More Than One Way to Skin a Fish

12 thoughts on “More Than One Way to Skin a Fish”

1. Okay, I’ll bite: how do you know villain isn’t playing some garbage ace here?

   • He wouldn’t try to represent a T when he has an A. If successful, he would bluff me off of hands that are drawing dead against him and get action only when he’s beat. Even if he knew I was going to call down with KQ here it would still be a bad way to play a weak Ace.

2. That makes sense for the river all-in, but I guess my question is how you (or really, I) can call the c/r on the turn.

   I’m particularly interested because I see a lot of hands like this, particularly at 2/4, which is where I (used to) play. So my thought process is as follows: Villain’s c-bet on the flop looks like either value betting a garbage A (which makes sense given that this is 2/4, table read, etc.) or of course a bluff. So I would have called here, too. I certainly don’t read that as a T or trying to rep a T.

   Then he checks the turn, so I too would have led out with a bet. When he c/r there, it looks like repping A3, which is squarely within his range. Obviously I think the A3 has a strong chance of being a bluff, but since I think the bottom of his range includes an awful lot of Ax that has me beat, I reluctantly fold here. Obviously I’m getting outplayed when I do that, so I guess I’m trying to figure out where my read is going wrong.

   Thanks!

   • Hey Andrew T,

     I’m not Foucault but I can answer this question.

     I think your assessment of his turn range is incorrect. On the turn, villain is representing a very polarized range. Basically – he’s either repping Trips+, or a bluff. With A3, even a fish knows he’s still playing the 2 10’s on board (ATT3 not A33T), so if he did have a weak ace, he’d be much more likely to try and get his top pair to showdown than turn it into a bluff. With A3 we’d expect villain to c/c turn and probably c/c most river.

     So, on the turn – his range is much more likely to be a hand weaker than Ax (mostly no pair, fish don’t often turn midpairs into bluffs) or a monster (AA, Tx). I’m not sure why you think his turn c/r looks like A3. Its very uncommon for someone to turn top pair into a bluff, esp on a paired board when he has to be worried about you just having a 10 in your hand.

     Also, vs a range of nuts/air – KQ tends to be better calling hand than say a hand like 88. With KQ we do have a gutter vs Tx, vs a hand like 22 we can spike an ace, K, Q or our gutshot, and vs a hand like QJ he’s pretty much drawing dead.

     • Chris M — that makes perfect sense. Thanks.

3. Is there not a big risk that you can’t beat some of his bluffs here (i.e 3x, 6x, PP’s). I seem to recall you posting about this issue fairly recently (or at least I read it somewhere on your site).

   • I think the point is that all hands with show down value will attempt to show down. So Villain checks all pocket pairs and all Ax, 3x and 6x on the river. The read is that Villain is a spewing maniac so the key to this hand, as I see it, is the $22 bet on the turn. This is like a red rag to a bull due to its size relative to the pot and has the effect of massively widening Villain’s spew range relative to the small value range of AA, Tx which we think he would bet smaller with anyway.

     • awesome post ben, well said

     • I can see a medium PP trying to get to showdown, but why wouldn’t a 3 or maybe 22 c/r the turn and turn their hand into a bluff?

       • Hero is getting ~2:1 to call river – meaning we need to have the best hand ~33% of the time to justify calling.

         Much of this hand comes down to combinatorics – and while it’s a valid point that hero’s KQ high actually may trail some % of villains bluffing range, its not enough overall to worry about.

         If we assume villain plays 50% of hands pre-flop and has a proclivity to spew, its not unreasonable to think villain has a turn C/R range of ~30% of his starting range (discounting hands like JJ-KK, weak Ax hands that he’d never do this with).

         Thats a TON of hand combos! Even if he does occasionally show up with a 6x, or 22 hand, he still has SO many hands that lose to KQ on this river. Any heart FD, any broadway gutshot, and of course any spewy bluff (48s, J7o, Q4s, etc)

         While its a good and important point to remember when bluffcatching that you want to be ahead of some of his bluffs (ie – calling here with Q high would be less good than K high, since you lose to more KJ, KQ, K3s type hands), you still want to look at your decision as a comparison of ranges – and here Hero deduced that villain will be bluffing w/ worse than KQ high more than 33% of the time to justify calling.

4. 3bet pre for value!!!!

   • edit – rest of msg cut off:

     3-bet pre for value I think is almost mandatory here, unless he has a high f3b or high 4b, both of which most 50vpip players don’t.

     otherwise looks good!

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