Thanks for all the comments on this week’s What’s Your Play? from the Borgata Poker Open. Sorry I was late in posting this, I ended up making a last-minute trip to see my family for Thanksgiving. I also played the $1000 Pittsburgh Poker Open all day yesterday and will hopefully be at it all day again today.
As I expected, a lot of you had questions about my flop and turn checks, so I’ll start by addressing those. I just didn’t think first that I’d have much fold equity on such a coordinated flop or secondly that with my image that I was going to get paid off on both the turn and river by anything less than a 5. Furthermore, MP is rather unlikely to have a 5, so while I may have been missing a bet from BB if he held a 5, I thought that was the only cost for a play that could induce a lot of bluffs and/or light river calls.
Some people mentioned a lot of draws, but really I wasn’t too concerned about those. Any J has a three-outer to a chop, two-pairs have four outs though MP probably bets the flop if he has that, and likewise I don’t think sets are likely to have checked this far, so I wasn’t too concerned about those despite their ten outs. The turn is a good spot for flush draws to bet, so I didn’t think BB had one nor that I’d be missing a bet from MP if he had one.
My plan was to call if MP bet flop and call most rivers, possibly folding if he bombed a third diamond.
River
I’ve already hinted above that I thought MP would bet his flush draws on the turn, so I wasn’t inclined to believe the river raise despite the size of it. The rest of the information I provided about his tendencies, the table dynamics, etc. was just corroboration for the central bit of data, which was the turn check. Basically I said, “Checking a flush draw on the turn seems unlikely – do I know anything about this player to suggest that he would be more passive than average?” then answered that question in the negative.
Pepito asks a very important question, “although villain may have the heart and propensity to bluff, why would he wait until the river when he had two earlier opportunities on the flop and turn?” This is an extremely important observation and something you should always ask yourself before bluff catching. If your opponent passed up the opportunity to make a cheap bluff, it’s unlikely that he’ll run an elaborate, expensive one later. This is why river check-raises from non-elite players are rarely bluffs: a guy is unlikely to go to the trouble and expense when he could just bet the river himself with his bluffs.
In this case, I thought a bluff was still possible because Villain may not have realized until now that he needed to bluff. He could easily have had a pair that he was hoping to check down, then realized with a bet and call on the river that it was no good but that neither BB nor I was likely to have a flush.
Calling vs Shoving
A surprising number of commenters suggested shoving as an option for Hero. Please take my bluntness not as impoliteness but as an impetus to plug a large leak in your play: shoving here would be awful. We’re dealing with a polarized range, as is often the case when facing a big bet on a card that significantly changes the texture of the board. We may think, as I did here, that that range contains far more bluffs than value hands, but regardless what it does not contain are value hands worse than our bluff-catcher or better hands that would fold to a shove. Villain is not doing this with any straight, not even JT, because of the possible flush. Nor is he folding any flush to a river shove.
So even though we might expect to be good extremely often, we still can’t shove because we won’t cause better hands to fold or worse hands to call. David Sklansky provides an extreme example of this in Theory of Poker. The game is Seven Card Stud, and Hero is showing quads on seventh street. Villain is showing something like 8h 5s Th 2d. Despite the fact Hero almost certainly has the best hand, he can’t bet or raise because Villain won’t continue with less than a straight flush.
The fact that Villain’s raise represents a large percentage of Hero’s stack is not a reason to throw the rest in. There’s no such thing as pot commitment on the river, because there are no draws. When you’re beat, you have 0% equity, so it’s not like on the flop where you might say, “Well, all the money will go in eventually, so I’ll put it in now.” You need to be ahead of Villain’s calling range, not his raising range, to put any more money in the pot.
Results
I called, and Villain showed Kd Qd for the flush. This was really a shock to me. I can’t remember the last time I was so sure someone was bluffing and I turned out to be wrong.
I’m being slow, but, I take it from the post that you still think calling was positive ev given his range? or do you think that it was a mistaken read, or perhaps both?
IMO not realy an EV issue here … with no action post-Flop we have no way to narrow MP’s range (other than his ‘non’ action, which is apparently part of his ‘plan’ this hand) and his call in position pre-Flop opens a large range … it’s either a bluff or not. I suppose you could summize how often he bluffs here for an EV calculation … how often would he bluff with THIS size of a bet as opposed to say 6000 plus? Does this change how often we call?
MP apparently can mix up his play and did so in what turned out being a great spot after the board completed for him. Can we give MP credit for not betting Turn? Any bet on Turn narrows his range and could have him facing a check-raise with no hand and a now bloating pot.
Does he suspect something from Hero’s non-action? He has no showdown value to Hero’s possible AK, AQ or pair, has set up this type of play in previous hands and has position to the other players. I don’t realy think that Hero was his target, but with Hero’s smooth call behind River stab by BB he continued the ‘ruse’ and got paid off. We don’t care where the chips come from as long as they flow to us, eh?
Just one of those cases where both players ‘play’ worked out and of course someone is going to get hurt when that happens. Can’t say what I would’ve done in that spot … Hero’s classic ‘weak when strong’ play (that we all like to see when it backfires) just didn’t work out in this case. I don’t want to give MP too much credit here other than keeping the pot small and taking advantage of it when the board worked out in his favor. We will never know if he makes the same play if the board blanks out … or a K hits River perhaps?
I am rather still confused by this hand.
V. shows up with KQDD so why is folding small DD awful?
Why can’t villain be raising AD 10o to get us to A fold small diamonds & B fold a chop?
I get why V. doesn’t want to build a pot with KD and then raises river after seeing small bet and call which makes it rather unlikely someone has ADxD…
Since hero can have 2 small D’s are we now saying villain never bluffs?
Villian can bluff, he just got lucky that his ‘bluff looking’ play is now the 2nd nuts and his ‘unconventional’ non-semi bluff of the Turn helps trap the slow-play by Hero into a bluff-seeking call. In this case here I don’t think it matters if Hero has small flush or straight, he is just using previous information and sticking to his ‘plan’ for how he wanted to play this hand and got the action he was looking for from Villian .. it just turned out in this case that it was not a good result/read.
Villian didn’t have to show his cards on previous action that set up this play but, as I said earlier, the more a player uses this ‘play’ the more likely they are to have a hand since chances of a call increase each time it’s used, IMO. Now he can actually use the play again with more credit since he did show down a great holding.
Villain may not bet a flush draw on the turn 3-handed because he assumes he doesn’t have enough fold equity with multiple opponents. People bluff less multi-way in my experience.
Checking back the turn is a big mistake IMO. Your line will look bluffy to many villains. They will call with their flush draws, which won’t call or bet the river as often. They may even check/raise bluff.