Bet the turn. Why check the offsuit 9? It doesn't complete any draws and it creates potential draws if he's just floating the flop.
If he calls the turn bet and then shoves the river, then I would lean more toward fold than now.
He probably interprets your turn check as weak and some guys will spazz out and look to blow you out of the hand.

Still, as played, without a read on villain, I would fold.

Basically the turn bet gives you value on the turn so you can check the river if your spider senses go off. Additionally, but continuing to rep strength it makes villain less likely to bluff. An all in river shove usually isn't a bluff unless villain is a maniac.

 

[renisundernet]

Maybe 45 offsuit or too aggressive and got the two pair on river. I would call but woukd think of his/her tendencies to bluff so far. A new table then is a call again imo, but not very confident. Its a difficult spot but has a lot of bluffs as potential candidates.

 

[Vallet]

The solution can be simple if we pay attention to the ratio of the pot to the villain's bet on the river. This is a cash game, so fold. The opponent can protect many hands on the big blind (45, J7, 57, 44, 55, 77 and others). The villain's bluff can only be if you have dealt a serious blow to his stack in previous hands.

 

[fundiver199]

Preflop
Standard raise.

Flop
Standard C-bet.

Turn
You only started the hand with around $80 or 40BB effective, and you are playing, what I presume is a soft 1/2 live game. If these assumptions are true, you are leaving a ton of money on the table by checking back a hand this strong. The hands, you would want to check back for pot control, would be something like JT, where now you basically have the worst kicker, you will ever have. But AJ is easily strong enough to play for stacks 40BB deep, so you should bet around $15-20 and set it up for a river jam. If he check-jam on you, then you beat him into the pot and hope to run good.

River
Something is wrong in the hand history, because you say, a flush is possible, but there are not 3 cards with the same suit on the board. This matter, because we need to know, exactly what the cards are to determine the chance, he has a flush, and if no flush is possible, then obviously there are less hands, you lose to. If there were 3 clubs on the board rather than 2, then you having Jc is quite important, because it makes it impossible for him to have flopped top pair with the backdoor.

As for straights it seems very unlikely, T8 or 86 with no flushdraw would call the flop, since these hands flopped absolutely nothing other than a backdoor straightdraw. Since its a BB defend, I guess, he could have 63s, but there are only 4 combos of that. So all in all there are not that many combos, that got there on the river, as you might think. But of course he could also have flopped or turned it with hands like J9, 44 or 55. Especially J9 makes complete sense for him to play this way, whereas 44 and 55 will check-raise the flop at least some percentage of the time.

At the end of the day you have massively underrepresented your hand by checking back turn, and your plan should have been to play for stacks by betting yourself. So as played I think, you have to close your eyes and call, unless the opponent is an OMC (old man coffee) type. It is close though, because hands like KJ or QJ probably dont overbet for 2X the size of the pot, so by playing passive on turn you have degraded your hand to a bluff catcher and made the river decision much more difficult, than it should have been.

 

[fundiver199]

If BB has a massive stack, he may be trying to bully you.

Or even just the fact, it was then Hero, who only started the hand with 40BB. I am not a live poker player, but I know someone, who used to work as a dealer on a casino in Denmark. And according to him the short stacks were constantly being pushed around by the regulars. Many of them were people with gambling problems, who kept losing and had to wait for their next salary to play again. So this is definitely a thing in low stakes live games.

An all in river shove usually isn't a bluff unless villain is a maniac.

If this was an online microstakes game, I would agree. But live poker dynamics are different, as I explained above. And online if you play 25NL or higher, there are also good regs, who will attack capped ranges with river overbets.

 

[primrose]

Something is wrong in the hand history, because you say, a flush is possible, but there are not 3 cards with the same suit on the board. This matter, because we need to know, exactly what the cards are to determine the chance, he has a flush, and if no flush is possible, then obviously there are less hands, you lose to. If there were 3 clubs on the board rather than 2, then you having Jc is quite important, because it makes it impossible for him to have flopped top pair with the backdoor.

Maybe this isn't obvious to other people, but this hand history was written by an LLM (there are several clear indicators of this). So OP isn't saying anything; an LLM was saying that flushes are possible, and LLMs are surprisingly terrible at poker, so very likely they have messed something up.

(Not that I think it matters, I would fold whether or not a flush is possible.)

 

[John A]

Online, or live?

This is usually a straight forward fold.