Most are wanting to x/c flop, so its only 1 extra small bet by x/r. If they're folding 1/3 of their range OTF, that's a huge coup. If they fold ~15% of their range to our flop x/r, that's also good. It prevents their Qhi- hands from getting cards and prevents them from using their position to cripple us and get us to fold our 70% equity.

@ZOMG: TJ is a flop fold. I do like bluffing with QT/QJ with spade. Except I see K6-K9 as being very close in value to QJ. Choosing bluffing hands is a balance. You want to choose weak hands so that you can get more better hands to fold. You also want equity (FDs, Str-draws) so that when you are behind, you can catch up. K9 is stronger so may be used as a bluff catcher, but I think its fine as a semibluff too. K9 has more equity and blocks kings. If we barrel turn, we can still give up river and win some of the time. If you think QT is a good xrbluff hand, I would say K9 is only a few pips away, and can't be terrible.

Just playing poker bro

This hand is way outta my playing range, but here's what I think:

If you have a preflop 3 betting strategy here, and you have a flop check raising strategy here, that means your range is pretty weak when you check three times in a row here. My guess is that a range analysis for the big blind would show K9 being far above the call or fold threshold. You'd need to look at the opponent's range and see how much of the pot he's winning when he checks back a hand with some showdown value like K7s, QJo, QTo, or whichever hand you think he chooses as his threshold bluff or check hand. This hand should show a profit for the HJ on the river whether he chooses to bluff or showdown. If you call enough to make this bluff less profitable for the HJ than checking back, then he can exploit you by never bluffing. If you fold so much that the profit of betting exceeds that of checking back, then he can exploit you by bluffing more.

So if you don't want to be exploited, which I think is likely vs this player, then you need to offer an immediate profit to his bluffs that is equal in profitability to his option of checking back his threshold bluff or check hand.

The profitability of the HJ's option to check back will be dependent on the big blind's river checking range. The weaker that river checking range is, which will be due to early street aggression, the more profitable it will be for the HJ to check back the river. The stronger that big blind's river checking range is, which will be due to a lack of early street aggression, the less profitable it will be for the HJ to check back the river. I think that in the latter case, K9 will be closer to the call or fold threshold, but probably still a call.

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If you actually go through this exercise and find the profitability of calling K9 here to be negative, then it's probably going to be at or near the top of your folding range, in which case I'd recommend the check raise bluff.

My initial thought was raise river also.

The more I think about it though, pretty sure you're getting sigh-called by any pair. A new player in this game is leading all his pairs after the turn checks through pretty much always IMO. Villian likely knows this. So x/r folds out his Kx and air, but gets looked up by hands that beat us I think.

Which leads to, is KT-KQ a big enough part of his range for us to put two bets in with? My guess is no, but I didn't run the numbers.

Donk seems horrible too, so...call, get info, move on.

Edit: lol, villian is paulV? First pump snap call.

Re-edit: somehow missed most of second page of this thread. Call ZZ, expect to see an 8 most of the time.

Result -- he showed me A6o no spade and collected my hard-earned moneys. I was a bit surprised he played his hand this way tbh.

Thanks for all the replies!

Well now that I know who villain is... 100% call flop...100% call river lol.

In general its an extremely weird line on villain's part.

Also, vs. an unknown opponent if you're going to x/c river I think betting river is best since most villains will not call K9-KQ here.

On an A3438 board I think most players will try to get value from PP 55+ or 8s when checked to and will not stab with air on the river so it should be best to bet when you can get a few better hands to fold.

Re spoilers: line looks fine. Its good to not double barrel all your Ax combos.


@Bob -- good post. Agree. If villain is loose enough, K9 can clearly be put in the x/c bucket. If villain is tighter, than K9 is more marginal and be worth bluffing.

@magic- I like how you played it. It was nice meeting you. I thought you played great, and I did not suspect that you were shot-taking, you seemed very comfortable. Maybe I'll catch you up at foxwoods sometime.

@uphill- Didn't realize I came across that cocky and arrogant. I'll try to keep that in check.

So, wait....villian in this hand was the future of poker or ZZ?

Really?

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/22...alente-437575/

I love when one player is getting characterized by another in a thread, then player reads comments about himself...lol
...... Get on twitter, players often (young guns esp) live tweet while they are playing; nothing better than reading their comments of the table while playing live against them.

Ps. Magic JDR are gold players and bloggers!

Except I'm pretty sure what happened here is that uphill thinks villian in this hand is ZZ, and the comments Paul thinks are directed at him are really towards somebody else.

Which, honestly, is even better comedy than somebody just reading and replying to comments made about them.

Rarely disagree with you DeathDonkey since you single handedly enabled me to become a winning player with 3 hours of your coaching.

However, I think c/r river is subpar against this particular villain unless you've taken a similar line with a value hand. Maybe this is 2nd level meta game purposes but c/r river seems subpar against a showdown bound villain who will most likely only fold KT, KJ, or KQ if we c/r river and bet/call any better hands.

No idea who villain is or how he plays. Just going off of OP's reads and his perceived image at the table.

I'd be shocked if villain was Paul. Played w him a couple times in wsop tourneys this summer and he was always gracious and humble and a tough competitor. He never showed signs of frustration and would acknowledge when he made bad plays (whether they were actually bad or not).

Oh, yeah re-reading it I now think he's talking about ZZ, and I'm not sure if I'm villain in this hand. I was thinking it was a similar spot where I vbet KQ on river.

Against either of us, you should call river. K9 has too much showdown value to x/r river, so we can pick a slightly weaker hand to turn into a bluff-raise.

I also think A6 is a good candidate for villain to check behind on turn as it's the weakest ace he can hold at this point without also having a wheel draw.

@magic re:envelope

The first scenario cannot actually be turned into a 2 player game, and the two scenarios are completely unrelated. Both players cannot be offered the same decision simultaneously. If player 1 opens his envelope and sees $10, then player 2's envelope must contain either $5 or $20. But for player 2 to have the same offer, Player 1 would now have to be capable of holding $40, $10, and $2.50 which is not the case. All of these possibilities cannot exist simultaneously. In the 2 player game there are only 2 envelopes, one containing X and one containing 2X. For the initial scenario, always switching gave us either X/2 or 2X yielding an EV of (5/4)X, but in the 2-player scenario always switching gives us either X or 2X yielding an EV (3/2)X.

lol, thanks Pope . . .

It's good to be the guy who agrees with PaulValente.

Still the best thing you've ever posted

i are confused good sir? i didn't even mention you lol. the hand was said to have been played against our friendly neighborhood pakistani.

but i guess you're just prognosticating what will be said in the future of your futuristic ways at some point

LOL...ahhh we get to the bottom of it.

apparently reading comprehension is overvalued in the future.

I've never been more confused on a read in my life, I was assuming ZZ was A different ZZ and would prob just Chek call vs this guy.

I've never played live with him but he was def super tough online

I don't usually like outing villains in these threads, but since it's been mentioned already and there's so much confusion, I'll say villain was ZZ.

Regarding Paul's answer to the brain teaser, I'll give everyone the problem / paradox since I legitimately think it's interesting and cannot solve it at current.

The Envelope Problem:

Part 1) two envelopes are placed in front of you and you are told one contains twice As much money as the other, but the absolute quantities are unknown. So u pick one and open it and see $10. You are then asked if you wish to switch (this isn't the Monty hall problem I promise). The trivial calculation here is that the other envelope will contain half the money ($5) half the time and twice ($20) half the time. This means EV of switch is 12.5, or 5/4x. It would be, based on this reasoning, 5/4x regardless of the amount u open.

Part 2 / the paradox) You and another person each take one of these envelopes (same rules). In theory, from each of your perspectives, switching envelopes is a +EV proposition, but this is clearly a zero sum game. How is this possible?

The "trivial calculation" is incorrect. It is more likely that smaller amounts will be given than larger (approaching infinite) ones, because there is only a limited amount of money in existence. Therefore, given any particular normal amount of money, it is more likely that you already have the envelope with the larger amount of money than the smaller one, making switching worthless.

Also, the larger your current amount is, the more likely it is that you already have the larger of the two amounts, making an incorrect switch worse.

Probably best to take this to low-content thread if you want to discuss more.