This is a continuation of the Hand of the Week. Discussion of the flop action, which I imagine will surprise some of you, can be found here.
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?
Post your thoughts and preferred action here. I’ll respond to comments as I’m able and post my own thoughts as well as the next decision point on Friday.
I like calling and raising blank rivers (non-clubs, non-8/9/T/J/Q), as aces up is a huge favorite to be the best hand and to be called by worse. And not only will a river 3-bet bluff be super rare, but even plenty of better hands wouldn’t 3-bet for value.
If we raise now, we do open ourselves up to 3-bets from worse hands — not that that’s a bad thing if we plan on calling down, but given the reads it might not be a profitable calldown. And of course, by raising we shut out all hands that are drawing dead or close to it, when those hands might have thrown in a river bluff. And by calling, we can still go for another street of value if he checks the river with a hand like 99 and makes a curious payoff. Having position is awesome in general, and in this hand it’s especially sweet.
i just call (and with the intention of calling almost all rivers.) i want to keep him bluffing with his missed draws and/or maybe check-calling a 2/3 pot river bet with his made hands that may think i have a missed draw. (no reason to bet small in this situation imo since you’re trying to get action from bluff catchers that think you’ve missed.)
with that said, i don’t hate raising this particular turn. you’re virtually always ahead at this point (just losing to 7 combos of boats+, and whatever 6x he has (another 0-12 combos maybe?). also, it sort of doesn’t matter how many 6x combos you assign him, since giving him weaker 6x combos (like 76o or A6o) implies tons of other combos are also out there — that is, as you expand the # of strong hands he has the # of weaker hands grows somewhat proportionally.
since villain is in sb i wouldn’t be surprised if his preflop range was in fact pretty pocket pair heavy, but this early, and for this small a percentage of his stack, he’s likely to have a zillion more combos of Jx, hands like 99/77/55, flush draws, straight draws, etc, here. and with so many draws in his range it’s not the worst thing to raise and try to charge ’em/blow em out, especially if you don’t think he’s going to bluff river a ton with his misses for some reason. if you do raise, say 800 more, i think you can safely fold to a 3-bet (he’d have to be an absolute maniac to 3-bet worse). also, if you do raise turn and get called i think you’re generally going to have check back the river, which feels awful nitty, but is probably right imo.
While pretty obvious, I’ll start by saying that folding is definitely not an option. We are behind very few hands, and can expect villain to be value-betting hands weaker than ours as well as some bluffs. That means we are pondering the relative merits of calling vs. raising, as well as considering different raise sizes.
Option 1: calling
Pros: we aren’t too likely to get drawn out on here – villain could have flush draws, but our A of clubs limits those significantly. Depending on villain, I would expect KQs reasonably often, KTs, QTs, T9s occasionally, rarely anything else. The only straight draw with 8 draws is T9, and I certainly wouldn’t expect more than the suited combos of that. Two pair hands like KJ and 89 have one two outs to beat us thanks to the pair on the board, so overall given a free card is not very risky, in terms of getting drawn out on.
We can possibly get more money from missed draws or total air on the river by just calling now.
Cons: 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.
Option 2: Raising
The Pros and Cons here really depend on how villain behaves with hands like a pair of jacks. Certainly we lose money from bluffs by raising, but do we make enough more money from jacks and similar hands to be worth it? Without reads on villain, it’s difficult to decide, but we should try to play close to optimally. Andrew mentioned we are probably checking back hands like AK, KQ, and 99 on the flop. Do we want to bluff-raise or call with hands like that now? I can definitely wanting to call with some A-high hands as they are potentially best now and also could improve to beat part of villain’s value range. Hands like 99 should probably just be folded, while I only really want to bluff-raise with flush draws, most of which we probably would have bet on the flop. As such, we really shouldn’t be value-raising here too much. That said, Andrew says we aren’t checking back many strong hands here, so what are we value-raising if anything? I think hands like 67s are likely in our range here, and are better raising candidates as they block the portion of opponent’s range that are beating both AA and 67.
As such, I think I call here with AA, raising only 6s and very few bluffs.
I personally prefer a raise to a call here. Villain’s range can fall into a few categories – a) hands that beat us – {6x, 88, jj} b) two pair hands betting for value / protection {Jx, 8x, 99, TT} c) Semi-bluffs with decent equity {mostly flush draws and some T9s or possibly some 97s or 75s} and d) air balls.
The hands that beat us are probably the smallest part of villain’s range. There’s just not many combinations of 6x that villain can call from the SB – 76s, 65s, occasionally 86s, A6s is unlikely since we have two aces.
How do we get the most value from the other groups? Since we checked the flop, if villain has a J with a strong kicker, he will probably be skeptical enough to call a turn raise, and there’s a decent chance he can call a river value bet. He may even take this line with 99 or TT since we didn’t bet the flop and most villains expect a bet from top pair on a fairly wet board. While with this group of hands, he may also be likely to bet many rivers for value, I think we have a better chance of getting 3 bets in by raising the turn and betting the river than calling the turn and raising the river.
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. Calling the turn makes it harder to get money in ahead on the river and we have to guess at his bluffing frequency on a good number of draw-completing rivers. If these hands don’t bluff the river, they definitely can’t call a river value bet.
While air may be statistically the bigger part of villain’s range, I don’t think it’s going be a big source of our value in this hand. Many of these small bluffs may be “one and done.” While raising the turn would effectively prevent us from getting any more value from his air, I don’t expect to make much from river bluffs.
In short, I think the value to be gained from the two pair and semi-bluff hands outweighs the value lost from bluff-catching the river or from putting more money in behind.
Thanks for the comment, Dave. For the most part I think this is well argued, but I find a few assertions that you don’t really justify and that are not obviously true (or false, for that matter) to me. In particular:
“I think we have a better chance of getting 3 bets in by raising the turn and betting the river than calling the turn and raising the river.”
“Many of these small bluffs may be “one and done.” While raising the turn would effectively prevent us from getting any more value from his air, I don’t expect to make much from river bluffs.” It’s worth pointing out that one of your criticisms of calling was that it required Hero to guess about Villain’s river bluffing frequency, but is that not what you’re doing here?
Looking at his betsize het not strong. You didn’t show annyvstrenght on the flop. If he had a set, Jhigh, or a six he would bet small. Just to get somme value. Raising has no benefit. You just let him fold his hand. Just call and hope he spazes out on the river.