Quote:
let me clarify my question. it seems like a lot of you are saying something like: well you have to call here because top two pair is such a strong hand and if you just fold top two pair when P pushes you will get run over. so in other words you are using the hand strength here as a way to control how often we call when P pushes the river. i.e. call with AK or better, that way we call him x% of the time, if we call less than x% P will abuse us.
i know you don't think you are doing this but i'm pretty sure you are. because if we had KQ i don't think you would all say oh easy call P is bluffing. and yet most of you would agree that the vast majority of the time, P has either less than KQ or greater than AK.
it seems to me that this is sort of a game-theoretic approach. i.e. x% is optimal for calling P river push, and so i will call with AK or better to get to that x%. the problem of course is every scenario is different. THIS is the kind of thinking that makes P so successful, not the guys who are saying to fold. because when you think like this you are giving up already. you are not even trying to read him. you are just saying, my hand falls into the x% when i should call, i hope i win. he knows that you do this.
and that's why the x% is not going to work out for you. it's gonna seem like you're getting unlucky but you're not. it is by design that a good chunk of your x% calls will be against the nuts.
This is an incredibly good post.
I figured someone was going to pick up on this logic, so I should have already clarified, but oh well...
To retort, I realize that what I said (and what Matt said) might have come off as, "Dood, you have top two, you have to call." This isn't quite what I meant (and I presume that Matt didn't mean it quite like this as well).
If you have reason to believe that AK is no good here, you fold, metagame be damned... It's that simple.
The argument that I am making is that Mahatma will be bluffing here more often than people think he is. My guess is that, given this particular board, he does not expect a call. Depending on the way the game has been playing (here is where some history would be very helpful), he likely puts his opponent on a decent, but not great, hand. The flop bet probably means almost nothing, and I think that the turn call could mean anything from middle pair up to around AK; a set for Hero has to be discounted because it might raise the turn. A set is also far less probable from a Bayes Theory, starting hand perspective. So, to Mahatma, it is a simple question of, "How often will my opponent fold a middle or top pair type hand to my all-in?" My guess is that, in this spot, he would probably conclude that a river bluff is a good move.
Also, something that many people have not considered is that, if the game has been playing wide-open, Mahatma could easily be value-betting a worse hand here. If he thinks that his opponent can make a big call, he could have a worse two pair, or MAYBE even a bare ace, although I think that this is pushing it. Again, more history/context would be helpful.
Then, of course, he could have a straight or a set.
I think that, when we put it all together, Hero's hand is best often enough to call in this particular spot. If he thinks that Hero will never make a big call, he will make a ton of these bets as bluffs, knowing that he will only get caught by a really big hand. If he thinks that Hero might make a big call, he will probably not be bluffing quite as often, but there is a higher probability of a value-push from a worse hand. I think that either way, it ends up being a call here. So, depending on the history, AK might be the same as KQ here for Hero. Or, it might be drastically different...
I guess to sum it up, people are looking at the situation as, "Mahatma HAS to know that Hero has AK here and that he will probably call, so this is probably a value bet; thus, you should fold." I am looking at it from the perspective that Mahatma thinks that Hero doesn't have enough hand to call an all-in on the river most of the time in this spot given the board and action to this point. I think that there is a very high likelihood that the river push was preordained given the action prior to the river.
I don't even think that this helped to clarify what I was trying to say, but it's a start at least. Again, to a degree, all of this is meaningless without some sort of context.
ML4L