We’ll start with the results:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, 320 Tournament, 200/400 Blinds 50 Ante (8 handed) – PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Button (t24118)
SB (t25330)
BB (t9032)
UTG (t8323)
UTG+1 (t25215)
MP1 (t13846)
Hero (MP2) (t16901)
CO (t31444)

Hero’s M: 16.90

Preflop: Hero is MP2 with A♦, 4♥
3 folds, Hero bets t800, 1 fold, Button calls t800, 2 folds

Flop: (t2600) 4♦, 4♠, K♥ (2 players)
Hero bets t1666, Button raises to t3640, Hero calls t1974

Turn: (t9880) 10♠ (2 players)
Hero checks, Button checks

River: (t9880) 7♦ (2 players)
Hero bets t12411 (All-In), Button calls t12411

Total pot: t34702

Results:
Button had K♦, Q♦ (two pair, Kings and fours).
Hero had A♦, 4♥ (three of a kind, fours).
Outcome: Hero won t34702

As many commenters identified, the crux of this hand is in recognizing that Hero’s hand looks reasonably strong after calling the flop raise. Many of you made compelling arguments for 3-betting the flop, which I’ll come back to in a moment.

As played, I don’t think we can expect a bluff from Villain on the river. If he wanted to take a shot, he would have done it on the turn, when he had better leverage. If Hero checks the river, it’s pretty clear that he has showdown value, and it’s too easy to click call. Villain’s flop raise, if it’s a bluff at all, is likely to be a one-shot “feeler” to determine whether Hero has anything at all. Once he gets the answer, I don’t think we can expect him to keep bluffing.

Thus, no matter how heavily his range is weighted towards bluffs (and I think it very much is), those aren’t the hands to target for value, at least not on the river. We have to aim for the part of his range that has some showdown value, either a K he raised for value on the flop or a bluff that turned or rivered a pair. Some of those hands might value bet if checked to (though can KJ/KQ expect to get called by enough worse hands?), but I don’t see them calling a check-raise. Nor do I see Villain shoving for any kind of value over a bet, unless he has exactly KT. Not only is it a questionable play generally, but tournament players in particular tend not to go for thin value with significant chunks of their stack.

That leaves the value betting to Hero, who has a choice between betting smaller or larger/all-in. Fred wishes that we were “less polarized on a river shove”, but I think polarization is exactly what we want here. No matter what, Villain has a bluff-catcher. A smaller bet looks more like thin value, which means a larger value range for us.

This is a spot where a big bet is disproportionately easier to call than a smaller one. In other words, Villain presumably calls 3000 more often than he calls 12,000, but nowhere near four times as often. The overbet shove represents a nuts/air range against which it’s actually easier for Villain to talk himself into a call. Ian says it very nicely:

“When he checks back the turn, he’s either got some showdown value (but then why the flop action?), has given up or perhaps he picked up the draw.

I think it’s going to be hard to get much value out of him, so I’m very tempted to ship and see if he can talk a marginal made hand into a hero call.”

Three-betting the flop is an interesting and very viable option. As Jonny pointed out, it’s not a spot where I expect a tournament player to spew or “attempt a re-re-bluff”. However, Emo Meltdown is correct that “Because he’s unlikely to put a another chip in the pot against a flat (it would be pretty spewy to try to bluff Andrew off the K+ he’s likely to have when he calls the flop raise), it’s not like we lose a bunch if he folds his air to a flop 3bet.”

Against a good hand-reader capable of very disciplined folds, this is a better way to represent a bluff than shoving the river, as it’s very difficult for Hero to show up with air after calling the flop (absent the Emo Meltdown “Scandi float”). Even with KQ on the river, Villain can beat only an out of position float or a small pair/Ax turned into a bluff, both unlikely.

I also like this because it contributes to what Gareth calls a “boss image”. Even if Villain correctly guesses that this is rarely a bluff and folds, there is still a seed of doubt in his mind. He’s likely to overestimate your bluffing range in odd spots in the future and to play more straight-forwardly against you generally. This is a particularly important consideration in live poker, when the whole table is likely to notice your play and adapt accordingly.

So I think three-betting the flop is a very viable line. Failing that, though, I think checking the turn just in case Villain wants to bluff, then shoving the river to maximize value from bluff-catchers, is the way to go.

Thanks again to all our participants!

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

SB ($2845.40)
BB ($1543.40)
UTG ($798.80)
Hero (MP) ($1573.80)
CO ($2739.30)
Button ($664.40)

Preflop: Hero is MP with Q♥, K♥
UTG bets $18, Hero calls $18, 2 folds, SB calls $15, BB calls $12

Flop: ($79.20) K♠, Q♦, 7♥ (4 players)
SB bets $39, 1 fold, UTG calls $39, Hero raises to $159.90, SB calls $120.90, 1 fold

Turn: ($438) 9♦ (2 players)
SB checks, Hero checks

River: ($438) 4♣ (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $284.25, SB raises to $2666.30 (All-In), Hero folds

Total pot: $1006.50 | Rake: $3

Results:
SB didn’t show
Outcome: SB won $1003.50

I think the consensus among the commenters is correct and checking is better. Even at the time part of me was thinking it wouldn’t be easy to get called by worse and I could get raised by both better and worse. But, like Fuel55, I then told myself that checking top two would be too weak. Nate made the case for checking very well:

Hero shows plenty of strength by raising the flop, and it’s hard to see Villain having continued with a weak top pair hand with UTG still in the hand. Often I would doubt that Villain has the self-control to check a set or better on the river here, but if Villain is very good, there’s no reason to rule out a big hand for that sort of psychological reason…. Villain should have plenty of better hands in his range, and although KQ isn’t the bottom of our range, Villain can’t have many hands between KQ and what really is the bottom of our range.

PhenomAAoo explains why it makes sense for Villain to check a big hand on the river:

If the river was T or higher, villian would almost always bet to get value and not slow play his set as he is risking hero checking behind. However 4 is a irrelevant card. River is a great card to check Straight and sets, because villian thinks that hero will definately bet his top range.

Jonny brought up one other point that didn’t occur to me but is interesting and worth mentioning:

Another thing is Andrew’s read that villain rarely goes to showdown. If villain is interpreting hero’s flop raise as strong, rather than as a squeeze, then this could indicate that if villain has a one pair hand like AK or KJ he will tend to just bet-fold it on the flop rather than call and attempt to see showdown.

So we’ve established that Hero’s hand looks like what it is, Villain is good enough to check nutted hands on the river, and he isn’t likely to pay off with worse. I don’t see Villain getting to the river with many hands that need to bluff, so I don’t think there’s a case to be made for bet-calling. As Jonny and others said, there’s a good chance he folds one-pair hands to the flop raise if he bets them in the first place. They are just a reverse implied odds nightmare, as even making trips wouldn’t give him a very strong hand should I continue betting.

The one other thing to consider is Shawn’s suggestion of a bluff shove “to make him fold 77 or a chop of KQ”. The trouble is that even if Villain only plays JT when it’s suited he has more combos of those than of 77. Given that we’re risking more than the pot, the shove has to work a lot, and we can’t count on that. After all, Hero’s turn check doesn’t rep strength very well, so there’s no guarantee he even folds 77.

Lessons to take away from this hand:

1. Always be thinking about your opponent’s range. No hand but the nuttiest nuts is too good to check or fold in the right circumstance, and you should be playing your opponent’s cards, not yours. My bet here was Level 1 thinking, plain and simple. Which brings us to…

2. Everyone makes mistakes. I got over tilting about bad beats a long time ago, but when I make plays that I ought to know to be bad, it still bothers me sometimes. I’m trying to get over that, too, because playing perfectly isn’t a realistic expectation and in a certain sense is just as beyond your control as an unlucky river card.

3. The obvious play is usually the right one. Obviously I’ve gone out of my way in the past to find some weirdly played hands for this feature, and that’s to drive home the point that you should be creative and consider all your options, but realistically the play that seems right to you at first glance usually will be right.

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

SB ($2845.40)
BB ($1543.40)
UTG ($798.80)
Hero (MP) ($1573.80)
CO ($2739.30)
Button ($664.40)

Preflop: Hero is MP with Q♥, K♥
UTG bets $18, Hero calls $18, 2 folds, SB calls $15, BB calls $12

Flop: ($72) K♠, Q♦, 7♥ (4 players)
SB bets $39, 1 fold, UTG calls $39, Hero raises $159.90, SB calls $120.90, 1 fold

Turn: ($430.80) 9♦ (2 players)
SB checks, Hero checks

River: ($430.80) 4♣ (2 players)
SB checks, Hero?

Hero has four real options here, all of which were thoroughly analyzed in the comments: check-raise all-in, bet small to induce a raise, bet 75-125% of pot, or open shove for 200% of pot. I’ll offer my thoughts on each here, but I strongly encourage you to go back and skim the comments if you haven’t, because there’s a lot of good material in there that I’m not going to address specifically.

Bet 75-125% of Pot- As a theoretical matter, I believe that when you have the nuts you should generally take a line that maximizes your chances of playing a large pot, even if this results in winning less from the bottom of your opponent’s range. It’s a fundamental principle of poker: big hand, big pot. For that reason, I don’t like this line. This is a much better card for Hero’s range than for Villain’s and not one on which he’s likely to bluff or bluff-catch aggressively. Even very strong hands like sets may just call a bet of this size, which is of course a disaster for us, so this is my least favorite option.

Shove- This line has similar problems to the one above. Villain probably won’t fold sets because people suck at folding sets, but I would expect him to fold anything less. As commenter Jonny put it, “The problem with overbetting is that it’s the one move that’s most likely to get Villain thinking carefully about how strong Hero really should be if he bets this river at all.” It is the best way to get value from sets, so it has that going for it, but I think there are other ways to stack sets while still extracting good value from slightly less strong hands.

Check-Raise All In- Commenters argued for this line for two reasons: to induce bluffs and to make Villain feel pot-stuck with his strong hands. I’m inclined to agree with Bond2King when he says, “Hero’s range here includes every possible strong hand, and it’s basically impossible for Villain to not have showdown value. That combined with the fact that Villain is on the tight side and the stakes are $1/$2 makes me think that it’s very possible that he’s simply never bluffing the river here no matter what we do.” Or as Andy more poetically put it, “We have his range aggressively sliced from bottom”. Villain has called two sizeable bets on a relatively dry board, and has a tight range as early as pre-flop, so there just aren’t many hands for him to bluff with.

Because Villain has so few bluffs in his range, there isn’t much reason why I would check-call this flop. Thus, as $trate argues, “Villian should only bet river for value if he plans to call it off, because all hands eexcept for T9s are bluffcatchers, and hero basically has no hand to c/c.” I don’t necessarily expect even an above average $1/$2 player to realize this, but it’s not at all impossible that Villain checks back hands as good as AQ- I believe that would be the correct play for him.

Finally, I’m concerned about whether Villain will call a check-raise with any but his absolute strongest hands. Such a move would look awfully strong and turn even his small sets into bluff-catchers in a spot where Hero is extremely unlikely to be bluffing. I wouldn’t be shocked if he talked himself into a call, but again I think the correct play for him with 44 facing a check-raise is to fold, and I wouldn’t be shocked if he did that either.

Bet Smallish to Induce- Several of the people advocating this line were talking about inducing bluffs, which I’ve already said I don’t consider likely. However, I think a smallish bet makes Hero’s hand look weak enough that Villain will seriously consider shoving any hand that would have called an open shove or a check-shove. Thus, this line stands to extract a modest bet from the middle of Villain’s range and quite possibly a stack from the top of it.

Since Hero can’t make his hand look like a bluff (this board is simply too goo for his range), the next best thing is to make it look like a weak value bet. As Jonny says, “he can hope to get looked up by 2 pair hands if he himself shoves his sets over a smallish bet. ” Georgios also put it very well when he wrote,

“I think villain (tight side TAG) he must respect your raise UTG. So after both calls in a dry flop and similar (dry) turn, on the river he has something strong [AQ,2pairs,set,str8(less likely)] or with showdown value [KQ,QT,TT,AK,AT (less likely)]. It is almost impossible to have bluffing range at river,and the A on the river is either a good bluffing hand for you(not reason to bluff for him) or good for UTG raise range and difficult to turn his showdown hands to bluff you out…

In case he is strong you’ ll go all in even you bet or check..

In case he has showdown hands I think he check after your check but may be he call a modest bet about 60% of the pot.. if you bet about 50 he have to call 50 to win 134 so he must be right about one time in three.. If he think you are vg and agrres player you have that bluffing percentage with good bluffing card as A.”

So that’s what I’d advocate, and what I did:

PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, $2.00 BB (6 handed) – PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

BB ($266.50)
Hero (UTG) ($206.40)
MP ($80)
CO ($200)
Button ($482.95)
SB ($261.25)

Preflop: Hero is UTG with 10♠, K♠
Hero bets $6, 1 fold, CO calls $6, 3 folds

Flop: ($15) Q♣, 8♠, 4♦ (2 players)
Hero bets $9.65, CO calls $9.65

Turn: ($34.30) J♥ (2 players)
Hero bets $24.45, CO calls $24.45

River: ($83.20) A♠ (2 players)
Hero bets $48, CO raises to $159.90 (All-In), Hero calls $111.90

Total pot: $403 | Rake: $3

Results:
Hero had 10♠, K♠ (straight, Ace high).
CO had J♣, J♠ (three of a kind, Jacks).
Outcome: Hero won $400

To be fair, these results don’t tell us much, since any line except potting it is likely to get a stack from this hand. Still, I think this roughly half-pot bet is the way to go.

Thanks again to everyone who participated, this was easily the best discussion we’ve had!

Thinking Poker Tournament Seminars are pre-scheduled, small-group discussions focused on the most common mistakes and skills gaps that I see in my NLHE tournament students. Each two-hour seminar costs $150 per person and is capped at five participants, to enable individualized attention and opportunities for everyone to ask questions and participate in discussions. The content is prepared and the discussion facilitated by me- it’s like an interactive poker video!

Participants will learn how to defend their blinds against late and early position raisers, how to deal with post-flop aggression, and how to pull-off the ever-vexing donk bet. In addition to the seminar itself, all participants receive a syllabus of recommended study materials to help prepare for the session and apply newly acquired skills in their future play.

To register, please e-mail andrew(at) thinkingpoker (dot) net with subject line “Playing Out of Position”. If you have questions, please post them here, as others may be wondering the same things. Also please leave a comment if there’s a topic you’re interested in or a time that would be better for you- there’s plenty of flexibility to accommodate everyone, I just need to know what you want to see!