That too.

No, that's not the moral of the story.

That's result's oriented, and you're not WA/WB in this hand.

A quick tutorial with some myth busting on WA/WB:

- In MANY poker hands, if you flip over your actual cards, you would see you are way ahead or way behind vs. your opponent's actual hands. Say for example, as a thought experiment, pre-flop, hands are dealt, and before doing any betting and you flip over your KK to show everyone. Someone else flips over AA. You're "way behind."

- Reverse the hands. Now with AA you're "way ahead."

- OK this is important: That type of "way behind" has NOTHING to do with the poker theory concept of WA/WB behind, and people in this forum confuse the concept all the time. Yes, in poker, excluding closer to even-equity draws, it's very common for your actual hand to be better or worse than an opponent's and have little chance to change in relative value by the river.

- Again, that has NOTHING to do with the CONCEPT of WA/WB.

- You experience the concept of WA/WB most commonly when there's a very good chance you have the best hand... and so you want to value bet... but you cannot because villain's range is distributed into two primary segments:
a) Hands that beat you and against which you have very little equity.
b) Hands you beat that against which you have very little equity AND (this is a huge and!) that mostly can't call value bets.

- One fundamental underpinning of the WA/WB concept is that while you may very often have the best hand, you often can't value bet because you do not beat 50% of villain's calling range.

- Secondarily, you may also choose to check and not bet a street to widen your own range in such situations for the hope of getting villain to call with a wider range of hands you beat on a future street, thinking your range is now weaker / you're bluffing more.

- Another key aspect of WA/WB is that villain's range of likely worse hands has very little equity and is not likely to comprise draws. You are not WA/WB when villain's range of likely hands includes draws that are going to have decent equity against you. So another element of WA/WB is that villain has very limit outs when you have the best hand.

- Here's a great WA/WB example:

You hold KK and open from UTG. Villain calls in BB. You put his range on pocket pairs, some broadway, some strong connectors, and lots of middling suited aces.

Flop comes A92r, and villain checks to you.

You are now WA/WB. If you bet KK, villain is very likely to fold every hand you beat. He'll fold his pocket pairs, his connector hands with 9x, and his air. And he will call with all his Ax. There are no draws, so the hands you beat generally have only 2 outs against you. Against villain's range of hands that you beat - Ax+ - you have 2 outs. Way ahead. Way behind. Get it? So what's the play here? Check the flop for sure, soul read the turn, possibly bet for thin value when checked to, etc., etc.

- In this actual hand, OP is saying he feels he's WA/WB. He's not. Not remotely. He just happened to be in a spot where he ended getting it in against a hand that crushed him. That has nothing to do with WA/WB. And again, I totally stand by all my posts ITT - villain's range definitely contains hands like 55, 66 (pocket pairs + draws), 76 (pairs + draws), 99-JJ, maybe QQ (over pairs), etc, as well as hands that beat us. This is not a range against which we are WA/WB because IT GIVES US VALUE. Remember? That's one of the most important fundamental traits of a true WA/WB situation - the inability to get value based on the situation.

- OP, in this hand, did you just ship the turn over V's $40 bet? I think that's really spastic. OR did you raise turn and then call a shove? That's bad too, imo. Turn is a raise/fold for value, and like I said, a call isn't terrible by any means, but I really feel we're leaving value on the table if we don't raise turn small. But we need to raise/fold.

Said more succinctly, you are completely leveling yourself and results-oriented with that moral. It's really a terrible take-away. It's going to inhibit YOUR ability to get value when you are ahead and have you stationing villains when they are ahead.

Just think about that and how that dichotomy would affect you over time.

You are going to be calling these small bets without giving yourself a chance to extract MORE value (and I think there is plenty of value to get in situations like this) while allowing villains to fire into you with whatever they want. You'd abandon so much value when you're ahead and give them as much value as they're seeking when they're ahead.

Nice post willyoman

Also, think about when we value bet:

AK

on

K93r

We are doing this because villains will call with KQ, KJ, KT, etc. Hands we crush with very little equity.

Though it's also possible villain has a set 33, 99. Hands that crush us, giving us very little equity.

There are no draws.

Indeed, villain's range is segmented primarily into hands against which we are way ahead or way behind. Does the CONCEPT of WA/WB apply? No. NOT REMOTELY.

We're going to bet/bet/bet in that spot because villains will call and give us value with so many hands we're crushing all day long.

So be careful about situations where you think you're "way ahead or way behind" and, as such, you decide that can't extract value, because that's often wrong and completely misapplies the concept. And I think the OP hand and the following discussion is a pretty good example of such a situation and the flawed thinking that limits our expectation.

You're being results oriented OP. based on his line, I would range him as 77, 44, 99+, 65s, 8xs, 7xs and 45s, 64s with his range heavily weighed towards PPs. I would flat flop. On turn I would raise small to $80 or $90. He only has $300 left when he bets turn. We don't want to raise bigger as he will feel he is committed if he calls and will likely make a nitty hero fold with a hand like 99, TT. Whereas min raising keeps him in and the pot will be huge on river where we can bet about $150 or so.

Also as a side benefit, min raising turn doesn't commit us but it also allows us to safely fold when he reraise a hand that crushes us

I agree with the way you explained WAWB. I also agree we're not WAWB OTF. I think OTF after the CR V's range is 99-JJ, 77, 44, 65s, 8x and maybe T9. As very few $2/$5 players would CR flop with 55,66, and 67 there - I don't think those are in the range.

I changed my mind about the turn. I think 99-JJ would fire normal size bet there - unless I had a read on the guy as a habitual underbetter and that wasn't the case. T9 would probably just check/call. So only monsters would fire tiny. So basically his betting tiny drops off the part of his range we beat and leaves only 8x, 77, 65 and 44 and pure bluffs. Pure bluffs are a tiny % of the range there. Thinking about it logically, it's actually a fold OTT. Sounds results-oriented I know but seems logical to me. And it's really hard to fold AA there but logically I should have.

P.S. Yes, I shoved turn over $40. Yes, it was horribbad, yes plz rub it in more

Cool man. But yeah, for that part of the hand - the idea his weak bet sizing on the turn is indicative of a strong range - I would also disagree. I would think it's usually more weak than strong, but that is just something that's will be more difficult for us to know. You just gotta do your best to range him.

Though either way, you can't FOLD the turn. That's crazy talk my man.

For people advocating raise/fold turn:

While I expect to be ahead of villains range a good % of the time, I dislike raising turn for the following reasons:

*TT-QQ will be 3b pre some non-zero % of time (so we can get rid of a small portion of those combos)

*The missed draws we want him to bluff river with will fold to our turn raise

*99-QQ may jam over the top of us some non-zero % of the time and we will fold incorrectly (and we will be folding getting 2:1!)

*When we get to river the pot is 240 and effective stacks are 280. This stack size is set up pretty well for jamming over the top of villains river bet if we feel we are good, getting value from some of his weaker made hands, and picking off villains river bluffs.

Willy, very nice post

Same to you wowlucky.

Lots of good info on this thread

I'm actually really surprised that so many people are suggesting that raising the turn is the best action here. I honestly just don't understand why everyone wants to pump more money into this pot with one pair after a player described as tight has raised us AND continued after the top card on the board pairs. Sure, the guy's sizing is small, which in some cases indicates a weak hand. But I don't think we have enough info here to determine that small bet = weak hand.

I think I have listed some compelling reasons for not raising the turn already, but it seems that others don't agree? It seems that Wowlucky has also posted some compelling reasons...

I just don't see why all of a sudden because the guy bet small OTT, we decide that he didn't hit the board and that he's got 99-QQ the majority of the time. Am I at least correct in that those of you who want to raise the turn believe that the majority of villains range here is one pair? Granted we weren't given the best read on this guy, but it seems to me that, given that range, every street could potentially be played differently (3bet pre, c/c flop, check turn because the 8 scares him).

@ Willy, Good post on WA/WB... But I disagree that the concept doesn't apply in this situation. I feel that:

*Villains range is too heavily skewed towards the "us being WB" portion of his range due to his actions up until the turn for us to still be in value mode.

*The 8 OTT is one of the scariest cards in the deck for the portion of his range we are trying to get value from. Sure he may call, but it's definitely not guaranteed (unlike the AK/K93 example).

In a nutshell... Tight player c/r us and continues -> We decide to value raise one pair...? Does not compute in my mind. If you want to flat the turn and bet the river when checked to... fine. But given the actions up until the turn, I would absolutely be looking to get to showdown for cheap unless Villain shuts down.

People overplay one pair hands a lot. I think V can easily have 99-JJ.

Imagine that we have AK on K93 and we bet flop and get C/R. The turn is a Q or a J and Villain continues. Do you still want to raise for value?

But does him having 99-JJ justify raising the turn when his range is still mostly nutted and he may actually fold 99-JJ??? And we almost never have to protect our hand against draws???

If Villain can easily have 99-JJ than he can easily have 8x!!!!

Yeah I agree with other posters that he can have 99-JJ here a lot. The turn 8 makes it less likely he has pocket 8's. Nothing scary on this board and for a cheap turn bet (after c/r the flop) I'm happy to call now with expectation of him checking most rivers if he has a pocket pair 99-JJ. To me in live games, once it goes c/r flop, bet turn, bet river it is almost never a bluff so sometimes I can fold happy on the river if a player can never make this move with hands like 99-JJ (i.e. bet 3 streets for value) other times I make a crying call and see a set (turned house). Point is I call turn bet 99% of the time and seeing a river and on the river either folding to another bet or betting when checked to against most typical and standard live players who are easily read.

He could also have 66-55 on the turn and making a werid blocking bet after a failed c/r flop. So calling turn is like standard.

Hero shipped the turn and got called by J8.

Edit: Could have sworn that this post was asking "What's the river action?", but I guess I misread.

I hate the ship on the turn now 99-JJ might fold.

Lol like this example? No offense olaff

Edit: completely agree with professor

@olaff: I like your reasoning to fold turn but in game I'd probably call and sigh call small river bets

Technically it's 2 pair. But ya I think the 8 is a bad card. If another card was paired it would be a lot better. 8 is definitely part of the min raise range. If you guys are happy to raise turn why not raise flop. Turn has to be one of the worst cards

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if hes calling with j8 oop pre and check raising that flop vs you im not sure exactly how tight he is..