Correct river Jam?

[Marcus Acosta]

SO I BUSTED LOL
I PICK UP J♦️J♥️ ON THE BUTTON $305 EFFECTIVE.
UTG STRADDLES $15 with $275 effective. FOLDS TO ME AND I CALL.
FLOP K♥️6♠️3♣️
HE BETS $25. I CALL
TURN IS 8♥️.
HE BETS $35. I CALL TO SEE THE RIVER AND. IF I MISS I CAN FOLD BUT HES REPING A KING HERE. BUT I HAVE A KING IN MY RANGE HERE TOO.
RIVER IS 6♥️.
He leads again for $50.
The board pairs and there is now 3 to a flush. I have the jack of ♥️. So if I put him on a king there is not way he calls when I shove.
I shove and he slow rolls me and makes the call with A♥️9♥️. I think I played it right. Thoughts?

[David Wibel]

Marcus, I am going to break the hand down from the start and to be honest, there are a number of mistakes prior to discussing the river. Also, lay off the all caps, just add spacing between your paragraphs and it will be fine.

Pre-Flop: If UTG really did straddle then you have to be raising. If you don’t you can’t narrow Villain’s range and risk getting dirted out by random 2 pair hands. If UTG actually raised to $15 then I think a call is fine but I would like to see a raise still. JJ is vulnerable on a lot of boards and folding out some broadways or Ace high hands is a good idea.

Flop $34 pot $260 effective: Again this is where it really depends on if UTG straddled or raised. If he straddles I think a call is fine, he could be bluffing with any number of hands, if he raised I’m probably folding to that sizing. If he has a king we are drawing to two outs and this is a really dry board so I wouldn’t expect too many bluffs.

Turn $84 pot $235 effective: So there is now a flush draw and you have the Jh. I’m folding to a bet here or raising trying to get him off a draw and turning the JJ into a bluff which feels bad. Calling two streets is saying we have a King or better, slow playing a set maybe but JJ is below the value part of your range now.

River $154 pot $200 effective: Flush gets in, sixes now make trips and any set is now a boat. Meanwhile you have JJ and decide to put Villain squarely on a King. You know you are turning JJ into a bluff which is good but there are a number of other hands that he could have that he will call a pot sized shove. He has a number of sixes or two pair hands he could call with, if he was on some weird flush draw he gets there. I think this is a bad shove, you are targeting the bottom of his range and the Jh doesn’t remove many flush draws, only KJ and AJ really. You are representing at worst a 6, which I don’t believe or a flush which I also don’t believe having called the flop unless you had exactly A3 of hearts. In short I hate the all in and you should just fold.

[Marcus Acosta]

Thanks for your feedback. I’ve been playing standard ABC poker my whole life and I’m really trying to better my game. You’re exactly right here, I put him solely on the bottom of his range and I didn’t take a lot into consideration about my own. When the action folded to me on the button I saw that there was a raise to $15 by the under the gun player. So when I look at my Jack’s I just called the pre-flop raise but when it folded back to the initial raiser the dealer gave him the option to check. I agree that if I had saw the straddle and it wasn’t a raise I would have raised jacks on the button to protect my hand.

[David Wibel]

This is just a difficult board to build a story on. Bluffs work best when you have a believable story to tell on the entire hand and you need to start telling it soon while removing the value hands the opponent has. For instance if you had Ah3x without a flush then representing a flush or a 6 works a lot better because your opponent can’t have the Ace of hearts, drastically reducing the number of hands he can call with, removing all nut flushes and reduce him to exactly one combo of 33.

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