Thanks to everyone who offered opinions on What’s Your Plan? Turned a Big Draw. I’m surprised that so many people zeroed right in on the two most important details of the hand and yet so few came up with what I believe to be the correct play.
Important Details
The first important thing to notice is that Villain’s range for getting to the turn is likely very wide. We’ve seen him make a loose pre-flop call, and there’s a lot of ways that he could have a small piece of this flop. I also happen to agree with BlueDuck that “He’s a middle-aged recreational player so I’d expect he’d play a straightforward in-position style – his call of the CB suggests a small pair or picked up a pair on the flop. If he had AJ, KJ, or QJ – I’d expect he’d have raised your CB.”
The second important detail is that Hero has a hand with a lot of equity but no showdown value. These two factors add up to a great spot for bluffing, as virtually everyone advocated. I think check-calling is the only really big mistake you could make with this hand – it’s simply too good of a spot to give up on winning without showdown.
Check-Raising
What surprised me is how few people suggested check-raising all-in on the turn, which is what I did. No one on Thinking Poker mentioned it, while Cardplayer commenter Blueduck mentioned it in passing. Nyy214 said a bit more than most, and I liked his other suggestion as well:
Check shove. If he gives you a free card then fine. Or what about a bet of like 3500 (I know its very odd), but if he calls either way you get make a bet of like 17k on the river. If he raises to like 11k then you can ship. I feel like these two plays give you the most fold equity.
I dont like betting 12k on the turn because if he shoves you have to fold and if he calls, he probably isnt folding a ton of rivers
With a draw this big, you really want to make the last bet, and nyy214 had some good suggestions for how to structure the betting to ensure that. Against a player of this type, I like the check-raise line because he’s less likely than a professional to bet the turn without thinking about the possibility of a check-raise. In other words, whereas a professional might say, “I’d like to protect my TT, but I don’t want to open myself up to a check-raise bluff I can’t call, so I better check behind,” this player is more likely to see how vulnerable his hand is, bet, and then realize after he gets check-raised that he doesn’t want to call it.
We’ve also seen that he’s willing to bet draws when checked to on the turn, so I feel comfortable concluding that he’ll have a wide bet-folding range. Thus, check-raising gives Hero a very good chance to get in the last bet and win a large pot without showdown.
Bet-Betting
This is my next preferred line. As cbeak says, “After calling flop and turn, I think a relative unknown’s river range is on the wide side, consisting of things like diamond draws, pair plus diamonds, second pair or top pair or better. Therefore, we might want to bet.” If we don’t get raised on the turn, then Villain’s hand can’t be that strong, which sets up a good river bluffing opportunity.
The problem, as many of you pointed out, is that if we do get raised on the turn, we probably have to fold away a lot of equity. This line prevents us from getting in the last bet (unless we bet very small with the intention of 3-bet-shoving, as nyy214 suggests, although this player probably doesn’t raise even an underbet on the turn without a very good hand).
If Hero does bet the turn, I agree with Gareth that, “we shouldn’t have to bet large to fold the hands we want to fold with a turn barrel. Those hands are basically pairs worse than a jack. So TT-88, A7s, 76s, 66. I think this is a card that coordinates well with his flop calling range, non of his diamond draws are folding, some paired up, the others added a gutshot. No Jx is folding and neither is a set or an overpair etc. So anyways I think we only need to make a smaller bet at this point in relation to the pot, I would go with 7300 into 15600.”
Results
I checked the turn, intending to shove over a bet. My opponent gave a little shrug and casually – a little too casually – tossed two 5K chips into the pot. I moved all-in, and he snap-called with a set of 7s. I didn’t get there on the river.
I was surprised that he didn’t raise the set on the flop, but mostly I was disappointed in myself for not paying more attention to his body language. I should have been more open to taking in new information and re-evaluating my plan, because in retrospect his little “Whatever, guess I’ll bet 10K” act screams strength.
I still like planning to check-shove in the absence of a tell like this. It just goes to show you how important it is always to be looking and listening for new information, even when you think your mind is already made up.
Thanks to everyone who participated!
Gareth is my man in terms of zeroing and zipping the gist.
“Cliffs: bet moderate to fold out his weak made hands, call versus certain raise sizes knowing he is pretty nutted when he raises turn.”
The second important detail for me is that Hero draw is not big draw against recreational player turn bet or raise range and I have zero equity at this point(effective stack).
The draw has equity to be “big” under condition that I see river and make my backdoor flush or str8 and I get his stack.
Showdown on turn against recreational player or predictable midlestake grinder I consider my fall off the cliff.
Aganst top regs I will be satisfied to get turn showdown because they able to manipulate against the aggregate tendencies(pretty nutted) in this spot.
But I am recreational player who play exclusively on line and hu and I see your points.
zero fold equity
“I think check-calling is the only really big mistake you could make with this hand – it’s simply too good of a spot to give up on winning without showdown.”
Well I will say your axiom will contradict practical philosophy of large pool of online midstakes grinders(bumhunters) who employ low-risk extracting strategy against recreational player.
The core of their philosophy is:
a) read transparent betsizings by your recreation player
b)do not rely on fold equity by your recreational player.Stay passive on flop and turn to facilitate overplaying hand by your opponent
c) try to see river and facilitate to make larger errors on river by your recreational player.
I see check-calling is big mistake in case of good reg who manipulate range or bumhunter who employ low risk strategy(fold equity).
To be clear with my previous post that I will be satisfied with turn showdown aganst top reg.
Well I will not be satisfied because of odds or equity,etc.In case of turnshowdown they will never be great.
I will be satisfied that I will stay ahead of his frequent weapon -range manipulation.
Not me but him will be aggravated at my frequencies.
Recreational players are also notorious for failing to plan ahead, having no sense of pot control, and overvaluing their survival in large buy-in tournaments, all of which I felt could be exploited with a check-raise. Unfortunately I was not alert enough to transparent physical tells, the live poker corollary to your (a). Essentially I think the principles you list are generally good, but there are times to deviate from them. Even if you rarely attempt to make a player like this fold, having one of the biggest possible draws is good reason to consider an exception.
Andrew,
I think the reasons you list, specifically the lack of planning and the value of survival make bet turn bet river a better plan than check shove. I don’t think you are going to get bluff raised virtually ever on your turn bet, and you stand to get the same folds you get by the c/r by barreling all the way – but for a cheaper price. Yes, if he raises the turn bet you have to fold, but if we believe he only raises with the strongest portion of his range such as sets, the alternative is having him call our c/r with that same range and us playing a big pot with one card to come… so bet fold isn’t the worst thing in the world here, and as long as we are correct about our other assumptions (he gets to the turn with a fairly wide range, he is less likely to have a multi-street plan than other players, and he has some value on his tourney life, double barelling the turn and river gets the same folds as c/r) then it seems to be the better line to me.
Yes Andrew I see many factors and I did not try to analyze because I do not have experience: like survival in large buy-in tournaments,virtual vs non-virtual space,hu vs n-max,etc.Just musing not criticism.
Two questions
1. Say in the moment you notice this tell and peg him for a strong range of overpairs, two pair, and sets. You abort your check-raise all in plan and check-call to donk lead all straights and heart flushes huge right?
2. When the turn checks through are you planning on ever bluffing the river? Only on obvious cards like an A? It seems to me that he is very unlikely to be able to recognize a b/c/b line for value and will pay us often when we hit a heart or an 8 especially, with the weak holdings in his range. To that point I would not expect him to fold A7s on an 8 river (or a 9 or a T river for that matter), unless we make a gigantic bet. Further I would imagine bluffing a diamond to not be viable if he checks back, we can’t necessarily bet 2.5x the pot since he should have a broad range of diamond flushes in his check back turn range, and his weak holdings won’t be scared enough by a 80% pot river bet on a diamond river either.
My main thought (feel free to dispel illusions):
If his flop calling range is so wide (and we think it might be capped… though it wasn’t… maybe it just excludes or discounts AJ/QQ type hands that would see where they were at with a flop raise), check-raising all in on the turn makes sense if we can get him to bet/fold weak to strong show down hands like JT or TT or KJ. But the main advantage I see of it is that we get to see the river versus his nutted hands (with all the money in no less) whereas bet/bet we might not, depending on how big he makes his turn raise. The problem with this being a big advantage over bet/bet is the fact that you, and I, and most people, thought his flop call range was often capped, so we don’t expect to be raised very often, and we expect to be battling a wide, capped range going into the turn on this texture. That’s what makes bet/bet so great here, it let’s us manipulate his range so thoroughly because we can make excellent estimations about what his range is. In fact we know almost his exact range to raise, to call, and to fold the turn should we bet 7300 — and consequently we know how to best exploit that range, say if he calls, by bluffing the cards that scare him and by value betting the cards that don’t (but actually make our monster).
With check-raise all in we risk the turn checking through often and having severely diminished river fold equity. We often won’t be able to fold out those holdings on the river that we could of on the turn. Moreover those holdings that we couldn’t fold out on the turn with bet/bet we own often on the river in a larger pot, now with turn x/x they never fold in a smaller pot. You mention that he should be able to bet draws because of previous play, therefore he will bet/fold these draws often on the turn in addition to his strong showdown hands? What draws exactly? The diamond draws that turned top pair? The diamond draws that are gutted or double gutted… with an over or two?! Most of the draws that we can fold with a turn check-raise, it seems to me, will call a turn barrel and lose to us at showdown, like 89, T8, 86 (he already showed that he wouldn’t bluff missed draws). The other draws will talk themselves into crying calls often because they are combination draws.
Now I am not saying that we should worry about our river fold equity being diminished (in the turn x/x case) for the sake of trying to win every pot we play, but rather that why would we turn down a +cEV turn barrel that happens to have the benefit of setting up excellent river play versus this villains range and capacities?
Very nice post. You and Todd make a compelling case for bet-bet. I’m going to think on this some more, but I’m afraid I may be publishing a correction later this week…
I can’t speak to big buyin tourneys but I know when I play live 100 or 200$ tourneys or live cash games people often see smallish half pot bets (7300 into 16k) as weak and often shove over them with one pair or even midpair hands believing you can’t call. I really think betting 10 or 12k will make it much more likely you don’t get jammed on.
One more advantage for betting turn and river as opposed to check shoving is the possibility, especially for a recreational player, of calling the shove with a hand such as KTdd – if he whiffs the river then a bet would enable you to win, whereas if you were all in then you no longer have the option to bet and making him laydown the best hand. This is the Omaha player in being talking as I am used to getting the majority of money in with both players drawing at the world and missing the river only to fold for a bet 1/20th pot size. A river bullet allows for this potential while the c/s removes it from your arsenal.
Very good point, and good demonstration of how learning other games can give you “mental exercise” that opens you up to new ways of thinking about NLHE.