This is the fourth hand of a six-max tournament on a .FR site. Hero (who is not me) and Villain are both readless on each other. Blinds are 50/100, both players have roughly 20K to start the hand.
Villain opens to 205 from the HJ, Hero calls with As Th in the BB.
Flop 5s 9h Jc Both check.
Turn 5s 9h Jc 2d Both check.
River 5s 9h Jc 2d Ah
There’s 460 in the pot. What’s your play and why? If you choose to bet, be sure to specify value target(s), bet size, and plan if raised. Leave your thoughts and comments here, and I’ll be back with my own thoughts and the results on Friday.
Bet and fold to any raise. Hero hopes to get called by A8, A7, A6, A4, A3. Maybe a stubborn medium pair or a 9 although those hands will probably fold. Most likely hands hero would lose to are AK, AQ, A5 and A9. Stronger hands usually would have been heard from by now. A jack usually would have been heard from by now.
Hero appears to have exactly what he actually has – an ace. It would be pretty unusual for the opponent to try to bluff-raise anyone off of an apparent rivered top pair. So I think hero can fold to any raise.
I guess I would bet 3/4 pot. Initially I was thinking a smaller bet since the opponent likely doesn’t have much. But I think he’s going to have trouble letting go of a rivered top pair, especially because his hand is “underrepresented” in his mind.
Check-call. That way you leave all bluffs in his range and avoid being confronted with difficult decisions in case of a raise.
+1.
Check-call up to pot sized bet to get value from villain’s bluffs or villain’s weak (perceived) value hands including the few combos of no-kicker aces, 66-88, 33-44, 9x, 5x, 2x, and rare/strangely played Jx hands.
+1
Maybe this is too simplistic, but the way I see it (trying to use Andrew’s hand reading advice): villain obviously doesn’t like his hand, and hasn’t displayed any aggression to our repeated displays of weakness. You’d have to think even a low pair (or AQ/AK) would have bet out by the turn, right?
So we’re looking at villain having 1) air, 2) a worse A, or 3) a slowplayed monster.
If we bet, he folds 1) and 2) and raises 3) and bluffs. I presume we’re folding to any raise unless we have an outstanding read (that we don’t have).
If we check, he checks 1) and value-bets 2) and 3) and bluffs. Presumably we’re calling any modest bet.
So category 1) nets out to zero. The question then becomes: do we make enough money on category 2 by checking to make up for our losses on category three by calling reasonable bets? Since there are more A-combos than 5s and 9s, that makes calling +EV, right?
Thanks for the comment, Andrew. Just wanted to point out that category (1) doesn’t net to 0 following your logic (which I don’t necessarily agree with). The reason is that you say he might bluff-raise with air, and if you’re folding to a raise, then you’re actually losing money to these hands relative to checking and winning the pot either when he checks behind or when he bluffs.
Initially my thought was to bet around 1/2 pot. A size where any worse one pair hands may call and get us some value. However, how many one pair hands are really calling here? I would think Jx hands and all pp (except sets) would have already been heard from and probably 9x and hands once the flop checked. Maybe worse aces but there really aren’t a ton of them out there on this board. We probably can’t get any better hands than ours to fold (and we don’t have any clue as to what the villain is capable of laying down yet)
The only two pair hands that really fit villain’s line/range IMO would be A2 and A5 with outside chance of J9 or A9. This early in the tourney, if he raises its never with a hand we beat so I think its a clear bet-fold spot if we choose to lead the river. He would raise with all sets/two pairs and sometimes AK/AQ. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him just call with AK/AQ because its so early in the tourney and there could be a fair number of Ax two pairs that show up from our spot in the bb.
In the end, despite the itch to go for value, I’m not sure there’s a ton of it out there if we bet and with us being blind with respect to the villain’s capabiilities this early in the tourney I would check and call a bet up to about 60% pot.
I think we have a pretty easy bet/fold spot. The fact that he checked it back twice rather than betting on at least one street means that he very often has a hand with some show down potential but which can’t stand much heat. Hands like Ax, 5x, pairs below 9, possibly 9x all fit the description in, I think, descending order of liklihood. As such I think we should make a bet of roughly half pot size… our AT is well enough ahead of that range and I would expect that we get hero called and we win more often than we get called and lose or get raised. If we do wind up getting raised we can release it as the vast majority of the time this happens the A will have improved him more than it did us or he will have an oddly slow played monster.
i’d bet-fold if i don’t have much read on vallian. I don’t think there’s a lot of air in his range by the river. he’d bet at least once with his air on the flop or turn.
a big portion of his range should be medium strength (one pair) hand that he’s willing to take it to showdown.
A bet would often get called by Ax (x<T) hands and pocket pairs. Ax hands may or may not bet when checked to. but he'd mostly check back pocket pairs, which may call a bet on the river.
VILLAIN’S FLOP LINE
I don’t think he’s going to be checking the flop that often. Top Pair+ is likely betting the flop, TT/88/A9s/T9s/98s/97s/A5s/65s/54s might also bet a lot of the time, 87s, QTs, and T8s will be semi-bluffing, and even KQ/KTs will be betting frequently.
When he checks he likely holds 88-66, 44-22, and his Ace-high hands. He also holds some of the hands from the betting range that he will sometimes check.
VILLAIN’S TURN LINE
I think his turn checking distribution will be severely unbalanced, narrowed to the weaker part of his range. We can almost certainly eliminate slowplayed strong hands (Jx+) and almost all strong semibluff hands. We can even deweight most of the thin value hands he might have checked the flop with: his split pairs of Nines and Fives. He might bet those rather than give a free card to an apparently weak range.
So what remains with a high frequency are showdown hands such as 77-66, 44-22, his Ace-highs, KQ/KTs, and a few other wiffed hands (only 76s comes to mind).
THE RIVER: VALUE-BETTING
Since he is never folding a better hand on this river, betting must gain value strictly from worse hands that will call.
Once the Ace appears, what are your value targets?
If you expect him to have bet the flop or turn often with TT-88 and his split pairs of Nines and Fives, then your prime value targets are hands like 66/44/33, A8s, A7s, A6s, A4s, and A3s.
That’s 28 combos, 18 of which Villain would be hard pressed to call since your line matches up with Ax so well.
So you might get a call from Ad8d, Ac8c, Ad7d, Ac7c, Ad6d, Ac6c, Ad4d, Ac4c, Ad3d, Ac3c (10 combos), assuming he opens those from the HJ. And you’ll definitely get called by the better Aces or the same hand (including his rare two-pair, A2s, or very weirdly played A9s/A5s): AdKd, AcKc, AdQd, AcQc, AdTd, AcTc, Ac2c, AdKh, AdKs, AdKc, AcKd, AcKh, AcKs, AdQh, AdQs, AdQc, AcQd, AcQh, AcQs, AdTs, AdTc, AcTd, AcTs ( ~23 combos).
The problem is that of the hands that you beat that he might call with:
*the strongest non-Ace hands would have bet the flop or turn (TT/88, KJs)
*most of the rest will be too weak to call given your line and the Ah river.
So I think a bet will fail to yield the 50% equity baseline for two main reasons:
*If he holds an Ace in his hand with A2s+/ATo+, there are more combos of Ax that beat you then there are of ones you beat (especially considering he will ALWAYS call you with AK/AQ and might fold sometimes with A4s/A3s).
*He will fold most hands weaker than A3s due to your line and the Ah river.
THE RIVER: CHECK-CALLING
Check-calling is great if Villain will:
*bluff often (bet with hands after you check he wouldn’t call with if you’d bet)
*value bet worse
I don’t think Villain will bluff the river often. His range after check/checking IP is skewed towards his showdown hands and away from his strong hands and drawing hands. I estimated he opened with ~20%. That range is such that it doesn’t leave behind much air (and he would have probably bet air on the flop often).
And so even though Hero might fold King-high or a small PP on the river, I think Villain’s much more likely to be betting for value with the showdown hands that became pairs of Aces. I don’t think we can assume strongly that after checking twice he will necessarily turn 66/44/33 into a bluff on the river either.
But if you check he will bet worse Aces for value with a high probability (and may bluff with some frequency) and you’ll likely be getting 3-to-1 on the river if he bets after your triple-check, so you should have enough equity to call.
CONCLUSION
Check-calling > bet-folding.
One thing that I think we should note is that any hand that beats us is extremely likely to be betting on the river, and we plan on calling that bet if we check. The point being that since we are going to be putting in money on the river against all the hands that beat us by check calling we should be looking only at the range of hands of that we beat to see if betting or check-calling is best. What do we beat? Well earlier I put down a likely range of “Hands like Ax, 5x, pairs below 9, possibly 9x all fit the description in, I think, descending order of liklihood” This was based on reasoning that he was likely to have a hand with some show down value but that wasn’t super strong as we can expect that many players will bluff or value bet with total air and strong hands respectively. We beat 5 of his Ax combos and everything else in that range. Of course there is some chance that he has total air and might bluff reasoning that the A is a good card. If we think that this is very likely then we can decide to check and call. However, I think that based on the action we are more likely to get called on our bet than we are to induce a bluff by checking. 1/2 pot or slightly less seems good.
Excellent post, Andy! As you’ll see I disagree slightly with your conclusion, but I think your hand-reading is spot on here and very well explained.
I think its never too early at a poker table to start establishing the image you want to project. Slow play, calling station, TAG, bully … Certainly winning every ‘obtainable’ pot is important, but being this deep I dont really think that anything you do here would be considered spewy going forward.
I was once told that you should always show your first bluff … is an overbet (400+) turning our hand into a bluff? Do you want to show that if your opponents dont cbet us that we will ‘slow play’ our Aces to showdown? Will our opponents respect our future ‘Ace on the River’ bets since we bet for value here (250ish)?
We cant really go wrong here … even check calling can send a message to those at the table about how we play the game. “Really, he risked losing value on the River by checking top pair?” In this case here we are OOP so we dont get to see our opponents cards if it gets checked down or we see a fold to our bet so that leaves 3 choices.
1) Value bet 250 and get called by a wider range of V holdings or fold to a raise.
2) Polarize bet of 400+ and get called by ‘only’ hands that beat us or fold to a raise.
3) Check and maybe miss value or see our opponents holdings by calling his bet.
I dont really like the idea of allowing our opponent to ‘bluff’ at such a small pot since it may discourage them from doing it later when there is more on the line. People are more likely to be ‘mad’ at themselves for curious calling a River bet than feeling like they got slow played and thus put a target on ourself. So that wipes out #3.
So it comes down to ABC poker … #1 or edgy poker … #2. If we are more prone to polarizing types of bets then I would lean more towards #2 since we actually have ‘something’ for showdown if called this first time showing that style. I would expect to see 66-88 types of hands if we go the ABC route, so I guess I would lean more towards a bet of 400 and fold to any serious raise, but call a min raise to see the cards. GL
Thanks for the comment, answer. I know you and I have disagreed about this before, but I’ll say again that I think you’re putting far too much stock in trying to project a particular image and in wanting to see your opponent’s cards. Many of your opponents probably won’t be forming much of an image of you one way or another anyway, and for those who do I think it’s better just to play the image that you have rather than pay good money to try to cultivate a specific one. In other words, I usually try to determine the most profitable line for the hand I’m playing now without regard to how it will affect my image going forwards. Once the hand is over, I will consider its affect on my image and adapt accordingly in future hands, but I rarely take a line I consider substandard simply for the purpose of cultivating an image.
Likewise I don’t think it’s worth 400 chips just to Villain’s cards. Suppose you call that raise and see AK. How will you profit from that? What will it enable you to do in the future that you couldn’t otherwise do?
tldr; The ace represents a good card to bet out on because it polarizes our range and he should look us up sometimes.
I won’t write a novel about this hand but will say that I would bet 200-250 and would fold to any raise bigger than a min-raise. If the villain is a thinking player he could know that the Ace represents a scare card and that we could (and probably should) bet our bluffs as well as our value hands on this river card based on the way the action played out. Therefore he should call with most of his holdings. I would call a min-raise because his range looks awfully weak and unless he rivered a two pair, I would guess that the check/check/min-raise line is bluffy.
Just because his range was weak before the river doesn’t mean it’s weak on the river, because the river card is one that ought to improve his non-pair range considerably. In other words, much of what he’s checking back on the flop and turn is Ax, so the river is actually a very good card for his previously weak range.
Bet folding seems terrible, unless he raises to like 3k+ and even then it would hurt.
If you had any reads that villain might bluff, then check/calling is nice … and it allows you to more easily check KQ/etc. But I’d be more tempted to bet like 150, and snap call any sane raise (assuming we’ll also bet/fold that with our 76s type hands).
Why does it seem terrible? I’d consider it a very easy fold if raised.
My philosophy is that non-elite players strongly prefer cheap bluffs to expensive bluffs. So I’m not going to expect a guy who passed up two opportunities to take a small stab at the pot in a very standard/easy spot to suddenly make a much larger bluff raise in a much more uncommon bluffing spot.
> Why does it seem terrible? I’d consider it a very easy fold if raised
Just that top pair and 3rd nut kicker has to be near the top of our range for this action and board, and without reads he can be checking down like 66/77/88 (or worse) and then thinks it’s obvious he can only beat complete bluffs on the river … but we can almost never have a good hand either. It’s also not obvious that he raises all the likely hands that beat us: AK, AQ, A5, A2 (and esp. an A9 that didn’t bet flop). So he has to have like JJ/99/AA that checked two streets, 22 that checked one (and didn’t bluff flop) or 43 that didn’t semi-bluff turn.
I may well not have subdued my calling daemon as much as you though :).
I don’t disagree with any of that reasoning, I just don’t think it’s relevant against many opponents. Folding the top of your range is a good way to exploit players who don’t have bluffing or thin value ranges when they raise, and I think this is a spot where that’s what I’d assume about a non-elite opponent. Basically you’re right that it’s an exploitable fold, I just don’t think it matters. And yes, “But it’s the top of my range!” is definitely one of the calling demon’s favorite manifestations among better players.
About any worse hand that villain will call hero’s river bet with (smaller aces) will likely bet anyway if hero checks. Checking and calling gets value plus catches some bluffs. Villain can have KQ/KT/QT and figure the A is a good bluff card for him.
this is a potentially good spot to overbet the river like ~750. it looks so much fishier and less value-y than a 1/2 or 2/3 psb. expect villain to fold the majority of the time, as villain’s range is comprised predominantly of unpaired air.
as played, villain will sometimes curiosity/hero call with second best pocket pairs along with worse Ax because hero’s line seems so bluffy (a slightly better run-out would be if the board wasn’t rainbow, and had a flush or straight draw). even if villain folds pocket pairs, hero has set up image to overbet future rivers.
some of the time, hero gets called by AK/AQ/AJ which is sad, but 750 isn’t much relative to 20K, and again there is added image value.
not worried about being raised by either better or worse hands on this board. either way, easy fold.
Thanks for the comment, pepito. I’ll address overbetting in my results post, but I just wanted to add here that I don’t think “750 isn’t much relative to 20K” is a good way to think about a poker situation. Among other things, it applies at least as much to the 750 you win when ahead as it does to the 750 you lose when behind. Beyond that, though, the profitability of a play simply doesn’t depend on how much money is in your stack. This is a recipe for losing money when you have a big stack.
Preflop you both have wide ranges for the min-raise and call from the big blind. Post-flop the way both players have checked would eliminate mostly the strongest hands (sets and two pair) from both ranges and maybe some of the draws – basically both players are acting like they have nothing. So one plan is to check and continue to act like you have nothing, hoping that this will induce him to either bluff or value bet a weaker hand a high enough percentage of the time compared to the times he has a stronger hand than yours to make your call of his bet worth it. However, I’m worried that given his line so far, he’s not going to bluff hands like KQ that much at all and will just check back weaker A’s and hands like QJ & JT and only bet AQ or better. So I choose to value bet the river, planning to fold to a raise. I like 300 – that should get a call from all his weaker A’s and most of his other one pair hands.