This is from the $215 4-max WCOOP event. Villain is Chris Moorman. In my experience, this sort of “blatant” continuation betting tends to provoke LAGs, because they want to be the ones picking up all of the pots where no one has anything, and of course that’s going to happen alot on a 552 flop. I’m OK with that because I have position and my range is on-balance stronger than his.
PokerStars – $200+$15|50/100 Ante 10 NL (4 max) – Holdem – 4 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4: http://www.pokertracker.com
BB: 121.31 BB (VPIP: 44.32, PFR: 25.00, 3Bet Preflop: 14.29, Hands: 88)
Hero (CO): 78.18 BB
BTN: 146.22 BB (VPIP: 41.33, PFR: 28.19, 3Bet Preflop: 17.86, Hands: 156)
SB: 22.06 BB (VPIP: 46.36, PFR: 29.80, 3Bet Preflop: 1.75, Hands: 156)
4 players post ante of 0.1 BB, SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB
Pre Flop: (pot: 1.9 BB) Hero has Qc Jd
Hero raises to 2 BB, fold, fold, BB calls 1 BB
Flop : (4.9 BB, 2 players) 5s 5h 2s
BB checks, Hero bets 2.45 BB, BB calls 2.45 BB
Turn : (9.8 BB, 2 players) 8d
BB checks, Hero checks
River : (9.8 BB, 2 players) Qs
BB checks, Hero bets 5.88 BB, BB raises to 19.88 BB, Hero calls 14 BB
BB shows Td As (One Pair, Fives) (Pre 58%, Flop 78%, Turn 86%)
Hero shows Qc Jd (Two Pair, Queens and Fives) (Pre 42%, Flop 22%, Turn 14%)
Hero wins 49.56 BB
To be honest I’m not sure whether the results corroborate my call or not. I’d expect him to bet anything without showdown value on the river, so for him to be bluffing, he has to be taking something that had some showdown value vs my turn check-back range and turning it into a bluff. On the other hand, I also think he’s unlikely to check a flush or trips (and certainly to check-raise trips). So I basically just decided that he’d be sufficiently weighted towards the bluffs. As it turns out, though, he had a pretty ideal bluffing hand, so it really doesn’t prove that he’ll be bluffing a lot in this spot.
“I’d expect him to bet anything without showdown value on the river, so for him to be bluffing, he has to be taking something that had some showdown value vs my turn check-back range and turning it into a bluff.”
I don’t know. The opposite line of reasoning is that your turn check back means your range contains some hands with showdown value and may be prepared to pick off bluffs on the river, making him less inclined to bet out as a bluff. Betting out would represent flushes, trips, 8’s, and Q’s, and some of those hands might have bet out on the turn. That’d be a pretty narrow range of value hands compared to the wide range of whiffs he’d have.
If he thinks you’ll call a lot if he bets out, he would then check a lot, and either just give up or go for a lot of check/raises. Your range looks really weak. I mean what can you bet/call with on the river? You probably bet 8x on the turn, so your B/C range could be something like Qx and rare slowplayed trips and flushes–i.e., really small.
Point being, I think QJ is a pretty straightforward bet/call. I doubt he expected you to fold a Q.
Of course, I could be wrong, and maybe I’m missing the bigger picture. Like would he often be turning AT into a bluff here? Or was this an uncommon deviation from his standard line of check/calling? Does he really expect you to fold so much that a C/R is better than a C/C? If he thought you’d fold 8x or Qx, I admit I don’t understand why he would think that. I mean *I* would never expect anyone to fold those hands if I were in his shoes.
I know the river is the main point for discussion but I think I would definitely consider betting the turn. Queen high should rarely get to use its small level of showdown value as villain will lead river with worse and we cannot call. However QJ has good equity versus his turn calling range and we have all the overpairs (and probably more 5x) in our range. It puts a lot of pressure on his Ax floats as he has to consider that we can bluff all scarecard rivers and we may already be ahead.
When villain calls flop, his range has lots of weak pairs 33-77, random broadway card floats and lots of Ax. Leading the river, for value, on a Queen that hits your range doesn’t make much sense imo. Villain would have to float QT, QJ, KQ, AQ to hit this card and surely won’t be thin value betting 8x or pocket pairs as he can simply bluff catch on a card he expects you to bet a lot.
Against a player as tricky as Moorman i think QJ is a bit high in our range to fold. We may check back AQ on flop, we bet KK, AA, 5x on the turn so the top of our range is KQ, QJ type hands. Considering that were going to bluff this card with most of our range that cbet then gave up, i think he expects us to still have a decent amount of air. We don’t have to call with all of our Qx but given how your range is relatively weak and Moorman knows this and has no problem pulling the trigger on these moves, i think we should call. (But i would go back in time and bet the turn)
When I check turn, I’m not expecting to win unimproved ever. Checking does enable me to realize some showdown value, though, because it enables me to see whether the river will be a Q or J. My concern with betting the turn is that he’ll check-raise bluff a lot. Remember that even when he called flop I had the expectation that he was floating a lot, perhaps more even than he was. I’d rather face a bet from those bluffs on the river, when I’ll sometimes have an easy call, than get raised by them on the turn.
The fundamental problem with betting this on the turn is that I don’t have that many overpairs or better in my range, and I don’t necessarily want to bet all of those. That means that I can only balance so many bluffs, and I don’t think this is the best candidate for bluffing.
I see what you mean about being unbalanced if you always bet this hand in this spot, due to lack of value hands. You only have 12% equity though against A high because we only have 6 outs. I know what your saying about realizing this equity but its not going to be those cards very often so you will be giving up a lot.
I’m thinking now it may be an “ok” spot to delay cbet on the flop. Advantages being, you could float the turn if he leads and then bluff rivers if he checks. You can also realise your equity on the turn. Disadvtange being, if we have a hand like 99, we will want to bet for value and protection though so I guess we may not have that much value in our turn range after checking flop so he may put us on weak Ax high and barrel us anyway.