I’m blown away by the number of responses Monday’s What’s Your Play? post received. It produced some great discussion that was instructive even for me, so a big thanks to all of you who commented. I know I didn’t interact with your comments as much as I usually do, but truthfully you all were doing such a good job of asking and answering your own questions that I didn’t feel it was necessary. Really this sort of reader interaction is a blogger’s dream!
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!
Andrew, what do you think is the worst hand Villain should shove here? (assume it’s mutually understood that neither of you have a bluffing range)
Also, as Hero how do you play this river with each of: AK, AQ, or 88?
One cool consequence of Hero betting half pot with the nuts here is that it makes it impossible for Villain to go for full value with his sets when he has the best hand without simultaneously owning himself when he doesn’t.
Jonny,
Your first question is a tricky one. I’m counting on Villain misinterpreting my range as a result of my bet, and consequently I expect him to shove hands like small sets that would have difficulty getting called by worse simply because he doesn’t expect me to have better in my small bet range. In truth he would need a quite good hand, probably JJ+, to shove for value. This is a problem you run into when your opponent’s range is stronger than yours: it’s hard to get value from even your pretty strong hands because the top of his range extends higher than the top of yours. He’d also be correct to turn the bottom of his range, even if it has showdown value, into a bluff if my calling range is that tight. He could get me to fold two-pair, for instance, and probably ought to try for that if he has one small pair on the river.
I think I’d make the same bet with AK and AQ (though it’s far from certain I’d have played it the same up to this point, but if I did) and fold to a raise. 88 would be a bet-call, though I might be more inclined to go for the larger bet on the river since there’s less value in inducing a shove (unless, as discussed above, he was good enough to turn hands into a bluff).