Thanks to all the commenters, and especially to those of you who contributed to all three parts of this special multi-street “What’s Your Play?” With regard to the river action, WPS22 encapsulates the situation well:
I think he could easily be value betting a weaker hand than yours, but what weaker hands is he value betting that he will also call a shove with? Maybe a flush. It’s highly unlikely he has a straight and almost impossible he has trips. Anything less will never get a call.
The odd thing about this hand is that its really hard to put him on something that beats you. Its hard not to raise if you think you can’t be beat, but I think the situation when you shove is that you are beat or he folds the vast majority of the time. If you shove you are basically hoping he has exacly an A high flush.
I guess you also have to consider the value of your last 30bbs. The times when you shove and he beats you and takes your last 30 are technically worse than the times when you shove and he calls and you win an extra 30. I understand you said you have him covered but it sounded like you were both within a few bbs.
There’s no question of folding. I won’t go into detail on that point, since not a single commenter advocated it, but I will say that it’s good that so many took the time to acknowledge this. You should consider all of your options at the poker table, even those that seem obviously wrong, because every once in a while the unconventional play is the best one.
In this case, I believe my hand is not only good enough to call given the pot odds but is in fact a favorite against Villain’s betting range. The question is how many of those hands will call a shove. WPS22 and several others make the case well that:
1. Better hands definitely are in his range;
2. Stronger second-best hands (ie straights and flushes) are not likely in his range;
3. Weaker second-best hands (ie trips and overpairs) are either unlikely or unlikely to call a shove.
Taken together, these points argue against shoving, even though Hero is rarely beat. Even if we believe it’s close whether or not Hero would be ahead when called, I agree with answer20 and others who made the point that, “Not that you want to let anyone off the hook, but I would rather win this pot or have 30BB left to work with if I lose on a call”.
This is Day 5 of the WSOP main event, and Hero is at a relatively soft table. He can anticipate many profitable opportunities in the future, so his final 30BB should not be gambled away lightly. I’d want to be ahead something like 60% of the time before I shoved the last of my money in (or close to it, since I do technically cover Villain). Everything we’ve seen here points towards taking the conservative route and calling.
Trentbridge says that, “I would call but I’m sure Andrew raised because he has more confidence in his read of the UTG’s hand than I do.” I hope he’s right. This is a hand I played during the 2010 WSOP, so it’s been nearly two years, and I don’t remember every detail of Villain’s demeanor, body language, etc. I like to think that his behavior telegraphed enough weakness to justify shoving, because that’s what I did. I remember feeling extremely sure that I was good, but I don’t remember why, so let’s just hope that I really did know what I was doing at the time. Absent a good reason not too, though, I do think just calling here is the way to go.
Villain folded to the shove, so we’ll never know what he had. It was a nice start to my day, though! If you’re interested in finding out how the rest of the day, and indeed the rest of the tournament, went for me, you can read all about it in my 2010 WSOP Trip Report. Enjoy!
I assume you mean you want to be 60% against his calling range (not his betting range — you certainly are that here, I think), right?
Yeah it seems to me that we are weighing unlikely circumstances. That he checked a set or 33 on the flop; that he checked a flush draw on the flop, then didn’t raise a flush on the turn that he bet to that size; that he has a 3X type hand; that he has 56 or A5 in his UTG range; that he is value betting something capable of calling a river raise that is also worse than our hand. All of these things are terribly unlikely, but one of them only had to have one unlikely thing to have happened, for him to have slowplayed a flopped overset. If he did flop an overset and took the unlikely route of checking the flop (something any inexperienced amateur with trapping syndrome is capable of in a bad spot) then his turn and river play isn’t necessarily something unlikely given his holding. So in other words, for that threat to be real, he had to do one unlikely thing, with an unlikely (combinatorically) holding, which isn’t out of the question for an amateur. For him to have hands that call a raise that are worse he had to do more than one unlikely thing (open a 3X, open A5, open 56, raise/call turn with 3X then bet/call river with 3X, check flop, raise/call turn with A5, bet/call river with A5, and not c-bet 56). So while we should expect him to be making a hopeless bluff here a ton of the time, his river betting range is polarized to bet/folds probably over 90% of the time and bet/calls less than 10% of the time, it seems like his river bet/call range has our hand looking like a bluff catcher versus his river betting range, by virtue of always being better.
Is raising a non-shove amount worth considering? The ‘busting main event’ factor is probably fairly big here, I could see a few hands calling it off with a straight that might do a fold vs a jam.