Full ring - 9 handed 1/3 NLH cash game at a casino

Hero has a tight image and everyone thinks it's his first time playing poker. Hand occurs 2 hours in when the table thinks hero is on a heater.

Villain is slightly drunk and is loose passive (calling station), he likes limping a lot preflop.

Action:

LJ ($300 stack): Villain limps $3
CO ($450 stack): Hero raises to $15 with QJo, folds to villain who calls.

Flop: J82 rainbow

Villain checks, hero bets $25 into $33 pot, villain calls.

Turn: 4c putting 2 clubs on the board.

Villain checks, hero bets $40 into $83, villain calls.

River: Offsuit K

Villain checks, hero? Pot is $163 and villain has about $220 behind.

Hero thinks about the position for 20 seconds, and checks back. Villain shows A2o for bottom pair. If I bet 2nd pair for value here, how much do I bet?

I can’t really imagine any cases in a full ring game (i.e., not playing heads up) where I would ever bet second pair for value on the river (unless you have a ton of history with the specific player and some weird circumstances). I’m happy to check it back here. If you must bet, I would go small (1/3 pot or so) but only if you think he really likes to bluffcatch.

Just ran the scenario through flopzilla, my hand wins over 91% of the time here given he limp calls with 50% of hands and folds flop with high cards due to the large sizing.

Even if you have the best hand 99% of the time, that doesn’t mean you should bet. For a bet to be profitable you need to have the best hand over half the time *when you get called*. The cases where you have the best hand and he folds to a bet don’t factor into your decision at all.

Good point, he needs to call me with worse, and never check raise bluff me or else things get dicey. Thanks for your input, it gives me more to think about.

Wtf... I bet second pair for value on the river often when v hasn't showed any strength. There are situations where betting AK hi for value makes sense lol. What an insane thing to say.

This hand is pretty thin but if v isn't the type to check raise bluff then I'd bet 1/4 pot here. If we have AJ it's a slam dunk value bet

Sure, you have to value own yourself sometimes. You said this guys is a station. You're ahead of J-10, J-9, many of the the 8s.

@drowski: Out of curiosity, of all the times you have found yourself on the river with second pair, what percentage of the time would you estimate you have put in a value bet? 10%? More like 50%? Obviously it depends on the action, but what would you guess is your historical average across all hands where you’ve had the opportunity?

What about with ace high?

I would estimate my frequency of making a thin value bet is 10-20% for second pair and <5% with ace high (just a guess for both though). Maybe you could argue those numbers are too small and I could be making more thin value bets, but they certainly aren’t “insane” numbers.

You said you can't imagine any cases where you'd ever value bet second pair on the river full ring. Did you just mean after betting both flop and turn?

Good point, I was implicitly imagining having bet previous streets and gotten called like this hand. Much more likely in cases where it’s checked through.

(I also think “can’t imagine many cases” represents my opinion better than “any” since obviously I agree there are some, though I would still argue that value betting second pair or ace high is a special/unusual circumstance).

If preflop has a good chance at taking it down / isolating the limper, then I'm cool with raising here.

I think our flop bet is too large. This isn't necessarily with regards to what is going to call us (any reasonable sizing will have no affect on what calls us), it is more to do with controlling the size of the pot for our hand. So against a passive calling station where I'm probably planning on going for 3 postflop streets, I exercise pot control by just betting way smaller, especially on dry boards. So I wouldn't go any more than $15.

I'm ok with our turn sizing (I wouldn't be betting any larger).

Next time don't post results as it will bias responses.

Against a passive calling station, I'd go extremely small on the river attempting to target weaker Jx-. Probably wouldn't go any more than $50 here (<< 1/3 PSB) and even a "same bet" is fine.

GcluelessNLnoobG

I have nothing to add on the value side of betting the river, as the discussion looks complete to me. However, betting the river in this spot has two other possible advantages: you don't get called and therefore don't show your hand, or you get called and end up looking looser than you are. (I seriously doubt you get raised in this spot).

So yea, I would put in a modest river bet her fairly often.

It's not like you were 3 barreling 2nd pair. I'd say that a small bet is against a passive calling station is a decent play. In this case, I don't think the villain would ever call, no matter how little. He was looking to hit his 5 outer, not that he thought about it that way.

Thanks for your answer, I chose a larger sizing on the flop in order to fold out high cards and keep pairs calling me, since I'm ahead of most pairs on the board. On the turn brick, I bet half pot for value. I like your 15 dollar bet on the flop to pot control so we can go for 3 streets of value without a bloated pot.

Good point, never thought about it this way. Bottom pair on this board is basically only calling a 3-10 dollar bet lol.

Thanks for your input, not showing my hand has some advantages like you said.

How would having a looser image help me here? Wouldn't that mean I need to bluff less since I had a tighter image originally?

It means you get called lighter.

There's only 3 higher cards on this board and we welcome one of them, which means the worst case scenario is being up against AK (which is unlikely due to the preflop action). So even if he somehow has AK, with 6 outs he's only going to hit on the turn about 7:1, and a small ~1/2 PSB only offers quite poor 3:1. If he's only got one good overcard (a much more likely case) then he only has 3 outs (about 15:1 to hit on the turn). So no need to bet large to protect against these types of hands.

GcluelessNLnoobG