1/2 Friday decent game

Me : 30s WG semi respected but not feared. My opens get 3 bet more than average because I'm the only person in the whole casino who folds to 3 bets which makes me "scared money" £250 stack bought in for 300 lost a cbet give up pot.

Villian : 20s WG plays up to 5/10+ on occasion is always double straddling to 10 in this game to make it bigger probably the best player at the table but thinks he's by far the best. stack £2000 rebought big after losing a few big pots including 77 vs TT all in pre for an £800 pot in a double straddle "only had 40 bigs gotta get it in there". VS a semi omc guy who I personally don't think was adjusting his range all that much based on the straddle.

The hand

Hero QJ open to 15 otb (single straddle)

Villian calls from straddle

Flop : Q 8 4

V checks
Hero bets 22
V calls

Turn 2
check
check

River A
V checks
hero thinks perceptibly long (30s) then bets 45
V instashoves by lazily dropping in a handful of £25 chips.
H?

all streets considered.

I like your play on all streets. And I fold river as played. We have plenty of Ax hands in our range that can call a river bet. Whilst we are a little bit capped (we probably don't have sets or top 2pr when we check back the turn, we might not have flushes too when we don't barrel turn), we still have better hands in our range to call with.

In your opinion, what does he have that beats QJ but loses to Ax that he shoves in this spot? Is he value shoving KQ or like A7?

that is true, but you shouldnt base your decision upon it imo.
QJ is about the weakest hand you could have here to valuebet, and you get shoved on. folding the weakest parts of your valuerange is never wrong, if he got it this time, oh well...

also, bet the turn. if you don´t get called by worse in this spot, barrell more often.

Is this hand worth 3 streets of value iyo? Or do you prefer a bet turn check most rivers? I was betting all rivers (as evidenced by my still betting basically the worst river). I figured it was a 2 street worthy hand. Perhaps that's the wrong way to think about things?

2 reasons to call with Ax instead of QJ, despite villain having no range of hands better than QJ but worse than Ax:
1) We block value hands like A4 and A8
2) We can defend at a decent frequency (not calling too often, not folding too often) so that we're not being exploited.

Tom-

This popped up in my feed for whatever reason

I like your flop bet/turn check plan. This isnt a good river to valuebet tho, he has 4x and 8x of diamonds, some nut diamonds as well as some other ace high floats that paired up. Given that hes described as the best player at the table, i hate this river bet even more because he isnt paying off with worse and is capable enough to attack your range here, which is basically capped by your turn check. As played, easy fold (ya he'll be bluffing some but he has plenty of value combos and this is probably the weakest combo youd think of vbetting) but the river bet is far too thin against this sort of player imo

River bet is good because we have a lot of busted draws here (T9, J9, JT, KJ, KT) and we need to balance that out by widening our value betting range.

you should continue betting those straight draws on the turn.

valuebetting your Ax that you stabbed flop with is enough to balance your other low equity flop cbets that gave up on turn (which you would pull from to construct your river bluffing range after going b/x on flop/turn)

Yeah, I really don't incorporate the concept of blockers into my thinking at all. If anyone has the time and inclination can you show me in this specific instance how much me holding the A instead of the Q changes the maths? I just can't grasp conceptually that it makes enough difference to change a fold to a call.

I understand the less exploitable range is a separate point. That makes sense. I want to call with x% of bluffcatchers it may as well be the Ax %.

blockers are important, but not relevant in this situation with your actual hand (edit: it is relevant in a different context, but not for constructing/approximating villain's value range).

as a theoretical example, imagine you got to the river this way with Ac8d

so you confidently value bet river with this Ac8d combo that you have, and he snap shoves on you. ok, so what does his range look like here? he'll have some flushes and presumably he'll feel good about a set of 8s or 4s here if he thinks you mostly bet the turn with your flush draws and that you'll pay off the river here as played with aces up (two extremely reasonable assumptions).

so his value combos would look something like [88, 44, 45dd, 46dd, 86dd, 87dd, 89dd, 8Tdd, J8dd, K8dd, 56dd, 57dd, 67dd, 9Tdd, J9dd, JTdd] (i've omitted other suited broadways because he probably 3bets those pre), for a total of 20 value combos in theory. but since you have the 8d, you block a ton of those, so now he only actually has 12 value combos. you've just reduced his value range by 40% ( !!! ) solely because of the 8d in your hand.

so now if his shove is pot sized (idk stack sizes, just hypothetically for sake of argument), then you're getting 2 to 1. if he has 20 value combos, he has to have 10 bluffs in order for you to make a profitable call. but since you block a bunch of his value combos, he only has 12 of them now and so you only need to find 6 bluff combos in his range in order for you to call. that blocker effect can easily make the difference in you calling/folding a spot where villain's range is so polarized that he doesn't have a whole lot of value combos to begin with, and/or if it's hard to think of many reasonable bluff combos in his range

sorry i hit enter too quickly. so for a mea culpa on the relevance of blockers...

we think about villain's bluff range in this spot...he might want to have a diamond in his hand, and he might want to have a pair or some high cards in his hand to block your 2pr/strong Ax combos (the bulk of your value range when you bet river). i expect him to bet his missed straight draws, so he is likely x'ing the river initially with some degree of showdown value. which combos that contain some level of showdown value would be best to bluff with? QxJd and QxTd both make the most sense, so that would be QsJd/QhJd/QsTd/QhTd (you have Qc obv), for a total of 4 bluff combos (and would actually be the full 6 you need if you had Ac8d). with your actual hand or another hand that has no blocker effects against his value range, you would need to find another 8 or 6 bluff combos before you'd even be breaking even against a pot sized raise. so, you can see how this blocker effect becomes extremely significant in this situation where 1) villain is polarized, 2) villain doesn't have many obvious bluff combos to choose from.

Tom, ignore 6bet me. His idea of solid play is 4 bet jamming pf with 99. Read his PG&C thread to get a better idea of his skill level.

On the river, a bet is either to get a weaker hand to call, stronger hand to fold or the stronger hand to call for less than they would have bet. There's no weaker hand that is going to call and the only stronger hand that would consider folding is KK. If you were doing a blocker bet, it should have been smaller.

So I'll post my thinking and the results. I basically went through the expanding brain meme.

Stage 1 0s in : That river sucks

Stage 2 10s in : I should still value bet to get called by QX 8X 99 77 66 55 maybe TT and JJ if for some bizarre reason they didn't 3 bet.

Stage 3 20s in : But I've thought way too long at this point my hand is basically 100% face up and this guy just can't wait to "own me" he'll just bluff shove all his worse 1 pair hands. So I should just check back.

Stage 4 30s in : If he's bluff shoving all underpairs maybe I should bet call knowing that I look like exactly what I have. Even if I'm wrong it'll have advertising value that I can't be moved too easily off weak hands.

So I bet and snap called, he had 9 8 and MHIG. He was quite confused when I tabled and we talked about the hand after the game died. I said what do you rep he said a flush and I was like yeah exactly. He said he'd be shoving all 2 pairs there too which I was skeptical but sure. I said why can't I have AQ and he said you'd never check back AQ on the turn (probably not true).

On the whole it looks like the consensus is that he was right and it was a bad call overall. Hopefully my advertising equity makes up somewhat for the -EV of the call.

The 4bet jam with 99 actually wasn't as bad as people think it is. People are just being results-oriented because I ran into AA.

The reality is that when you open raise in the CO, the BTN and SB flat, and the BB 3bet squeezes, his range is usually going to be wide enough to justify 4betting hands like {99+, AQ+}. That's if he's a competent player that is positionally aware, which I assumed he was.

But anyway, let's not get off topic. I've given multiple reasons why I believe that bet/folding river for thin value is a great play. And I do believe that villain can hero call a river bet with weaker pairs if there are too many bluffs in our range in this spot. Many villains will be aware that we're capable of using scare cards as bluff cards, and they'll bluff catch us more as a result of that. Villain's bluff catching range is behind our QJ, so it makes sense to target that.

As far as the argument that "we should be barreling most of our bluffs and semibluffs on the turn, so our bluffing range shouldn't be that big on the river", I respectfully disagree. We have a tonne of hands which we'd rather just go for a one and done on the flop, but which we later decide that we can bluff with on the river. Even a gutshot like JT isn't just going to triple barrel 100% of the time. We'll often check that back on the turn, since the board texture doesn't change much and our flop bet didn't get through. When we arrive at the river, our range is so full of air, so we can either just give up a lot on the river, or we can add some more thin value hands to our range and bluff more, which is the better option imo.

Nice catch. I was going to comment on how the instashove is usually a sign of weakness, but I didn't want to add too much weight to live reads.

I still think though that if we call river with our Ax hands, then that's usually enough. I don't think we need to bluff catch river with QJ unless we're really confident with our read.

And I do think that villain has a point that we will usually barrel AQ and AA on the turn. It makes sense to check back our weaker Qx hands like QT and QJ, but we should be barreling KQ+.

Winning hands like this costs people tons of money long term. If you keep playing like this and making that river call, you will get destroyed. The fact that you won this time will only give you confidence to do it again in the future which is a really bad thing.

Your river bet is pretty bad. Its much much better to bet the turn and check back the river than try to bet the river after checking the turn. I have no idea why you did that.

I mean I posted pretty extensively why I did that. You seem to agree with the consensus that it was faulty thinking.

I will say that Vs the average non-thinking player in my games I still think this is a +EV value bet on the whole (but it should 100% be a bet fold). Probably not good against anyone playing exploitativly rather than just looking at their own hand.

I was going to say call before reading the results - I swear. His line makes little sense unless your river bet/call frequency is far too high (which seems super unlikely)

- you've already described your image as a bit of 'scared money' because you actually fold to 3-bets (side note - flat those 3-bets in position more. If your postflop is good you'll be able to pick up more pots AND it'll protect your initial raises a little more).

- what value hand triple checks? JT or 98 are either leading turn (if he floated you on the flop its to take it away later and the turn was a great card) or likely betting river (if he views you as scared money he can't count on your to bet so he can raise on an A high river. If you have the ace you're almost certainly calling and it's not likely enough that you'll bet the river without an ace to try the c/r). Flopped 2/pr or sets need to build a pot at some point. A hand like A8 is almost certainly leading the river.

-it's super hard to call with medium A type hands that a b/c/b line from you would make a lot of sense. And even if you can - the long pause before betting makes those hands less likely.

- given the flop call and then turn/river checks it feels like Vill recognizes your holdings as somewhat weak and wants to turn a hand with marginal showdown value into a bluff. Especially given image.

Edit/Other notes
- I don't believe that his 2 pair hands play like that (like how he claims). Q8 builds a pot before then. A8/A4 likely leads river rather than goes for a c/raise (what are they hoping to get a c/raise called from)? I realize that given that we bet/called w/QJ, A8/A4 can now c/raise rivers but in general Vill has to assume that Qx is checking or bet/folding and given image can't even assume A/x will bet/call. So they need to bet 2 prs on the river.

The fact is that at these stakes, a river check raise is like 98% a monster hand and not a bluff. Trying to pick off a bluff in a spot like this will destroy you long term. He will almost always have a hand that you dont think he should really have (a hand that doesnt make sense)

A4
A8
7d6d
JdTd
And other hands...even something as stupid as As2s.

The main question mark of the hand though is what hand do you expect him to call a river value bet with after the Ace hits when you didnt bet the turn and then now bet the river? You're repping an Ace. He can only beat a bluff. Just about the only hand you are targeting is QT....or trying to get KQ to fold. If you are betting the river so thin as to target one hand, its a big mistake.

Bet the turn. Make BD diamonds pay to draw while also getting value from any pairs lower than QJ. This will also lessen V's bluffing frequency OTR and if he checkraises the turn, we can re-evaluate (and potentially fold).

This is definitely true for 1/3 regs, but not necessarily true for 5/10+ regs that are just temporariily sitting in on a 1/3 game. Many of these young LAGs are pretty good at balancing their river x/r range with both bluffs and value bets.

This villain doesn't sound like a 5/10 reg. My take away was that he jumps into a 5/10 game once in a blue moon (and probably gets killed).

He's also double straddling. The guy is just an adrenaline junkie maniac.

That wasn't my takeaway.

However, if he's an adrenaline junky maniac and can't range well - then this seems like a good bluff spot, no.

The maxim when a player raises the river he's got it works for most situations for standard live 1/2 donks. We can agree that this isn't your standard 1/2 live donk. Because of that thinking beyond these maxims and actually trying to range people is important. And this line makes no sense as a value line.

Heres OPs read

20s WG plays up to 5/10+ on occasion is always double straddling to 10 in this game to make it bigger probably the best player at the table but thinks he's by far the best. stack £2000 rebought big after losing a few big pots including 77 vs TT all in pre for an £800 pot in a double straddle "only had 40 bigs gotta get it in there". VS a semi omc guy who I personally don't think was adjusting his range all that much based on the straddle.



This sounds like a good 5/10 reg type guy to you? Sounds like a maniac who like to gamble to me. I can think of someone it reminds me of around here but I wont name names.

Again, the worst part of the hand is betting the river after checking the turn. What was the point? What was Hero targeting with that bet? Against a guy crazy enough to check raise bluff, Heros river bet is suicide.