I've lost a couple decent pots to villain, and then this hand. Haven't seen him bluff or act spazzy yet.

Hero ($343) is button with AK83
Villain BB with $553

Hero 3x, villain calls
flop ak5

v checks, hero bets $16, v calls

turn 8 villain checks, hero bets $48, villain calls

river 6 villain checks, hero bets $108, villain CRAI

hero??

In my experience they show you the 97/74 here every time.

I don't understand what worse hands are calling the river when the flush whiffs

seems like the river bet is -ev

No blockers to value range, 0 equity against value range, hero is uncapped -> imma fold it

any hands which think we're on a whiffed fd?

He did

Is this too thin? do any worse hands call? just bluff catchers?


What's villain's bluff catching range here? (Especially if he didnt have two hearts) Do they get to the river the way they did?

river is a must bet

Not too thin at all, you just have to make the bet/fold. In practice, no one is going to try to bluff by representing some ridiculous backdoor straight on this board, so you're left with looking at the probability he calls with worse vs. the probability he actually backed in to the straight or is check/calling down with 55. If he never calls worse, you can just abuse the **** out of him in this spot since he so rarely has better. In general, I'm going to have a relatively narrow range of middling hands that I'm not betting on this river. His check/call twice range just sort of inherently leaves him in a bad spot when facing a river bet here, so I want to be betting as often as possible

not enough hands to make this a +ev bet, this is a snap check back OTR imo, you can argue it's a b/f vs a lot of players because they won't have a c/r bluff range at all but mathematically speaking, check>>bet/call>>>bet/fold, vs most players bet/fold>bet/call, as a standard check back is best

I like how it somehow goes check > b/c > b/f

Depends on your style.

yeah that makes zero sense

I'm of the opinion that you should call if you are betting the river as a standard

there is no ev difference between b/c and check, exactly zero, the only difference is variance

do the math of this if you don't believe me, it's only a matter of style (and bankroll)

b/f is fine though because most players suck, but it's another story when you're playing someone good

...or if you are playing someone correct

I like to look at this from a purely mathematical perspective, let's play perfectly as villain, what combos of hands can we reach the river with that can call a bet that does not beat nut two pair? Zero

but if we get here with a flush draw, which will be naked most of the time on this board, we will have lost the hand, we didn't extract enough odds in a heads up pot, so to make up the ev we have to bluff the river, c/r bluff the river in fact, some % of the time in order to make up our odds

we can in fact calculate the amount of times we need to bluff to make it a zero ev play

the vast majority of players are not thinking at this level, so sure, go ahead and b/f, but the only 2 plays here that are correct are check and b/c

How would the c/r bluffs make a profit when hero should bet/call every value hand?

It's more complicated than that. In order to sometimes c/r bluff the river, the opponent would need to show up with an appropriately large c/r value range. Here, this would require having some AA/KK combos that flat pre and c/c flop and turn. In order to construct an appropriately-balanced polarized river c/r range, the opponent will have to have made significant adjustments to standard pre flop flop and turn value ranges. On the other part of the equation, the opponents range will be chock full of bluff catching hands and our range have a reasonable amount of total air.

Without making the requisite amount of PF/flop/turn slow plays, our opponent can only bluff at frequency ~25% as often as he actually backs into the straight. This clearly puts him on the other side of the polarized vs. bluffcatcher game. He needs to not fold the river 60% of the time here. Pretty much impossible to do using a strategy that never calls worse than AK and doesn't slow play AA/KK AND play raise or fold on flop/turn a preposterously high percentage of the time.


As a practical matter, the blind defender's river c/r range will be SO out of whack here that I want to punch myself in the nuts when I get c/r'd holding AA77.

The king of hearts is the key to this hand. OP should never bet this river and fold to a reraise. In fact, hero should not bet this river most of the time.

if this were posted by villain 100% of us would say c/c river with a worse 2p than AK is terrible, only options are to turn it into a bluff or just fold.

the river bet itself is -ev, it's only to catch bluffs, I'd say you get flat called about 0%, if you are betting it's only to be calling vs c/r bluffs, which a lot of good players have

I imagine there are a lot of sickos who c/r whiffs as a bluff a ton here, which is why snap checking back 100% is fine, bet/call some of the time is unnecessary variance

There are two categories of players that checkraise bluff the river a fair amount here: Guys like Ike who have put a TON of work in to make sure they show up with an appropriately balanced range on this river, and guys that you can pretty much immediately peg as total spazzes.

An unremarkable guy in a Bovada 2/4 game isn't in either of those categories.

Lmfao @ anyone who thinks u should bet call this river in this game. hecking is prob best.

These people arent balanced here omg

I love how people put their own spin on what people say. You SHOULD check back this river 100%. You CAN bet/call vs some sicko players (he has many many more straights than we do) and some fish.

Bet/fold is a donation, the worst play, and you should already know what you are going to do to a raise when you bet.

it's pretty close vs. most opponents. the fact that you have an 8 REALLY sucks because it blocks A8/K8 combos that you could potentially get value from.

since villain doesn't have any info on you he won't expect you to overfold the river here which you would have to be doing in order for a c/r bluff to be profitable. i vote fold.

River is clear bet/fold vs weaker or average opponents. If he c/r pots otr he could put there a ton of bluffs which he would not have overall so easy bet/fold vs most people imo.