Thanks to everyone who commented on the turn situation. Here’s a recap of the action so far:
Blinds are 50/100, Villain has about 20K (starting stack), and I have about 25K. Only six players (including both blinds) have claimed their seats so far. I have black Aces first to act and open to 300.
Villain calls from the SB, and everyone else folds.
Flop (700 in pot) Jc 8c 6h. Villain checks.
Turn (700 in pot) 6d. Villain bets 400. Hero?
I once again suspect that at equilibrium, the Expected Values of raising and calling will be quite similar for all of Hero’s strong hands. This is because these hands have relatively static value versus Villain’s likely betting range. If you have some exploitable read on Villain, you should employ it. In this case, I’d consider his river bluffing tendencies the most important read. Against overly passive opponents, raising now is probably best, and against overly aggressive ones, calling is probably best. Without such a read, though, it can be tough to tease out the best play, because it’s going to be a small difference, with good arguments on each side. Of course that also means that it won’t matter terribly much what you choose, but I nevertheless think that the exercise of finding the best option is both good practice and intrinsically interesting.
Several commenters argued the merits of calling versus raising in a vacuum quite well. It’s striking, though, that none of these arguments is really specific to the exact hand Hero holds. They would apply just as well to any hand Hero wants to play for value. Now, it’s certainly possible that one option might just be strictly better than the other for value, but I think that would imply some exploitability on Villain’s part, and I’d be more comfortable with such a solution if we could pinpoint what precisely it is we’re exploiting and why we feel comfortable with that read.
In cases like these, I find it helpful to imagine that I will call with some strong hands and raise with others. This enables me to rephrase the question, not as “Is calling strictly better than raising?” but rather, “Is there anything about my hand that would make it better than similar hands for calling or raising?”
Consider the arguments in favor of raising. Dave says, “If villain has a semi-bluff, he seems very likely to call a turn raise since hero could be bluffing and his hand could improve.” I agree that against Villain’s draws, raising is probably somewhat better than calling, as it more or less guarantees that we get a second bet into the pot (or fold out a good bit of equity), whereas on the river Villain may or may not bluff when he misses but will certainly put a bet in when he hits. However, the Ac in our hand significantly reduces the likelihood that Villain holds a draw.
Relatedly, Dave worries that “we have to guess at his bluffing frequency on a good number of draw-completing rivers”. That’s not quite true, though. The Ac is a very significant blocker, which means that bluff-catching with that card in your hand will be +EV even against an opponent with an optimal river bluffing frequency. We know the Ac is in our hand, but he doesn’t know that we know that. This means that on club rivers, we have an information advantage that can be exploited. Although these may not be the best river cards in the deck, they are cards on which Hero can in fact expect to put money into the pot with an edge.
Mark points out that, “Hands opponent is betting for value, particularly Jacks may be scared off by a lot of cards, such as possible flushes, straights, or overcards. This makes up a huge portion of the deck.” Here, again, we have significant blockers. Aces are not good cards for getting value from Jx, and the Ac would be especially bad. When we know that the river is less likely than usual to be an Ace, that becomes an argument in favor of calling with this hand and raising some different value hand, such as 7h 6h, which does not block so many scare card rivers.
As Mark points out, hands like 76 are also more desirable for raising than AA “as they block the portion of opponent’s range that are beating both AA and [trips with a bad kicker]”.
If the decision is otherwise close, we can break the tie by considering the relevance of the exact cards we hold. In this case, they argue for a call, which is what I did.
The next decision point is here.