16nl Flopped top 2 on super wet board...

[Paul7340]

Villian is 15/8/inf (60 hands) limited postflop stats

PokerStars - $0.16 NL - Holdem - 8 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 3

CO: $13.60
BTN: $6.40
SB: $5.13
BB: $16.24
UTG: $25.16
UTG+1: $17.07
MP: $17.62
Hero (MP+1): $16.24

SB posts SB $0.08, BB posts BB $0.16

Pre Flop: ($0.24) Hero has K Q

fold, fold, fold, Hero raises to $0.48, CO calls $0.48, fold, fold, BB calls $0.32

Flop: ($1.52, 3 players) 9 Q K
BB checks, Hero bets $1.45, CO calls $1.45, fold

Turn: ($4.42, 2 players) 9
Hero bets $4.22, CO calls $4.22

River: ($12.86, 2 players) Q

Clearly when that falls my decision to shove is easy, and if another heart falls my decision is also easy!
If it was a blank river what would your line be?

Thanks

[bull699]

Still b/f'in small on the river, getting calls from some Kx hands.

[Pokie]

I hate your turn play in this hand, potting it as though you have the nuts even though you are million miles away from it. Even 92o beats you, enough said...

[Paul7340]

I hate your turn play in this hand, potting it as though you have the nuts even though you are million miles away from it. Even 92o beats you, enough said...

I posted the hand because i felt it was misplayed, so what would you have done?

Imo a bet is mandatory here, giving a free or even cheap card here to a very likely draw is worse than betting. So its a question of bet sizing, 1/2 PSB is to small and i think $3 would have been better

[Pokie]

Originally Posted by Paul7340

I posted the hand because i felt it was misplayed, so what would you have done?

Imo a bet is mandatory here, giving a free or even cheap card here to a very likely draw is worse than betting. So its a question of bet sizing, 1/2 PSB is to small and i think $3 would have been better

I prefer a check/call or a smaller bet of 1/2 pot if you're facing a player that likes to call but doesn't bet himself.

The problem is I can't see what hands the villain can call with that we beat, maybe KJs but normally I'd be laying this down to a turn bet myself, so considering the villain seems reasonably competent, we can't really bet here. The villain can't call with something like AJ trying to fill his gutshot, since the bet size wouldn't give him enough implied odds and the board has paired up.

This is why you are basically bluffing when you bet the turn, since all better hands call/raise, and all worse hands fold.

I think the best play is check/call turn and then check/raise all-in on the river.

Easy game.

[Paul7340]

But if we check the turn we give him a free card to draw to, which in this case can be to the straight or flush for that reason i think a bet is necessary, just a question of how much (i think pot was to big maybe somewhere around 2/3, 3/4 would have been better).

If we check looking to check call, i dont see what hands he bets that we beat and the ones we do beat he checks and we let him draw for free and loose value.

[Pokie]

Originally Posted by Paul7340

But if we check the turn we give him a free card to draw to, which in this case can be to the straight or flush for that reason i think a bet is necessary, just a question of how much (i think pot was to big maybe somewhere around 2/3, 3/4 would have been better).

If we check looking to check call, i dont see what hands he bets that we beat and the ones we do beat he checks and we let him draw for free and loose value.

We beat his random floats that he now needs to bet the turn to take the pot away from us.

He may bet random gutshots, and probably his flush draws.

If he checks it back and the flush or 4-card straight come in then a bit of soul-reading is required but it's an easy check/fold against someone that doesn't bluff this stuff, and an easy check/call against someone that likes to rep straights when there are 4-cards that make a straight on the board.

We don't have to protect our hand from draws, this kind of thinking really gets you into trouble. You're probably thinking it because people have drawn out on you before and stacked you with their straight or flush, and you at least want them to have to pay some kind of money for drawing to the straight or flush, so that if they stack you, at least they had to pay a tiny fee for doing so. Bad thinking in my opinion.

[Paul7340]

We don't have to protect our hand from draws, this kind of thinking really gets you into trouble. You're probably thinking it because people have drawn out on you before and stacked you with their straight or flush, and you at least want them to have to pay some kind of money for drawing to the straight or flush, so that if they stack you, at least they had to pay a tiny fee for doing so. Bad thinking in my opinion.

This just seems completely wrong to never give the wrong price to a villian on a draw and to just let the board run out without making money from people on draws. We win at poker if our opponent makes more and more expensive mistakes than us, setting the incorrect price for a draw is us forcing the opponent to play incorrectly and the majority of the time this will lead to a nice profit for us

[Pokie]

Originally Posted by Paul7340

This just seems completely wrong to never give the wrong price to a villian on a draw and to just let the board run out without making money from people on draws. We win at poker if our opponent makes more and more expensive mistakes than us, setting the incorrect price for a draw is us forcing the opponent to play incorrectly and the majority of the time this will lead to a nice profit for us

No, because they just won't call when you price them out when they're on a draw, but they will happily ship over your big bet with a set or straight. This costs you EV. The only way around it is to give them a fair price, but don't pay off when they get there. This means that you gain $$$ for the times that they miss, and you don't lose many $$$ when they hit.

Obviously super fishy players will call without implied odds but most players don't, particularly when the board is all paired up and they're potentially drawing to the second best hand.

Your post also implies that you always bet the flop and turn to protect your hand whenever there is a draw out there on the flop. Sometimes we can't do this and just have to let them take a free card. They are in position after all so they have the advantage, that is why position is so good, they can do the best play that helps their hand, whereas when we're OOP we can't always do the play that we want that helps our hand the most.

[lunatic fringe]

This just seems completely wrong to never give the wrong price to a villian on a draw and to just let the board run out without making money from people on draws. We win at poker if our opponent makes more and more expensive mistakes than us, setting the incorrect price for a draw is us forcing the opponent to play incorrectly and the majority of the time this will lead to a nice profit for us

I think your both wrong and both kinda right. Let's assume that you make a large enough bet size so that the Villain is faced with a 0 EV call. In this sense, he might as well just fold. However, if you make your bet slightly smaller, he'll have a +EV call -- but this call will be just SLIGHTLY +EV. So why is this latter case so much worse than the former?

However, you're correct that if you can get the Villain to make big mistakes with hands which have lots of equity against us, than this is a very good reason to bet. So in your example, let's assume that the Villain has a hand like A J which has ~25% equity against our hand. If we bet 1/3 pot, he'd need 20% equity to call, so against our specific hand, he'd have better than direct odds to call and it would be correct for him to do so. However, against our range it might be correct for him to fold. So when we bet the turn, 2 pair might be the bottom of our value betting range. And his flush draw + gut shot could be drawing dead to full houses and better made flushes, so it would be correct for him to fold his hand to our range... whereas it's correct for him to call vs our specific hand. In this sense, betting can make sense in order to get hands with good equity against our range to fold which would be a pretty big mistake.

But, if we're just going to bet the turn and the Villain is going to call, and then we're going to check-fold the river and the Villain is going to bluff with his missed draw, then betting the turn for protection did not accomplish anything. In other words, if betting will get an opponents hands with strong equity to fold, then this is a really good thing. If it won't get the opponents hand to fold, then it's quite a bit less effective (especially if you're going to check-fold to the same hand on future streets.

This isn't to say that "charging" a draw has no place, it still works in the sense that its supposed to -- albeit not as effective as getting a hand to fold. But there's no reason to go out of your way to make an extra large bet to charge a draw if it's not the highest EV bet size. I guess this is a long way of saying that you should size your bets to maximize your EV and not to charge your opponents draws -- while you need to consider how the draws make up your opponents range and how he'll react to a particular bet size, it shouldn't be your only or primary concern in most spots.