Thanks to everyone who commented on the river action of this street-by-street What’s Your Play?
This spot demonstrates the dangers of wistful thinking at the poker table. You must be rigorous in thinking about your opponents are actually likely to have and do rather than what you would like them to have and do. For example, I think Hero’s options here are betting for value and checking, expecting to win somewhat often when it checks through but planning to fold if Villain bets.
There’s an understandable desire to see showdown when you have a strong hand in a large pot, but that can’t be a substitute for considering your opponents’ ranges before acting. Reading some of the comments here (to be clear, this isn’t directed at everyone who considered checking and calling), I got the sense that some people took for granted that they would be going to showdown and considered only whether to bet or check and call.
Check-Calling
Checking and calling makes sense only when you believe that Villain’s bluffing range will be larger than his bluff-catching range. By his bluff-catching range, I mean the hands that will call a bet but will not bet if checked to. These are the hands from which you lose value by checking, so they must be outweighed by the value you gain when Villain bluffs.
Many commenters advocated check-calling, but Alistair is one of the few who made much of an effort to explain how and why Villain could get to the river with a hand that he would want to bluff: “One thing I haven’t seen anyone mention yet is what a great spot the turn is for Villain to float. He may have seen flop check as weakness and the turn bet as just a stab with no diamond, so i think we need to put comeplete air in his range….”
I happen to disagree about the likelihood of a float with air – that’s an awfully fancy play, especially with a third player in the pot, for a guy who so far has been relatively tight and straightforward and doesn’t seem interested in tangling with me unnecessarily – but at least there’s a consistent thought process there. I believe Villain’s turn call represents either a full house draw or a hand with showdown value. Most of the former got there, and most of the latter will continue to play as showdown hands rather than turn into bluffs. In other words, if he calls the turn with top pair, it’s because he thinks it could be good. In my experience, all but the most elite players will opt to take a showdown if they think they have a shot of winning that way rather than turning hands into bluffs, even when it’s a good time to do the latter, as it would be here.
Eric also mentions a number of possibilities, but I think most of them are inconsistent with Villain’s pre-flop action and/or with what I explained above. As Chris says, “If we check then I can’t imagine any hand that he bets that we beat. he surely checks back any smaller flushes, straights, trips or pairs. It also seems highly unlikely that he’s got to this point with a hand he feels he needs to bluff with. Therefore, if we check then I’d say we have to fold to any reasonably-sized bet.”
If you disagree about the likelihood of Villain showing up with air or turning a made hand into a bluff, then by all means check and call, but don’t start by presuming that you’re going to see showdown. If you’re going to check and call, you should be able to enumerate the hands that you expect your opponent to bluff.
Value Betting
At the table, I was a little to quick to put Villain on a lesser flush and discount full houses from his range. My thinking was that he would have bet two-pair or a set on the turn, and I’m a little embarrassed to say that I didn’t take my own advice in thinking through how exactly he could show up with a worse diamond. Several commenters have done a good job of discussing what sorts of hands he would limp-call in early position, and I wish I’d thought more about it at the time.
Kelley makes a good case for why this information argues against value betting:
“Sets could check behind on a suited flop if playing carefully, so the board pairing is not a good sign for us. AA could have tried to trap you pre flop (although most limp raise), and JJ or 88 could easily limp call pre flop to set mine so early in the ME.
Check call if you think he may bluff (unlikley), and check fold it you believe him.
If he checks behind with a worse flush or 2P, you may lose a little value, but you don’t know if he would have called any bet.”
I do think it’s an easy fold if raised. For all the same reasons that I’m not anticipating bluffs if Hero checks, I’m even moreso not anticipating bluff raises. It’s actually quite difficult for Hero to have better than an Ace-high flush here, making it a good time for Villain to turn hands as strong as Td into a bluff, but that’s a move I’d expect only from the absolute trickiest and most fearless opponents. Most people are not bluff-raising rivers for most or all of their chips in the WSOP main event.
Check-Evaluating
I do actually think there’s a little bit of room for Hero to check and decide. This is a spot where many players will give away a lot of information with their bet sizing. In particular, if Villain bets a hand like the Td at all, it’s likely to be a small bet. Because this is live poker, there’s also room to consider physical tells before making a decision. As Mat suggests, I’d probably call bets of up to about 1/3 pot, but with anything bigger I’d give Villain a good staredown with the intention of folding unless his body language gave me a reason not to.
In conclusion, I think cEV-wise it’s awfully close between bet-folding or check-folding (well, check-evaluating, but usually folding). The reason I wish I’d checked is that, as Mat says, “the possible loss of the chips is more concerning than the gain, i.e. losing 4-6k from a ~54k stack is worse than the benefit of gaining 4-6k on 74k stack.” Day 1 of the main event ought to be about avoiding variance once large amounts of chips are stake. That means, among other things, avoiding large, thin value bets.
Results
I bet 8K. Villain called and rolled 88 for a full house. Which brings us to my…
Last Question
Should Villain have raised? If not, what is the worst hand he should raise?
Meh, first impression was the good one heh even though I narrowed too much his range to QQ.
Thank you for the explanations on check-calling, it makes a lot of sense into why this spot was kinda bad for it.
As for Villain, he saw you raising into 4 limpers which shows a lot of strength. If he is tight, perhaps he thought that your range included JJ+, AJs+ and AKs+. He knows you and knows you can be tricky.
He was either trapping, either scared on the flop. He was most likely way more scared on the turn after your bet and after he let you had a free draw surely thinking he let you had a free draw to the flush.
Perhaps lingered on the back of his head the fact that you could have JJ, AA, QQ, AQ on the river.
I think your image prevented him from playing back at you, pretty sure against a less tricky opponent he would have been more straightforward on the river.
I think value raising would not work against you unless he is utterly sure he beats you.
You would fold anything less that a full house and would raise/call any full houses better than his. You would not call that much light as his betting pattern is strong.
He knows you can take a shot at betting the river like you did with a flush but must be quite sure you would not lose your stack on this spot.
Definitely not a raise for me.
I think the spot narrows so much both your ranges that AQ would be the worst he would go with. With JJ, knowing your preflop range, I don’t think he would go full blast with it he would see AQ as a possible hand for you to have.
I also think you would consider losing with JJ a cooler and he must know that and take advantage from it. JJ would be so much in his range if you held 88 that I think you would be thinking about it a lot if he raised you and perhaps would be folding to it.
my 2 cents !
Thanks again for this post !
His river raising range should probably be KTdd. I guess we could include T9dd since it blocks KTdd.
More seriously I think it should include AQ and better but I don’t have a particularly good justification for setting the bar there, besides the fact that AQ beats QJ/JJ/88, blocks QQ, and chops with AQ.
So I guess you can’t completely cover everything but it doesn’t seem like you not to talk about bet-sizing?
“Day 1 of the main event ought to be about avoiding variance once large amounts of chips are stake. That means, among other things, avoiding large, thin value bets.”
If this thinking is part of our overall strategy for Day 1, it seems to me we should seriously consider checking our option preflop. Yes, we absolutely gain value by raising with AK vs the range of limpers, and yes AK belongs in a balanced raising range, both of which you correctly pointed out. As a counter to that, I would argue that the streets of a hand are not played in a vacuum and as we extract value pre-flop we up the price of poker on the later streets. Holding AKo OOP vs multiple opponents, some of which are reasonably tough, should call for us to weigh the value of the extra 1200 chips we are getting our opponents to put in the pot against our overall strategy of avoiding variance once large amounts of chips are stake. This is a spot that unless we take it down with a single flop or turn bet can very easily amount to tough decision for large chips. As a second counter, I would ask that while AK belongs in a balanced raising range, do we need to have a balanced raising in this spot (in the big blind vs 5 limpers)? I doubt its important that we do. I would say we even got lucky preflop in that we only got 2 callers preflop and the tougher players folded.
And to answer your question, no he should not have raised – that seems obvious as with the nut flush its pretty clear if we bet we are folding to a raise.
As to what he should raise with we are likely just calling preflop with 88 and possibly JJ, although that would fit with our balanced raising range. We could have showed up with something like QJs as well. I guess AQ is the minimum he should raise. But then he would even have to dump that if we re-raised.
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—:D evil thoughts
I wonder if we could 3bet bluff shove the river with our A and our Kd
Haha !
I though exactly the same ! I wonder what would have happened with a check/shove !
Perhaps he would sigh call ? He can see that as a trick with a flush ?
Could, should, and would are all different things. I don’t think attempting to make people fold the top or second full house is going to be a very happy venture in many cases
I don’t think he should raise, AQ is a very likely holding for hero and you don’t want to risk more chips. I’d consider raising QJ.
It is possible that we could raise 88 there some of the time, but I would feel much safer with JJ since JJ is very possible if we have 88. We don’t see QJ in that spot from either player very often, so that only leaves AA and AQ that beat our JJ (along with straight flushes). AA would have bet the Flop to protect against the 4 flush, but AQ very well could have bet out on the Turn looking to see if our opponent wanted to continue now that it has a 4-card holding.
The bet sizing on the River probably could have been a touch smaller (4 to 6000) since 88 is always calling and rarely raising. It really depends on if we were committed to folding to a raise (probably yes) or not. If we are never calling a raise, then we need to make a larger bet that will create more calls than raises.
I really don’t know if 88 or even JJ bets out here either since we could be trapping on the River … unlikely for a pro not to bet out a FH on a River, but us rookies always overthink what plays are being made at us and we ‘should’ be happy with our suck-out against my opponents suck-out … (I personally don’t think anything above a 16 to 20% draw should be considered a suck-out .. 6 outs or less!!)
Having the 8th nuts or so when calling for your $10k buy-in life isn’t the best feeling and the way the hand was played out we could have made a case for a bluff shove using JJ or AQ as our line of betting (more likely AQ since JJ would have bet the Flop). Gutsy move, but I think this was a very good target for that move since he knows we know he knows our moves. This would have been a case for a smaller River bet or a check-shove … but even when makeing a case for AQ, there are 4 hands that beat us.
Honestly, I am never raising in his spot in the heat of the battle because I fear it can only be called by better (AA, AQ) hand. To answer your question, I would only raise with those two hands also (and I may not even raise with AQ).
However, if he really thinks about it, you have to have a flush card in your hand to check the flop AND bet the turn.
I don’t think even AA that slow played the flop would bet out on a four flush board.
So when the board pairs, you can’t have a FH.
This means he knows (should know) he has the best hand with the FH.
If this is true, he has no downside to raising (although you can’t call, so it may be pointless). Maybe he thinks you would get stubborn with the nut flush?
More importantly, if he doesn’t have the FH (has lower flush instead, or maybe AJ counterfeited), he can now turn that hand into a bluff that you can’t call.
I admit I don’t have the stones (yet) to make that play, but with better hand analysis, it should be clear that you can’t have the FH. However, I would have to know I was playing against a player good enough to bet a flush for thin value and then fold to a raise.
I don’t know how many of those players I face on a regular basis (if any).
BTW, this is why I said earlier that you should check call to catch a bluff and check fold if you thought he had the FH. I dont like opening up myself to bluff raises, although there are very few players capable of making that play.
I can see how bet folding gains value from the lower flushes, but I don’t know if enough of them call to make it profitable when you fold to all raises from better hands.
One more point:
Doyle says “If you plan on calling a bet, you may as well bet it yourself”.
So if you planned to fold if raised, then you spent the same $ as check calling (maybe less). More importantly, you gave him a chance to call with a worse flush that surely would have loved to check behind.
As a very good instructor told me recently, “You actually want to have some of your value bets called on the river by better hands some of the time. Otherwise, you are not value betting enough. You only need to be right slightly more than half the time for those bets to be profitable.”…or something like that.
Check calling like most of us do in that spot is the passive line that shows we are amateurs and only works against bluff happy players.