Thanks for all the comments on What’s Your Play? Suited Broadway on the River. I’m going to start by speculating a bit about what GTO strategies might look like on the river considering the (probably non-GTO) ranges with which each player gets to the river. Then I’ll say a bit about adapting to this particular opponent.
Should Villain Check the Nuts?
Matt says, “I am highly, *highly* disinclined to believe that V checks the Ad on the river here (not to say that it would right or wrong to do so). I find that a lot of people at roughly a live 2/5 skill level have a really hard time checking from out of position on the river with their very strong hands and risking the possibility of having the river check through.”
I agree with this as an empirical observation about live 2/5 players. But should Villain check the nuts? My guess is no, but that a successful shoving strategy with the nuts will also require turning some pretty good pairs into bluffs, which is another thing that 2/5 players are notoriously bad at.
In the AKQ game with a fixed bet size, we know that it’s correct for the OOP player to bet all of his nut hands plus some bluffs for balance, and then to check-call enough of his medium-strength hands to make his opponent indifferent to bluffing. When multiple bet sizes are allowed, it’s better for OOP to make a “blocking bet” with all nut hands, some medium strength hands, and some bluffs, leaving at least enough medium strength hands in his range to call a shove with optimal frequency after checking. That would seem to imply that OOP should bet all of his nuts.
The catch is that OOP will have trouble finding bluffs to balance that bet. If I were Hero here, I’d feel pretty comfortable folding the Kd to a shove, because Villain would have to be turning hands as good as top pair into bluffs (which isn’t actually so unreasonable, because it’s hard to imagine that ever winning at showdown – Hero can probably bluff all worse hands when checked to).
Betting the nuts is not an and of itself a mistake, but failing to balance it with bluffs is.
Hero’s Betting Strategy
Perhaps the more important question is, even if we can conclude that Villain would not check the nuts, what influence should that have on Hero’s strategy? If we knew for certain that Villain did not have the nuts, then we could value bet the second nuts with confidence. On the face of it, it would seem that the unexploitable play would be just to shove all Kd and Ad combinations plus bluffs for balance.
However, Hero might well have a difficult time filling his bluffing range. I argued that Hero’s turn check was, essentially, an exploitive play. I thought it was a very good spot to barrel generally, but I didn’t want to bet-fold such a good draw, so I chose to check. The only other draw to which this logic would apply would be the bare Ad. That means that probably the only air in my range on a diamond river are three combos of QTs.
It’s hard even to find pairs to turn into bluffs. Most pairs weaker than a K I would either have checked on the flop or bluffed on the turn, or they would have a diamond, making me content to check back the river. I also think a set is too strong to bluff on the river.
That leaves Kx with no diamond as the next leading candidate for bluffing, and even that may have some significant showdown value.
Basically, the decision not to take a very good bluffing spot on the turn, combined with a card that nails the weakest part of your turn checking range, leaves you with an overly strong range on this river. This forces you to bet small against a smart player, to avoid giving him a trivial fold.
I’m thinking there are maybe 11 combinations of AdX in my range (3x AQ, 3x AJ, 3x AT, 2x AK) and only three bluffs. The unexploitable play would be to bet about a quarter of the pot with those hands and check everything else.
Many 2/5 players, quite possible including this one, will not be such savvy hand readers and may well misinterpret the turn check as weakness. Exploitively, I could see betting somewhat larger, perhaps more like half pot, with both nuts and bluffs. Whether or not to include the Kd in that range comes down to how confident you are that Villain wouldn’t check the nuts.
Maybe you would flat preflop with 77, but would you not 3b pre with 9d9x and TdTx, then bet the flop and check turn? Or is there too much showdown value to bluff with those?
Also since you’re betting so small couldn’t you bet fold the Kd and consider it to be a thin value bet? They way the hand played out I think it’s more likely the Qd is in his range (either QdQx or KxQd), especially if you think he’s betting the Ad usually.
Just as I was typing this I realized I fell into the trap of discounting part of the range earlier in the hand then having them magically reappear later in the hand. On the flop discussion I mentioned that I would discount KQo because he quickly called. I thought KQo is weak enough to consider folding, and along the same lines QQ is strong enough to considering raising (which means it wouldn’t be a quick call). However I don’t want to be over reliant on timing tells like that, and I think a bet with the Kd should still be considered for value and not a bluff, but it’s probably a lot thinner than I originally thought.
Too much SDV to bluff with 9d or Td (any diamond, really – I’m not even bluffing sets). We’re already having trouble finding enough bluffs to balance all of our Ad value bets, so trying to throw Kd in there as well would require either more bluffs or a smaller bet size. For exploitive reasons, I could see making a quarter pot bet with a value-heavy range of Ad, Kd, and no bluffs.
Is this a board you have to balance your turn bet size statically across your range though? Kd has so much more equity vs Ad/Qd, do you ever think about just merging equity values where your sizing is not necessarily one static value balanced across your range of hands, but an exploitive amount distributed according to two different hands and their equity?
I mean, there are just going to be some spots where your value range is always smaller than your bluffing range, or your drawing range and depending on the runout you just aren’t going to be able to balance. I’m not sure I like defaulting to a very small bet just because I don’t have enough bluffs in my range. I’m actually trying to figure out if exploitively changing my betsize in these cases to match my hand equity can work.
For example let’s say Kd has 60% equity, Ad 25%, Qd15%. In this scenario just just say I only have these 3 combos of hands. I merge the Ad/Qd hands and size about 33% smaller than the Kd bet. So on this turn with a $300 pot I’m betting 150 with the Kd and 100 with the Ad/Qd. I think my actualy bet size with the Kd can be as small as 100 which should make villain unable to exploitively raise all the bluffs he would like to. Therefore, GTO protects the bad end of my range in this case because of the range overlap. Likewise betting $150 with the Kd works because when I have the Ad that sizing is also protected and valud.
Because there are no bet sizing tells in either regard, I should be able to exploitively size my turn bet where villain cannot appropriately counter me. I’m trying to figure out if adjusting ranges and bet sizing makes more sense in a larger context depending on factors such as villain type. There have to be some metagame considerations which have overarcing influence things.
Sorry but I don’t understand what you’re asking here. Even in the example you give, it’s not clear to me whether you’re talking about betting $100 with all three of those hands, or $150 with the Kd and $100 with Ad/Qd? In either case, if you aren’t balancing with bluffs, you can always be exploited by folds. Of course against certain Villains you might be OK with/not worried about that.
If Hero is comfortable folding Kd to a turn shove, doesn’t that allow Villain to profitably bluff at the four-flush with a suboptimally high frequency? I agree that it isn’t unreasonable for Villain to be turning hands as good as top pair into bluffs. If the river card opens up a larger part of Villain’s range for profitably bluff-shoving, who gets more EV from this river? The OOP Villain?
I think you’re misunderstanding my post. I was saying Hero might want to consider turning top pair into a bluff. I was also saying I’d fold the Kd for exploitive reasons – because in order to bluff here, Villain would have to turn a pretty good pair into a bluff, and most players just don’t do that very often. So yes, it might well be an exploitable fold, but that’s the point of it, to exploit a situation where I think Villain won’t bluff enough.
Thanks for the clarification, Andrew. I suppose that I was just wondering where you would rather be sitting on this river, HUFTA or HULTA?