WCOOP Review: Fold the Turn?

26 thoughts on “WCOOP Review: Fold the Turn?”

1. You 2x from utg in a 6max with antes and get 3bet. Your opening range in this spot should be decently wide, so I think you should 4b to 13.5bb, intending to call a shove. On the flop, did you consider a b/3b line? I think your turn read that he’d bet more with a bluff is wrong if this is a decent, thinking player. The board is paried and he has position on you and he bet a great leverage amount. This is exactly how he should play a bluff imo. Something went wrong on an earlier street and now your lack of position is crippling you.

2. I had exactly the same thought as mwalsh. I really like taking the initiative and leading out on the flop here. If you bet, say, 7BB, you can then profitably shove over any raise size (and I’d snap call if for some reason villain decided to shove over our bet).

   If villain calls then my plan would be to continue betting on almost any turn card (and very happily bet-fold if villain raises this specific turn card), but probably shut down on the river if we don’t hit any of our outs.

   The line taken seems to make it too easy for a good villain to use his position to take the pot away at a time when we have something approaching a monster hand, especially 6-handed, and it also seems to make it quite unlikely we get full value from what will very often be the best hand, both pre-flop and on the flop.

   • Thanks for the suggestion, guys. Donking is something I probably ought to do more often in 3bet pots, especially when I suspect the 3better has a wide range.

     • I don’t think I have ever seen anyone layout proper donking strategy. As a matter of fact, almost none of the good players I’ve learned from do it consistently in the material I have studied so I have no idea how to use it. Is this material available anywhere?

       • I’ve never seen a good strategic break down of donk betting.

         The closest is probably Will Tipton’s “Expert Heads Up No Limit Hold’em”. (Disclaimer, this is not any easy book to read. Read some reviews to see if it is for you. It is a great book in the way that Mathematics of Poker is a great book.)

         There is some discussion of game theory betting strategies OOP against the raiser in a heads up game.

         It seems like the ‘standard’ exploitative style of play is to almost never donk but that is very unlikely to actually be best IMO.

       • I think that donk betting is probably just ‘too hard’ to do well.

       • Maybe the idea with donk betting this type of hand on the flop is that you are indifferent to what villain does (as long as you are willing to get it in).

       • I wonder if it is best to donk when you DO care what Villain does and you can’t count on him doing the right thing:

         1) Donk when Villain is too likely to bet smaller than you’d like.

         2) Donk when Villain is too likely to check and you want a bet to go in.

         3) Donk when Villain is too likely to bet larger than you’d like but is not too likely to raise your smaller donk.

         • I’m not sure about (3) but (1) and (2) are basically my thinking on the matter. Donking is pot control prevention. You might want to protect/start building a pot with a strong hand or threaten a big pot with a weak one, but either way it’s something to do when you don’t want to give your opponent the opportunity to keep the pot small. If you think he’s very likely to bet, it’s probably not a good idea to donk, because whether you’re going to value bet or bluff, you’re still better off letting him put chips into the pot with the bottom of his range before you do that.

         • If Villain habitually cbets on the large side I think a blocking donk bet could be a reasonable option.

3. QQ+ is a total of 9 combos here, it really comes down to looking at what he does with hands like 1010/99/JJ/AQ/AJ. and what hands he selects as bluffs, if we think that this is only QQ+ exactly then folding is good, if we are ranging him that strongly then the 1/3 of combos we are dead against are going to create reasonably reverse big implied odds.

   strong case for scoping your opponent?

4. I think this is a fold. His bet sizing indicates he isn’t worried about protecting his hand and he is setting up a pot size shove for your stack on the river. I think his range is something like 80% nuts, 10 to 15% bluffs, 5 to 10% medium hand where you have outs. That doesn’t seem like the right price to me.

5. Hello,

   I think that you can check/raise all in. I think it’s important to make the last bet here. He can call with JJ or fold, it is not important, because you now have a lot of outs and for future hands you can balance your range with made hands.

6. I think on the turn I like a check raise the most. You called a 3 bet from UTG, then check called the flop. If your opponent just calls you have outs against him. But, I think your play looks really strong and you will probably get a lot of folds, like K/Q. Pre flop I think you left yourself susceptible to the 3 bet with the min raise, so your opponents range could still be very wide.

7. While the nut nothing here is a decent bluff catcher, are you prepared to stack off in this spot? Flat the turn and the pot is 37.82 BB, 83% of Hero’s remaining 45.38 BB for a rough SPR of 1.2/1. Why is Hero involved in a big pot OP with draws/air? Using your own hand reading rubric (excellent video series BTW, well worth the quarterly $ for TPE) we can discount monsters from villain’s range when he bets <1/3 pot on the turn. Villain’s range is weighted toward broadway hands that made top pair (AQ, KQ, QJ), middle pairs and a few weaker flush draws. If Hero would indeed fold to a river bet if he spiked an A or K, his options are: 1. bluff-raise the turn with the intention of check-folding the river (weak line), 2. float the turn and bluff-raise the river if it bricks (maybe 20% against v’s range), 3. fold.
   I think this a four-bet fold pre flop. Doyle wrote in the original SS that he loved AK more than big pocket pairs because it was a drawing hand, and as such it was easy to let it go. By calling OP pre Hero allowed villain to take the more aggressive line; Hero played the AK as a passive trapping hand, making it harder to let go. I try to avoid these spots.

   • I’m definitely not discounting monsters from Villain’s range at any point. That small bet could easily be to induce, and he can still access stacks on the river so it’s not like he has to bet big to build a big pot. If I 4-bet preflop, it’s certainly not with the intention of folding. Against wide ranges, which isn’t necessarily what I was up against here, AK is a hell of a lot more than a drawing hand. Thanks for the kind words about the videos 🙂

8. This is a surprisingly interesting hand. Seems like an obvious spot to me but you and the commenters appear to think differently. 8)

   Why are you raising so small pre-flop? There are antes and you are still min-raising UTG? Seems to me that you would want to play fairly tight and open larger when you are going to be out of position. A while back I did a thorough analysis of my 6-handed cash game play and found that I was only able to profit UTG with a very strong range. You are better than I am and tournaments may be different but – Have you analyzed your UTG profitability in your poker database?

   I would probably have raised to something like 3 or 3.5 BB pre. Maybe even a little bigger so I can comfortably 4 bet all-in.

   As played after CO raises I think this is a clear 4 bet with 54 BB. I would 4 bet fairly large to maximize fold equity because a lot of the marginal hands that might call us are races where we’d prefer a fold. So, 4 bet to maybe 20 BB and call a shove.

   As played on the flop I’m check-raising all day. We have very, very good equity against all but QQ. There’s no problem getting it all in and there’s a good chance we can get Villain to fold. What’s not to like? The raise size is a bit awkward because we can’t generate a lot of fold equity AND leave Villain room to bluff. So, I just focus on the fold equity and raise to something like 20 BB. I wouldn’t mind shoving but my instinct is that you will get more folds with a big but not all-in bet.

   As played I don’t think it matters between calling and folding. If I called I would probably try to check down when I hit top pair and bet small when I hit the flush, folding to a raise. Check/fold all other cards. I may slightly prefer calling the turn to folding because you will get to show down and win a decent amount of hte time.

   • I don’t have nearly enough of a sample size to look at numbers for UTG profitability in post-ante tournament situations. There’s certainly a case for raising larger, and it’s something I’ve experimented with a bit. Generally for short-stacked poker with antes, I’m more inclined to build my pre-flop game around stealing as much as possible rather than building pots with strong hands, and that means minimizing my risk for an attempted steal which means min-raising.

     Check-raising the flop is surely going to be profitable, it’s just a question of whether calling is more profitable. Calling gives V more rope to bluff if we think his range is wide (either at blanks or at cards that hit Hero’s hand), it gives Hero some strength on cards that will generally be perceived as good barreling cards, and it may even set V up to put more money into the pot with made hands he’s eventually going to fold when H pulls the trigger.

     Or if we think he has a strong range, which I did, then there’s not much fold equity (though admittedly you don’t need much and I may well be overestimating my ability to soul read from OOP) and you may be able to make better decisions on future streets.

   • Do you successfully steal from UTG 6 handed with antes with that small of a bet? I don’t play tournaments but that has to be terrible play by your opponents if so.

     Short handed, short stacked, and tournament poker are all about stealing but I’m just surprised that it can work to this extreme.

   • I’m finding this hand super interesting – thanks for this one.

     I think about this situation much differently than you do, which isn’t usually the case.

     On the flop I don’t particularly want to keep Villain’s bluffing hands in. I doubt that Villain’s range has enough hands worse than AK after a pre-flop 3 bet. Maybe my perception of Villain’s range is way off because I mostly play 6-max 100 BB cash.

     I agree that there are situations where we get more value from Villain bluffing on the cards that hit us. I just think it is too likely here that Villain has a made hand but one that will be reluctant to pay us off if we hit.

     If we were in position it would be very different. I think it is much harder to get paid off OOP which makes the semi-bluff more attractive.

9. An interesting bit of math to consider pre-flop:

   Once CO puts in the raise and Hero is at least going to call there are 13.82 BB in the pot (2.22 blinds and antes, 5.8 twice in bets).

   Hero has 48.38 left in his stack. If Hero goes all-in and is called the pot will be 110.58.

   How much equity does Hero need if he’s always called? He only needs 43.75% equity in that 110.58 to match his 48.38 stack. AsKs has 45.7% equity against the top 4% of hands which is something like 88+ and AK.

   How much equity does Hero have if he calls? Hero is out of position against a 3 bettor. When Hero hits an ace or king it smacks his perceived range. There are some implied odds against worse aces and kings but Hero is often only going to win the cbet and the pre-flop pot. When Hero whiffs it is going to be very hard to continue on anything but a flush draw.

   Also, Villain is going to fold to a 4-bet. Maybe fairly often. That’s a great result – Hero gets to add about 25% to his stack.

   AKs is an interesting hand because it is only dominated pre-flop by 6 combos. It also benefits a lot from always seeing the turn and river. That, IMO, makes it a great hand for playing aggressively pre-flop – especially with shallower stacks because the money already in the pot is often enough to make a shove +EV. In this case there’s already 13.82 in the pot when it is time to 4-bet which is more than 1/4 of Hero’s stack.

   • Hard to argue with any of that, especially from out of position. FWIW I did have, let’s call it a hunch because I didn’t have enough info for a read, that Villain was pretty strong. Not sure it matters though.

10. So far we have all the ingredients to play GTO, and as far as I can judge, up until the turn, that is what you have done.

    Also, the GTO turn play, as far as I can judge, and as far as I know, is to call.

    I don’t really see anything else to do. Hero folding would be grossly FPS.

    With n=5, our price is 23.82:7, and holding two overs and the nut flush draw besides the nut high, I think folding would be equivalent to rendering roughly six volumes of Epistemological Humility Quarterly alight.

    • Do you think the bet sizing might be GTO? I’d be VERY surprised.

      • Andrew only made one bet, which as far as I know (no one knows these things exactly) was GTO sizing. Villain’s sizings not being GTO aren’t really here or there in this spot I don’t think.

    • Well said, as usual. Wouldn’t be the most grossly FPS thing I’ve done, though usually those don’t involve folding.

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