Hero is UTG+2 with a $2500 stack, and most of the table covers. Action folds to Hero, who opens to $30 with 8s 7s. The hijack, button, and SB call. For discussion of the preflop action, see this post.
Flop ($118 in pot after rake) 7h 6d 3s. Action checks to Hero. Hero checks. Button checks. For discussion of the flop action, see this post.
Turn ($118 in pot) 7h 6d 3s 3d. Action checks to Hero. What’s your play and why?
We’ll discuss it in the comments, and I’ll post my thoughts and action later this week (I fly to Montreal tomorrow, so I may not post until Friday).
I’m pretty torn on this decision so I’ll just rant a bit about what I’m thinking.
At this point no one has made a bet so it’s likely our hand is best. We might also expect the players in position to have stabbed with some of their weakest hands. If we bet it’s very possible we can get value from any pair and even some ace highs as well as diamond draws. A bet will also have the same protection properties that it would on the flop. This does leave us open to getting raised by some over cards that have picked up diamonds and potentially put us in bad river spots. and we probably don’t have any 3s in our range. We can have some bigger over pairs to bet/call with.
That being said, I think this hand would work well as a bluff catcher. If we check twice we are going to have a decent amount of give ups in our range and our opponents may be more inclined to bluff. We can also usually keep the pot smaller which is more important this deep than getting thin value. There’s always the river to sneak in a value bet if it checks through again. I think check/calling and evaluating the river could be the play.
I’m leaning towards checking and calling here with how deep we are.
Here, I would bet a bit less than 1/2 the pot, $50 – $55, mostly for value/protection (although see later caveat) expecting to be ahead and to be called mostly by some stubborn broadway hands, OESD, some gut shots, turned flush draw, and middle pair kind of hands. I don’t think a better 7x or over pair checks the turn again (SB) or checks the flop (BTN).
With this sizing, we can assess most rivers based on texture and action. I think 3x will raise or check raise so I can comfortably bet-fold, and I think my sizing is unlikely to be bluff-raised because if my range is balanced I can turn up with A3s and even boats here, and I also think the smaller sizing can sometimes look like it wants a call. I’m in no way tied to the hand, so if I get the feeling someone is slow playing a monster, I have little concern about getting away from the hand without putting more money in the pot.
Finally, it doesn’t look like this is turning into a ‘big pot hand’, and as there has been little interest in the pot so far, while this final statement appears a little contradictory as far as value betting goes, the turn looks like a reasonable time to take our somewhat weak TP equity and take a weak value/bluff stab at the pot.
I prefer checking now.
We need less protection for our hand with only 1 card left. We are WAWB most hands that checked this flop.
There just aren’t many worse hands we can get called by. And if we did bet and get called, we can rarely bet again on the river for value. Our hand will become a pure bluff catcher on the river as we are squeezing out a lot of worse hands from our opponents’ range with a bet on the turn.
Given that we can’t bet the river again, I prefer checking now hoping to induce bluffs.
We can even check raise this turn for thin value against some diamond draws. But its merit is debatable.
Welcome to Montreal! I assume for the WCOOP? Good luck!!
Yep, WCOOP, thanks. I don’t see where “We need less protection for our hand with only 1 card left. We are WAWB most hands that checked this flop” comes from?
I mean for each individual opponent, you are WAWB. But yes, all 3 of them together could have as many as 18 outs against you ( 2 unpaired overcards for each, so 6 outs for each)
The only hand with good equity against you is a diamond draw. Paired board means 56,46 type hands have lost their 2 pair outs.
But yes, against 3 opponents we will get outdrawn on the river a fair %of times. So may be we need protection after all.
What do our opponents perceive our flop-check range to be? This turn illustrates perfectly the reason why Andrew wanted to have some strength in his flop-check range. If opponents perceive us to have no overpairs and no top-pairs in our flop-check range, then we are left with slow-played full houses (6 combos), top two pair (2 combos), and junk over cards (68 combos). (I assumed a PF range of 66+, AJ+, 76s+.) That means any opponent (most likely the BU, or else villain on our right) can auto-profit by raising, since presumably we will fold 68 out of 76 combos to a raise.
But just including 87s in our flop-check range doesn’t solve this problem if we are going to bet-fold it. We still would have only 12 value hands and 68 junk hands in our flop-check range.
Why not check-raise turn with full houses, and check-call turn with 87s and 76s?
We could balance our check-raise range with a few of the 9 combos of flush-draw-with-2-overs hands. We need to decide which of those to put in the check-raise range vs the check-call range. Andrew, how do we make that range allocation decision optimally?
Your overall point is valid, but your combinatorics seem to be assuming Hero never bluffs the flop and then bets his entire range on the turn.
That’s true about the flop. But on the flop, we are betting into 3 opponents on a flop that doesn’t hit our EP raising range at all (and hits the calling ranges much better). So when we bet flop, we should expect calls and raises pretty often. What should our betting range be on the flop, then? I would think we bet all sets (6 combos), two pair (2 combos), and overpairs (42 combos), unless we want to check-raise the top of our range. If we do that, then once we check the flop, the strongest hand we can have is 87s (which is what I assumed in the earlier post). To balance our flop betting range, we have to include 98s (OESD) and some hands like two overs with a backdoor flush draw.
When we do all that, our checking range is really really weak; so back to the dilemma of how to play 87s if we put it in our flop-check range.
I was not assuming that Hero would bet turn with the whole range–I was just saying that our flop-check takes out so many value hands that villains can correctly assume that when we do bet turn, we have at best 87s, even if that is literally the only hand we bet on the turn, and then attack us with any two cards.
I think it is okay for us to give up almost every time we check flop 4 ways (assuming we don’t improve on the turn), even though we are unbalanced by definition when we check, because this flop is probably in the bottom quartile of flops for our EP range.
One point of clarification – doesn’t hijack act after our hero? I think 2 players left to act affect the decision a bit.
I think it’s close between betting and checking, maybe do each some % of the time. When you check you look like you are giving up on the hand so you give HJ and button a chance to bluff and you could call down, but then again they could end up betting with 99 or TT. Betting for protection also seems warranted, but again you could get called by better, so I think it’s the same as the flop, if you do bet, bet small, 30 to 40% of the pot.
After posting, I also realised there are 4 players in the hand not 3! This does change the decision re betting but I’ll stick with it.
Fair point on the sizing, I’d originally thought betting 1/3 was better for Hero, about $40, but ended up thinking it looks too much to be exactly what it is, a weak ish made hand, therefore just under 50%, $50-$55 gives us a little more FE plus value if we’re getting called by worse, which I do think is possible by the turn. I think the key is our ability to assess ranges, river texture and action/ tells if we’re called.