Effective stacks ~700. Villain has my $700 or so covered.

EP limps, Hero raises to $20 with KQ next in, Villain calls next in, one more player calls and limper calls. To the flop 4 ways, pot ~$80.

Flop: K 7 2

EP checks, Hero bets $65, Villain calls, everyone else folds. Pot ~$210

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
I am new to the room and fairly new to the game, so I know little about Villain and he knows little about me. I get the sense that he is a winning regular (got called for 5/10 shortly thereafter, though I didn't know this at the time). I'd rather not use any Villain attributes in evaluating this hand.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Turn: 9. I check, Villain appears as if he knows he is going to bet but takes some time to figure out the amount. Bets $120, I call. Pot ~$450

River: 3. I check, Villain again quickly appears to be planning to bet. Eventually bets $375. I call.

I will provide my own thoughts/reasoning later so as to not poison the thread.

This is one of those spots where I try to pick up as many reads after his river bet as possible. Where are his eyes? focused on one spot? does he appear comfortable? breathing patterns? can you see his neck, what is his carotid artery doing - calm or pulsating? The answers to this question would give me a lean in either one direction or another but I would not feel totally comfortable.

GENERALLY, players who take time to think about bet sizing are thinking about how much they can bet to get value. when players are bluffing they tend to bet quicker and not use as much thought.

it's a tough spot with zero history because you are basically guessing whether or not villain does this with busted flush draws.

Against described V, hard for him to be improved by the flush or make two pairs on this river.

What does calm carotid artery mean and what does pulsating carotid artery mean? Calm im assuming means strong and pulsating im assuming is bluff because nervous?

My artery pulses like mad when I'm strong (to the point I try to keep it covered). Pulses only a little when I'm bluffing, maybe. Definitely strength. The only tell I haven't been able to control.

I think the hand is played OK, but I'd rather have reads before I call down with one pair.

I dont hate it but I would have rather lead on the turn. I think his river bet feels like a value bet more than a bluff. He is in position and if he bluffed the turn with hearts and you called why does he think you will fold the river to a brick? Its possible obv but I would say this was a value bet (set most likely from the runout) like 80% of the time and bluff 20%. Maybe even 90/10 frankly.

KK, AA, KK, even QQ all seem pretty unlikely from V. Would he value bet KJ/KT? Or QQ-JJ-TT? It is really player dependent.

Why c/c turn? I'd bet turn for value folding to a raise.

Sent from my SM-G920V using 2+2 Forums

This is a pretty polarizing river bet by V. If V is a thinking player as we expect, he likely expects that Hero's range is capped at one pair hands--AA at best. If he were trying to go for thin value with KJ type hands, I doubt he would bet this much. V should end up being (essentially) nutted or with air here.

V's range probably consists of Kxdd, maybe A7dd, 77/22/99, and whiffed hearts. I discount 77/22 slightly because I would expect V to raise those on a 4-way flop. Whiffed hearts should also be discounted slightly unless we have reason to believe that he would fire another barrel on a river blank after we c/c turn (basically saying that we have JJ/QQ/Kx with maybe AA in our range).

I haven't stoved the ranges. I would think that theoretically this is a call, although in my experience this kind of line ends up being either a flopped set or backdoored diamonds like every time.

It is polarized it can be the nuts or nothing. Very rarely is a medium strength hand.

Pulsing artery coupled with not moving tense breathing leads me in the direction of bluff.

Javanewt just said pulsing artery is insanely strong so... who do I believe?

Nice hand... Readless its a gross spot. Depending on the player, this could be a wide range of value hands depending on how good he is and how the rest of the table is. Standard play says that he only has sets and Kxdd here for his value hands and XhXh for his bluffs. However I know a few good 2/5 players who will have other weird **** in their range like K7s, 23hh, K9.

That being said, you get the feeling he knows what he's doing... why? Also, what image do you give off from your appearance? Most good players are not going to bluff an unkown in this spot because your rage here can be Kx+ or super wide.

I think your line is fine most of the time... However without reads, I think it may be better to pot control by betting smaller on flop and turn as opposed to larger flop and checking turn. I like 45 flop, 90 turn. We want to stay in control of the hand as much as we can when we are readless. When you let off the gas and check call turn, your range caps.

As played, fold river imo. It sucks, but you are unknown. Unless he is specifically trying to bluff you off top pair, his river sizing is pretty valueish. That being said, calling is not bad either. I think its a marginal spot either way. (FYI I probably call because I am a station and people tend to lose their minds against me sometimes)

Pulsing artery is insanely strong AND big bluff. Depends on the person. Usually if they are under 30 its a big bluff. Over 50 its big value. No clue about the tweeners. If I'm playing against observant players and there's a chance I won't be able to control my pulse, I pull my shirt up to my mouth and hold it there for the duration of the hand. It probably looks kind of douchey, but I KNOW it's saved me money on my big bluffs. If I have a big hand and I feel it going, I just let em see it to try to get the call.

RE: Reads - I didn't provide much information here because I have found that people put a lot of stock into information that is inherently unreliable. I'm new to the room and was somewhat new to the game. I think that it makes more sense to evaluate the hand as one would play it against an unknown or online than to use low value info. I included the stuff about him appearing to be a winning reg so that it was clear that this wasn't just some low limit chump.

That being said, if y'all insist, here you go. Villain is a young asian guy who I had seen playing the like one other time I have been to this casino so far, plus, it's Tuesday night and I saw him on a Saturday, so I am inferring that he plays often. He's the biggest stack at the table and I've seen him play pretty strongly thus far.

When he bet the 375 I made sure to ask, "So it's 375, right?" before I called. He sort gave a startled "What? Yeah 375" in response, which locked in the call for me. But, I'd rather not focus on this.

RE: My image

Early on when the opportunity came to chop the player on my right used a codeword for "do you have a jackpot hand" that I had never encountered and then when we chopped, Villain kind of needled me about not checking to see if I have a jackpot hand before chopping. My unwillingness to bet $5 to win half of a $25,000 jackpot and my unwillingness to straddle when he pointed out it was my turn to probably set up an image that I don't like to gamble much. It also says some things about him that he tries to talk me into straddling and then doesn't straddle himself.

The only real hand of note that I played involved me having 33 in the BB on a 3s 3c 5s flop. I checked, pfr bet, player between us raised, and I pushed. The raiser called with 77 and rivered the 7 to put me down a buy-in early on. I promptly rebought for the max.
------------------------------------------------------------------

My line was primarily influenced by an effort to control the pot. I chose to bet 2/3 on the flop to deny some immediate and implied odds, and then figured I could slow down if I end up OOP. I'm interested in a comparison of your proposed line with mine. At first blush it seems like your line actually inflates the pot more because you are putting double the money in before slowing down, but that's obviously not the whole picture.

My main concerns with a double barrel strategy here are that 1) it sets me up to get stacked vs. hands that beat me, 2) it makes it much easier for villains to get away from worse made hands, and 3) it makes my bet flop/check turn range very weak and thereby exploitable. I'm obviously giving up: a) pressure on draws (unless they value pwn themselves by betting when checked to) and b) the chance of extracting value from worse made hands that might actually call further action, and c) the increased reliability of getting raised on the turn/river rather than just getting bet at.

Villain description makes me even more inclined to call -- and it does affect the hand.

Agree with this. It sounds like your checking the turn for balance (to protect your checking range). If that's the case, then you also need to c/c this river as well. Villain's mannerisms on the river seem fairly indicative of a bluff. Also, since V appears to be a reg, and you have some seemingly noticeable tells going on here, finding out whether he's bluffing here can give you a nice edge on him in the future, which swings this to call if it's at all a close spot.

If we decrease the bet sizes for the line and bet turn, lets see what happens:

80 pre, we bet 45 on flop, villain calls ~170 going to the turn 90 on the turn, if villain calls ~350 going to the river and we have ~550 left. We can now check/call check/fold, or bet/call bet fold river. If villain raises turn, we still have not reached commitment and can call, fold, or raise.

There are obviously complications with this line, we tend to invite more people to play a wider range against us, so we lose some information. However that can also work to our advantage since we have a decent value hand.

I like keeping the betting lead for most parts in tricky hands because it keeps our range uncapped. When we have no history with people, we can play super unbalanced and change our bet sizes to meet our needs. I'd be happy betting bigger with a hand that I can take to the felt. We don't need to balance anything with this guy unless we know for sure we will be playing MANY hours with him/others paying attention in the future.

Unbalanced play is key to crushing LLNL. If we were playing rock paper scissors against someone who always threw rock, we wouldn't take a balanced strategy and throw an equal number of rock/paper/scissors. We would always throw paper. Our exploitable strategy will crush them until they adjust to it.

I think this hand is pretty standard, but pretty interesting because it is a common difficult spot. Keeping the betting lead OOP will usually make it easier.