B3RTstare's Hand, Revisited

Now...time to look over our work from the previous example!

My data on villain shows that he is opening 19% from MP.  Although he might be valuing his openers slightly different than I would, here is what I came up with:

Developing this range assumes that we are working with a substantial sample size of MP opens.  From a database of hands obtained through a vendor, I have 232 samples, which should put us close to where we need to be for this to be workable.  Being that villain is a 22/20.5, this seems roughly accurate.  The 19% range is actually kind of tricky, and the basis of coming up with an accurate estimate is highly dependent on how he values his mid-upper range suited connectors, which begin to take on a very subjective appeal around the 20% range.

Normally I wouldn't care so much, but the 9 dropping on the turn, in addition to flopped made flushes make this situation rather acute.  Looking back over his 232 samples of MP opens, I was fortunate enough to find a showdown one worthy example of 98s, in which there was a likely defender in the BB, meaning that we can expect villain to do this on a regular basis.

Plugging all this into Flopzilla yields this:

Villain is trailing B3RTstare just under 70% of the time.  But what happens on the turn?

Completely unfiltered, villain's equity has grown by a mere 1%, however, his turn call has eliminated all the trash from his range.  Assuming that I did this correctly by using the turn filters (close, if not precise), here is where we are now:

Equities now have almost flip-flopped, with villain taking a 63:37 lead in the hand.  Let's go to the river!

Facing villain 85% equity, it's time to call it quits on this hand.  There are two very important things to note here:

1) B3RT's open-ended straight flush draw provides a great blocker for reading villain's hands.  It eliminates virtually all possibilities of king-high flushes, and there seems little to no doubt in concern of flushes below a 9, given the opening range.

2) Virtually all possibilities for villain's flush potential is to the nuts!!!!  Would he turn a nut flush into a bluff or thin value shove?  Doubtful, in my opinion.  On the other hand, a very good player such as this could make great bluff shove with a top pair hand like AcQx, knowing that B3RT could really only make the hero call with the small boat.  

CONCLUSION:

Any way you cut it, this hand goes to villain, no question.

Is the case closed on this hand?  Not quite...there is still the possibility that something strange happened, like villain hanging around after the flop with 8c8x because he doesn't like folding to B3RT, coupled with the fact that he still has the slim hope of drawing to straight flush.  Or he might even be raising a different range to combat what he believes B3RT's blind defense strategy to be. 

Bottom line: I think this hand has great potential to open people's eyes to how ranges hit the flops and how using c-bet frequencies and blockers can seal the deal on reading an opponent's hand.