Our best bluffs are going to be hands that block his strong Jx. KQ for example would be an awesome candidate to bluff river. What’s tough about bluffing the river is hands that pick up equity on the turn are often bad river bluffing candidates because we then block the draws that we can get to fold. So we are more likely to get to the river with 56ss than say KQhh as played, but KQhh makes for a better river bluff.

In general people don’t like to fold so I usually like to make sure I’m doing most of my river bluffing with my top candidates, but this isn’t a bad spot to go for it. It honestly comes down to your image and what you think of V.

Fold pre, other than that I love it. Good for you for having heart.

But you’re flirting with disaster in the sense that you’re obviously just trying to win the hand.

Pre is a bit too loose, but if you aren't going to pull the trigger on this turn and river, what are you doing in the hand? Furthermore if you don't jam this you basically have zero bluff range. KQ should be a c/f 4-ways on the flop so it's pretty irrelevant to this situation.

I hope the more experienced (and inexperienced) posters here realize the A is a mostly brick as far as Vs range is concerned and as such H’s QQ+ and A4-5s should pile. Not concerned w the straight as 54s is so rarely in both ranges by the riv. As long as you’re bet bet betting the good stuff then go ahead and throw this guy in there too...

Low score, maybe 2-3. Sizing is all over the place and seems sloppy to me. The question should be at what sizing would villain still fold and save you money the times he does not.

Against some opponents at 1/2 and 1/3 wildly overbluffing can still be profitable just because they are weak players with poor fundamentals. But that doesnt mean we should encourage the line

Just curious as to why you think the sizing is bad?

People are button-clicking words as usual. This is not "overbluffing." Do people know what overbluffing means? When you have the nut low on the river by definition you can't be "overbluffing" if you bluff.

^not true since which hands to bluf is determined by combination of how many sd value it has and how good its blockers are. Many cases where all bluffs ave 0 sd value and nut low hand should not be bluffed if it doesnt have good blockers. On this flop hands like A3s have better potential for tripple barreling then 65s.

I don't understand your point. A3s is obviously not a bluff candidate because it's not a bluff. Of all of the hands that get to the river, I can't think of any better bluff candidates than what we have.

It's wrong to conclude we're over-bluffing based on choosing this combo to bluff. It's actually hard to over-bluff in this spot unless we have zero equity turn barrels.

Against players with zero folds, bluffing one combo is overbluffing. Just saying lol.

Ok, so we shouldn't be bluffing people who can't fold. But why are we convinced that our opponent is incapable of folding? I realize low stakes live players are showdown monkeys and if you're going to deviate from optimal play, you want to bluff less and value bet thinner. But that doesn't mean they literally never fold. I mean he's facing a bet/bet/shove into a MW pot with 2nd pair on a dry flop. He doesn't have to be a poker whiz to realize that he's not good too often against most of his opponents.

I think people here either tend to be biased against bluffing due to preconceived notions of the ineptitude of their opponents, due to previous bad experiences bluffing, due to their idea that the OP wouldn't be posting if the bluff got through (although it did as noted in another post), or due to something. I stick by my original post that this is a slam dunk bluff and if you aren't bluffing here you aren't bluffing right and you have deviated way too much from optimal play.

You can quibble with sizing if you want but I think the flop underbet is fine due to board texture and the multi way nature of the pot making opponents play more face up than they would otherwise have to. The turn bomb setting up the river shove when we pick up a ton of equity is on the agro side. Certainly we could bet smaller on turn and not shove river, thus saving chips when it doesn't get through. I don't think this is good though. I don't know OP's original plan, but if he was planning on giving up on the river with any cards that didn't improve him or a good scare card, then I think the turn bomb is good because it would discourage pocket pairs less than a jack from continuing.

My comment was mostly tongue-in-cheek. Still though, even in this hand, the V called two near-pot bets, tank call river is likely. There are a lot of players against which you should zero bluffing frequency at least on certain boards and streets.

All very good points.

So let me ask you the following: Is the success of the "third barrel" independent of the prior two streets' action or conditional upon them? That is to ask: does the Villain's resolve look stronger or weaker after two flats? Is he psychologically more attached to the pot and anchored in his decision given his prior actions or less so?

I really don't know. I'm tempted to conduct an actual experiment on laboratory grinders. That said, I'm thinking most behavioral economics studies would suggest that people get more anchored to prior decisions and aren't capable of judging a sequential gambling prospect on its own merits; that is, independently from priors.

In games with even decent players I couldn’t agree more. But in games with people playing garbage ranges and who aren’t going to do things like bluff raise without a huge draw, I think continuing with KQ here is pretty reasonable. Maybe it’s a little ambitious 4 ways, but 3 ways I would almost always continue in a 1/3 game.

I actually really want to look into getting a solver for multi-way pots. I’ve just seen what happens in pio when I give opponents weak ranges and we node lock so they don’t bluff raise the right combos or at a high frequency, our cbet frequency goes through the roof.

Of course, multi-way the number of nodes explodes and the results get super-sensitive to the assumptions we make. You know all this already, so I'm stating the obvious. But I'm really curious to hear your views on this because like yours, my instinct is that people are c-betting to infrequently at these levels even in multi-way situations.

I'll go against the grain a little and say that KQ BDFD is a fine c-bet here, and we're still being pretty selective 4-ways including it.

I'm not a neuroscientist or anything, I'm barely even a poker player. From a poker perspective, the villain looks like he's playing a bluff catcher and he's capped by flatting twice. From a psychological perspective I would agree that as people get more emotionally and financially invested in a hand, it's going to take more to get them off it. That's why it's so easy to steal limped pots. But if we say that's a reason not to bluff, then we're going back to the dark ages of never running multiple street bluffs and playing each street in a vacuum. Against some opponents, this is probably a correct adjustment, but not how we should be styling our poker game in general.

Also, maybe the A is enough for the opponent to give himself permission to fold, ie "I know this guy was FoS and just barreling off with his AK but then the luckbox got there on the river." Maybe it doesn't make a whole lot of sense if we're breaking down ranges, but we're not talking about logic at this point. This way he can still surrender without admitting he was wrong
which is probably what he wants to do anyways because no one is super comfortable playing for their stack with a bluff catcher.

Yea it seems awfully standard to me - even in a game with decent players - even 4 ways - as long as we have the bdfd.

ran this through GTOPlus

solver is 50/50 barreling or check/jamming this combo on the turn, and always jamming river

even when i node lock villian to basically not bluffraise anything on the flop, solver still plays it the same

Thanks for sharing that. Do you have an exploitative perspective on this also?

Thanks again for sharing this fascinating hand

basically the exploit is if he's not raising enough on the flop, we exploit by cbetting most of range for a small sizing, in the sim i ran i gave OOP a 33% and a 75% flop sizing.

vs a GTO opponent, oop is supposed to check 45%, bet 1/3 34%, and bet 3/4 21% of the time. IP is supposed to be raising 20% and there is NO WAY live 1/3 opponents are hitting that. The 200z pool on ignition isnt even hitting that on this flop and they are much much more aggressive.

when I node lock IP to underbluff (took their raise % down to 10%, and fold % slightly up) the flop, the cbet % jumps up 100%, with the small sizing being used 85% of the time. And since when called you're up against a stronger range on the turn now, your check % goes up (75%), even though solver still likes barreling this combo at some %. For example it likes to check AA and JJ here almost always, but always betting KK and QQ.


I'm still working out the best way to use solvers in relation to live play. You already have to make a lot of assumptions as far as ranges go and what your opponents are doing with certain parts of their ranges, and you don't have a database to look at like you would online.

in this particular sim, I gave myself (oop) a 16% opening range which looks something like A2s+, KTs+, Q9s+, J9s+, 44+, AJo+ and 54s+ I gave my opponent a flat range of 17.5% which includes all PP up to QQ (flatting some small % instead of 3betting), all suited aces, offsuit aces down to AT, and SC's and gappers down to 54s and some stuff like T7 suited and J8s.

Well the biggest problem is I assume your solver is for heads up. Our betting ranges and sizing are going to look much different multi-way.

I discounted the 2 blinds as they are atc short stacked fit or fold players

Interesting debate because this is your sole and best bluff card and versus any hurrdy durr 1/3 player who will give fold a J because of the psychology of an “obvious” ace hitting it is a profitable jam. On the other hand it seems your opponent may have picked up on your bluffy ways given that you folded to a 1/2 pot sized river bet after C/R. However most live players especially not grinders are probably not paying attention even and you have a total of 1 hand in history. You also have a stereotyped tighter image as an early 30s something so there is that to weigh too. He could also have draws and floats that bricked too that is small but not negligible. Ultimately if you jam it has to work 1/2.2 or whatever times and I think it will given the lack of history and the A being such a psychologically great card to bluff versus live opponents as others have discussed. So Nh but I guess you are positing this because he was correctly slowplaying a set or did made the rare 1/3 Villian pickoff with a J.