Call or no?

Villain is REG. VPIP: 40. Defend V BTN open: 22.

FCB: 45. He check-raises when he hits the board pretty well. Which in this case means something like 345hh, 35hh, 45hh, KK or AK. (aces is 3B preflop 100%.) So I probably have the best made hand. I flat-called because the first three hands have me drawing slim.

Now, turn. He usually continues once he's shown aggression on flop (T C-bet: 60). So all blank cards he will fire, and cards that he expects doesn't help me. (I imagine QJ10 off-suit are all cards he'll continue on).

The only reason I dislike calling the turn here is his sizing. I'm not sure he would bet AI with a draw-heavy hand, which leaves KK and AK as his most likely holding. Calling and I'm just begging to see AK...

What would you do?

half the deck makes a low which you're not drawing to
the other half makes straights or if he does have aa/kk/ak makes a bigger boat than you'd make
there's two flush draws out there
if you call this huge overshove after a flop checkraise, what card are you hoping to hit? a black nine?

I can easily see a 34kk eventually a 34kkhh or a 34ak in his holding here with the info you give on villain

> you called and did hit quads ?

Interesting hand, the beauty of NLO8

You have to call $215.73 to win $521.46. Thats around 41% pot odds.
The key question here is how many times will villain have kings? (Ruled out aces in the first place because of your read).
If you pull out KKxx from his range and give something like 345hh, 35hh, 45hh, AKxx only as you mentioned yourself then you can call becasue you have the odds. But if you put KKxx back your odds fall down drastically again. And i believe as villain played in this spot we cant rule out kings that easily so its a fold for me.

I'd be inclined to call.

Bummer if he already has trip kings or if he makes a flush on the river, but you're still alive if you lose.

11*2-3=19 river cards enable a flush without also pairing the board. 25 river cards do not. And if the river does enable a flush, Villain may not have it.

On balance I like a call here.

Buzz

How many hands on villain since you mentioned he is a reg?
In our mind what is villain's perception of hero either overall or during the session on hands like this?
If villain is a reg what % do we call turn bets after flop check raises?

I like villains shove here as it can disguise the nuts or draws/air and would probably make my decision based on what I think he is putting my perceived range on here.

While the turn is a blank putting that second flush possibility out there does sort of make me cringe. We aren't necessarily committed on our stack after the flop so I lean toward a sigh/fold here instead of a hero call hoping to hold or to catch the miracle river. Its close...possibly making a crying call if the 3h is in our hand.

These excellent posts encapsulate better than I could put it myself. Basically, this is a maths based question determined by villain's perception of our range. After we have made that judgement we can then put a weight (%) to each part of his range KK**, 345hh, K345 etc determines whether this is a call IMO.

I completely agree with you when you write, "determined by villain's perception of our range."

To be more specific, although perhaps Villain picked up the diamond draw on the turn, it looks more like Villain hopes Hero was mainly drawing for low after this flop and will now fold to the push.

Surely Villain doesn't have a pair of nines. (Not impossible, I suppose). But more likely Villain has 9A** or 9K** and has now picked up two pairs, aces and nines or kings and nines.

However, there is that nagging possibility of KK**.

And there's another current thread started by arkyten (Suicide Bluff, Limit) where Hero evidently successfully plays a maniac strategy against fools. Perhaps that's what Villain is trying here... but I don't think so.

I think Villain is playing Hero for a hand that is not good enough in Hero's judgement to call this bet. I don't think Villain wants Hero to call this bet.

Often Hero's best move is to do what Villain doesn't want him to do.

Help!

I don't see any way to do that.

For example, what percentage of Villain's range for this line of play is KK**?

How possibly could we determine that?

The thing is, I agree with your premise that Villain's play is determined by villain's perception of Hero's range. I believe that's probably more true here than the possibility of Villain betting based on Villain's own range.

And that makes it more or less impossible (or so it seems to me) to assess percentages to Villain's possible starting hands.

Buzz

I hope my hand is the best made hand, and that I'll scoop.

I spent about 35 seconds OTF trying to determine villain's hand after his check-raise. I decided that only KK has me screwed, that AK is equally likely as kings, and that I don't want to fold this.

6K

On this table I've only played like 66 hands. But we know each other, and we make plenty of read-based plays.

That depends on what the turn card is. He'll continue, as I mentioned, on most cards that he think doesn't help me. So I am probably shoving a turn 3, 4, 10, J and Q. He C-bets turn very frequently so I am not gonna let him run me over.

Result:

I think this can be over complicated.
Whatever villain holds you are virtually always in awful shape, with very little committed when he check raises, on the likely assumption that we are going to the river.
fold the flop.
It's not about being ahead "now", it's about the odds of being ahead at showdown.

Villain is only ahead if he happens to hold the monster-under-the-bed hand, which in this particular case happens to be KK**.

And in this particular case, Villain does happen to hold the monster-under-the-bed hand.

Agreed. But unless Villain happens to hold the monster-under-the-bed hand, KK**, Hero is favored to be ahead on the river.

Sometimes you're the favorite and you make the odds on play but lose anyhow.

And that's what happened here.

I tend to avoid starting hands with low pairs, but of course I'm going to see the flop holding
A, 2, 3, 2.

Meh.

Buzz

Exactly my first thought. But after reading his description of the situations i think hero is comletely awero of this as well, this is why he just called on flop.
If the money goes in on the flop hero is way behind (even if we rule out higher sets) but since he just called on flop and got a safe turn, at that point he could rightly think he is at least on a flip against villains range.
So i think the decision on the turn is really about how strong is his bankroll and tolerate high variance and how much is he willing to make hard decisions like this.
They went to showdown on the turn, as Buzz said if villain doesnt have "monster-under-the-bed hand" (ie. higher set) hero is actually not in that bad shape to scoop.

My personal opinion: this is spewy play by hero (especially in this deep) but i can accept his explanation.

I believe there is a way of weighting parts of his range on PPTs but I haven't done it in a while. For example, 100% of the time he has KK** or 20% of the time he has KK**, 80% 2354hh etc. This would then give you your equity against his weighted range, which you can then use to influence your decision based on the pot odds you are getting.

http://www.propokertools.com/simulat...eighted_ranges

I haven't checked on poker tracker but villain is ahead with a lot more of his range than just KKxx imo. In fact I'd say only AKxx is behind hero.
Also I do accept this is PL and the good turn card most likely leaves hero ahead when the chips go in BUT I think 95% of the time the flop check raise has villain potting turn and river so it's pretty much all in on the flop.

I actually tried to weight the possibilities, based on the information WINNINGSTEK provided in the opening post to this thread:

But look at 35hh, for example. I presume this means Villain might see this flop and then continue after this flop with hands containing a trey, five, and two hearts. We can count the number of hands that fit in this category, but some of them really stink… and does “hh” mean only exactly two hearts, or would three or four hearts be OK too.

And if Villain is going to play 35hh, won’t he also play 34hh? And if so, we can replace 345hh with 34hh.

Temporarily disregarding hearts, we can count the number of ways Villain could have each of the various combinations, 34**, 35**, 45**, KK** or AK**.

Temporarily disregarding hearts, since Hero holds A223 and the board is AK2, there are three missing treys, four missing fours, four missing fives, three missing kings and two missing aces.

Also disregarding complications from 334*, 344*, 3344, etc. and overlaps (345*, 34KK, etc), there are
• 12 ways to be dealt 34,
• 12 ways to be dealt 35,
• 16 ways to be dealt 45,
• 3 ways to be dealt KK, and
• 6 ways to be dealt AK.

We could refine these values, but there seems little need. You can see that the total is 57 and of that only 3, roughly 5.5%, is due to KK.

The total due to KK would be somewhat larger if we only included 34** etc. hands that had at least two hearts, but even so, there are more ways for Villain to not have KK** and yet have a hand with which he’d continue than there are for Villain to have KK**, the monster-under-the-bed hand.

I can follow WINNINGSTEK’s logic that Villain cannot have AA**, but I would not completely rule out that hand, or various others.

All I did was approximate and it was tedious, yet incomplete.

Bottom line: It’s pretty difficult to assess a range to Villain here… but if we do, KK** cannot realistically be a substantial part of that range.

Just my opinion.

Buzz

I think that's hard to know without knowing more about what Villain's range is. But if it's only AKxx, considering the cards of which we know the whereabouts, there are about twice as many ways for Villain to have AK** as KK**.

I'll accept that. And I'll accept that when Villain check/raises the flop things look pretty scary for Hero. That is, the threat of KK** (or even AA** slow played for one round) looms.

Finally, I was wrong this time... that is Villain actually did hold KK**.

Meh.

Buzz

It's really not easy to see how many KK** combos he has there. (I assume he's coldcalling 80% Of KK** preflop (and 3betting 20%?), so about 10% of his preflop coldcall range is KK**).

The problem with the AK** hands is, that they are also often going to be 3b hands (!) any AK2*(def), AK3* (prob).

So as a conclusion, mathematically, I don't think AK** are more likely in his flop c/r range as KK**. This is even increased by the fact that not all AK** hands ARE c/r flop anyway. (depending on the villain, he might decide to c/c some and c/r some).

Very interesting hand, I think it's close but I'd let this one go EITHER on the flop OR call off on the turn (if I thought villain is c/r wide).

Calling flop and folding turn is completely wrong imo. We should think villain is continuing here 100% of the time. (and I don't think the sizing is that unusual with the board texture)

Edit: Sorry, I was a bit disregarding the fact that we block AK2*. Could make it even closer.