That's missing the point a bit. I'm saying if raising 100% of your bluffs is profitable, then raising 44 is surely also profitable. Absolutely, there may be a case where EV(raising 44) < EV(calling 44) , but that comes with much more information and is an exploitative approach to the game.

In other words, you never value raise because "you know" worse will not call. How do you know? What does "know" mean in this case?

Except your premise of "raising 100% of your bluffs is profitable" doesn't apply here.

And we "know" that villain is a reg who C/R'ed flop + continued on the turn and river of the driest board ever.

It's not really that dry of a board texture, and that statement assumes he's only bluffing with "draws", like 8 outers or better and also gives up with some of them along the way, which we cannot say for certain. He never has JT? He almost always stops bluffing by the river? That's pretty specific, and I can't say one way or another. Forgive the emotional implication of the assumption, but this player is not you. If he is, I don't know your thoughts. Maybe you don't bluff and don't call bets with the appropriate proportion of your distributions such that EV(call) > EV(raise).

If that's the case, then I defer you to the statement of EV(call) sometimes being greater than EV(raise); but, there is no reason given by OP, or any other place, to make such assumptions. That information may be nearly statistically impossible to asset about any player with how narrow ranges are within the confines of this discussion.

What is very plain is that if we took this line with any two cards and the opponent fold 96s to a river raise that his play would be extremely exploitable. Note that that's also negating the bluffs that opponent should also have in his betting distribution so that 96 is called by worse. On that idea we should be able to agree. Perhaps someone knows the population of the game with such intimate knowledge to apply with significant confidence thresholds to your statement that makes EV(call) > EV(raise); but, that is quite presumptuous, likely impossible, to say with enough significance.

Sure, sometimes he has air or a missed draw -- we're not folding.

And we don't take this line with ATC.

So if he is bluffing, as you mention, and he does fold 96, as mentioned, bluffing 100% of the time is extremely likely to be profitable. The value bet/call range for the river might only be 99/66, but that opens your opponent to another list of issues. So you'd be stuck justifying one assumption over many others that aren't consistent with a solid game plan. More importantly, those justifications require reason we do not have.

Of course we won't have any two cards. The point of saying that is to show that we could have any two cards to profitably bluff-raise. Playing all our hands in such a way to bluff-raise this river is nearly tantamount to saying 44 is not a value raise. Both assertions require information that is outside of what any of us will likely experience versus any player, let alone this player.

Because of that, we're opting to employ a strategy, that while it may take into account some assumptions, leans toward protecting ourselves from the lack of information to which we have access. So the point is that this should be a value raise, so it is without further reasoning. With that reasoning, it may not be a value raise; but, to have that reasoning be correct enough of the time, you will need A LOT of information about your opponent, i.e. more than we have at the point of this decision.

Nobody is viewing folding as a reasonable option.

How is this thread so long?

This whole post has to be a troll, not just the river folding part.

I think that most people get that if you don't have any reads, even general population / site reads that you think are relevant, then you want a default strategy. What I don't get is why you are saying that in the absence of a read the default is to shove the river - surely you could just as easily say that without reads you should call the river.

rethinking this whole thing

I think villains river sizing is really bad

1. the hand is played by two 2p2ers who don't know it.
2. unconventional sizing was chosen.
3. a few people are trying to post thought provoking stuff/do real analysis rater than "easy ship/how much did you lose" usual 2p2 nonsense.

How so? Please elaborate.

Easy call.
River raising bottom set is not good.
Do you think he call a9,a6?

Yeah, because people give out so much advice in other threads that this is just clogging **** up.

If he's reggish I can't imagine raising to be any good, we have all AA combos here, you're basically putting pressure on his 66/99 hands. Call is meh since he bet so small but seems right.

If you're bluffing a ton in this spot since you have a stronger range OTR, then I guess it's ok but I don't see enough A9 69 combos that call compared to 66/99. Also he probably doesn't play A6 or even A9 this way often enough. If we assume he has 69s in his range it's a call, if we include all 69o then it can be a raise but only if we assume he will pay us off majority of the time. Considering the texture and runout I can't imagine him bet/calling all his 69 here

That board texture is very dry and I think check/raising the flop with Suited Ace's and another over card makes a lot of sense from villain. (This is the line I would take because I feel it would generate a lot of folds very often.)

The turn hits villains check/raise range very often. Our turn play seems perfectly fine to me.

I'm shipping it on the river. More often than not I feel like I'm losing insane value by not getting it in and I would be extremely surprised if villain shows AA. I think a big chunk of the time villain shows Top pair because of his river sizing.

SO what actually happened!?!?!?

I had 99 and snapped.

I agree with shipping and it not being particularly close.

But since the thread seems split I ran a solver on it

You should 3bet flop about half the time with your hand.
You should raise turn about 80% of the time.
River you arrive with about a 2/5th of a combo of 44 which always jams.

The thinnest river value jam is A9. 64 is a bluff jam, kinda interesting, while weaker hands are calling.