Hand of the Week: Rockets! (River Results)

Thanks to everyone who participated in the Hand of the Week. Here’s a recap of the action so far:

Blinds are 50/100, Villain has about 20K (starting stack), and I have about 25K. Only six players (including both blinds) have claimed their seats so far. I have black Aces first to act and open to 300.

Villain calls from the SB, and everyone else folds.

Flop (700 in pot) Jc 8c 6h. Villain checks.

Turn (700 in pot) 6d. Villain bets 400. Hero?

River (1500 in pot) 2s. Villain bets 600.

I was a bit surprised by the comments, in that there seemed to be a consensus that a raise for value would be thin/risky and should be small. This surprises me in no small part because a lot of people seemed to be in favor of raising and then betting safe rivers on the previous street. This river is as good as it could be, so I don’t see what’s changed to reduce confidence in Hero’s hand. If anything, Villain’s bet size should only embolden us. In game, I thought it was extremely likely that he had a Jack, and the only question was how much he’d be willing to call.

The best argument I can see for making only a very small raise is that it’s hard for Hero to have bluffs after taking this line. If Villain is really going to fold a Jack to a pot-sized raise, though, that gives Hero plenty of incentive to take hands that were checked for showdown value on the flop, such as nut clubs or 99, and turn them into bluffs. In spots like this, where your previous actions have taken most if not all air out of your range, turning the bottom of your range into a bluff should be “standard”.

That still may not produce a lot of bluff combos, but Hero isn’t going to have a lot of value combos, either. Even Jacks is not a great candidate for a big river raise, as it blocks so many of your value targets.

The other concern was that raising opens Hero up to a raise which, if balanced properly, would reduce his EV to 0. There’s a lot to say about this.

First and most importantly, it isn’t going to happen. Exploitively, it just isn’t a play that’s in the described Villain’s arsenal. I want to emphasize this, because I think it’s very common for people to miss value on the river out of a misguided fear about getting check-raise bluffed or, in this case, three-bet bluffed. I expect a 3-bet here to be extremely rare, and I wouldn’t think twice about folding to one.

Even if Villain were capable of this, it wouldn’t be a reason not to raise. It’s generally correct to have a range that bets/raises for value and folds to a re-raise, as long as it isn’t the entirety of your value range. Villain should still have a calling range against Hero, because three-betting is too expensive to be his only defense against bluffs, and Aces should be ahead of that calling range.

Results

I raised to 3000. Villain called and mucked.

The possibility of a big payoff when the board runs out so nicely is part of what makes checking the flop competitive with betting. The amount of money Villain puts into the pot versus this line should be comparable to the amount he would put in against a bet-bet-bet line, which is the other way I could see myself playing this runout. If it isn’t, then he can be exploited by taking one line with all weak hands and the other with all strong hands.

Bottom line: Villain is quite unlikely to have a hand better than AA. He also has a lot of incentive to pay off a large raise, even if we don’t make exploitive assumptions about him (which would only make me feel better about putting in a big raise).