Hi all,

Thoughts on this bluff?

1/3 game. This new guy just got here but has folded 2x to aggression post and made semi standard call that could have easily been a fold. Just started drinking.

He prob thinks I’m tight

OTTH

I’m in the B.B. with 7s 2s 3 people limp to me including V in the SB.

I check

($16) Flop is K68

He bets 5 we call and another guy calls

(46) Turn: 9d he bets 15 and we raise to 50 guy folds and he SNAP calls

(146) River: Qh

He checks we bet 85

Thoughts?

You are only repping 57/T7 and maybe JT and 98.

I try not to go crazy in limped pots when I am the BB. His line looks like a flush draw but he can easily/likely has the K or Q which I don’t see him folding to that sizing.

I would have just called turn and realized your equity at a cheap price.

what are you repping for ~1/2 pot on the river? k9 and bluffs?

I can see H repping 2p here as well. I like it, but I find this line to be 50/50 or even a little less. With the pot size, bet size and idea that V may fold to aggression I think it's fine.

I'm OK with it. Don't love it, don't hate it. I'd bet a little more OTR.

Bet more on river. $110.

The turn raise is really bad. 72 equity vs villain's calling range just isn't very good.

You're going to need to elaborate here, because this looks like a prescription to never raise turn without a made hand. We have a full blown combo draw, how could our equity possibly be better?

Look at this board of K869 and consider all the possible combo draws that one could have in this spot. Hands like:

T9
97
JT
QJ
QT
A7
KX
9X
54

As far as combo draws go we have one of the weakest possible hands in this spot with 72.

Now consider the type of hands that will continue vs us and our equity against those hands. We are going to get calls from hands like flush draws and straight draws in addition to made hands. Our equity vs those hands is not very good at all. For instance, a hand as weak as Q3 has 72% equity against our holdings. We have only a 20% chance to best a hand as weak as 87 We have just 14% equity vs K3 and we'll never win a monster if we bink. We are 21% against A3

Now consider our equity against those same hands if we have A7. Vs Q3 we have 81% equity. Vs 87 we have 45% equity. Even against K3 we have 41% equity.

Also, while we do have position on villain we do not have position on the other player so things get especially dicey when the other villain calls with his draw (potentially a combo draw of his own) and we are playing the river pretty blind.

It should also be noted the equity of a combo draw is much higher on the flop with 2 cards to come than it is on the turn with just 1 card remaining. Furthermore the fact that the King is a rather than a makes this a much worse spot for all straight/flush combo draws on this board.

I also check preflop.

I also call the flop bet.

Even though it is a small turn bet he's still betting into 2 opponents on a big street. Sounds like we don't have enough history to really get too out-of-line here. I probably lean towards just calling with my good odds.

Bluffing for me boils down to a couple of main things: I pretty much don't attempt to bluff unknowns, and if I am bluffing I typically try to rep a scare card. Neither of that applies here. It will work some of the time, but the question is whether it will work enough of the time.

GcluelessNLnoobG

All the comments are consistent with the philosophy of playing bigger pots with bigger cards.

Yes, bigger HANDS would be even better, but if we are going to play bigger pots without the bigger hands, then bigger cards are better than smaller cards.

We're barrelling river. Getting called by better draws is one of the perks of raising. What matters in terms of equity is equity against made hands which are going to call us down.

You can say there is no value in having an equity advantage but that ignores what happens when we bink our flush (or in small # of cases the 10) and are now 0% to win the hand. That's a huge problem with this hand here.

If you are raising this RIO hand in this spot when our equity is rather weak then you are simply raising way too many hands and good luck getting a fold on the river. Either that or you are just picking the wrong spots to raise. I'm the most aggressive winning player that I know (postflop) and the fact that even I am not raising in this spot speaks volumes.

This doesn't make any sense. You're saying that the problem with the hand is how it matches up against other drawing hands, but him having a draw is an absolute dream for us. The more draws he has, the better. How would you play the hand if you knew for a fact that he had say the NFD? Raise turn, barrel river. Right? (Maybe you'd instead flat and bet or raise river, but you get my point). What happens on a minority of runouts vs draws cannot be a problem with raising the hand, because overall raising vs draws is great.

Except when it's possible/likely for villain to have the top pair (K) or 2nd pair (Q) in his hand...

... the likelihood of which is reduced if WE have the big cards.

but we don't because we have 72s...

Worrying about what happens if he has pair + FD seems way overspecific, that's a small number of combos and the range of stuff he could potentially have is enormous. There's also zero reason villain is "likely" to have big spades. He completed in the SB. He's also likely to fold river even if he has the Qs.