The lady was SB so I had position on both.

Just because no 2+2er is going to play like either of these villains doesn't mean our reads of hero river bet are meaningless.

The fish in this hand are making some attempt to determine what hand hero has. It's difficult to tell with bad players what their thought process is like because there are so many various Illogical ways inexperienced players think about the game.

In my opinion two commonly held beliefs among inexperienced/uneducated players are very prevalent;

1) The absolute size of a bet is what matters because they haven't learned about pot odds, implied odds, must defend frequencies, ranges, balance, hand reading etc. All they know is the absolute strength of their hand and they proceed to put absolute monetary values on those hands.

2) They think poker is ALL about deception to the point of absurdity. So if THEY have a strong hand they want to hide that fact by trapping. If someone is betting very big early in the hand they'll wonder whether they are bluffing because if they themselves had a big hand they'd wait till the river before trying to get value in order to fool their opponents.

So although it's nice for hero to know that we'd frequently fold river if one of us were somehow hanging about in this MW pot with a small pair it is more critical what we think the fish will do. Personally I think they'll fold, a lot, as they did. Yes maybe AK is actually winning sometimes like ImAllinNow suggests - however in my experience this small same-bet each street betting pattern is very often a crap top pair or a pair below top pair.

The fish simply thinks "I value a pair of 8s at $20 per street and no more." When hero then bet 3 times that amount, even though it's a less than half PSB, fish just thinks "ah, this guy had a strong hand all along and he's tricked me just like I would do to him. I fold."

I think that against fish hero's line is a low-risk exploitative strategy to steal some of these weird small pots. I think it probably works better than bluff raising them earlier because I think fish get suspicious of early aggressive action and when you couple that with their insatiable desire to see every board card before they fold - you're going to get called in all sorts of stupid spots by lots of terrible hands.

Surely this is why we are mainly just raising and betting for value vs fish? Because they can't fold. But if they've got to the river, seen all the cards and still just have a "$20 hand" all we have to do is guess what value they put on their unimproved hand (easy because it's often whatever they bet on flop and turn) and bet an amount 3+ times that for them to fold.

In the OP I thought it said v2 (asian lady) calls from BU?

Grunch

Not much. Dubious at best you'd flat flop with AT+. Unconscionable you'd do it twice on flop and turn facing a 1/4 PSB OTT.

Hand looks like busted draw/overs etc.

As far as the first part. I believe OP said that b/c many of us were saying that he was value betting, that makes his line good b/c we would be folding. It DOES mean that how we view his river bet is meaningless b/c the V's in the hand won't be seeing things the way we do. So using how we view his range and how we would play vs it doesn't make his line good or excuse what he felt was poor play.

What you mentioned is just a bunch of words that dont carry much weight in practice. Saying its difficult to tell with bad players and then being able to draw two huge conclusions like THEY ALL SLOWPLAY/DECEPTION or ABSOLUTE BET SIZE seems very wrong to me.

While the questionable position with the lady matters we do have the read that the limper is limp folding a lot. He did not fold this time and donk led/bet multiple streets into us and another player. We decided to call multiple streets with the intention of 1/3 potting the river as a bluff w/ A hi. We are clever thinking 2p2 players. Do we really think the limpers limp call, donk, turn bet range is that bad that its folding to a 1/3 river bet? Mind you we aren't even HU we are mw so we need to get the other player who is "bad" that we dont seem to know much about to fold as well.

Barring some really locked in reads that we dont seem to have this does not look like a good spot to me.

If our V's are all about deception wouldnt the river be an awesome spot to ch/call and own some 2p2 guy w/ a Tx that he feels will not be called another street?

You can make up reads to justify a line but in this type of spot that seems like a mistake. Only person who should be talking about what he thinks about the Fish strategy for whatever reason is OP b/c he was there and he included what he thought.

My made up general read would be that most fish tend to call instead of fold in spots where there is a lot of money in the middle which I think is much more accurate. You are not giving fish enough credit.

I think the fact that OP's line worked and he still thought it was bad is a very strong indicator here.

Ok, I guess I was high when I said she was SB last night. I’ll only respond when not under the affects from now on. Lol. She had to have been button because she hadn’t acted on river when I bet.

As for river bet it is way more than 1/3 pot 7weeks. Preflop $36. Flop $60. Turn $75 = $171 - $7 in rake and drops = $168. A little less than half pot, so like 45 percent.

7weeks7days

You and I are talking passed each other.

You seem very focussed on this specific hand but for me whether OP's line was +EV or -EV in this precise spot vs these exact villains isn't the point. I'm more interested in the general case and what useful ideas I can take away from this.

I didn't say "all fish". I said many inexperienced/uneducated players seem to place absolute monetary values on hands and project their own way-of thinking on to other players. I'd probably add "simplistic ABC" and "think what you see" thought processes to this particular archetype.

The over arching idea here is projection. IMO the less experienced and less capable the player the more they'll project their own way of thinking about the game on to their opponents. Therefore the more we can understand their way of thinking the better we'll know how to play hands to illicit the actions we want from them.

Some of the lines that such a thought process suggests may seem entirely unorthodox and -EV to a 2+2er mindset - and that's fine and to be expected when we're not playing against someone who has a 2+2 mindset.

This thread is also useful in that it has got me thinking about how to navigate multiway spots where there are some fishy players and some maybe less fishy players.

I think generally if 2+2er-types will assume fish are never folding hero can get away with making these low risk bluffs against any fish he has noticed fall into the archetype I describe even when more competent villains are in the hand. Reason being is the overriding rule of thumb "fish don't fold" necessarily precludes the competent player launching a bluff themselves and causes them to assume hero is thin value betting rather than bluffing so the competent player only calls if he thinks he beats hero's thin value bet. But - if competent reg thought he could beat hero's thin value bet he'd probably have raised the fish earlier in the hand (because fish can't fold). So reg doesn't have thin value beaten very often and mostly folds.

Ultimately if a reg gets a better read on the fish than you he can outplay the fish more frequently and take their money before you get it. He can also more easily outplay you when you're all in the same pot together.

I could see us having some weaker tens. QTs, JTs, T9s. 99 and A8s going for thin value

come on man

This hand is awful.

Flop call is very marginal if you have the ace of spades, and if you don't, it's complete spew.

On the river decent chance you were good.

I can always count on Sabr to remind me I suck. Lol

If you really had AK there then your $75 on river was just plain awful. It stuck out like a sore thumb and I'd have snap called with a pair of 2s.