I’m really impressed with the comments on What’s Your Play? TPTK Facing Strange Line. More than a few of you have gotten to the heart of a tricky situation in a more succinct way than I’m about to do.
In my eyes, the flop check-raise polarizes Villain’s range to the point where AK becomes a bluff-catcher. I didn’t expect to see worse Kx or pocket pairs raising. Villain won’t be ahead with these hands when called (he can beat some hands but is behind my range; Kx may be ahead if I fold and UTG3 calls, but it won’t be a huge favorite and that’s a somewhat rare outcome), and he’d be better served by using hands with less showdown value for his bluffs, as he has plenty of them.
The turn and river don’t do much to change this dynamic. Both players have busted flush draws in their ranges, some of which will contain the 9s, and neither is likely to have 99. Villain has more 9s combos, but this is because he also has more busted flush draw combos. Chris Clough explains this nicely:
“When he raises the flop, I’d expect it to be a 4 or a flush draw most of the time. And some of those flush draws will have the 9s in them. Given he was closing the action in the BB he could plausibly call with an extremely wide range here, perhaps anything from 9s6s upwards, which would give 6 possible combos that give him 9s full by the river. He could also have a 4 with a variety of other cards – possibly 2,3,4,5,6,7,Q,K,A, and maybe even one or two other suited combos – but I think even a conservative appraisal of his range must give him at least 20-30 combos with a 4. Plausible spade draws (excluding the 9s already accounted for) would be things like QJ, Q10, J10, 10-8, 8-7, 8-6, 7-6, 7-5, 7-4, 6-5, 5-3 – that’s 11 combos – although I’d say it’s highly doubtful he raises all of these on the flop.””
It’s worth thinking about my range for calling the check-raise as well. Especially with UTG3 sitting behind me, I can really only call with Kx+ and flush draws. So I’ve got suited connectors possibly as low as 65s at the bottom end of my range and KK or 44 at the top, I’m heavy on two-pair and flush draw hands, and I have relatively few combos of trips or better.
All of this means that later in the hand, I can’t bet AK expecting to be called by a lot of worse made hands. Villain shouldn’t have many in his range, and my range for getting to the river is not going to be heavy on hands that need to bluff, especially since many of my flush draws will be to the nuts and thus will have showdown value vs the hands Villain is most likely to fold. There’s some value in betting to charge flush draws on the turn, but on the river the As in my hand eliminates one of the few worse hands I’d expect Villain to consider calling with after taking this line.
What Do Those Checks Mean?
The really critical question is whether Villain’s turn and river checks virtually eliminate full houses from his range, such that any check-raise would have to be weighted towards bluffs. Several commenters assume that this must be true simply because a turn and/or river bet is likely to be called by hands that may not value bet. There are two problems with this logic:
1. As Chris argued above, Villain has a LOT of 4x in his range for seeing the flop. Thus even if this is an odd line that he would take somewhat rarely, he has enough combos of 4x that they don’t become trivial.
2. If checking twice will lead Hero to bet-call exploitably often on the river, then Villain should check a 4 twice. I imagine that the optimal strategy is to bet most 4s on either the turn or river but check some of them, and I don’t think there is grounds to assume that Villain is betting his full houses exploitably often.
The Cost of Betting
Given the arguments above, there’s no sense in bet-folding this hand on the river. Most of the value in betting would come from snapping off a check-raise if Villain is overbluffing. If you’re confident that he will, then go ahead and bet-call.
I wasn’t so sure about that in game, so let’s see what it would take to make bet-calling correct if Villain check-raises a balanced range. As Gareth correctly points out, we can look at opening ourselves up to a check-raise as a cost of betting and then weigh it against the potential advantages.
Because it’s relatively difficult for me to have bluffs, I would want to bet a small amount on the river, let’s say $400. If Villain shoved $3600 total, I’d need to call $3200 to win $8200, so a balanced shoving range would include approximately 3 bluffs for every 8 value hands, and calling would be $0 EV for me.
Checking against that same range would see me win the pot 3 times out of 11, so betting against that range costs me $273 (3/11 of the $1000 pot) relative to checking. To make betting worthwhile, I’d have to more than make up that $273 from Villain’s calls. Thus, Villain’s calling-with-worse frequency (we’ll assume he never calls with better) needs to be x such $400x > $273. Solving for x, we see that Villain needs to call more than 68% of the time that he doesn’t fold. If Villain shoves 3 bluff combos and 8 value combos, he has to call with 24 combos of worse to make betting $400 better than checking.
Edit: Thanks to Nate Meyvis for pointing out an error here. Together we were able to work out the correct answer. Assume that Hero folds to a check-raise (if Villain is truly balanced, then EV of call = EV of fold). Then relative to checking, Hero loses $400 to 8 combos of full houses and $1400 to 3 combos of bluffs, which is $7400 Hero needs to make up in calls. $7400/$400 = 18.5, so Villain would have to call with at least 19 combos of lesser hands to justify betting.
For those doubting that Villain will show up with a full house very often on the river, the point is that he doesn’t need to. Halving these numbers such that Villain only checks 4 combos of 4x or 9x on the river still means that we have to find 12 nearly 10 combos of worse hands that check-raise the flop and check-call the river.
Results
I checked it back and Villain showed K5s, which is either an anomaly or an indication that I should value bet the river.
If it’s not an anomaly, then I think it’s a mistake. Some commenters argued that check-raising hands like this enables Villain to “set his own price” for getting to showdown if it leads to me not value betting river. Even if I am missing value with AK relative to betting three streets, Villain is putting in additional money against some of my weaker Kx that wouldn’t have bet more than one street against a check-call. Also by weakening his check-call range he makes my bluffs more profitable.
It’s worth noting that against a more straightforward opponent I would be less concerned about a river check-raise and thus more willing to value bet thinly.
Other Opinions
PokerSnowie takes my line 100% with this hand but does actually check-raise Villain’s hand 2%, so as an anomaly maybe it’s not so bad.
Chad, the Villain from this hand, posted it on Facebook where it garnered a few notable comments that I’ll reproduce here.
Christian Harder: ” Think you have to at least consider betting to protect your floats. Obvious caveat is what can he call you with. Ace high could talk himself into calling.” Christian later seemed to back off from this a bit when he realized I held the As.
Brian Hastings: “Think it’s a pretty easy check, not like we have many zero showdown value floats after raising UTG and bet calling flop 4 way…”
Andrew, do you really think that 6s5s is a profitable bet/call OTF? Aren’t you concerned that BB and the UTG+3 cold caller often have better flush draws? And if BB doesn’t have a FD, he has trips most of the time? It seems hard to bluff when you miss, and even if you make a flush villain may have a better one or end up folding trips.
Good point. This would of course make it even harder for me to show up with air on the river.
Andrew: am I just being dense here?
I take the $400x > $273 inequality (x > .6825) as showing that Villain has to call at least .6825 as often as he raises. (Every hand he raises costs you .6825 as much as a hand he calls makes for you.) So if he raises 11 combinations, he would need to call with ~7.5 combinations to make your bet breakeven.
Sorry if I’m all wrong!
FWIW I think it’s a check even if I’m right. I’m with Stinger–waiting a while to show more aggression after your range has been narrowed doesn’t somehow undo the narrowing of your range. Also because of all the other stuff you said.
(FWIW this sort of situation arises in stud games where a player is forced into a tight range on third street. Even if it’s a long ways from third street to seventh street, that doesn’t change the fact that sometimes he’s just got to have a big hand. Recall Caro on stud high-low no qualifier: “If a decent player calls a raise with a J, he’s rolled up.”)
I find this hand to be interesting because of the BB’s play and hand. Because of the reverse implied odds and playing out of position I’m wondering if Villain could have taken a different line to get you to fold.
I’m wondering if there is any possible line that villain takes to get you to fold?
cR, Bet, Allin the River?
cR, Bet, Bet?
Brief, partial thoughts:
This is a fair question. I think the WYP here makes it clear that BB’s range has more fours and nines in it than Andrew’s. This doesn’t mean that Andrew shouldn’t bet the flop; it just means the BB has a good spot to continue aggressively with a range that includes bluffs.
Because BB can bluff, Andrew needs to call down with some hands. Ideally he would do this with hands that don’t block bluffs and do block value hands. Holding the K helps; holding the As does not help. The situation is also a little trickier, because Andrew has more KK combos than BB (and as many quads, I think). So at the *very* top of ranges, Andrew starts to have the advantage again.
I haven’t worked out the math here, but my guess is that, even if AK is better to call down with than AA here, it probably ought to be folded a lot (especially with the As), and indeed the BB should be able to run Andrew off his hand here.
Also relevant: if Andrew is min-raising, he’s a bit more likely to have A4s, 54s, 64s, etc. in his range.
I don’t think Villain’s intention was or should have been to get me to fold. He actually commented on his facebook post, after I linked the results:
“I didn’t think this was a real interesting hand. I would have bet the river vs me bc I’m a station, and just soul read if I x/j.
I usually don’t play this hand that way, but Andrew is particular floaty so I was ready to x/c in this spot, but could have seen something OTR to change my mind.”
There’s no reason for him to turn a hand this strong into a bluff. The only scenario I can think of is if double-barrel and the river is a spade. In that case, he won’t beat much if I bet the river, and he has a significant blocker to my full houses, so check-shoving the river in that scenario might make sense. But he was check-raising the flop for value, not as a bluff.
Sounds like Villain thinks you should 3b the flop more often than you do. 8)
Thoughts on 3-betting the flop?
3-betting the flop for value…
3betting flop at best seems questionable imo. Maybe with meta and history.
Just because villain thinks Andrew is floaty, it doesn’t mean he expects Andrew to 3bet with worse hands than K5s. Nor does it mean he would call/jam as a result of a 3bet.
So it kinda looks like what he did here was the classic raise to see where i’m at move. once you called and he’s outta position he was pot controlling to get to a cheapish showdown. he’s probably thinking no matter your range here, you are probably never 3-betting him except with possibly only kings full but he holds a blocker, and maybe you raise some of the time with the nut flush draw. anything else you’re either folding or calling. and, that as long as the utg guy folds (which will probably happen often), then it would more than likely go check check on the turn (unless it’s a spade in which case he’ll check fold if you bet). if you have TT-QQ you are probably calling his check raise then checking down if you can or pot controlling in position. which means he got more money in good with his hand than he otherwise would have by just check calling the flop. plus with a flop check calling line, there’s a potential you barrel and he may have to fold the best hand. if you happen to have woken up with AA, again, he’s thinking you’re probably calling flop and checking turn and maybe even checking river for the same reasons you did check the river with top top. granted he’s drawing there to two outs against AA and probably not getting paid off if he hits another king. and if u have kx no ace, he has outs to a chop. now, he did say you’re very “floaty”, so i guess his plan was to check raise flop and check call down depending on bet sizing and possibly making a hero call on a big river bet. i’m not saying his line was well played i’m just trying to understand why he took that line. he knows his image and used it to get to a cheap showdown against a range of hands that he thinks he’s ahead of. and if he is not ahead, chances are it won’t cost him anymore to find out due his potential to put you to the test at any point in the hand. i don’t like betting or raising for information but, sometimes in a multiway pot, it might be best to end the hand right then and there to avoid difficult spots later in the hand. plus you take the lead in the hand, albeit out of position, which allows you to maybe even turn your hand into a bluff depending on your read and/or the turn/river cards.
Foucault, I def like checking the river. Here is a slightly unrelated question, and I’m not sure if you have covered it before. I’ve seen a lot of players that have almost an encyclopedic memory to remember what people have done on past streets, which they may use on the river to make a decision. “If” you are using game theory optimal play for the most part (which obviously might not always been the best money maker, but it is the safest), would you really need to know the “information” that has made up the previous streets? Couldn’t you just use the information at hand (on every street)? The only reason why I ask is because I am a winning player and my memory for hand recall is horrendous, but I feel like I make very good moves on every street based on as much math as I can figure for odd/impliedodds/feel etc. Thank you in advance if you answer this. And honestly, I think most people deviate from game theory optimal play enough that getting tricky in the long run vs solid opponents is a losing strategy (as they will deviate from GTO from time to time also).