33/24
BTN steal 77%
fold to 3b 51%
fold to cbet 3b pot 73%
886 hands

decent reg, no history. only seen him check back 99 IP on T66tt 4 way in a 3b pot, then just smooth call down a boat.


sizing if we're betting river? check or even overbet jam? thanks.

[converted_hand][hand_history]Cake Poker, $1/$2 No Limit Hold'em Cash, 4 Players
Poker Tools Powered By Holdem Manager - The Ultimate Poker Software Suite.

CO: $199 (99.5 bb)
BTN: $907.27 (453.6 bb)
Hero (SB): $291.89 (145.9 bb)
BB: $119.36 (59.7 bb)

Preflop: Hero is SB with A Q
CO folds, BTN raises to $4, Hero raises to $14, BB folds, BTN calls $10

Flop: ($30) 6 8 Q (2 players)
Hero bets $20, BTN calls $20

Turn: ($70) 2 (2 players)
Hero bets $48.67, BTN calls $48.67

River: ($167.34) 9 (2 players)
Hero

Half-2/3 pot seems right to me. Low enough to get a call from QJ

Why is checking river even a consideration here?

just considering all options

It really comes down to your read in of your opponent and likely hands he is holding right.

If he is capable of check/raise bluffing you? Check

He could have in his range on this river a straight, set, two pair, or top pair as well as a few bluff catchers. So he could be strong here. Bet 1/2 pot and fold to a raise.

Overbetting here probably won't lose you money, but will strengthen villain's calling range considerably and dramatically affect the hands long term earnings. Also, I would guess that overbetting here would be the best bet size because a half pot bet is just encouraging your opponent to make an extra ordinary bluff raise as a last ditch effort. Therefore checking might just be the best line of play.

Overall no matter what you do, you are gong to make money.

What hands are calling us on a river shove? kq qj q 10 10 10 jj? I think I rather c/c or c/f then ship it in as he might turn a missed FD, 8x hand or 9 10 kind of hand into a bluff.

X river shouldn't be considered an option.

I think saying checking river shouldn't even be considered is pretty shortsighted. Although I think betting is better in this spot (assuming sizing isn't bad), checking isn't far off and ignoring that option and assuming we should just bet without really considering other options is just not really solid reasoning and not gonna help your development as a player

But like I said betting does look better than checking, having played around a bit with ranges in CREV. I compared a $92 bet, a shove and a check and betting $92 does look like our best option (and checking comes second before shoving). It's hard to pinpoint the exact bet sizing we should use on the river but something <pot does seem a lot better than shoving. I think we could shove some hands though and balancing a shoving range and at least one other bet sizing would probably be our best strategy on the river although it might be hard to implement. The hands we might wanna shove river with imo are QQ, JTs and T7s (assuming we get to the river like this, which might not be true especially for QQ and T7s), and bluffs with good blockers to a strong calling range, to balance out our shoving range. 88 and 66 are close and I'm sure with a bit of range tweaking we could argue that they're better as a shove than a smaller bet, but for now with the ranges I used they seem slightly better as "regular" sized bets otr.

In conclusion, I think betting $92 (or any size similar to that) is best here with AQ. Checking is slightly worse and shoving is really bad. I'm not sure if there is any merit to start checking some hands that have higher EV as bets, to protect our checking range on the river, but for now looking at this spot in a vacuum and not considering our whole range, I think betting <pot is our best option

its always a bet/fold if im betting?

Well you will be able to fold roughly 1/4 of your value betting range on the river (and all your bluffs) from a theoretical point of view (that is, if you're trying to have balanced/unexploitable ranges). AQ is the bottom of your value betting range and if you choose hands to call/fold with purely based on hand strength you can fold all AQ combos and still be calling enough hands (might not be true for all ranges, but it is for the betting range I'm assigning to hero in this spot). Picking hands to call/fold with based on blockers to villains value shoving and bluff shoving ranges is a more exact way to do it but also a lot more complicated. In that case AQ might become a call, although I don't really have much of a feel for how AQ affects villains shoving range compared to other hands in our value betting range.

Say you were to bet $92 on the river, giving him 2.82 odds to call (92 into 259). In that case villain needs to be good 26.2% of the time to call, meaning if you were to have a balanced betting range on the river it would contain 26.2% bluffs, 73.8% value bets.

When villain jams over a $92 bet he's risking $209 to win a $259 pot and thus needs 44.7% fold equity. You would fold all your bluffs, 26.2% of hands and also "should" fold 25% of your value betting range (since you should fold an additional 18.5% of your betting range to reach 44.7%, and 18.5% is 25% of 73.8%, (18.5/73.8 = 25))

This is all theoretical and obviously we shouldn't try to make villains bluffs break even unless there's a reason to (if you're both playing with balanced ranges). But this should however illustrate that it's okay to fold some of your value bets on the river, and that we don't have to be overly worried about bet/folding AQ here. In practice most villains are probably shoving a range that is not balanced but heavily weighted towards very strong value hands making AQ an even easier fold

Nowhere near as detailed as above but +1 for b/f river.

If you think he is capable of making Hero calls I'd just OB jam, I think based on the fact that you have the Ah it's a lot less likely he had a draw, So i wouldn't consider c/c.


I probably just go with big sizing like 145 because I think he is more likely to call that then a OB jam.

c/c,c/r are viable options and it is not clear EV wise how they fare vs bet/call bet/fold or shove in this spot.

If you have mathematical basis why checking should not be considered at all here, maybe you should let others know.

X/R is just stupid.

X/C isn't great because some Q's X behind and we block Ah FD which are alot of his flush draw combo's. If you are not shoving AQ here then your only shoving KK+.

Put more bluffs in ur range if you can't bet AQ here because it's an easy bet.

1) Not enough FD's.

2) 8x folds turn largely and not enough ppl turn SDV to bluffs still.

3) Only 9T is 9Th. You are expecting a double float vs huge bet sizings with T high?

Take river aggression into consideration. If he is either a bet or fold guy then yes certainly check the river to induce bluffs. Some guys will bet their pair plus busted draws to get you off similar hands instead of taking the showdown. If he's a station then bet again. I agree with MG we should take having the Ah into consideration but he certainly has draws in his range when he defends 3 bets so wide.

Doesn't mean he gets to river with them like I already said + not many draws anyway.

Mavoor in an earlier post did an EV analysis using CREV and this is what he says.
"In conclusion, I think betting $92 (or any size similar to that) is best here with AQ. Checking is slightly worse and shoving is really bad."

Based on that analysis what you are advocating here "shoving" is the worst option and the option of X/C that you say isn't great is near the best option.

The reasoning you are giving for shoving AQ "If you are not shoving AQ here then your only shoving KK+" is non sensical. These are different hands. Shoving KK or AA is a different problem than shoving AQ here.

We are talking about EV of different decisions X/C, X/F, X/R, B/C, Shove etc.

If you have any math or range arguments behind your statements, please by all means share it with the forum. Just saying this is stupid and that is stupid is not a sound argument it is your just opinion.

bet 115$-120$

I didn't mean shove. I meant HERO should bet. Didn't see stack sizes were deep. Didn't think it was overbet.

If he had a draw on the flop I'm not sure why you would think he would fold before the river. Range wise he can certainly have any heart combo above 56hh (He calls 3 bets with half the hands he opens with and he's definitely defending widest button vs SB) that would peel a turn, and that entire range is likely to fold to a river bet. I would certainly at least consider checking to induce a bluff.

Not disputing there's value to betting the river I think it's the right play as well. Just putting it out there that it's a villain dependent spot and we can consider looking at what I feel are relevant stats that OP didn't provide.

I'd check the turn here mostly due to the villain' floats like T9, TJ that he might've called you with on the flop. With 150 eff BB stack you don't want to see yourself check raised. So yeah I'd go with check-call on turn and the river. Plus you don't loose any of the villain's value range as he'd surely bet Qx twice. The same goes for the river because with you betting you won't see villain's TT and JJ calling. And if you check, you might induce a bluff.