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Thanks to a last-minute cancellation, Nate and Andrew put together a quick all-strategy episode. What do you do when you flop the nuts but the river pairs the board? How should you transition from tournaments to online cash games?
Strategy
It’s a 2/5 game at the isle casino in Pompano Beach, FL. We’re $1000 effective.
1 player limps, V raises to 20, folds to me in the sb i have AKo I raise to 80, V calls.
Flop ($165): TJQr. I bet 110 V calls
Turn ($385): 2. I bet 250 V calls
River ($885): 2. I check V shoves 550 I tank call.
I wanted to weigh in on the strategy segment this week. In listening to the hand, if we ignore the heuristic that podcast strategy hands are disproportionately bad beats, I would have played the river like hero (and likely would have taken far less time to call).
I don’t love the idea of the small blocking/value bet in this exact situation. Hero three bet before the flop (perhaps the one street I’d have played differently – a call from SB out of position can be a good way to mix things up with AK), bets 50+% of pot on the flop, bets another 50+% on turn and then… bets $80-$100 on the river? Not too many people would do that for value. It looks like a scared bet with AK, KK AQ or KQ. Whereas if you check, now your opponent might not bet all-in and you can call for less. It’s very hard without a good read on villain though.
Side note, in the scenario as described, I’d almost always check the river with the intention of calling any bet given stack sizes. I think there are too many opportunities here for the villain to think they’re value-betting, but are actually bluffing with hands like QJ and KQ. If we had a villain-dependent read, that could change things of course, but especially given it was the 2 that paired, I just think you have to make the crying call, and I’ve tried more and more to pre-make some of the decisions when I act so I don’t outthink myself.
Mixing it up is not the goal of poker though. There are plenty of situations where one line is strictly better than another and should be taken 100% of the time. If you want to make an argument for flatting with AK, you need to explain why that will deliver at least as much if not more value than 3-betting, which considering how much value there is in 3-betting is hard to do. Not saying this is or isn’t true of you, but in my experience, most arguments for flatting AK simply come down to, “I’m not comfortable making decisions in the scenario where my opponents calls and I don’t flop top pair.”