Timestamps

0:30 Hello & Welcome
42:21 Strategy

Links

Mediocre Poker Coaching with Carlos
Tournament Poker Edge
Reading Poker Tells (the best books/videos on live poker tells)

Strategy

Blinds 500/1000/100. Hero opens to 3K with Ac Qh on the BN, BB calls.
Flop (7500) T97cc Both check.
Turn (7500) 4c BB bets 6K, Hero calls.
River (20,500) 9s. BB bets 13K, Hero?

Time for Some Game Theory

It’s probably impossible to find a game theoretically optimal betting strategy for me on the flop, and likewise a calling strategy for Villain, as there are more than two players in the game. The river, however, is a different situation.

It’s quite likely that I’m playing a capped range after checking the turn (which may be sufficient reason not to check). If – and this won’t necessarily be the case, we’ll return to that question – Villain arrives at the river with a mix of nut hands (that beat everything in my range), air (that lose to everything in my range), and hands in between, then this is basically just the AKQ game from Mathematics of Poker, and Villain should probably bet all of his nut hands and all of his bluffs for a size that makes me indifferent between calling and folding with my bluff-catchers.

I hedge a little bit there because even in a straightforward scenario like the one I define above actual poker is a bit more complicated than the AKQ game. Blockers, for instance, can make the actual solutions more complex. Still, this is about as good an approximation as you’ll find for the AKQ game in an actual poker hand.

Hand Reading

The biggest caveat is that Villain may not get to the river a lot of air. As several commenters point out, there are good reasons why he might prefer to bet hands without showdown value on the flop rather than check and call with them.

However, that’s not enough to decide that he’s weighted towards value here, for at least two reasons:

1. Many of his strongest value hands might prefer to bet or check-raise the flop as well. Frankly, the flop check-call probably eliminates many of the hands that would otherwise be most likely to overbet the river, whether for value or as a bluff, including busted draws, sets, and even strong top pair hands. It’s a weird, uncommon line, which often means it’s likely to be unbalanced. However, if we can’t deduce or predict the imbalance, then game theory still provides a way to avoid playing into his hands.
2. One option for “finding bluffs” on the river is to turn a hand with a small amount of showdown value into a bluff. If Villain played a hand like AXhh or bottom pair this way on the flop, he may well conclude that bluffing the river would be higher EV than checking, even though his showdown value was part of the reason he played the flop the way he did.

Why Call?

If I’m roughly indifferent between calling and folding at equilibrium, why should I ever call with a bluff-catcher? It’s an understandable question, but as I argue in my recent article To Catch a Bluff:

Remember that an opponent bluffing at a game theoretically optimal frequency is, well, theoretical. It’s the assumption that we make in the absence of any better estimate of her bluffing strategy. If it turns out that she has a particularly poor strategy, bluffing with hands that are really too strong to turn into bluffs, then your bluff-catchers that break-even against an optimal bluffing strategy will actually make money. So, calling with those hands is a freeroll, as long as you don’t call with so many of them that you end up incentivizing your opponent to stop bluffing entirely.

There remains the question of whether my particular hand is a “pure” bluff-catcher or a better-than-average bluff-catcher. With only a vague idea of what Villain’s exact bluff or value hands might be, it’s hard to say with certainty which blockers could make my hand better-than-average. I’m inclined to think that having a heart would be bad and that blocking a set of 8s, top two pair, and a turned straight is good, but depending on the composition of his range for arriving at the river, these effects may be small or non-existent.

They Always Have It

My favorite response to this post came in a tweet that, sadly, I’m not unable to find. I mentioned posting a WYP about facing an overbet on the river, and someone responded to the effect of, “I didn’t read the post, but I fold.” This is reminiscent of a hashtag I’m fond of using, sometimes with tongue in cheek: #TheyAlwaysHaveIt.

There are lots of reasons why the average player bluffs at a lower-than-optimal frequency in many situations. One is just a simple fear of losing. Human brains tend to be loss-averse, which means that they tend to over-emphasize the consequences of losing a bluff. Mathematically, if a bluff of 150% of the pot will cause 70% of an opponent’s better hands to fold and will never be bluff-raised, then it will show a profit. However, if some part of your brain cares more about the money you lose when the bluff is called than the money you win when the bluff succeeds, then it may convince you that the bluff isn’t worth attempting.

On top of that, it can be hard to find bluff candidates. It’s usually obvious when you have a hand strong enough to value bet, but it’s not always clear which hands are best for bluffing. That’s especially true in a case like this one, where, as I argued above, bluffing at an optimal frequency may require the Villain to bet hands with some showdown value.

Results

#TheyAlwaysHaveIt logic becomes less applicable the more sophisticated your opponent is. I didn’t have much experience with this opponent, but he seemed more than competent, and I didn’t want to pursue an excessively exploitive strategy against him.

My logic went something like this:

1. The base rate for bluffing in this situation is probably too little rather than too much, so applying Bayes’ Theorem should lead me to fold pure bluff-catchers.
2. This opponent seems better than most, and the above logic is exploitable, so I don’t want to deviate too drastically from a balanced calling strategy.
3. My hand may be better than a pure bluff-catcher because of the blocker effect.
4. I call.

Villain had Ah Jh, which makes perfect sense and, to my chagrin, was not a hand I considered. The call kind of feels like a mistake in retrospect, but that may just be results oriented thinking. Thanks for your input, everyone!

I folded, and I don’t think it’s close. The short explanation is #TheyAlwaysHaveIt. Here’s a longer one:

Is This a Bluff-Catcher?

The first question to ask is whether Villain could be raising worse for value. If yes, he’s either making a huge mistake, or you should not fold. Here, I think it’s unlikely that worse raises for value. The only lower flushes possible are 52dd and 42dd, which are unlikely in a raised pot, and in any event would be awfully ambitious raises (the “huge mistake” exception.

Some comments mention straights or overpairs raising. I really don’t see that happening. The mistake here, I imagine, comes from thinking of betting or raising primarily in terms of protection, which is in fact a very secondary consideration here. You can’t “protect” a hand that may well be behind already – the cost/risk of putting in a raise drawing dead far outweighs any protection benefit.

Now you might argue that a recreational player may not think in those terms, but most tend to err on the side of being too passive, especially when it comes to large bets. Not to mention that a player excessively concerned about protecting his hand would probably raise the flop, not the turn.

It’s also worth noting that a player overvaluing weaker hands may also overvalue slightly stronger hands such as Q- or J-high flushes, which is of course bad news for us.

In short, Hero has a bluff-catcher. To decide how to play such a hand, we can start by thinking exploitively about whether this is a spot where Villain is likely to over- or underbluff.

Is Villain Bluffing Enough?

This is quite a difficult spot for Villain to bluff, because (a) he’s raising into a player who is uncapped; and (b) in order to bluff, he needs to get to the turn with a hand that has minimal showdown value and that doesn’t mind re-opening the betting.

That last caveat is important, because, as many comments point out, a bare Ad is a hand without showdown value that sees the turn. If the raise were a shove, enabling Villain to realize the equity of his draw, I would consider that plausible. However, most players will, probably correctly, not raise the Ad here for fear of facing a shove. Again, I think that if he were inclined to raise this kind of hand, he’d be more likely to do it on the flop.

Hero does have blockers to higher flushes, making this perhaps a slightly-better-than-neutral-EV bluff catch against an optimal bluffing strategy. However, there are many reasons to think Villain is in fact underbluffing this spot quite severely.

I was glad to see that nobody really took the bait concerning the straight flush redraw. It, too, could make the hand a slightly-better-than-neutral bluff catcher, but it’s not nearly enough to overcome the situational factors here.

Results

I folded, as did the second player, but the Villain showed Ad Kd anyway. Frankly, I think even this is optimistic on his part (after all, I folded a lower flush). If he’s ahead, he probably has us drawing slim to dead anyway, and he blocks the hand most likely to pay him off (a K-high flush). In his shoes, I would call and probably call the river, though I can actually imagine scenarios where I fold his hand.

In my own shoes, I would not have bet my 9d8d on the river had Villain just called turn, and there’s a good chance I would have folded it to a bet. It really is not that high up in my range, as I can have lots of better flushes as well as most full houses.

“Poker lingo is full of bluster and bravado. For some, the colorful language and the opportunity to spin dramatic narratives about aggression and courage is an important part of the game’s appeal….

I also suspect, though, that all these macho turns-of-phrase and bellicose metaphors obscure the mathematical side of the game. It often seems to me that players who worry about “defending” their big blind, or getting “bullied”, are more concerned about damage to their ego than to their expected value.”

Of course it’s not just about language; there’s plenty of strategy content as well! Please have a look and let me know what you think. Do you enjoy turning your poker game into a story of bravery and bravado? Do you find these kinds of metaphors particularly helpful or unhelpful?

You can follow Cate @catehall on Twitter, and she recommends the Center for Applied Rationality to “your audience in particular”.

In the strategy segment, Nate and Andrew talk about semi-bluffing, getting there, and folding.

Timestamps

0:30 – Hello and Welcome
18:06 – Strategy
52:23 – Cate Hall

Strategy

$5/$10 full ring NLHE at Commerce, $1700 effective stacks.

Hero opens $35 with 4c 3c in the CO, and the SB and BB call.

Flop ($100) As Ac 5s. Check, check, Hero bets $80, SB calls, BB folds.

Turn ($260) 2h. Check, Hero bets $175, SB raises to $600, Hero calls.

River ($1460) Villain shoves ~$985, Hero?

In this volume, you’ll find essays covering the following topics:

Navigating the Early Stages of a Tournament
Balance
Playing Your Image
Catching Bluffs
(Not) Talking at the Table
The Tournament Mindset

You can buy The Thinking Poker Diaries Volume 5 at www.nitcast.com (you’ll get Kindle, PDF, or EPUB versions) or in Kindle form on Amazon.

You certainly don’t need to have read the earlier volumes to make sense of this one, but if you need to get caught up, the first four books are available as a bundle at a discounted rate!

Applications is a Two Plus Two book par excellence. It’s dense, it’s thorough, it’s mathematically rigorous, and the only thing keeping it from a perfect score is that the writing and editing are sloppy at best and downright confusing at worst. There are dozens of typos, some as significant as a missing “not” which of course completely changes the meaning of the sentence. The subject matter is complicated, and the prose doesn’t do as much as it could to elucidate it. If anything, it serves to make the material seem even more overwhelming, and I can imagine many bookstore browsers getting intimidated.

If you can get past all that, though, you’ll find the most thorough and practical guide there is to playing unexploitable no-limit hold ’em. There are no toy games here; Janda gets right down to business applying game theory concepts to real no-limit hold ’em situations.

His techniques for estimating optimal pre-flop ranges are ingenious, and it only gets better from there. He emphasizes repeatedly that the goal isn’t to construct perfectly balanced ranges – that’s generally beyond human capabilities and in any event the details matter very little at the margins – but rather to build intuition and to recognize spots where you should be bluffing, value betting, calling, or folding more than you currently are.

Perhaps the most eye-opening conclusion for me was that there are many situations where the optimal strategy likely involves multiple bet sizes. Although Janda doesn’t go into a lot of depth on this, it’s certainly inspired me to investigate these situations for myself.

That’s not to say that Janda never goes into any depth. One of the highlights of the book are the hand examples at the end, where builds ranges for both players across multiple decision points in a single hand. His wise decision to shift the focus away from how to play a particular hand and towards building range-based strategies is the best illustration I’ve scene of both how one ought to think about poker and also how, specifically, to do that in a given situation.

This is not a book for the lazy or the close-minded. A quick skimming or surface-level reading won’t do much for you, and unfortunately the prose sometimes gets in the way of understanding already hard-to-grasp concepts. The effort is worth it, though.

Ruud says, “Generally I find Villain has the goods when he bombs the river like this.”

Pepito agrees, “unless he contemptuously views you as a bad, nitty player, what adept villain expects Kx to fold given that particular run out and action? river looks like soul-owning thin value from AK and/or KQ, or fat value from 2P, straights, and flushes.”

Mike argues exactly the opposite: “if he’s a good player, he will know he can try to rep something strong considering both a flush draw and straight draw got there.”

I think this is as telling a demonstration as you’re going to get of the value of guessing at the meaning of Villain’s bet. A “good player” shouldn’t be so easy to pigeonhole as definitely bluffing or definitely value betting, just as he shouldn’t feel confident about whether or not I’m going to call a river bet, so let’s dig a little deeper.

The Knowns (or Strongly Suspecteds)

1. Villain is raising exploitably many hands pre-flop and consequently will see the flop with an overly wide range. That means he’ll see the flop with a lot of weak hands. As long as we don’t fold exploitably often, he can’t show a profit by bluffing with them, so one way or the other our strongest hands will win the pot on any given run out – either Villain gives up frequently and lets us win at showdown, which also benefits some of our more medium-strength hands that aren’t going to call multiple barrels, or he bluffs frequently, meaning that we win the pot less often when we have the best hand but win larger pots with our bluff-catching range.

2. This is a particularly bad river for our hand and a good one for many of the draws Villain could have.

The Unknowns

1. Villain’s value betting strategy. Would he bet AK or AA for value here? If so, would he use this sizing? Multiple bet sizes, particularly on the river, is not necessarily an exploitable strategy, so let’s not rule out the possibility that this bet is more polarized than a $250 would be, but less polarized than a shove would be.

2. Villain’s turn barreling strategy. Does he bluff only/primarily draws? Because his range is more polarized than mine, he has room to make a larger bet with a range that includes more bluffs, and I think his sizing is likely a mistake on the turn, one that forces him either to give up with a lot of his weak hands or offer me appealing odds to call against a bluff-heavy range.

3. Villain’s river bluffing strategy. There are three options here: (a) He does his best to bet in a balanced way, though the number of bluffs available to him may be limited because of his turn sizing and the exact river card that came; (b) He bluffs too much, which requires him to also have bluffed too much on the turn; (c) A large bet means he is weighted towards value hands, which is a common tendency among non-elite players.

Against strategy (c), we do best by folding. Against (b), we’d prefer to call, and against (a) we’re either close to indifferent or prefer folding, depending on whether his turn bluffing strategy enables him to bluff the river adequately. The fact that we prefer folding in a lot of these hypotheticals does seem to argue for a fold, as does the fact that calling against (b) is probably less good than calling against (c) is bad, because (c) contains few if any bluffs, whereas (b) contains all value hands in addition to a lot of bluffs.

There’s another factor to consider, though. Given that Villain bet the turn and river, it’s somewhat more likely that he is playing overly bluffy strategy (b). In other words, because strategy (b) bets more often than the other strategies do (it’s easier to have air than a strong hand, not to mention that (b) bets both), if we thought that all three strategies were equally likely before we saw any action, seeing two bets should incline us towards calling.

Although Villain seems uncommonly good, there are still more players in the 5/10 NLHE pool who play strategy (c) than those who play (b). Bayes’ Theorem cuts us both ways.

Reading Hero’s Range

Although my pre-flop range is somewhat narrow and well-defined as “too good to fold but not a good candidate for three-betting”, the small bets on the flop and turn mean that I haven’t folded too much of it. Pocket pairs, Kx, AJ, AT, sets, and perhaps some 6x and 7x (though I probably three-bet those pre) all call the flop. The AJ and AT get bluff-raised or ditched on the turn, and sets raise, which means that the pocket pairs and Kx both go to the river. I probably don’t make any flushes or straights on the river.

To make Villain indifferent to bluffing, I’d need to call about half the time. The chance of Villain playing AK or KK this way makes KJ a slightly better bluff-catcher than the pocket pairs, though they really aren’t very different.

I’d much rather have the Js for bluff-catching than the Ks. Some of Villain’s Ks Xs might actually check the turn, so I think the blocking value of Ks is not what it seems.

It’s also possible that this river is so good for Villain’s range that I can’t profitably bluff-catch at all, at least not against this sizing. If his large bet prevents him from balancing with sufficient bluffs, I can exploit him by folding all of my bluff-catchers, which is probably what I should have done. In game, I didn’t appreciate the significance of the small turn bet in terms of potentially limiting Villain’s ability to bluff, especially on this river.

Results

I called. Villain had 98o for a rivered straight, which suggests his pre-flop range was even weaker than I expected.

Seeing that hand makes me like my river call even less, though it also makes me dislike folding pre-flop even more than I already did.

Props to Bryan Gour for considering a raise. I did think about that in game, and I agree that the Ks blocker is perfect for it, but I don’t know that I’d ever raise her for value, so I chose not to do it as a bluff either.

Told Ya So

“This is why I would have raised pre-flop…” To be honest, I was expecting more comments like Zachinacubicle’s than I got.

I’ve already talked about three-betting vs calling pre-flop, and while I’ll admit that as Villain’s pre-flop range gets wider, three-betting gets more appealing, I still prefer calling even knowing that Villain may be raising half the deck. After all, KJo is only a very small favorite against that range, and will not play well out of position. The only reason to three-bet this would be if you expect Villain to fold exploitably often, and that doesn’t seem to be his bag.

It’s important to recognize that this was a really bad river, perhaps the worst in the deck, and Hero still ended up with a close decision. Not all run outs will be this bad, and considering that even a bet on this worst case scenario river produced a close-to-break-even spot for the Hero suggests that this hand is really not so hard to play out of position.

If you are in the “Bah, I don’t care about game theory, people are so easy to exploit!” camp, that’s a fine attitude when it comes to calling or folding the river, at least if you think you have a handle on how Villain can be exploited. But if you’re folding pre-flop because you fear post-flop decisions, then learning to defend your equity by checking and calling in an unexploitable way is valuable for you. Calling and then bluff-catching in a balanced way is simply more profitable than folding pre-flop (and than three-betting pre-flop, unless Villain folds too often).

Contrary to Greg’s assertion, you don’t have to “guess” at Villain’s bluffing frequency. You simply have to call often enough that his bluffing frequency doesn’t matter.

Brian has a slightly different criticism of the call: “You play a limited number of hands live and recreational players make enormous mistakes with deep stacks. Setting up dynamics with almost zero EV vs the best players is a waste of your most precious resource – time playing against the recreational players.”

There’s something to this, but I think the argument cuts both ways. By passing on a profitable call here, you are giving your chief nemesis an opportunity to play against the recreational player, and in fact a very profitable opportunity to exploit that player. Not to mention that calling does still give you a chance to see a flop against that player. This is actually a concept that Nate and I discuss in our WSOP Premium Podcasts.

Edit: I meant to add that it’s quite easy to construct scenarios in three-bet pots that will make you wish you called, much as this particular scenario might make you wish you three-bet. Example: you three-bet pre-flop and get this flop. You either bet and get called, or check and call. On the turn you check and call. You’re in at least as bad of a spot now as I was in this hand, and you’ve put a good deal more money into the pot even before you contemplate calling a river bet.

I’m actually a bit dismayed by how many people are hurrying to label this player a fish and assume he’s going to be some huge mark after the flop. In fact, the way I described him was a splashy, “with lots of limping and calling pre-flop followed by lots of checking and folding post-flop.” There’s not tremendous value in dragging him into the pot. In fact, I’d probably rather he folded to the raise, as he’ll be getting 3:1 and closing the action with presumably a very playable hand. Short stacked or no, I’m not going to be looking to my stack in against him whenever I flop top pair.

Reverse Implied Odds?

Pretty much every commenter expressed some discomfort with playing KJo from out of position, and rightfully so. This is a hand I’d usually fold from the BB against a player in this position. My strong suspicion, however, is that he is raising more hands than his position warrants, and this presents an opportunity to exploit him by playing some additional hands myself.

The mere fact that KJ could be behind when it flops top pair does not make it a “reverse implied odds hand,” as Notam calls it. It’s true that it will rarely be more than a bluff-catcher, but top pair with a good kicker is generally a very good bluff-catcher. Calling bets is not generally going to be a money-losing proposition when we flop top pair, despite the presence of dominating hands in Villain’s range, because we know (or are comfotable assuming, anyway) that he will see the flop with an overly wide range. Thus, he will have only two options: rarely bet when a K or J flops, enabling us to get loads of cheap showdowns and only rarely pay off value bets, or bluff a lot at these boards, which means we’ll actually have positive implied odds on such boards. In the event that the board runs out in a way that calling is no longer profitable, we can always fold. There is never a point when we’ll be compelled to make a -EV call.

Let’s not forget that KJ probably dominates some hands in Villain’s range as well. He surely raises QJs, JTs, and KTs in this spot, and possibly some of their offsuit cousins as well.

Three-Betting vs Calling

Cromi007 says, “I like an absurd raise here, something like 200-240+.” There’s a reason why that size is absurd. Although a huge raise will indeed win the pot quite frequently, it needs to win the pot quite frequently, because it risks several times what is in the pot. Even if we take it down 75% of the time, we’ll be in such bad shape when we don’t get folds that it will likely overwhelm that fold equity. Three wins of $60 accompanied by a loss of $200 is not an appealing proposition.

Stuart says, “I don’t mind 3betting small ($90) to take control of the hand and maybe even set up a big 5-bet to win the hand pre.” This raise has the opposite problem. Instead of offering our opponent a lot of trivial folds, it offers him a lot of trivial calls. Three-betting does not magically put you in control of the hand. You’ll still be out of position, there will still be lots of money behind, and unless you have some reason to think Villain will fold excessively much either to the 3-bet or the c-bet (my description of him suggests neither), then there’s no reason to expect this to be a profitable play.

All of the information we’re responding to here is public. In other words, Villain probably realizes that UTG is going to give up too much, and will expect us to realize that as well, and will recognize that we don’t have to have a monster to 3-bet him (or 5-bet him, for that matter). It’s not enough to say, “He’s got a wide range, let’s raise in a really unbalanced way!” There’s plenty of room for him to punish that sort of imbalance, and everything we know about him suggests he’s capable of it.

What’s lacking from all of the comments advocating a three-bet is a justification for why this hand in particular is good for a three-bet. The fact that these arguments could just as well apply to 72o are a strong hint that what they’re proposing is an unbalanced play.

The fact is that KJo will not play well in a 3-bet pot. We don’t want to flop a marginal hand in a 3-bet pot, because in a 3-bet pot we want to be bluffing and value betting. KJo will not often make a good bluffing hand, and it will even more rarely make a good value betting hand. It’s going to flop mostly bluff-catchers, and that means that we want to keep Villain’s range as wide as possible and the pot as small as possible.

All of that said, I don’t think folding is terrible here by any means, especially if you aren’t confident in your post-flop ability. I think, however, that simply calling now and then playing a balanced post-flop strategy will show a profit, which should be a lesson to all those who say, “I don’t need game theory in the games I play.” Playing a bluff-catcher out of position against a wide range is one of the times that I find it most handy to be able to fall back on what I’ve learned about unexploitable play.

Results

I called, and UTG called. As you might have guessed, there’s another decision in this hand, which I’ll present momentarily in a separate post.

Thanks again to everyone who participated!

“[T]his looks like a textbook example of a “leveling war”, with each player trying to anticipate and stay one step ahead of his opponent’s exploitive strategy. Clearly, Tonking got the upper hand in this case.

That’s not to say that Newhouse was completely misguided to think that a bluff could succeed at an extremely high frequency. It was the final table of poker’s most prestigious tournament, both players had a lot at stake, and he’d already made clear that he did not want to finish in ninth place for a second year in a row. Then again, Tonking may have known and taken all of those factors into consideration.

The point I want to make is that Newhouse did not have to enter into this war at all. When you are genuinely unsure of how your opponent will respond, there are alternatives to taking your best guess. There is more to poker than good reads and “heart”. The fundamental mathematics of the game limit how much you can get away with, at least against a skilled opponent, even when you have the right read and the nerve to act on it.”

I also have an article called “Keep ‘Em Guessing” appearing on Poker News:

“The best guide I’ve found to judging my own play is my opponents’ reactions. If they seem consistently confused about whether to bet or how to respond to my bets, then I’m probably doing something right.”

Hope you enjoy them, please let me know what you think!

This post is inspired by a question from the Tournament Poker Edge forums. I’m just going to paraphrase it here.

Q: In your videos, you very frequently call raises from the big blind with weak hands. You say that with antes in play you are getting odds, and that you need to call when you when your equity is better than the odds you are getting, but doesn’t your equity assume that you see five cards/showdown? Doesn’t the fact that you’ll have to play a weak hand out of position after the flop make these calls unprofitable?

A: You are correct that you can’t just compare your immediate pot odds to your hot-and-cold equity (meaning your equity assuming you saw five cards with no more betting). Given that you are out of position, the post-flop betting should prevent you from realizing 100% of your equity.

The thing is that when you are getting extremely good odds, you don’t have to realize much of your equity to show a profit.

Let’s say blinds are 350/700 with an 85 ante. The button opens to 1400 and you are in BB with Q6s. There’s 2900 in the pot and you have to call 700, so you need 24% equity to show a profit on a call. Against a button opening 50% of the deck, you have 43% equity. You only need to realize 56% (24/43) of your equity to show a profit.

Your ability to realize equity is influenced by a few factors:

1. Stack depth is far and away the most important. With less money to bet, there is less room for your opponent to use his position to push you off the winning hand or to valuetown you when he is ahead. Immediate pot odds matter more the less money there is remaining to bet.

2. Your post-flop edge or lack thereof. It’s easier to realize equity against predictable players, whether they are predictably passive (you usually win when you have the best hand, even if it’s pretty weak, because they don’t put pressure on you) or predictably aggressive (you get profitable semi-bluffs and have high implied odds when you do make a good pair, as long as you are willing to call down). Balanced players are the toughest ones to realize equity against.

3. The playability of your hand. A6o is a hand that is often a favorite against an opening range, but so much of its equity is wrapped up in spots where you have marginal hands like Ace-high, top pair with a bad kicker, or third pair that it’s tough to play postflop. Q9s, on the other hand, usually makes a big pair with a decent kicker when it makes a pair, and it also has the potential to make straight and flush draws that you can play aggressively. Thus, even though A6o may have higher hot-and-cold equity, Q9s usually realizes more equity.

Do you have a question for the Thinking Poker Mailbag? Please leave it as a comment below!

Q: This is a hand from our regular 1-2 game. Villain is Pie Farmer.

A few hands earlier, I stacked a guy’s boat with quads, which prompted the table to go into their weekly chorus about how “Carlos always has the nuts” which roughly translates to “Please bluff us.” Unfortunately when I found a good spot for it, my friend Pie Farmer was in the hand. I kinda felt bad because he was already getting unlucky during the game, but the spot was too sweet not to take. He took it in stride and I think we will both learn a lot from it.

Effective stacks are $200 and he covers. He opens for $10 from EP with KK. MP calls and I call on the button with Ad2d.
Pot $30. The flop is Tc8c8d and it checks around.
Pot $30. The turn is the Td. Pie Farmer bets $20 and MP calls.

When he checked the flop, I though there was a chance he had air or a marginal hand like 99, JJ, or QQ. The only monsters he could have were 88, TT, or maybe some suited broadway hand that contained a T. The turn discounted his monsters and made the board scary for his marginal hands.

When villain just calls the turn, I don’t think he ever has a T, but he could have an 8.

I decided to make it $60 and shove most rivers because I had more Tx hands in my range than either of them given their actions up to this point (I guess having hands drop out of your range due to your actions is one of the worst problems of playing OOP). I figured this would get Pie Farmer off all his marginal one pair hands except maybe AA or KK. I also thought it could possibly get MP off of an 8 given my image and the table talk.

Also, if either player called with one pair, I had 12 outs. They both folded.

Afterwards, Pie Farmer said he would have called had the other guy not been behind him. I agreed and told him I would have folded KK in his spot as well, but neither of us are very sure about how we should play the hand in his spot.

My question is, if it’s ok to fold KK there vs. a perceived nit like me even though it is towards the top of our range on a draw heavy board?

I think it is because I’m rarely doing that without a boat, but I’m guessing that the GTO line is to call the turn and fold to a shove on rivers where draws come in, but I am not sure. This feels like a tough spot for an over pair.

A: First off, nice hand. My how our little nit has grown!

And don’t feel bad about bluffing a friend, even when he is having a bad night. A good friend wouldn’t want you to softplay him (as I’m sure you remember, I had no qualms about bluffing you when we played together!), and in any event it wouldn’t be ethical to do so.

This is a good spot, probably good enough that your choice of hands doesn’t matter terribly much. That said, your hand is arguably not ideal, as it contains significant blockers to hands in the second Villain’s folding range (in other words, flush draws are a big part of his non-boat range for calling the turn), and in the event that Villain does not fold your flush draw won’t be live anyway. So this is nowhere near the nut bluffing hand even though it may seem that way as it is a strong draw, but nevertheless I think this is a good spot and I certainly applaud the cojones.

As for Mr. Farmer’s optimal line with KK, it’s best to avoid capping one’s range in the first place. That may require things like raising a few more Ts and 8s in early position and/or betting the flop. The problem with trying to have a checking and a betting range on this flop is that you don’t have that many monster hands to begin with, which means that either your betting or checking range or both will be weak if you try to have a range for both. That’s a big problem against opponents good enough to deduce that and act on it, as Carlos did here.

It’s quite difficult to talk about GTO play in multiway pots. I’m sure I would have folded KK in PF’s shoes with the third player in the pot. In theory you ought to have some sort of call-folding range so that you can call-call with your Tx. A lot hinges on how much Tx you have in your range, how much air you have, etc. I guess KK is a decent bluff-catcher in the sense that it definitively beats all bluffs and is also resilient to hands that were bluffing but that bink enough showdown value to check behind and win on the river. In other words, it’s a somewhat better candidate for this than JJ because JJ has less equity against hands like KQ or AQ that Carlos might turn into bluffs. However, JJ has blockers to JT, so it could be a better candidate for that reason.

That’s all theoretical speculation, though. It’s OK to get bluffed sometimes when you’re out of position in multiway pots, but you should do what you can to avoid making your hand strength transparent and/or capped.

Prior to this hand, I’d really been hammering on the player in the CO. Mostly it was out of the BB, where I basically never folded to his button min-raises, sometimes 3-betting, sometimes calling and getting stubborn post-flop, but definitely not making it easy for him just to raise and take pots from late position.

It’s not that I think the BB’s cold 4-bet is weak exactly, just that there’s a little more room for it to be light than you might otherwise expect. My pre-flop and flop calls seem pretty unambiguous to me.

The turn is where it gets interesting. On the one hand, it’s a dicey spot for him to barrel. On the other hand, I’m getting 4:1, and he’s repping a really narrow range. I don’t see him betting AA here, with or without a heart. Even against that narrow range, I’m drawing pretty live. So basically on the turn I’m worried but don’t think I can fold.

In retrospect, I think that’s a reason to fold the river. Of course he’s still repping a really narrow range, and my hand is a decent bluff-catcher in that I block a couple things like AhQh, QhJh, and KQ that could play this way. However, I probably have enough trips, flushes, and boats in my range that I don’t really need to call with pure bluff-catchers like this.

My thinking is that even though my turn call is actually pretty strong Villain may just desperation shove the river with all his air once he gets that far. Probably that would be more plausible in a random $100 rebuy or something, but not so much in a $2K SCOOP event. Not to mention that I didn’t really think he had that much air in his turn range, though admittedly that was a weak read.

PokerStars – $2000+$100|250/500 Ante 60 NL (6 max) – Holdem – 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4: http://www.pokertracker.com

CO: 67.91 BB
BTN: 59.46 BB
Hero (SB): 113.82 BB
BB: 91.59 BB
UTG: 24.84 BB
MP: 14.75 BB

6 players post ante of 0.12 BB, Hero posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 2.22 BB) Hero has Qc Qh
fold, fold, CO raises to 2 BB, fold, Hero raises to 6 BB, BB raises to 14.4 BB, fold, Hero calls 8.4 BB

Flop : (31.52 BB, 2 players) Kc 4h 8h
Hero checks, BB bets 11.11 BB, Hero calls 11.11 BB

Turn : (53.74 BB, 2 players) Kh
Hero checks, BB bets 17.78 BB, Hero calls 17.78 BB

River : (89.29 BB, 2 players) 5d
Hero checks, BB bets 48.19 BB and is all-in, Hero calls 48.19 BB

BB shows Ac Ks (Three of a Kind, Kings) (Pre 43%, Flop 87%, Turn 77%)
Hero shows Qc Qh (Two Pair, Kings and Queens) (Pre 57%, Flop 13%, Turn 23%)
BB wins 185.67 BB

Despite our conversation at the end of the interview, my episode of Strategy with Kristy has not yet aired. I’ll update the show notes with a link once it’s available. In the meantime, you can hear me talk strategy on the Thinking Poker Premium Podcasts.

Timestamps

0:30 – hello and welcome
6:19 – strategy: hand reading
22:58 – interview: kristy arnett

Q: I came across an article you wrote for Card Player [that would be Holding Your Own] and I was discussing it with a poker friend of mine. We are both confused. Here is the paragraph:

A common fear when seated with a world-class player is that he’ll make some huge bet on a scary river and you’ll have no idea what to do with your pair of aces.

That’s a reasonable fear, and the best way to approach the situation, rather than trying to get inside of your opponent’s head, is to think about your own range. Not what it looks like, but what it actually is. What other hands would you have played the same way on earlier streets? If you can think of a lot of stronger hands you could hold, and especially if that scary card could easily have helped you, then fold. If you would rarely or never play a stronger hand than the one you have in the way that you did, then you should call no matter how weak your hand is in an absolute sense.

Could you give an example or two to demonstrate your point? If I could think of stronger hands that I could hold why would I want to fold. Is it because our opponent would also figure we might be playing that hand and because he has made a big river bet we have to figure we are beat?

A: Your guess is more or less correct. If you don’t know whether your opponent is bluffing, then you want to play in a way such that you won’t make a big mistake either way. That means folding some hands and not folding others. Unless you are trying to take advantage of a particular opponent whom you believe will bluff too often or too rarely (in which case you’d either fold rarely or often, respectively), then you need a set of hands you will fold to a given bet or raise and a set of hands you won’t.

Generally, the weaker a hand is, the better it is for folding. So, if you can think of a lot of better hands you could, then the hand you actually have is relatively weak and you can probably fold it. For example:

Vanessa Selbst raises in early position. You re-raise with a pair of Queens on the button. Everyone else folds, and she calls. Let’s suppose you would make this play with AKo, AKs, JJ, QQ, KK, or AA. I’m not saying that’s what your range should be, but just for the sake of argument, we’ll say that’s what it is.

By the way, you should be conscious of this when playing against a really good player. In other words, you should think not just about the hand you currently have but about other hands with which you would make the same play. This is helpful information that should guide not only big decisions like whether to call a river shove but even simple things like whether to bet a given flop.

Anyway, in our example, the flop comes Ks 8s 3c. Vanessa checks, you bet, and she check-raises.

You have no idea what to make of that. Vanessa is presumably a much better player than you are, so trying to figure out that she’s either definitely bluffing or definitely not bluffing is a mistake. That’s what it means for her to be a better player: she isn’t that easy to figure out.

Instead, you should pick some hands to fold and some hands to either call or raise, and then see where QQ belongs. Recognize that QQ is one of the worst hands you could have here. It’s not quite as bad as JJ, but it’s nearly as bad – in fact it’s practically the same hand. You could easily have AA, AK, or even a set, so as long as you don’t fold all of those, you won’t be badly exploited if she is bluffing. Basically, if it turns out that she is bluffing, then she just got lucky to run into the bottom of your range. And if she isn’t bluffing, then you got lucky to be holding the bottom of your range when she flopped a set.

What you’ve done, then, is reduced the situation to a coin flip: sometimes you get lucky and either pick off a bluff with the top of your range or fold to a monster with the bottom of your range, other times she gets lucky and stacks the (near-top) of your range with a flopped set or bluffs you off of the bottom of your range. Reducing it all to luck might not sound like an accomplishment, but when you’re up against someone who is far better than you, you’d much rather be playing a game of luck than a game of skill in which you are at a decided disadvantage.

Do you have a question for the Thinking Poker Mailbag? Please leave it as a comment below!

I’ll begin with a small mea culpa: not only did I apparently screw up the pot size, but I think I also misremembered the board cards, because I’m pretty sure a straight flush was not possible. Thankfully I don’t think either of these mistakes affected the analysis much, but I do apologize for them.

Plan For a Raise

This is a big pot, and it may be about to get a lot bigger. Making a mistake when the seventh and largest bet goes into the pot would be extremely expensive, whether it’s a bad call or a bad fold. Even moreso than usual, then, you need to have a plan for how you will respond to a raise before you bet.

I think folding would be correct. A lot of you, Nate most insistently, made the same basic point that it’s a tough spot for Villain to check-raise as a bluff because the Ah is a healthy part of Hero’s range.

Moreover, it’s just generally difficult for people to pull the trigger on a 180BB river check-raise bluff.

Finally, as Rant 2112 says, “We know from his line that he has a value hand on the river 99% of the time. He’s not going to turn it into a bluff. He’s just going to show it down.” By “value hand” I take him to mean a hand with showdown value, ie a hand that could beat most of my bluffs. In that case, most players, live players especially, will prefer to call rather than check-raise bluff. People like to see showdowns, especially when it means risking a lot less money than a huge bluff into a nutty range.

That said, we shouldn’t read too much into the “primarily a live player” read. That was just a hunch, I didn’t have a lot to back it up. Regardless, whoever he is, it’s not too likely that he’s sick enough to check-raise bluff here with any great frequency, so I’m all for folding if raised.

How Often Do We Lose?

Given that we’re going to fold to a raise, any time that he does surprise us with a check-raise bluff, it’s going to result in a very expensive mistake. We have to determine just how confident we are that he won’t bluff and then allow for an appropriate risk of being wrong as part of our argument against betting. Here I think the risk is small, in the absence of extenuating circumstances which we’ll get to in a moment.

So let’s say that 5% of his raises will be bluffs, and the other 95% of the time we’ll be beat. Depending on how much we bet, that those bluffs would cost us $150-$200 in equity that we’ll need to weigh against the upsides of betting.

Of course he’s never folding a better hand, so next we should try to estimate how likely he is to hold the Ah and assume that we always lose the pot when that happens. There are three ways he could get to the river with the Ah: 1) slowplaying the flopped nuts; 2) calling down with AhX where X made a pair on either the flop or turn (we can put AhAx in this category as well); 3) calling down with AhX and no pair.

Given the depth of the stacks, I don’t see a lot of reason for (1). He’d need to raise at some point in order to get stacks in by the river, and I’d expect him to want to build the pot before the board pairs or a fourth heart comes, so I don’t think there’s a high risk of this. If he has a flush to the Ace, he almost certainly made it on the river.

Most of the scenarios for (2) would require him to call a 3-bet with an offsuit rag Ace deep and out of position against someone he probably assumes to be aggressive and one of the tougher players at the table. I don’t think we’re going to see A3 or A5 ever, and even AT would be a pretty bad call. AhQx would make a lot of sense. It slightly contradicts my read on his pre-flop range, but that wasn’t a strong read, so I think we can safely count three combos of AhQx and none of the others.

We also need to consider AhAx. That hand is more unlikely based on the preflop action, both because he may have made a larger opening raise and because he my have 4-bet it. Then again, this deep he may just choose not to have a 4-betting range pre-flop, so let’s count one of the three combos of this hand.

As with (2), the possibilities for (3) are constrained by the fact that Villain would have had to call the 3-bet from out of position with an offsuit Ace. Only AK and AJ are at all plausible, and as with AA/AQ both may have been played differently pre-flop. Unlike with AA and AQ, though, it’s less clear that he would take this line post-flop. Although I don’t think it would be awful, I wouldn’t call it standard either. Both AhKx and AhJx would be good candidates for check-raising the flop or turn. Generously, we’ll give him three combos of those.

The cost of betting then, is getting called by seven combos of hands with the Ah, plus a small risk of a bluff which amounts to much less than one combo (.35 to be precise, if we go with our 5% guess).

How Often Does He Call With Worse?

We estimated that he’ll raise with somewhere between seven and eight combos of hands, so if he calls with just eight combos of bluff-catchers, we have a profitable bet. These are harder to count, but we can get an idea by looking at both his and Hero’s range for getting to the river.

Villain probably doesn’t expect Hero to turn many hands into a bluff on this river that he thought were good enough to bet for value on the turn. If Hero expected to be good on the turn, then he’s probably still good on the river unless Villain holds a high heart, in which case he probably isn’t folding. That means Villain can only hope to beat triple barrel bluffs.

Of course if I’m 3-betting K2s my actual 3-betting range is quite wide, but I also wouldn’t 3-bet it if I expected Villain to realize quite how wide I actually was. My best guess is that he might expect my 3-bet range to look something like {TT+,A2s+,K9s+,Q9s+,J9s+,T8s+,97s+,86s+,76s,ATo+,KQo}. Even so, that leaves about 87 combos (according to my rough count that, historically, is likely to be inaccurate) that he expects me to 3-bet pre-flop that can’t beat a pair of Tens on the river, which is about the point where I think he’d expect me to take my showdown value rather than bluff.

Most if not all of those hands bet the flop. The turn is a pretty good barreling card, so even if he assumes that I’d barrel only half of my air range, that would still give me more than 40 combos of air that get to the river this way.

The one thing we haven’t accounted for yet is the fact that my barreling range ought to be weighted towards Ah, Kh, and other hands with hearts in them that improve on this river. So if I were actually betting half of my hands with trivial showdown value on the turn, much less than half of that range would still be air on the river. Let’s say then that I have 20 combos of air after seeing the river.

I’ll have about that many combos of Ah and Kh, depending on exactly how weighted towards Ax and Kx he expects my 3-betting range to be. The range that I gave above is pretty biased in that direction. This is a good bluffing card, and I’ve got plenty of air in my range, so if he perceives me to be aggressive, it’s a good bluff-catching spot, especially if he isn’t sure whether I’d bet the Kh for value (and I wasn’t sure myself!).

The catch is that his best bluffcatchers are hands containing the Kh, which of course Hero’s hand blocks but Villain doesn’t know that. So his bluffcatching range may be narrower than usual for that reason.

Ignoring the fact that we have the Kh, his plausible bluffcatchers are AxQh (3), KxQh (4), KhQx (3), AA (3), KK (6), QQ (3), TT (3), 55 (3), 33 (3), JJ (6), 9h9x (4), 8h8x (4), QhJh, KhJh. That’s 47 combos, of which 7 are blocked in this instance and some, like the big pairs, discounted based on the preflop action. We’d only need him to call 20-25% of his bluffcatching candidates for us to show a profit. If he only continued to a river bet with Ah or Kh hands, he’d fold to a bluff roughly 75% of the time, which is about twice as often as we’d need for a bluff of $1500 to be profitable.

If he bluffcatches with anywhere near the right frequency, and if he rarely check-raises bluffs, then this is a bet.

Bet Sizing

There was some interesting discussion on bet sizing as well, with some people advocating an overbet to polarize our range and deter a check-raise bluff and others advocating a small bet to keep his calling range wide. I incline towards the second camp myself, because I think that when we bet big, we should actually be polarized.

This is because the first hands in his bluff-catching range should be those containing Kh. The larger our bet, the smaller his bluff-catching range ought to be, and so the greater the ratio of Kh to other combos. In other words, when we have the Kh in our hand, he should call disproportionately more often the smaller our bet.

However, as swallsjr points out, “We want to size our bet on the river to maximize the chances of getting called by worse, without inducing a check raise by worse.” That means we don’t want to bet so small that he excludes the Ah from our range, because then we don’t know what could happen. I think somewhere in the neighborhood of 1000 to 1500 is what I should have bet.

Results and Lessons

Remember I mentioned extenuating circumstances? Obviously I couldn’t have thought through things so thoroughly at the table, but I still went into the tank for a while when he checked to me. At some point, I began to worry that the longer I tanked, he would bluffcatch less and check-raise bluff more, correctly putting me on a thin value bet.

That may have been giving him too much credit, but eventually I just gave up and turned my cards over. He mucked, and I collected the pot. There are a few lessons to take from this:

1. Do the work ahead of time. You may be looking at the length of this post and wondering how one could possibly do this sort of analysis at the table. You couldn’t, for lack of both time and tools. That’s what makes it important to do this kind of analysis away from the table, so that your instincts and rough approximations are better in the heat of the moment. No matter how much you try to balance your tanking range, you simply can’t avoid giving away some information if you have to think for several minutes about a complex situation.

2. Small edges matter in big pots. Don’t look at this, throw up your arms, and say, “It’s all so complicated, it’s a close decision anyway, just check it back and collect what’s already a nice pot.” If a $1500 gets called worse 60% of the time and raised 40% of the time (and very rarely as a bluff), then you lose nearly $150  $300 by checking back. That’s 6 12BBs, at least an hour’s two hours’ worth of work at a live cash table if you have a solid edge in the game.

Thanks for playing, and good on ya if you made it this far!

Edit: Corrected math error in the second-to-last paragraph.

I was wrong on a few details of the Gigabet post I describe in the strategy segment. The Villain was actually Dan Harrington, not Eric Haber, and Gigabet actually bet-folded, not check-folded, the flop. For a great example of thought-provoking Gigabet mysticism, see Theory of Stack Sizes. And for rumors surrounding Gigabet’s hucksterism, see The Demise of Gigabet.

This week in music sees a reprise of Monogold, originally heard on Episode 1.

To be honest, I’m not that picky. Game selection matters far more to me than anything else, but I did enjoy a lot of the little niceties: friendly staff, competent dealers, good food delivery service available, and proximity to the outside world (I like to get some fresh air when I step away from the table for a break). I never waited long to get seated in a 2/5 or 5/10 NLHE game, though I did arrive a bit in advance of what I assume is peak time. There weren’t generally 5/10 games going in the early afternoon, but often one started not long after I added my name to the interest list (coincidence, I’m sure!).

There were a lot of regulars playing there, but though many of them looked and talked as though they were good, I found that most exhibited some pretty flawed thinking if I played with them for long enough. For example, there was one young guy with massive biceps who seemed to know everyone there.

I limped UTG with 99, there was another limper, he made it $50 on the button, the blinds folded, and both limpers called. Flop came A84r, I checked and called a bet of $80, and the other limper folded. We both checked a 4 turn, then I checked again on a Q river. He bet $170. I was probably calling anyway, but his bet came so quickly that I doubted he was going for thin value with a Q, so it was an A or nothing. Nothing about his demeanor suggested strength, so I called. He looked a little annoyed and said, “You got it,” then he really got flustered when I showed my 9s. “Unbelievable,” he said, shaking his head. “You can’t bluff anyone in this game. I can so easily have AK there.”

I work hard to remain unflappable at the table, but it was hard to resist cracking a smile at that last comment and how much ignorance it revealed. Of course the fact that he could have AK there is hardly a reason to fold getting nearly 3:1. More amusing was that I don’t think he would have been so bothered if I’d called him with like A3. I suppose the latter has a blocker to his precious AK, but in both cases I’m only beating a bluff. The fact that he was more concerned about the absolute strength of my hand than about my perception of his range was telling.

The other humorous guy was perhaps the most obvious tourist I’ve ever played against. He couldn’t have fit the stereotype better. From the moment he sidled up to the table, he was trying to look cool and show off his knowledge of live poker protocol, a classic case of “the lady doth protest too much.”

“So what’s the buy-in here, guys?” The dealer told him $200 – $1000. With a flourish, he pulled out a big roll of 100’s but put just $300 on the table. So much for looking cool. “Do I have to post? I can just come in? Is the button allowed to straddle?” Nothing he asked was unreasonable, but something about the way he asked suggested that he cared more about showing off that he (thought he) knew what questions to ask rather than about the answers to those questions.

Did I mention that he had his girlfriend with him? I don’t approve of that (If you’re new here, seriously follow that link. It’s one of my best poker stories). She sat in a chair just behind him but demonstrated no interest whatsoever in the game. She was buried in an iPad the entire time he played.

He dusted off that first $300 quickly, getting all-in on a KJx flop. Another J came on the river, and he frantically inquired of his opponent, “You got the Jack?” His opponent showed KJ, and he made a big show of taking the loss with equanimity. “Oh nice hand sir! Of course I’m going to go broke there. Can’t do anything about that. Nice hand, sir, nice hand.” There was another big show as he took out $300 more and called for chips, as per Caro’s Book of Poker Tells.

My hand against him began with me opened to $15 with 9c 8s in the CO. The tourist called on the button, and the big blind called. I bet $30 on a Kh 9h 2h flop. They both called. There was now $135 in the pot and $220 in the tourist’s stack. The turn was another 9. BB checked, I bet $75, and then the tourist went off on a little act. He sighed, counted out chips for a call, pushed them back and forth a bit as though he just couldn’t decide whether to call or fold, then decided that perhaps he should go all-in. BB folded.

Now it was my turn to sigh. He just gave off literally the oldest tell in the book, but I was getting 3:1 with about a 20% chance of improving to a full house on the river. Even a small risk that I was wrong in my read would be enough to justify a call. I called, and of course he had the nut flush.

In retrospect I hate my call. Not only was this one of the most blatant tells I’ve ever seen, but there’s also at least as much of a chance that he’s holding a made full house as that he’s holding a hand my trips beat. Oh well. At least he only had $300!

A: Great question! It’s actually inspired me to write a series of magazine articles on the subject, but here’s a sketch of what will eventually be a more thorough answer. The short answer to your question is yes, definitely. The best counter will almost always be a mix:

• Rebluffing with some weak hands/draws
• Raising for protection/inducing bluffs with strong hands (how strong will depend on how aggressive your opponent, how deep your stacks, etc.)
• Bluff-catching with well-selected hands (more on this in a moment)
• Folding weak hands that may be best but can’t stand up to the pressure you’re likely to get on future streets

Selecting hands for bluff-catching is tricky. Often your strongest hands aren’t the best candidates for this since you want to build more of a pot with those. But with hands that are too weak you risk letting the board get so scary that you can’t keep calling. Ideally you’ll have something like pair + flush draw that isn’t overly vulnerable and has good showdown value.

In the hand that you reference, I think that pre-flop Sylvain’s KJo might have fit better into the bluff-catching category (ie he should maybe have just called, though I don’t hate the 4-bet by any means) than the bluffing category. Against an aggressive player, top pair in a 3-bet pot is actually a quite a good hand, even without the best possible kicker, and KJ can flop that well. He still may choose to bluff with it on other flops, but I don’t think a pre-flop bluff was necessary.

After the flop, though, the hand was strong enough to fit into the value/betting to induce category. In this case Sylvain’s opponent  had second pair, but he may also have shoved hands like 98 or KQ that had draws, so top pair good kicker is a strong hand, and it’s a good time to bet a strong hand.

In the hand where an opponent check-called all the way against Sylvain, that player wasn’t really bluff-catching. On the flop and turn he had a draw, albeit a strong one, with very little showdown value. He could have countered Sylvain’s aggression much better by raising (even though in this case Sylvain actually had a hand he would have felted) rather than check-calling and hoping to improve.

The last option listed here is important to keep in mind. It’s generally better, for instance, to raise JT than 44 if you don’t believe an opponent’s bet on a Q85 flop. Even though the latter is technically the “better” hand, both are essentially bluffs once you raise, and JT is the much better bluffing hand.

Hope that suffices for a quick answer to a good question!

Do you have a question for the Thinking Poker Mailbag? Please leave it as a comment below!

“Most of Villain’s range on the turn consists of bluff catchers and bluffs. We don’t need to worry about optimizing against his value hands anyway because the chips will get in regardless.
Betting the turn, even small IMO, is going to fold out a lot of his bluffs.

Villain’s bluff catchers aren’t super strong. He’s not going to be comfortable paying off two decent-sized bets.

I think checking the turn is best so Villain bluffs more often. He’s going to bluff almost 100% of the time when he has a bluffing hand – he called the flop for a reason.

Against his bluff catchers we can bomb the river and hope to get looked up.

We should also bomb the river when the turn goes check, bet, call because Villain isn’t likely enough to bluff the river. We should just hope he picks up something he’s willing to call with.”

FWIW I do disagree with the bit about Villain’s value hands. I don’t think we’re guaranteed to stack a 6, and indeed I think not stacking lower full houses is the biggest risk entailed by this line. If Hero checks turn, Villain will in all likelihood check it back and just call a big river bet. Nevertheless, I think that 6s are a small enough part of his range that it makes more sense to worry about maximizing value against bluffs and bluff-catchers.

SPR Considerations

That last sentence is the crux of this hand, and it has a lot to do with the Stack-to-Pot Ratio (SPR). Here we have a kind of awkward SPR of 1.5. It’s awkward because there’s more than one bet left in the effective stacks, but not significantly more. With an SPR of 3-4, the potential reward from stacking a 6 and occasionally getting called down all the way by bluff-catchers would be larger, and it would be more important to choose a line that gives us a chance to build a big pot and get a big, second bet paid off. Here, the second bet will be no bigger than the first, so we need not be disproportionately concerned with it.

With an SPR of 1 or less, this would be an even more obvious turn check. There would be no second bet to worry about, so the cost of checking would be minimal. Even if the turn checked through, we could still get all-in against the top of Villain’s range on the river, so there’d be no reason not to give him an opportunity to bluff.

An intermediate SPR of 1.5 requires a judgement call: target the top of his range for two bets, or the majority of his range for one bet? In part because I’m not convinced hands as weak as A-high will pay off two bets anyway, and in part because I think his range overall is very weak, I like checking the turn and then bombing the river if it checks through. Lemayzing22 points out how much of Villain’s range will want to bluff: “Especially in a situation like this where it’s blind vs blind and you raised PF, bet the flop, then hit the breaks when your opponent defended…” From Villain’s perspective it looks like we attempted a steal pre-flop, continuation bet the flop, and then gave up when we continued to get resistance.

Rant and I also part ways in that if Villain bets the turn, I would actually call but then bet rather small on the river. I think that’s the only way we can hope to be called by less than a 6. Even a bluff that rivers a pair isn’t likely to pay off a big bet in that spot. As “G_Drob says, “if [Villain] do[es] bet, our action will always kill the action because if we call/raise in this spot it looks SOOOOO strong no matter what we do on the river (i.e betting river, villain will fold, checking villain will check back 98% of his range).” He’s right that by increasing our odds of getting one bet into the pot, we decrease our odds of getting the second. I just happen to think that’s OK in this case, because the second won’t be significantly larger and we’re not that likely to get it anyway.

Bluffs vs. Bluff-Catchers

A few of you suggested that a small bet on the turn might induce Villain to bluff-raise. I don’t see it in this situation. Especially in tournaments, your average opponent is looking for ways to take cheap stabs at orphan pots, not to run huge bluffs on players who have shown no weakness (I don’t see a small bet here as weakness because the stack sizes are small enough for even a small bet to set up a river shove). As Jonny says, “it’s pretty unlikely villain will ever be shoving over any turn bet. What would he be representing?”

Jessanders makes a very good argument that, “If he has nothing, you can hope that he bluffs the turn if you check, but that’d be all you could win, and his bluff is likely to be relatively small if he’s a good player. Boards like this don’t require big bets if you’re bluffing as your opponent either has it or he doesn’t.” This is correct in theory but not something I often see implemented well. Even many decent players fail to put much thought into their bet sizes and simply bet 60% of the pot or whatever because that’s what they always bet. Against a player whom I knew to be very good at adjusting his bet sizes, I’d be more inclined to bet here myself, but it’s not something I expect an unknown to do well.

SuperSytron argues that, “with such a dry board, I believe villain will call us down with a wide range and try to bluff catch a lot.” This, too, may be correct in theory but not consistent with how most opponents will play. As cbeak says, “he may have 3-bet some bluff catchers (Ax and pp’s, say) pre- so his flop calling range consists of a lot more floats than bluff catchers.” Moreover, I’m not convinced that Villain will call a river shove with just an A. If he doesn’t, then we get just a small turn bet out of him rather than the larger river bet we could get if the turn checked through.

Results

And therein lies the mistake that I believe I made in the hand. I did check the turn, but when it checked through, I bet just 6666, barely half the pot. Considering that Villain’s hand now looks quite a bit like a bluff-catcher, and he probably knows that, I should have given him the chance to catch a bigger bluff and bet more like 8-10K. Of course, it may not have mattered since he didn’t even call that 6666, but then again sometimes bigger bets actually look more like bluffs. In any event, the fact that he folded the river does corroborate my assumption that he wouldn’t have called down all the way with a bluff-catcher:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, 215 Tournament, 400/800 Blinds 80 Ante (8 handed) – PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

BB (t37804)
UTG (t23094)
UTG+1 (t55662)
MP1 (t53809)
MP2 (t3215)
CO (t24644)
Button (t37332)
Hero (SB) (t23870)

Hero’s M: 12.97

Preflop: Hero is SB with K, 5
6 folds, Hero bets t2400, BB calls t1600

Flop: (t5440) 6, K, 6 (2 players)
Hero bets t2880, BB calls t2880

Turn: (t11200) K (2 players)
Hero checks, BB checks

River: (t11200) 10 (2 players)
Hero bets t6666, 1 fold

Total pot: t11200

Results:
Hero didn’t show K, 5 (nothing).
Outcome: Hero won t11200

Thanks again to everyone who participated!

I got off to a good start, calling a raise to 2,200 from a seemingly tight-aggressive player in middle position with AJo in the CO. The big blind called as well, and we saw a K82 rainbow flop.

The pre-flop raiser bet 4,500. Against some players this would be a snap-call with a good Ace-high, but his TAG image gave me pause. I ultimately called because the board was so good for a continuation bet and the odds so tempting, but I didn’t feel great about it. The third player folded.

We both checked an 8 on the turn. The river brought a Q, and he checked again. AJ has considerable showdown value here, but I decided to turn it into a bluff by betting 7,500….

Give it a read and let me know what you think!

“Putting this person on a range is very difficult as a result of his unusual stats. I can’t help but think that if this person really plays 18/17 over an adequate sample size, its virtually impossible that he flat-calls a lot of suited connectors here. If he calls T9s, he also calls JTs and 78s etc, and this already makes his flatting range much wider than 1%. I find it tough to believe that he doesn’t flat anything except from the CO and Button. Accordingly, I will slightly discount the suited connector portion of his range. ”

It may be difficult, but I’d say you nailed it! And really, shouldn’t it be easier to enumerate a narrow range than a wider one? I think you’re right that a narrow calling range will consist almost exclusive of set mines. As Dana points out, his 1% cold calling range is an aggregate statistic that is almost certainly higher when he’s BTN vs UTG+1, but how wide can it be? Even {QQ-66,AQs+,KQs,QJs,JTs,T9s} is 5% of hands and probably a little too wide, so it’s tough to put many non-pairs into his range.

For those of you who can’t or won’t read the article, the short version is that I advocate check-calling all the way because it’s extremely difficult for Villain to have a draw. It’s rarely correct to slowplay on a board this wet or to focus on inducing bluffs with a hand this strong, but in this case so much of Villain’s range is so weak that I think it’s correct just to try to induce bluffs or ideally get him to hit a lower set.

Jonny argues that, “If he expects us to check AA or KK on this board then he is presumably less likely to bluff. ” He’s less likely to one-barrel, that’s for sure. Particularly if the board gets scary, it would be very reasonable for him to think that AA/KK will fold by the river. Meanwhile that first barrel can get me to fold the bottom of my range, like AK, Ad Jd, and small pairs that I’m just check-giving up on this flop but that have good equity against Villain’s small pair.

As Prabhat and others point out, checking probably results in us stacking 88 less often. For the same reasons, though, we probably get stacked less often by QQ and T9. Granted 88 should be a larger part of his range, since we’re not certain he shows up with QQ or T9 at all, but on balance we’re actually not a huge favorite if Villain is willing to get all-in on the flop. Even being generous about the number of combo draws he could have:

Board: 8c Qs Jc
Dead:

equity     win     tie           pots won     pots tied
Hand 0:     52.599%      52.05%     00.55%               7729            82.00   { JdJs }
Hand 1:     47.401%      46.85%     00.55%               6957            82.00   { QQ, 88, AcKc, AcQc, AcTc, KcQc, QJs, T9s }

A lot hinges on whether he can have T9 or QQ, since subtracting T9 bumps us to 60% equity, and subtracting both gets us to 80%. Then again, if has neither, he probably doesn’t have those other suited connectors much either, meaning that we rarely get action at all when we bet. I think we make nickels on the dollar getting all-in on the flop, whereas we have near 100% equity against underpairs, so inducing them to bluff should be the higher priority.

Indeed, as Shawn says, a bet on this board will look very strong: “I think another thing to consider is our perceived hand range also to Villain. If we bet the flop I think he can take out AA, KK, TT, 99, AQ, KQ as we don’t really want to build a huge pot OOP against such a wet board with one pair/gutter hands. If we’re UTG+1 raising pre and betting the flop into such a wet board vs a button caller I think that narrows are range down to nut flushes with overs and sets although maybe not 88.”

This is an instance where Villain probably doesn’t even realize how much information we have about his hand. Rather than bet and give away so much information about our own, I think it’s better to exploit the leg-up we currently enjoy by giving some Villain some rope to represent hands he’ll rarely if ever have.

I know I described Villain as “not very tricky or creative,” but I don’t think that precludes him from taking a few stabs at what looks like a very weak line. I do think it makes him less likely to float or bluff-raise the flop, so in this case checking seems like the best way to induce bluffs from his very weak range:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, $4.00 BB (9 handed) – PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

CO ($685.70)
Button ($449)
SB ($402)
BB ($527)
UTG ($400)
Hero (UTG+1) ($434.35)
MP1 ($400)
MP2 ($412)
MP3 ($206.95)

Preflop: Hero is UTG+1 with J, J
1 fold, Hero bets $16, 4 folds, Button calls $16, 2 folds

Flop: ($38) 8, Q, J (2 players)
Hero checks, Button bets $25.25, Hero calls $25.25

Turn: ($88.50) 6 (2 players)
Hero checks, Button bets $59.85, Hero calls $59.85

River: ($208.20) A (2 players)
Hero checks, Button checks

Total pot: $208.20 | Rake: $3

Results:
Button mucked 4, 4 (one pair, fours).
Hero had J, J (three of a kind, Jacks).
Outcome: Hero won $205.20

Edit: Whoops, didn’t mean to publish this yet, but I guess the cat’s out of the bag now. The 2+2 Magazine article should be up later today, I’ll add a link when it’s live.

Edit 2: Link is now live.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, $6.00 BB (6 handed) – PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

BB ($618)
UTG ($884.80)
Hero (MP) ($1112)
CO ($673.35)
Button ($935.05)
SB ($603)

Preflop: Hero is MP with A♠, Q♣
1 fold, Hero bets $21, 1 fold, Button calls $21, 2 folds

Flop: ($51) 8♥, 8♦, 6♣ (2 players)
Hero bets $36.30, Button calls $36.30

Turn: ($123.60) 6♥ (2 players)
Hero checks, Button bets $108, Hero calls $108

River: ($339.60) 3♣ (2 players)
Hero checks, Button bets $389, Hero calls $389

Total pot: $1117.60 | Rake: $3

Results:
Button had J♥, 9♥ (two pair, eights and sixes).
Hero had A♠, Q♣ (two pair, eights and sixes).
Outcome: Hero won $1114.60

BB ($819.50)
Hero (SB) ($1000)

Preflop: Hero is SB with 6, J
Hero bets $9.60, BB calls $5.60

Flop: ($20.80) 2, 5, 5 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero checks

Turn: ($20.80) K (2 players)
BB checks, Hero checks

River: ($20.80) A (2 players)
BB bets $12, Hero calls $12

Total pot: $44.80 | Rake: $0.50

Results:
Hero had 6, J (one pair, fives).
BB had 8, 10 (one pair, fives).
Outcome: Hero won $44.30

With my line, it looks a lot like I have either A-high trying to showdown cheaply or air that I declined to bluff. In either case, I’m likely to bet the river. Thus, it doesn’t really make that much sense for Villain to bet if he paired the Ace, and it makes even less sense for him to try to value bet a K. There’s also not much point in bluffing if he has Q-high, so my Jack starts looking pretty good.

Of course this all falls apart if Villain realizes how FOS his river bet will look and expects me to call with J-high

This isn’t the best example of a wet flop, but it is a good example of an opponent refusing to give me credit because I checked the flop:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, 162 Tournament, 150/300 Blinds 40 Ante (5 handed) – PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

BB (t13725)
Hero (UTG) (t6371)
MP (t9263)
Button (t14823)
SB (t15087)

Hero’s M: 9.80

Preflop: Hero is UTG with 10, 10
Hero bets t750, 3 folds, BB calls t450

Flop: (t1850) 10, 5, 2 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero checks

Turn: (t1850) 6 (2 players)
BB bets t300, Hero raises to t1500, BB calls t1200

River: (t4850) 6 (2 players)
BB bets t300, Hero raises to t4081 (All-In), BB calls t3781

Total pot: t13012

Results:
BB had A, Q (one pair, sixes).
Hero had 10, 10 (full house, tens over sixes).
Outcome: Hero won t13012

Excerpted from my WSOP 2006 Trip Report:

As we are taking our seats on Day 1, there is a lot of commotion, and someone saying he needs two seats. I immediately think of US Airways’ controversial policy requiring overweight passengers to purchase two seats, but it turns out the gentleman who will be sitting two seats to my right is William, a twenty-something missing one arm and almost completely unable to use the other, who plays with his feet and needs the second seat to balance himself. One at a time, he pins his cards to the table with his big toe, slides them up a little wooden ramp, and looks them. He’s adept enough with his toes to take individual chips out of a stack and then push them into the pot. He has an assistant who stacks his chips for him when he wins a pot. Apparently he made it into the money last year, and obviously he is popular with the press, so there are a couple of cameras taping him as he gets set up. Maybe I will be on TV after all!

William has busy feet and is getting involved in a lot of pots almost immediately. I wanted to feel the table out a little before getting involved, but I get dealt some solid hands and have to play them. This results in my butting heads with William a few times. He backs down pretty quickly each time, but I can feel him getting frustrated, which is all the more reason for me to get involved with him, since it means he will not be playing his best.

As it turns out, I end up winning a big pot against him with absolutely nothing. A little background: one of the first hands I played, I raised AQ from early position and Will called out of his BB. Flop was rags and gave me a flush draw. Check, check. Turn blanks, he checks, I bet like half pot, he says “I think you have AQ, but that still beats AJ” and throws it away. We play a few more pots in between, with me raising his limps a couple times, and I can feel the frustration pouring off of him. He’s also had two pot-sized river bluffs snapped off by other players.

He limps for 50 and says “I’ll try to induce a raise”. I say “I’ll oblige” and make it 200 with KQo. He thinks and calls, saying “I induced the raise, so I guess I have to call it.” Flop J77, check check. Turn J, he checks, I bet 200, he check-raises to 1000. I just can’t think of any hand he would play this way. I don’t think he has 88+, 66- is counterfeited, and if he had a boat he wouldn’t be check-raising me so hard, he clearly doesn’t want a call. So I think for like a minute and call. River is a 5, and he toes three pink chips worth 500 each and nudges them into the pot with the tip of his toenails. I think again, really hesitant to call off so much of my stack, but I just can’t put him on a hand. I’m tempted to raise him, but that would cost me even more, and I start thinking maybe K-high is good. Why would he bet an A on the river? He’s got to think he’s good but he can’t expect a worse hand to call. He must have a hand with no showdown value at all. So after like two minutes I call him and wait for him to show. He rolls T8s for a busted gutshot. When I turned my cards over and took the pot, he got pretty agitated.

It actually worked out very well for me in terms of my image at the table, because based on the comments people made when I showed down, I could determine how well they understood the game. Some people were just floored that I had put so much money in the pot with such a weak hand and couldn’t see past that. A few players seemed to understand why I played it the way I did. But everyone seemed to decide right then that they weren’t going to try to bluff me, and that would make life very easy for me over the next few hours.

I was thankful the cameras weren’t around when I won my big pot against William, because I’d rather not be the guy taking all the chips from the disabled kid who’s playing to win money for the Foundation he started to help others with disabilities. But I am not getting off that easy. The reporters come over to check in with William, and when they ask how he is doing, he says, “Don’t ask.” Then he swivels in his seat, points his naked toe at me, and says, “This is the guy who did it to me.” He’s kidding, kind of, but we both know that he is really getting me back for calling his bluff.

About a half hour into this level, he is down to just 1500 chips, and goes all in. Everyone folds to me and I look down at a pair of Jacks. I call him, and immediately the cameras come rushing over to witness his fate. My hand holds up, and I eliminate him from the tournament. He continues to rib me for the cameras, asking how it feels to crush a crippled kid’s dreams, and all I can do is laugh. He’s mostly just frustrated with himself because he knows he hasn’t played his best, and he is ultimately a good sport about it. He signs a picture for me (he has better “handwriting” with his toes than I do with my fingers), gives me a hug (which involves him awkwardly flopping his body into me- I don’t do a lot to return the hug because I’m afraid to break him), and wishes me luck.

More Classic Stories:

Little Old Lady Owns Me at 2/5 NL
The Grasshopper and the Baboon
Don’t Make Your Girlfriend Watch You Play Poker

As always, check it out and let me know what you think.

Consequently, I made the decision to call down based on the fact that the board came out very badly for my range. I think Villain would (correctly) expect me to bet flush draws on the flop, and the check-call probably indicates either a pair of T’s or a pocket pair to him. QT isn’t the absolute top of my range here- that would be something like AT or KdT, but it’s close enough to the top that I think it needs to be in my calling range against a Villain capable of triple barreling on a run-out that’s bad for my perceived range. The fact that draws missed on the river should also increase his bluffing frequency, as he may expect me to be on a pair + draw planning to fold if I don’t improve.

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t expect to be good here anywhere near all the time. He would surely play flushes, straights, and probably AJ and AT this way. This isn’t even a particularly good line to take, and it’s not something I planned from the beginning. I just checked, and then he kept betting, and I kept thinking about how unlikely I was to have a good hand and therefore how much he ought to be bluffing me.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, $4 BB (4 handed) Hand History converter Courtesy of PokerZion.com

BB ($456.10)
UTG ($600.80)
Button ($1008.80)
Hero ($2248.35)

Preflop: Hero is SB with Ts, Qs.
1 fold, Button raises to $9.2, Hero raises to $32.8, 1 fold, Button calls $23.60.

Flop: ($70.40) 3c, Td, Jd (2 players)
Hero checks, Button bets $48, Hero calls $48.

Turn: ($166.40) Ad (2 players)
Hero checks, Button bets $126, Hero calls $126.

River: ($418.40) 2c (2 players)
Hero checks, Button bets $288, Hero calls $288.

Final Pot: $994.40

Results in white below:
Hero has Ts Qs (one pair, tens).
Button has 7c 4c (high card, ace).
Outcome: Hero wins $994.40.

One last comment, regarding the 3-bet: Villain actually had pretty high F3B stats, but most of my history with him is from 100BB games. If I knew he would have such a wide calling range, I would not have 3-bet this hand.

Take a look at the hand, and then sound off on the question I’ve got for you at the end:

Full Tilt No-Limit Hold’em, $10.00 BB (5 handed) – Full-Tilt Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

UTG ($1570)
MP ($1124)
Button ($2200)
Hero (SB) ($1000)
BB ($1017)

Preflop: Hero is SB with 7, K
3 folds, Hero bets $40, BB calls $30

Flop: ($80) 6, 8, 6 (2 players)
Hero bets $55, BB calls $55

Turn: ($190) K (2 players)
Hero checks, BB bets $150, Hero calls $150

River: ($490) 3 (2 players)
Hero checks, BB bets $772 (All-In)

Suppose that you were going to have to make this decision. I tell you that he is a winning regular at these stakes, and I offer to give you just ONE of the following statistics that I have on him, based on a sample size of 397 hands played in 6-max games. Which would you choose and why?

Voluntarily Put Money In Pot (VP$IP)
Pre-Flop Raise (PFR)
Three-Bet Percent (3B%)
Aggression Factor (AF)
Fold to Continuation Bet (FCB)
Flop Aggression Frequency (FAFq)
Turn Aggression Frequency (TAFq)
River Aggression Frequency (RAFq)

I want to wait a few days to give everyone a chance to comment, so I’ll post my thoughts on Sunday.

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, $4.00 BB (6 handed) – Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Hero (MP) ($563)
CO ($186.75)
Button ($863.60)
SB ($400)
BB ($447)
UTG ($406)

Preflop: Hero is MP with A, 8
1 fold, Hero bets $14, 1 fold, Button calls $14, 2 folds

Flop: ($34) 8, A, 10 (2 players)
Hero bets $26, Button calls $26

Turn: ($86) 5 (2 players)
Hero bets $68, Button raises to $200, Hero calls $132

River: ($486) 10 (2 players)
Hero checks, Button bets $623.60 (All-In), Hero calls $323 (All-In)

Total pot: $1132 | Rake: $3

Even though I called the turn to induce a river bluff, I think it’s a tough decision on this particular card.

Arguments in favor of calling:

1. I took a line designed to induce a bluff.

2. River is a scare card.

3. I’m getting considerably better than 2:1 pot odds.

4. Villain isn’t playing AK this way, so getting counterfeited isn’t relevant.

5. All straight draws missed, and the clubs are a backdoor draw.

Arguments in favor of folding:

1. My hand looks like a draw when I call turn, and the most obvious draw got there. Thus, this may not look like a good bluff card to Villain.

2. The club also pairs the board, meaning Villain will shove most of his turn value range on the river. On a non-pairing club, he might check behind two pairs/sets that didn’t fill up.

3. Villain could have been raising turn with a flopped gutshot and turned flush draw, in which case he got there on the river.

4. Given that I may play club draws this way and many of my other turn slowplays fill up on the river, A8 is the bottom of my range.

As you can see, I did call, though I believe that was a mistake after thinking it through more thoroughly. I didn’t give enough weight to the argument that Villain could have floated the flop with a straight draw and a backdoor draw that picked up 9 outs on the turn. Maybe it’s just bad luck that that happened this time, but those are the draws that ought to be most likely to raise the turn. Add to that the fact that I’ll have plenty of other hands in my range that can call this river, and I think I ought to fold A8, and probably shove the turn with it as well. For the record, that’s usually how I’d play it anyway, I just carried away here with trying to take advantage of an aggressive dynamic.

Results:
Button had 9, 7 (flush, ten high).
Hero had A, 8 (two pair, Aces and tens).
Outcome: Button won $1129

I had a nightmare last night that I was playing high-stakes heads up no-limit hold ’em with Phil Ivey himself. I knew he had picked up a tell on me that revealed the approximate strength of my hand as strong, marginal, or weak, but I didn’t know what it was or how to stop doing it.

The river had just completed a possible flush, and the final board read 5 8 T Q 2 . I was holding A T and checked. Phil gave me that look, like he’d just spotted my tell, and then announced, “All in.” The dealer counted the bet down: $14,000 even, into a pot of just $6,000. Somehow, I managed to have the Great One covered. But could I call this bet?

Hope you like it- please let me know what you think!

…because sometimes, you aren’t bluffing:

Full Tilt No-Limit Hold’em, $20.00 BB (2 handed) – Full-Tilt Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

BB ($14268.50)
Hero (SB) ($4179.50)

Preflop: Hero is SB with 7, Q
Hero bets $60, BB calls $40

Flop: ($120) K, J, J (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $77, BB calls $77

Turn: ($274) 8 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero checks

River: ($274) 2 (2 players)
BB bets $210, Hero calls $210

Total pot: $694 | Rake: $0.50

Results:
Hero had 7, Q (one pair, Jacks).
BB had Q, 9 (one pair, Jacks).
Outcome: BB won $693.50

Although I didn’t recognize his name, this guy played very well, and it didn’t take me long to quit him. He’d been making a lot of good, thin value check-raises on dry flops like this, and he very rarely folded them. Thus, I thought his flop call represented either very marginal showdown value or a float with the intention of bluffing the river. Turns out it was both, which is really as it should be. I think he doesn’t turn Ax into a bluff on the river, which is why I call with Q-high, but I think this is exactly the right way for him to play Q9.

Hero (MP) ($4429.50)
CO ($7120)
Button ($2587)
SB ($4449.30)
BB ($4169)
UTG ($712.40)

Preflop: Hero is MP with 4, 4
UTG calls $20, Hero bets $90, 1 fold, Button calls $90, 2 folds, UTG calls $70

Flop: ($300) 3, 4, 6 (3 players)
UTG checks, Hero bets $187, Button calls $187, 1 fold

Turn: ($674) J (2 players)
Hero bets $444, Button calls $444

River: ($1562) Q (2 players)
Hero checks, Button bets $1225, Hero calls $1225

Total pot: $4012 | Rake: $3

Results:
Button had 6, 7 (one pair, sixes).
Hero had 4, 4 (three of a kind, fours).
Outcome: Hero won $4009

This guy isn’t calling the turn with a bare draw, so I’m not too concerned about him having the flush. He could have a big draw, something like Ah5h, that he chose to “slowplay”, or maybe a flush with the Jh, but I don’t think he has a flush too often. His most likely hand is something marginal with showdown value, either a bare pair that was bluff catching or a pair plus draw.

A less sophisticated opponent is just going to check back the river very often and be happy to show down his pair. A player of this guy’s caliber, though, will realize that it may be better to turn a weak pair into a bluff. Especially when I don’t bet at a good bluff card on the river, I no longer have a lot of the bluffy part of my range that he was beating on the turn. He may get real heroic on the river, but overall I think he turns a pair into a bluff (or very occasionally value bets worse) more often than he calls with worse. Though bet-calling here might be even sexier, come to think of it….

“I just don’t think he’s telling a consistent story on the turn and the river. On the river, now, all of a sudden he wants me to believe that he does have a monster hand and he wants to put all of the money in, so much so that he’s willing to bet more than the pot. So, on the river, all of a sudden he’s saying, “I want to play a huge pot,” and that’s not at all what he was saying on the turn.”

It’s just a transcript of a phone conversation, so it reads kinda rambly, but other than that I think I came out pretty well.

It’s a tournament, and blinds are 100/200. Hero raises to 475 UTG with KK, and good loose aggressive regular calls out of the SB. The flop comes Qd 4s 9d. SB checks, Hero bets 625, Villain calls.

The turn is the 4d, pairing the board and putting three diamonds out.  Both players check. (I don’t think it matters much, because the turn decision isn’t the important thing here, but Hero has the Kd.)

The river is the 4h, giving Hero Kings full of Fours. Villain checks, Hero bets 1400 into a 2300 pot, and Villain shoves for 11080. Hero has him covered.

Most of the forum seemed to think this was a call, and in many cases not a particularly close one. To me, it’s a clear fold.

Not everyone articulated it this way, but the general sense seemed to be that a pair of K’s is at the top of Hero’s range, and that folding hands at the top of your range isn’t what you do against a LAG.

The problem here is that Hero actually has two very separate ranges: a bluff range and a value range. KK is actually only around the middle of Hero’s value range, which I would set at roughly TT+. Unless Villain is floating the flop from out of position, a possibility made even less likely since Hero can account for two of the K’s, meaning he won’t see stuff like AK/KJ/KT very often, Villain probably has showdown value. He called a bet on the flop, and the most obvious draw came in on the river.

This means that Villain will primarily combat Hero’s bluff range by calling rather than by check-raise bluffing. When Villain check-raises, it no longer matters much where KK fits in Hero’s full range, because Villain isn’t really playing against the bluff portion of that range any longer. Villain’s shove is rarely a bluff, so it matters only where KK fits relative to Hero’s value range, and more importantly relative to Villain’s value range.

If you’re thinking that this is just a very fancy way of saying that Hero has a bluff catcher in a spot where Villain is rarely bluffing, you’re correct. The thing is that many people tend to use this flawed “top of my range” or “hand under-represented” logic (which are really the same argument, in my opinion) to justify some calls that I would say are clearly bad. Yeah, your hand can be a bluff quite often, but Villain can usually combat that by calling. When he shoves, KK is in trouble.

UTG ($1027)
MP ($980)
CO ($1442.40)
Hero (Button) ($1471.25)
SB ($1000)
BB ($1336)

Preflop: Hero is Button with J, J
UTG bets $35, MP calls $35, CO calls $35, Hero raises to $165, 4 folds, CO calls $130

Flop: ($415) K, 9, 9 (2 players)
CO checks, Hero checks

Turn: ($415) 5 (2 players)
CO bets $130, Hero calls $130

River: ($675) 8 (2 players)
CO checks, Hero bets $376, CO raises to $1147.40 (All-In), Hero calls $771.40

Total pot: $2969.80 | Rake: $3

Results:
Hero had J, J (two pair, Jacks and nines).
CO had K, A (two pair, Kings and nines).
Outcome: CO won $2966.80

I’m not a big fan of my river bet to begin with, and if he’s capable of this, it’s awful. I just didn’t expect him to check any big hands on the river, since it looks so much like I’m just trying to pot control/show my hand down cheaply. In other words, I don’t think he can expect me to bet the river too often.

This one was against a really awful player:

No-Limit Hold’em, $10.00 BB (2 handed) – Hold’em Manager Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Hero (BB) ($1705.40)
SB ($240.80)

Preflop: Hero is BB with Q, J
SB bets $15, Hero calls $10

Flop: ($40) 3, 7, 2 (2 players)
Hero checks, SB checks

Turn: ($40) J (2 players)
Hero checks, SB checks

River: ($40) J (2 players)
Hero bets $10, SB raises $40, Hero calls $30

Total pot: $120

Results:
SB had 9, 5 (flush, Jack high).
Hero had Q, J (three of a kind, Jacks).
Outcome: SB won $119.50

I didn’t think he would check a good spade on the flop, and I guess I was right….