+1

Can you clarify this?

DD's explanation is that the K reduces the number of value combos he can hold --> villain is more likely to call down with A-hi --> DD elects to give up on the bluff.

Sure. The turn card could not have helped villain's hand (unless he was waiting until the turn with AK), making it very difficult for villain to continue with unimproved A-high hands.

The moral of the story is, if you're going to run a bluff, you must commit to it (although you can probably c/f a turned A in this particular case). This hand is an example of very bad coitus interruptus.

This is FPS nonsense. The K is a GREAT card for UTG. (Would you rather have a Q or a J or an A fall?)

The money in lhe isn't made by trying to bluff a good player off of a hand that he 3bet an UTG raise with in a full live game. It's fine as an intellectual exercise, but this is not a hair worth splitting if your main purpose for playing poker is to make money.

If you're often finding yourself in situations where you're oop with air against a good player, you're doing it wrong.

+1^^

I agree with some of what you're saying.


Standard flop play is to just fold. We only raise if we have a good image and think that villain is capable of folding something some time.

I don't see how the K is the best card for us to barrel bluff on. Our FE is highest on a low blank. When the K pairs, our range contains fewer Kx hands, and more PPs. --> AJ/AQ will peel more frequently (maybe always). Now if we barrel turn, we have to barrel river. If we deem a triple barrel to be unprofitable, it is absolutely better to give up. Even bad players will know the K diminishes our range and will call down lighter.

I'm guessing that was DD's initial read


I also really hate 3x barrel bluffing. IME, people who call the turn on a dry board VERY often call river. So, we try bluffing but give up because of the bad turn that kills our immediate FE. I think it's defensible and not as horrible as you are saying. Certainly not FPS.


(With a J/Q/A on the turn, at least we have immediate FE against smaller PPs; the J/Q also give us a GS )

Addendum:

Whether the K improves whose hand is moot. It's a WA/WB spot. The K just makes it more likely villain is WA instead of WB.

I disagree and think its good.


I agree with you that I think this hand is bad, I think his turn decision is very good If DD thinks he has a profitable bluff on the flop (which is debatable) and re-evaluates after this turn card and thinks a bluff will no longer be profitable why should he continue.

Maybee he thought, my flop raise was borderline at best but at least I have roughly 30% equity vs AQ and 8-10% equity vs over pairs and a lot of value in his flop bluff comes from being able to barrel off backdoor draws. When the turn takes all of those away and guarantees we have 0% equity vs a good portion of his range, i think it was a good decision to re-evaluate and check fold turn.

You say its tough for villain to continue with unimproved A-high hands, considering there's really only AQ, AJs and maybe A-10s, and the rest of his range were going to be putting in 2 big bets with 0% equity, how often do you think we need to be able to fold out A high here to make turn bet profitable?

My best guesses would be we can expect villan to fold A-10s most of time (if he even 3 bets its), AQ almost never and AJs some % that I don't really know but is almost guaranteed to not matter enough to make turn bet profitable

Did you expect him to fold to the check raise on the flop like ever? You spend all this money trying to get to a spot to make a guy fold a better hand and then you punt cause the top paired so it hurts your combos? Owell. It's not time to punt. bet bet. ****em.

Or you could start by folding t9s utg like you probably should. And then check fold the flop like you probably should. Or you can play the hand as bad as possible (minus the river bet)

I only said turn check-fold was good (good only when compared to alternative of betting). I think pre flop and flop are both bad. I'm just saying the fact that we made the pot huge with prior mistakes doesn't mean we have to bluff turn if its not going to be profitable.

Obviously if check folding the turn is best, that likely means check-raising flop was bad. My point is only its possible for DD to realize on turn, hey my flop play was not good, I'm going to give up rather than continue on. I don't know how often he expect villain to fold AQ here, but lets use the extreme example that villian calls down AQ here 90% of the time then the fact that we made pot large doesn't mean we are forced to barrel off (it does mean we've already screwed up the hand though)

That is such a bad turn card to barrel. If i played it like that I'd check fold everyone there. What is he folding on that card? Qt?

No. DUCY?

It may not have been a good flop bluff but everything you wrote here is complete crap, I don't want you fooling someone reading this into thinking there is good logic or strategy in it just because you happen to post with an air of confidence. Jon Locke already noted why the king pairing is really bad and he used math and logic and numbers and stuff which you entirely ignored

Nothing to add other than this was a good discussion and got me to go play for a couple of hours for the first time years. I even won a fun ticket. Was really hoping to get T9s UTG so I can raise it, but didn't happen.

loooooooooooooooooool

When the K pairs here can we expect to get called down by AQ and AJ every time?

I think it's more important/interesting to answer the question what% f the time they need to fold let's say AJs/AQo here for a turn bluff to be profitable first (assuming were bluffing all non ace rivers if called on turn also), as well as what % of his range those two hands represent (assuming he calls with every other hand 100% of the time).

When you do this I think you'll see turn check fold clearly corrext.

Nobody has really tried to look at his turn check from a GTO point of view, and a lot of people keep shifting back and forth between talking ranges and the specific hands. DD is saying he should be shutting down since the K pairing puts less top pair in his range. Runner is saying its a mistake to start bluffing and then not continue bluffing in general. I am an nl guy now, but isnt the idea that we have to give up with a fraction of our bluffs on each street, or else we they have no incentive to fold their bluff catchers? I realize this kind of thinking is more useful when we are dealing with polarized ranges, but for sure I would imagine he should be shutting down on what he deems to be the worst turn cards his range. If somebody is capable of putting a number on that percentage I'd like to see it, Im sure we shouldn't be giving up very often. Anyhow I doubt the K falls into that bucket.

For instance in NL, if we have the nuts and air assuming pot sized bets, we should be giving up on the next street one third of the time with our entire range. The ratio of value:bluffs varies on each street, but to say in any form of poker, giving up on your bluffs is bad just isn't right. This keeps him indifferent from calling or folding with his bluffcatchers assuming we are betting pot.

The thing here is that once the in position player 3 bets preflop and hits the very static K73r flop, he probably has ~60% range vs range equity. I just plain don't think bluffing this flop with anything is going to be more profitable than checking because of the abundance of hands that the in position player can and will call down with. So I don't bluff this flop with anything. Thus, I don't have any bluffs to give up with on the turn.

This isn't a spot where either player will attempt to force indifference on the flop or turn because of the strength of the ranges in question. It's a battle of the value hands. The in position player is going to win that battle more often than not because of the strength of his range.

Because of the betsizing problem in limit holdem, when you start with a strong range you should be showing down a lot of, if not most of, the time. Deviation from this showdown bound nature of the spot will result in a loss of value for the player that deviates. I think.

tl;dr this spot is more about how the bets go in the middle rather than if the bets go in the middle.

This is far too intelligent of a thought for this thread:

Okay, the K73 board is really static, and the K pairing on the turn cuts into the number of top-pair hands we can have, so it is therefore a bad card for us to continue our bluff.

So why is our flop check-raise good in the first place?

I can see one argument for it: we need bluff in our flop k/r range to balance our value k/r's, and if we're opening UTG in a full game with T9s at all, it's going to be at the very bottom of our range, so it's a perfect candidate to bluff with.

But the board is really static, and not much is going to change between the flop and the turn. This particular turn card shuts down our bluff. If that's the case, oughtn't it shut down our value betting too? How are we going to be playing AK in this spot, or 77?

I'm caught between the logic of Jon_Locke, where it turns out that almost nothing that beats us folds to a turn c-bet on this board, and my own sense that the villain who three-bet us before the flop is going to call our flop checkraise with their entire range.

It seems to me that it is a mistake to continue our bluff on this turn and it is a mistake not to continue our bluff on this turn, well, maybe the real mistake is how we played the flop. Because the flop is so static, what if we check/call with our entire continuing range on the flop, and delay actually playing poker until the turn?

Alan-> k/c'ing here takes balance too far. You shouldn't have a range in that spot that includes complete air later street bluffs on a dry board oop. Also, DD specifically shows up w enough "wtf" (to the table) stuff in a "k/c, k/r, b" pot that he doesn't need to look for spots to add to that range lol.

I said "check/call with our entire continuing range." I left out the part where this particular hand on this board probably ought not be part of that range.

It's simple, the king pairs, they are going to call down. The king doesn't pair, they should fold sone ace highs. Even if not I have mostly value hands in my range so who cares. This time I had a bluff.

I would have checked back the turn with jj as well, with the intention of calling a river bet.

I assume you were going for a check raise ott, or were you just planning on dogging it?

All the guys who advocate just betting the turn are overly optimistic and falling back on mindless barrelling.

I am old though, still have a bit of the LHE is all about saving or earning a bet when you can.