What’s Your Play? Miracle Turn Results

Thanks for all the comments on What’s Your Play? Miracle Turn. Ironically, Gareth, in his excellent comment, takes my oft-referenced Value Targeting concept to task for its lack of nuance when I made this post specifically to demonstrate a more nuanced use of it!  “Normally I think the Brokosism that we should value target hands that are second best to ours could lead to the neglection of a villain’s entire range, esp if they are making calling errors, calling 3rd and 8th best hands as well as 2nd best. But I think in this spot it is the perfect guide, and the map says check-raise!”

In this case, the obvious second-best hand is trip Kings. A King is perfectly consistent with Villain’s action thus far, probably moreso than any other hand, so we certainly should think about how to maximize against that hand. If the results turns out to be close, though, we can break the tie by looking at how each line we’re considering performs against other parts of Villain’s range.

Naturally we want to get a lot of money into the pot against a K, and between them the comments picked out the three viable options for doing so: overbetting, check-raising, or bet-raising.

Overbetting

My reluctance to make this play is based on my fear that Villain will not raise with worse, and secondarily that he may not call with an Ace. Villain will be hard-pressed to fold trips to a player he perceives as overly aggressive, but that doesn’t mean he’ll raise. An overbet is a polarizing move that represents that Hero has at least trips, and one thing nits aren’t known for is thin value raises.

I know I said that Villain doesn’t slowplay, but if he makes a strong raise of an overbet, we’d have to reconsider that assumption. Remember, it’s not enough to say “Well, better hands are unlikely, therefore I call,” because worse hands are also unlikely. The question becomes which is more unlikely?

As Which argues, “A huge raise would mean either a bluff, an over valued hand, or another cooler. I would think nits would NOT want to take a chance of losing a whole lot rather than winning more. I feel nits of all players are LESS likely to overbet raise light or over value hands either IP or OOP.” If I overbet, I’d consider calling a min-raise or anything else that seems like it could be bare trips, but would fold to a big raise. For more on this concept, see He Has to Have Something.

“Overbetting” actually describes quite a few different bet sizes. After all, there is only $310 in the pot and more than thirty times that in the effective stacks. If you’re going to make this play, you should put a lot of thought into how much you bet. Since you can’t anticipate a raise from worse, you want to bet as much as you think trips will call. The largest amount I saw anyone suggest was $600, about twice the pot. I’d probably go for $800 – $900. It’s really not that easy to move people off of trips in a blind battle.

I wouldn’t expect this bet ever to be called by an Ace. A bet of about half that has a shot of getting called by top pair, though it’s far from a guarantee, and of course such bets win far less from trips.

Check-Raising

Wtm5012 argues that, “I would say that the most likely scenario is that he is either a) trying to steal, which isn’t very likely considering he’s “nitty” or b) he checked behind an A or a K for pot control on the flop. If he views you as super bluffy, your check-raise is going to look even more like a bluff making him more inclined to pay off with a weak Ace or three kings.”

I don’t see any reason why a check-raise would look more like a bluff than a bet. It seems to me that a bet made before an opponent has shown any interest in the pot is more likely to be a bluff than a raise made after he’s shown interest. I also don’t think this matters terribly much, except for getting called by Aces – until the pot gets really large, I think Villain just isn’t going to fold a King, and probably isn’t going to do a lot of thinking about Hero’s hand and whether or not he’s bluffing.

The bigger problem with check-raising is that I’m not at all certain an Ace will bet. Villain’s better Aces are probably either three-betting pre-flop or betting the flop, and if he has an Ace with a weak kicker, what would be the sense in betting the river?

Gareth raises the possibility of inducing bluffs from QJ or JT, which is worth considering, though even he admits it’s not a big source of value. We know Villain doesn’t bluff much, he’s already had an opportunity to bluff (after Hero checks the flop), and he actually even has some showdown value with Q-high.

The best argument for check-raising is that it may get more money into the pot against a King while looking a bit less strong than bet-raising. Gareth suggests check-raising as big as $1200, which though ambitious assuming Villain bets something like $200 is not out of the question. If you’re going to take this line, you should do it huge, and doing so might well be the best play. It won’t come up often but if a nitty Villain wants to three-bet a huge check-raise, you better be quick to fold your straight.

Bet-Raising

As I argued above, it’s not a given that Villain will raise an overbet, or even a “normal” bet, with bare trips. I also doubt that he’ll call a bet of $200 to $275 with less than an Ace, though it’s not out of the question.

Mobius Dumpling (and also JSfromMTL) makes an interesting argument:

“We bet around 150$ to get value from various hands he’d be bluffcatching with. We size it small enough that he’ll feel enticed to go for value with trips and raise us. If and when he raises, we raise back, around 2/3 pot. Our value target for a river 3-bet is various trip type hands: I think he’ll find it hard to fold KQ or KJ (all combos of which are still in his range) against your river 3-bet, given your image.”

Villain is far more likely to raise a small bet with his trips, so while we’ll win less than a $200 bet would from an Ace, we’ll win a lot more from his weaker trips and maybe also from weaker bluff-catchers.

It’s worth mentioning at this point that Villain actually can have a lot of weak Kx in his range. Samael makes the argument very well:

“I think the villain’s preflop range may be a bit wider than is assumed here despite his nittiness, given the fact that he merely completes the straddle and he may not, in fact should not, fold his decent Kx hands against our aggressive image after the action folded all the way to us in the sb. Besides, he has position on us and this may induce him to defend his straddle with a wider range than is customary for him.”

This is a play I wouldn’t attempt against an extremely good hand reader, as it actually looks quite strong. It’s extremely difficult to bluff like this, betting small hoping to induce a raise just so we can three-bet when Villain could so easily call. So really, he ought to be able to fold his bluff-catchers, certainly including weaker Kx, to a three-bet. Frankly, I just didn’t think he would have the discipline to do that, but I’d much rather check-raise against a very good player.

Results

I bet $125, Villain raised to $325, I raised to $925, and he shrugged and called with what I’m sure was a King. In retrospect, I think I ought to have three-bet bigger or perhaps even check-raised huge as Gareth suggested, trying to get more like $1000 to $1200 into the pot. The more Aces you expect Villain to have in his range, the more sense it makes to go for a three-bet, but I really didn’t expect him to have many.