Sorry in advance for the lengthy post. I've posted a few threads where I made a call when I thought there was a good chance I was behind, but I think this is the first post about a call where I am clearly behind the vast majority of Villains range and if I did the math it would say fold. I see frequent bluff catch and hero call posts and they have all been specific to the hand. My main question here is: Should you look to limit your bluff catch / hero call hands? I can see an argument for live reads being a slippery slope to reinforce bad calls. If we don't actively look to balance this is the answer to just try to eliminate them from your game? Meaning we only bluff catch when V has enough bluffs in their range to justify it mathematically, and not when we get live reads that make us want to put V on the bottom of their range so we can win? Here's my example from Saturday. Biggest hero call of the year for me, I'm nitty.

Table history. 2/5 $1k max, table wasn't great but there were 4 seats I had a plan to exploit.
Seat 1 - Average LAG not scarey, older $2k+
Seat 2.5 - Middle aged eastern European sitting with his lady friend. Clearly new to the game. Limps every flop, may fold to a raise but often calls. Several small re-buys. He's sitting between seats, not sure where he's clocked in. $300
Seat 4 - Youngish LP player who tries to find aggression on occasion but usually looses his nerve to any real push back. $800
Seat 5 - Young TAG who overbets his strong hands to keep from getting pushed around. $2k+
Seat 6 - Hero, not sure what my image is here. I only played 3 hands in 40 mins. Only one went to showdown when Hero called $20 in the BB with A5 and flopped TP against LP Villain. V gave up after the flop and checked down his 66. I know, fold pre, but he was so soft... $650
Seat 7 - Solid winning Reg I've played with a few times, TAG that I dont have a plan for. $750
Seat 8 - Solid winning Reg who I've seen play TAG or LAG. Table / dealers comment that he's slumming 2/5 and there's a 10/10 game running. $1100
Seat 9 - Solid TAGish Reg I've only played with 2 or so times before, no plan. $900

HH - Other than the new player feeding the table things were pretty standard until the 10/10 Reg opened for $25 and got 2 callers. Young TAG 3! to $100 and 10/10 4! to $325, folded back to TAG who jammed and had 10/10 covered. 10/10 snap calls gets no help from the board, Young TAG pulls $2400+ pot with AA and 10/10 goes on tilt (someone said he had AK but he didn't show, I assumed KK but either is believable). Up to that point there were no 3!s. After that 10/10 pulled out an orange chip, re-bought the max and proceeded to 3! two more times in the same orbit. I picked up KK and opened for $25 in the CO and he 3! me as well. He snap folded to my 4! however (wasn't sure how much tilt he had and no one else played back at his 3! other than young TAG so I figured it was worth a shot, should have probably flatted IP and dodged an A but whatever).

OTTH: It's two hands after my KK and I look down at JJ. LP opens UTG to $20. Young TAG calls, I flat the LJ expecting 10/10 to 3! his CO to scoop the dead money. I also know that I have to fold if I 3! and he comes over the top even though he has some bluffs in his range on tilt, pot control? Seat 6 calls, 10/10 calls, BTN folds, SB is V1 LAG who 3! to $120. Folds back to me. I don't have odds to set mine but JJ is still ahead of a good portion of his 3! range here. I was already getting a sense that given the table dynamic (10/10 is raising at every opportunity) that his range is somewhat capped. Everyone else has shown weakness so I feel V1 LAG can 3! here with 77+, AQ+ and even some underpair semi bluffs. I'm not prepared to 4! though and would prefer to take a flop and eval. Especially with 10/10 tilting behind me.

Flop: (~$410 after rake) 8 4 4
V1 c-bets $150. I was a bit stunned at the sizing and thought it was either very strong or very weak. I didn't want to take to long with my decision because I know 10/10 is watching behind me and if he senses weakness he can come over the top light so I may have rushed my decision to flat again here. With this flop I'm sure I should raise or fold but the sizing threw me off a bit. 10/10 folds and we are heads up to the turn.

Turn: ($710) 8 4 4 3
V1 goes all in. Hero only has $380 behind to win $1470. I'm clearly behind V1s probable range at this point. But from pre flop, to the small flop bet and now I'm picking up weak live reads. I can't even particularly tell you what about his body language made me think there was a good chance we were ahead and I'll probably get flamed for not snap calling after putting almost half my stack in the pot getting better than 3.8:1 to see a river (flop mistakes aside). If I had say $600+ behind do you ever go with your live reads in a situation like this? I've played with V1 before a few times and he has a non zero amount of bluffs here but I'm sure it's not complete air. He is normally relaxed, smiling, and talkative even in big hands, but this hand he is quiet and clearly nervous. I took over 2 minutes with the decision and apologized to the table but I'm just not used to calling it all off so light against this line. His heart rate was up and when I asked if he had QQ he would hardly make eye contact as he shrugged and said "I don't know". I guess my stare down may have been a little uncomfortable but I didn't think it warranted his body language.

1 - Is this turn call spew (ignoring the bad flop play)?
2 - If I had $600 behind does your answer change?
3 - The original question, should we ever be calling when the math says no but the live reads say yes?

The real problem with this hand IMO is pre-flop. If you had 3-bet, you'd have a much clearer idea of villain's range. If he 4-bets, you can fold pre and save yourself a lot of money, and if he folds or calls you can over-realize your equity post-flop.

AP, I'd call given V1 description and the price we're getting. Along with the fact that V1 should be 3-betting most of the hands he wants to play from the small blind given the action. Also this board should not hit you very well at all and in theory you would've 3-bet QQ+ and folded 99, so he could be exploiting that targeting folds from AQ+.

I agree, it should be a 3! pre. It was kind of silly to expect 10/10 to 3! into 4 players without the goods the more I think about it. I was too worried about his tilt aggression. Should have never been in this spot but good to see the AP call vote.

You have a routine stack off here this deep unless you have reason to believe he is exclusively QQ+ which he isn't.

Preflop is absolutely fine.

Thanks for the feedback. I agree it's not "exclusively" QQ+ but it's pretty heavily weighted there. Where do you draw the line here?

Also, can you elaborate on pre-flop? If V1 doesn't raise we are 6 ways to the flop and gave away a ton of equity. Clearly 3! > flatting right? What is your logic for flatting and with what frequency?

I likely flat JJ near 100% vs an UTG open and UTG1 call at a full table assuming I have any respect for either player in front of me. There is no clear "value" in 3 betting perceived strong ranges here, and you also seem to be underestimating how well JJ does multiway in a 2b pot. You should be able to find good lines when that scenario plays out, and if you get 3b by a non-nit, you can find good lines there as well - mostly stacking off with sets and overpairs at a low SPR.

You can actually fold this pre facing the 3bet if you respect the player enough to know how QQ+ heavy his squeeze range ought to be vs utg+1+2 action. But once you choose to call pre you have determined it includes enough 'bluffs' (AQ+, maybe A2-5?) and you can now call down because you can rely on those bluffs stacking off on 8443r because it's such a good board for his value range. Calling off stacks is generally marginal, but once you arrive at spr2 or whatever on a great board for JJ you just commit to the call down.

In general, I try to avoid Hero calls at these levels as most V's just don't have enough of a bluffing frequency to make it all that profitable.

However, this spot is different IMO for a few reasons. First, V's line makes no sense to me (small flop bet/shove turn when nothing changes). That smells way more like someone who does not want a call (99 or TT is my guess) than AA/KK. The board is totally dry so V should assume that you will call another shell with 99-JJ (your likely holding). Secondly, the pot is laying you a really good price here which generally doesn't happen in Hero call situations.

I would call here for sure. I am also fine with preflop given what you described.

Thanks again, good food for thought. I admittedly didn't give much respect to UTG LP, but the TAG could have some traps there with 10/10 tilting behind that I could have jumped into with a 3!. Flops seem to not cooperate with my JJ, maybe I play it too aggressively to compensate. Agree that if TAG would have 3! UTG+1 I can find a fold fairly easily. I guess this isn't much of a Hero at all. I've definitely been making these exploitable folds in the past but the situation occurs so infrequently I've never given it this much thought. Sounds like even without the reads you would range him similarly and call AP.

I agree about generally trying to avoid Hero calls, as noted. This is the first such call I've made this year when the value hands were weighted this heavily over the bluffs. From the comments I guess it's not much of a Hero call though. I absolutely agree that his line was all over the place which factored in to my decision but again as you note, many V's still fail to fire the last bullet without the goods.

I have no problem at all w Vs line and sizing. Makes perfect sense for his range/stacks.

I am wayyyyy to tight post flop and I Still couldn't fold here like you said we put in to much money and are getting a price.

Haven't gotten to the hand yet. But comment on the preamble..

Every single loser in the room thinks they have a live read that justifies their bad play. The math doesn’t matter if their read is on. Every. Single. One. Of. Them. And maybe there’s 1/50 of them that are actually right. They are truly skilled at it. Players like mikestarr. But that’s 2% of people who think they are. If someone goes by the math... there aren’ nearly as many of hs.. just spend 5 min perusing the threads here... the math players will be much more likely to be winners. They might not end up being the killer that the truly exceptional “reads” guy is... but th chances they are winners is close to 50x as likely.

@whatnow88 - Thanks for the feedback. Didn't realize everyone is calling this off as standard.

@sisyphusonroids - This is more of what I expected to hear but as you haven't read the hand yet I'll wait and see if you fall in line with the consensus that this is a standard stack off.

Flatting w JJ vs a UTG open should be fairly standard unless you have reason to believe he’s opening fairly light. “Passive” wouldn’t fit. Flat is good. Remember to raise for value, you have to be ahead of the villains continuing range.

Don’t be surprised by the small cbet size. It’s perfect. It sets up a pretty easy turn shove. And there’s no need for villain to bet big on such a dry flop that hits nothing

On the turn, you’re not calling 380 to win 1470. You’re calling 380 to win 1090. I get what you meant tho. But if you start getting terms wrong it can become confusing when you get around to doing the math. Anyway, you need 26% equity. The rest of the analysis is properly assigning a range and then seeing if you have the requisite equity...

Or as most here do it... figure out a range that justifies whichever play you made, and use “live read, live read” as the excuse to construct it that way (slightly tongue n cheek)

You've asked like 28 different questions in your OP and i'm tired/lazy, so i'm only gonna comment on these three :wink:.

1. On the turn we need to have ~25% equity, which we exactly have vs 88/TT+. Make it a more reasonable range (88+, add 2 random combo's of AK barrels), we are up to 40% and folding becomes a massive money mistake.

I could go either way on a 3bet or call pre, btw.

2. It changes some. We have to defend a 1/2 psb with ~75% of our range. Assuming we 3bet QQ+, only 44,88,A4s are higher in our distribution. Vs a psb we should defend less, around 60%. We could probably fold 99 at that point, but JJ is still just way too far up in our range.

3. In my experience most people are terrible at looking for/interpreting live tells. I like to think i am above average at picking up on them, and i'd guess less than 3% of my decisions are influenced by them. I also vividly remember calling down vs a guy i thought i had a "clear as day" tell on, and he ended up showing me the nuts. So either i am terrible at live tells, or they just don't matter much. Probably both apply.

3. There’s never a situation where “math says yes, live read says no”. Reads
And math aren’t ever in conflict. Good, exploitive poker is a two step process. 1. Assign ranges, 2. Do the math. The reads aren’t contradictory to the math. They are part of the step before the math. Reads are just part of step 1: assigning ranges.

Good points, thanks. I'm still not sold on the cbet size as it wasn't heads up. Had I folded and 10/10 called it would be an overbet turn shove. Maybe I need to study ~1/3 pot sized bets more. I almost never use them, except river value bets. When I size down it's usually still 1/2 pot.

This answers the question, I guess it wasn't phrased well enough. In real time at the table, even with some bluffs in his range I didn't think JJ had enough equity to call off but it appears I was wrong. Depending on the range I could be right or wrong, what I was trying to get at is a situation where you have to put in more bluffs or take out some value combos to make the call correct. Your position is clearly, never do that. Go with your best range and if the math says no then don't overcompensate by adjusting ranges due to live reads, just fold.

Thanks, this all makes sense. A few follow up questions. Where do you come up with "vs this sized bet I need to defend this % of my range" figures? And secondly I have tools post game to get these equity calcs but how do you do this in real time at the table? Do you run enough calcs that you just have a ball park feel for what your equity is against Vs range?

I shouldve prefaced it by saying "in an optimal strategy, we need to defend x% of our range". In reality we should adjust somewhat for player and population tendencies. In this case I was just trying to point out that you should fold slightly more often vs a bigger bet.

And yes, i just fiddle around with ranges a lot, mostly in equilab and holdemmanager. Applying it at the tables happens fairly quickly, in my experience. Though if you invest in software at this point, it should probably be some kind of solver.

There’s two different calculations. The one that probably concerns you most in this situation...

You’re closing the action, with no more streets of betting (important)...
And you have to call 380 to win 1090. The way you figure out how often you need to be good is... (risk)/(risk+reward). In this case it’s 380/1470=26%

An easy way to approximate this in real time is to treat each bet as a fraction of the pot size. If you memorize 3-4 common bet sizes, you’ll always have a ballpark reference really quickly.

Facing 1/2 pot bet = 25%
Facing pot bet = 33%
Etc.

(Notice yours was just about 1/2 pot (380 into 710), so you could have ballparked it in seconds as 25% and been fine)

You can run the calculation from the opponents perspective to see how often they need to get folds w their bluffs, and then defend enough so as to deny that profitable. They call that MDF (minimum defense frequency)... but that’s probably not as applicable to your situation quite yet.

Yea I think I'm ok on those even though I counted the pot wrong in my ratio. I meant knowing how much equity JJ has against a certain range. Is there a ball park method for that too?

Well. Not really. You can memorize some common right situations.

Otherwise, as long as the ranges in consideration aren’t too big/varied, you can do some back of the envelope math... as long as you can roughly categorize the range into equity groups, count combos, know rough equities for groups (rule of 2 and 4), and then weight the categories/equities based on percentage of overall range. If you’re really good w ranging and really quick with basic math, you can prob get close enough in a min or so.