What’s Your Play? Bad Runout for an Overpair Results

I’m really impressed by the comments on What’s Your Play? Bad Runout for an Overpair. I was actually reluctant to post it so soon after begging for more comments, because it seems like the biggest reason people have for not commenting is a concern that they don’t have a feel for how higher-stakes games play. Admittedly, this is a hand that relies on your opponents having some hand reading skill and some discipline, but you all really rose to the occasion with some insightful comments. I think there was a consensus that Hero was probably beat but had some chance of winning at showdown and also that the Villains were both quite unlikely to have flushes. The disagreement, rightly, revolved around what to do in that situation.

Hero is Probably Behind

Besides the fact that the board has run out in a quite unfavorable way, Villain 1 has given some indication that he can beat JJ. As Brent says, “I assume Villain 1 has something, since the turn card is pretty great for him to continue betting on if his hand had zero showdown value.”

Piefarmer likewise narrows the other player’s range based on his flop call: “Villain 2 narrows to pocket pairs, likely those that give a straight draw, possibly flush draws.”

Although it’s possible to put both players on pairs that Hero can beat, it takes some optimism on this board. We might be able to win something like 20% of showdowns, which ain’t nothin’. Because both players probably have showdown value, I don’t expect a lot of bluffs if Hero checks. That means we’ll get to showdown a lot, but that any bluffs they do make are going to cost us the pot, because I wouldn’t feel good about calling here. Granted there aren’t a lot of hands that can value bet, but sets and two-pair are a real possibility especially for Villain 1, a good deal more likely I think than bluffs.

Should Hero Bluff?

Neither Villain is likely to have a flush here. Any time you are confident that your opponent(s) don’t have any of the best possible hands, you should at least consider bluffing. How do we know there are no flushes out there? Sean makes the case for Villain 2:

“When the turn checks through, I think that defined V2′s range very well. We can take flushes (and any sets) out of V2s range because V1 checked in front of him and V2 would want to bet his hand to get value from hero and let his friend know that he has a hand. I think he very few aces in his range because the aces he had in his range after the flop were mostly flush draws, which the As on the board now blocks. I didn’t put many other Ax hands in his range after the flop because I doubt he is calling V1′s early position preflop raise with likely dominated hands like A9 or A7, and I expect that he would have folded his other aces to his friend’s cbet on the flop, as he is not likely to float with AQo or something. This caps his range at various pairs that hit the flop and hands like JJ-TT,88.”

TaddisVonBaddis does a nice job of capping Villain 1’s range:

“With a flush I would expect him to try to build the pot, regardless of his flush strength (I say this because on that flop there are very little pure floats from Andrew oop or from Mr. Straightfoward in the CO so it is reasonable to think that both V2 and Andrew have either pairs, flush draws or T8/68 as their most likely holdings). Certainly there is a case for checking QJss or JTss here but V2′s playing straightforward almost handcuffs V1 because he knows V2 is checking behind the vast majority of the time and won’t want to leave himself with just the river to build the pot with such a strong hand.”

If you expect to lose often at showdown but think your opponents probably don’t have nutted hands, well, that’s a formula for bluffing. In this case, Hero has non-trivial showdown value, so the bar for a profitable bluff is pretty high. A bluff would have to have not just greater $0 EV but greater than $131 EV, if we go with that estimate that Hero will win 20% of the time at showdown.

What’s the Target?

Just as with value betting, you should have a target for your bluffs. Your goal isn’t necessarily to maximize fold equity, it’s to maximize the equity of the bluff. Sometimes that means setting your sights lower, accepting that you’ll be called by some better hands, but minimizing your risk. Having a clear idea of what you are and aren’t trying to make your opponent fold will help you determine the ideal bet size to maximize your risk:reward ratio.

In this case, we’re mostly concerned about folding out better one-pair hands, specifically AQ. These make up the bulk of the range of hands to which Hero will lose at showdown.

There are two ways to do this: try to represent a wider value range, including flushes and two-pairs, with a modest bet, or try to represent only a flush with a big, possibly over-, bet. The former has the advantage of risking less. It also has the disadvantage of requiring more hand-reading and discipline on the parts of our opponents. A bet of half to two-thirds of the pot offers awfully enticing odds, and many players are reluctant to fold top pair, especially after checking it on the turn. PokerWilo warns that, “All checking the turn doesn’t necessarily mean they likely do not have an ace. They could easily be pot controlling and inducing river bluffs by hero which they intend to call.”

I agree that anyone who checked an Ace on the turn didn’t do so with the intention of folding the river. We know these players will be skeptical of Hero. To be successful, then, we need to give whomever might have an Ace something he wasn’t counting on when he checked the turn. Carl Mellor suggests that, “we bet pretty big to apply maximum pressure. Polarize our range. Our story adds up, we have the flush…. It’s going to be very hard for anyone to hero call with Ax here.” Even for someone who checked expecting to bluff catch, calling a huge bet with one pair isn’t going to be a trivial decision.

Brett asks, “Would we really get to the river without a bet with any suited connectors or hands that we normally call a preflop raise OOP with? All the broadway cards give us over cards and close to nut flush draws on the flop and all the small suited connectors give us a pair + flush draw and or straight draw on the flop. Those seems like betting hands. So if I were the Villains I would call BS on any attempt for us to rep the flush on the river.”

To my mind, this is another reason to overbet. The more bluff-heavy our range will be perceived to be, the bigger the bet should be. And in fact, because of its showdown value, JJ is not the very best bluffing candidate available to Hero. So if we’re going to bluff T8s, 86s, TT, and also JJ, we’re going to have a legitimately wide bluffing range.

That said, I don’t think it’s inconceivable for Hero to show up with a flush here. As deep as we are, raising and getting it in with a combo draw or two overs and a flush draw isn’t automatic. There are good reasons why I might just overcall with a big draw, and that’s assuming the Villains are sufficiently sophisticated hand readers to actually consider which specific combinations of flush cards would make sense for Hero.

The final advantage of overbetting is that it may result in the Villains folding hands even stronger than Ax. After all, even top set is just a bluff-catcher, with no blockers to our value range, when we bomb the river.

A few people suggested check-raising. This isn’t without merit – it enables us to take our showdown value some of the time and get some more money into the pot before we win it with the bluff – but I think too many better hands check behind. People really don’t like thin value betting in big pots, especially not into multiple opponents on scary boards. I wouldn’t be shocked at all to see AQ get checked on the river, or even 97.

Results

To be honest, sizing overbets is something I’m still working on figuring out. There is a game theoretically optimal way of calculating this, but I don’t think that’s what we should be going for here. We just want to bet the smallest amount that will cause someone with a non-flush hand to say, “Holy shit, that’s a big bet. Ugh. I guess he has a flush.”

I settled on $1000. That may sound risky, but even if we get looked up 30% of the time – and I think the actual result will be closer to 0% – it’s better than checking and winning 20% of the time at showdown, which is itself an optimistic estimate.

Villain 1 angrily announced “I fold,” and Villain 2 followed suit without any drama. Villain 1 was very upset that I bet a “ridiculous” amount, saying that he had a set of 9s and would have called “five or six hundred”. This corroborates my suspicion that the success rate on this bluff will be damn near 100%.

Thanks again for all the great comments. I hope this has given you confidence that, if you take your time and think through it, you can figure out what’s going on in a hand even if the stakes are bigger than you usually play!