What’s Your Play? Flopped Trips Results

 Thanks to everyone who commented on this week’s “What’s Your Play?” Sorry for the delay in getting results up; I’m currently visiting old friends and a new baby in New York, and the days have been busy.

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!