Thanks to everyone who commented on What’s Your Plan? Boated Up in a Blind Battle. The most recent comment is also the one that most closely resembles my own opinions, so I’m going to start with what Rant2112 said:
“Most of Villain’s range on the turn consists of bluff catchers and bluffs. We don’t need to worry about optimizing against his value hands anyway because the chips will get in regardless.
Betting the turn, even small IMO, is going to fold out a lot of his bluffs.Villain’s bluff catchers aren’t super strong. He’s not going to be comfortable paying off two decent-sized bets.
I think checking the turn is best so Villain bluffs more often. He’s going to bluff almost 100% of the time when he has a bluffing hand – he called the flop for a reason.
Against his bluff catchers we can bomb the river and hope to get looked up.
We should also bomb the river when the turn goes check, bet, call because Villain isn’t likely enough to bluff the river. We should just hope he picks up something he’s willing to call with.”
FWIW I do disagree with the bit about Villain’s value hands. I don’t think we’re guaranteed to stack a 6, and indeed I think not stacking lower full houses is the biggest risk entailed by this line. If Hero checks turn, Villain will in all likelihood check it back and just call a big river bet. Nevertheless, I think that 6s are a small enough part of his range that it makes more sense to worry about maximizing value against bluffs and bluff-catchers.
SPR Considerations
That last sentence is the crux of this hand, and it has a lot to do with the Stack-to-Pot Ratio (SPR). Here we have a kind of awkward SPR of 1.5. It’s awkward because there’s more than one bet left in the effective stacks, but not significantly more. With an SPR of 3-4, the potential reward from stacking a 6 and occasionally getting called down all the way by bluff-catchers would be larger, and it would be more important to choose a line that gives us a chance to build a big pot and get a big, second bet paid off. Here, the second bet will be no bigger than the first, so we need not be disproportionately concerned with it.
With an SPR of 1 or less, this would be an even more obvious turn check. There would be no second bet to worry about, so the cost of checking would be minimal. Even if the turn checked through, we could still get all-in against the top of Villain’s range on the river, so there’d be no reason not to give him an opportunity to bluff.
An intermediate SPR of 1.5 requires a judgement call: target the top of his range for two bets, or the majority of his range for one bet? In part because I’m not convinced hands as weak as A-high will pay off two bets anyway, and in part because I think his range overall is very weak, I like checking the turn and then bombing the river if it checks through. Lemayzing22 points out how much of Villain’s range will want to bluff: “Especially in a situation like this where it’s blind vs blind and you raised PF, bet the flop, then hit the breaks when your opponent defended…” From Villain’s perspective it looks like we attempted a steal pre-flop, continuation bet the flop, and then gave up when we continued to get resistance.
Rant and I also part ways in that if Villain bets the turn, I would actually call but then bet rather small on the river. I think that’s the only way we can hope to be called by less than a 6. Even a bluff that rivers a pair isn’t likely to pay off a big bet in that spot. As “G_Drob says, “if [Villain] do[es] bet, our action will always kill the action because if we call/raise in this spot it looks SOOOOO strong no matter what we do on the river (i.e betting river, villain will fold, checking villain will check back 98% of his range).” He’s right that by increasing our odds of getting one bet into the pot, we decrease our odds of getting the second. I just happen to think that’s OK in this case, because the second won’t be significantly larger and we’re not that likely to get it anyway.
Bluffs vs. Bluff-Catchers
A few of you suggested that a small bet on the turn might induce Villain to bluff-raise. I don’t see it in this situation. Especially in tournaments, your average opponent is looking for ways to take cheap stabs at orphan pots, not to run huge bluffs on players who have shown no weakness (I don’t see a small bet here as weakness because the stack sizes are small enough for even a small bet to set up a river shove). As Jonny says, “it’s pretty unlikely villain will ever be shoving over any turn bet. What would he be representing?”
Jessanders makes a very good argument that, “If he has nothing, you can hope that he bluffs the turn if you check, but that’d be all you could win, and his bluff is likely to be relatively small if he’s a good player. Boards like this don’t require big bets if you’re bluffing as your opponent either has it or he doesn’t.” This is correct in theory but not something I often see implemented well. Even many decent players fail to put much thought into their bet sizes and simply bet 60% of the pot or whatever because that’s what they always bet. Against a player whom I knew to be very good at adjusting his bet sizes, I’d be more inclined to bet here myself, but it’s not something I expect an unknown to do well.
SuperSytron argues that, “with such a dry board, I believe villain will call us down with a wide range and try to bluff catch a lot.” This, too, may be correct in theory but not consistent with how most opponents will play. As cbeak says, “he may have 3-bet some bluff catchers (Ax and pp’s, say) pre- so his flop calling range consists of a lot more floats than bluff catchers.” Moreover, I’m not convinced that Villain will call a river shove with just an A. If he doesn’t, then we get just a small turn bet out of him rather than the larger river bet we could get if the turn checked through.
Results
And therein lies the mistake that I believe I made in the hand. I did check the turn, but when it checked through, I bet just 6666, barely half the pot. Considering that Villain’s hand now looks quite a bit like a bluff-catcher, and he probably knows that, I should have given him the chance to catch a bigger bluff and bet more like 8-10K. Of course, it may not have mattered since he didn’t even call that 6666, but then again sometimes bigger bets actually look more like bluffs. In any event, the fact that he folded the river does corroborate my assumption that he wouldn’t have called down all the way with a bluff-catcher:
PokerStars No-Limit Hold’em, 215 Tournament, 400/800 Blinds 80 Ante (8 handed) – PokerStars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com
BB (t37804)
UTG (t23094)
UTG+1 (t55662)
MP1 (t53809)
MP2 (t3215)
CO (t24644)
Button (t37332)
Hero (SB) (t23870)
Hero’s M: 12.97
Preflop: Hero is SB with K♣, 5♣
6 folds, Hero bets t2400, BB calls t1600
Flop: (t5440) 6♦, K♥, 6♠ (2 players)
Hero bets t2880, BB calls t2880
Turn: (t11200) K♠ (2 players)
Hero checks, BB checks
River: (t11200) 10♣ (2 players)
Hero bets t6666, 1 fold
Total pot: t11200
Results:
Hero didn’t show K♣, 5♣ (nothing).
Outcome: Hero won t11200
Thanks again to everyone who participated!
“I think checking the turn is best so Villain bluffs more often. He’s going to bluff almost 100% of the time when he has a bluffing hand – he called the flop for a reason.”
Yes, he did call the flop for a reason. We don’t know his exact reason, but we all agree that a good chunk of the time it was because he called with a bluff catcher or is on a pure float, and that we should consider this as the biggest portion of his range in planning our hand.
The argument presented is for checking the turn and betting the river when behind. But if the reason he called was a float with the intention of bluffing later is he going to auto-give up this plan to an underbet of 1/3 pot or less? I’m not so sure of that. He will be less likely to continue with his plan for sure, but if he does go ahead and bluff its going to be bigger. As to the question of what he is representing with such a move – we are playing against a random in the Million – we don’t know how deeply he is thinking and might very well not be thinking past “this guy’s range is wide, I’m taking it down” and if so he is basically representing “you can’t call me, so take that!”
Similarly if he has a bluff catcher is he going to auto-fold getting 4:1 or better on a card that actually reduces the chances you have what you represented on the flop? I’d say if he called the flop with an A or a small pair of some sort he is calling the turn a high % of the time as well. If we get called we can just go ahead and bet the river.
Basically the reasoning we put into this player’s range still leads me to believe that betting small is better than checking – we should err on the side of trying to get more money in here.
It seems like a lot of your thinking here is limited to the turn action rather than to turn-river combinations. Yes he is very likely to call a turn bet with a bluff-catcher, but I don’t think he’s likely to call two bets. Given that a river bet can be bigger, especially when compared to the underbet you’re advocating, check-betting is better than betting immediately if we assume he will call only one bet with a bluff-catcher.
We may just disagree but the likelihood of a bluff-raise on the turn. In my opinion everyone but especially tournament players is a gazillion times more likely to bluff by taking a smallish stab at the pot when shown weakness than by risking a ton of chips shoving into consistent strength (Hero has done nothing but raise and bet at every opportunity). Yes a bluff shove is worth a lot more to us, but not enough more given that I think it happens with about 5% of the frequency of a bluff if Hero checks the turn.
Suppose villain does have Ax. How often do you think he calls 6666 on the turn, compared to on the river after turn goes check-check?
He probably doesn’t expect you to bluff that turn card very often, but he also probably doesn’t expect you to bluff-stab the river very often after he checks back the turn.
Also although you have a wide range for opening bvb and cbetting this flop, I do wonder weather that actually leads him to have much of a floating range, particularly with the SPR as it is. I guess that’s very much player & dynamic dependent though.
Finally some of his potential floating hands are Qx, and i don’t think he would bet Qx on this turn card, because he probably isn’t expecting you to fold Ax, and he beats everything else that does fold.
Fair enough, but I don’t think he’s calling a bet with it either, so it doesn’t really matter what we do when he has Qx. Actually I take that back – checking gives him a chance to river a pair, so I think we get slightly more value from checking turn vs. really weak showdown hands than we do from betting and causing them to fold immediately.
Yes betting the turn doesn’t get more from a Q than checking, but the point was just about estimating what proportion of his range is going to bluff vs a check compared to what proportion is going to call vs a bet. I was suggesting that the former might be smaller than people were thinking.
i.e. what he does with Qx does matter for our current decision because if he never bluffs when he has Qx then making sure we bet when he has Ax becomes relatively more valuable. Whether its better to bet on the turn or the river is a separate issue.
Part of my point is that I think, if we got only one bet, the river bet can be bigger than the turn bet. I doubt he ever folds Ax to a turn bet, but I (literally) wouldn’t bet on him calling twice with it. To me, a bet-check-bet line here wouldn’t look terribly bluffy, but in my opinion many players overestimate the likelihood of a spaz bluff in such a spot. This is particularly true if you bomb the river, as I should have done.
I agree that the possibility of getting a bigger bet called on the river is an important factor in favour of checking turn. I guess my point was that our main consideration should be how to squeeze maximum value out of Ax because I think the chance of him bluffing is relatively insignificant. I could easily be wrong about that – I think its pretty difficult to estimate someone’s floating range on a flop like this & with shallow stacks.
My hunch was that he will find more tight folds to a river bet, than a turn bet on a turn card that ostensibly was good for him. But again I think this is something that’s difficult to estimate.
“FWIW I do disagree with the bit about Villain’s value hands. I don’t think we’re guaranteed to stack a 6”
Here’s how it will go when Villain has a 6:
Hero x
Villain 6666
Hero c
River pot will bet 24,532.
Hero shoves 11,844
Villain does not fold the underfull getting 3:1
After checking the turn Hero has enough Ax and pairs QQ-77 that Villain will very often bet the turn for value IMO.
Same thing with the plan against bluffs on the river – If Villain bets about 6k then Hero only has about 12k left and a 24k pot on the river.
It is going to be hard for Villain to fold if he has something.
I was disagreeing with the “no matter what” part – of course there are ways to get all-in against a 6. If Villain checks behind turn, though, which I think is very possible and probably the correct play for him, then I don’t think we stack him on the river. So possibly losing the opportunity to stack a 6 is one (small) cost to checking the turn.