i was sweating my dad play 200nl and he had this hand come up, i said it was a good call he insisted it was bad, who's right?

200bb deep

hero limps 35 btn minraises to 5$ villain in bb (40vpip, 4pfr, 4%3b) flats

flop comes 642 giving hereo nut straight,
bb donks 1/2 pot, hero calls, btn folds

turn is 9 bb bets 2/3 pot, hero 4x reraises villain calls

river is 9 villain donk jams all in for 100 into a 200 pot

does hero call or fold?

if im correct, hero needs 25% equity to call here (100 call to win 400), right?
i think hero has 25% equity here, despite the fact that villain is such a tight fit/fold player with his aggression. is it conceivable that such a tight villain could be doing this with missed bd flush draw/missed straight draw, some weird counterfeit 2p, a misplayed TT+ or is it a full house every time? my dads pretty beat up about it he just keeps smashing shlt in the wood shed while yelling "im such a f**king fish" over n over

thanks for settling this hopefully, i think he did ok calling

The reason he 4x raised the turn was to shrink the combos that can call to sets and the nut flush draw. If he calls this river, he squandered this info. Villain can only call the 4x turn raise if he is sure your dad will pay off. If your dad felt that villain is overbluffing, he would have raised smaller or flatted the turn, and then can confidently call a 1 PSB on the river.

As played, call is bad.

EDIT: it is not ‘go smash the woodshed’ bad. But, us dads do need to vent the frustration from time to time.

thanks for the input. you think its pretty certain that a 4x raise narrows villains calls down to such an absolute range? i feel there are still people who would call that with draws/ not let some overpair/2p go and then donk the river when their hand is counterfeit/thinking their "trap" is good. but, that may make up such a minute portion of their range that in general its just a fold..

Real problem here is the limp with 53s pre, otherwise it is annoying but I am probably not folding. If the guy was really tight and you had the read MAYBE you could make the fold here, but personally I am not the folding type.

Yeah, if the HUD or the read on the player is “fit or fold” the donk bet is almost never a bluff. Counterfeit 2-pairs would just check. 9x might shove for thin value, but there is not a lot of 9x that bets flop and turn, and calls a 4x turn raise.

There are hands vs maniacs that I would never fold, even holding AA/KK. But that is how you exploit overbluffers, is by just calling down.

In theory, the 4x narrows them dramatically, and “fit or fold” even more so.

TAG regs fold when you raise them, everything but top range, like a set.

Are we only calling the river jam with 44?

I am not saying it's right or wrong just saying if villain's jam range is underfulls+ that has to be the minimum hane we call, right?

I agree. Good point.


The combinatorics of boats vs straights is interesting, since this board should only be a nut straight, quad 9’s or 66699, 44499, or 22299. None of these hands block each other at all, so we really can’t be surprised when it happens.

We might have played bottom set differently. However, assume the hand played out the same way but we are holding pocket 2’s and rivered 22299.

Now the villain could have flopped the straight. But, would villain ever flat the 4x raise with the nuts, and a backdoor spade draw on the board?

Possibly, a crafty player might flat leaving 1/2 pot stack there and then check call with a straight on all rivers (even blanks).

But not this ABC villain. If we raise 4x and villain flats, it is almost always sets, with some nut flush draws and maybe flush/straight combo draws. The only other possibility is that both players hold the same straight, which is the only thing we do block.

So the river paired the board and ABC villain shoves remaining stack half-pot.

For a pure strategy, folding all our rock bottom boats would be prudent. After all, did we really improve? Is our hand now elevated higher in our range than it was previously? If we stop and think about it, all we really want from 22 is a blank river. This keeps our hand strength disguised. One of my favorite pros, Phil Laak, correctly snap folded once such a rivered bottom boat vs Johnny Chan. I don’t think Laak folds many boats, but he was clearly behind the range of Chan when Johnny shoved over the top with what was clearly a bigger full house.

Next, If we hold 44, then we need villain to hold exactly 22 or a weirdly played straight. So, as a mixed strategy, we can even consider folding a portion of our 44 combos. Maybe we fold 25% and call 75%. Maybe 50/50.

Calling can always be done by dispersing your combos with mixed strategy, any which way you see fit, so long as your overall defense is MDF, and you never call with a combo that can not beat a bluff.


Now, here is the hard part. If we ever fold our straight or bottom boat, and get shown a bluff will we TILT?

We should be satisfied with our decision, with the info we had available, and simply make a note that this villain was not as ABC as we thought.

Folding would be absolutely terrible. Villain is 40 vpip and is in the BB he can have all kinds of garbage here. 87, 64, 75, any spade draw, A9, K9, A3, A5. Villain has probably 15 value combos give or take. If even one of the hands I mentioned play this way even a portion of the time call is +EV.

On a side note, your dad needs to quit poker. It doesn't seem to make him happy.