Hero ($850, BB): Just got back to the table after a meal break.

V ($350, SB): New talkative MAWG, rec holidaying at casino for long weekend probably. Asked me as soon as I sat down how long I took to build that stack, etc. and some friendly chatter.

Onto the immediate first hand..

4-5 limps including V, Hero checks his option in BB with 44

Flop ($20ish): AK6r
Checks through

Turn ($20ish): Ar
Checks through

River ($20ish): 4
V bets $12, Hero raises to $25, folds to V who re-raises to $50, Hero ???


4bet/call/fold?

I'd probably just call. Maybe a little nitty, but it seems like this V flopped big and was hoping to check raise, turned huger and again was hoping someone would bet for him, and now he finally leads river, gets raised, and re-raises - seems like we're in the cooler here.

The only reason for him to check the flop is if he has a monster, 66, A6 etc or he's afraid to bet an ace with a weak kicker. However, most players at this level forget all about their kicker once they make trips, so I doubt he's checking the turn with A8 etc, seems more like a full house.

The only thing that makes a 4 bet tempting is it looks a lot like you're trying to steal the pot given that you've shown no strength. However, if he's bad enough to play a hand you're ahead of like this and stack off, there will be plenty of opportunities later in the session. Call now, get it all in later.

Not folding to an unknown opponent and you probably won't get get called by worse if you 4 bet, so just call. Villain could be on any lower end AX here, checking flop with TP and medium to low kicker. Then on turn he has top trips and feels like he has to check and let somebody take a stab at it. When nobody does, he leads river hoping to get something from the hand. There are more hands you beat then not so the raise is obvious, and too many villains overvalue trips here for me to fold. However, a 4 bet is only getting called by boats and big AX and there should be few big AX in his range.

The small raise is so damn fishy. And your description as a rec player makes me think that this is exactly the kind of guy that would overvalue Ax here.

We're deep enough to raise/fold here. Make it $150 and and if it goes bad be happy you only lost 50BB with an under-full.

Call

Call. Never folding in this spot but with the worst full boat, there's no need to get bold here. If you raise, the only hand that can pay you off is trips and everything else raises. There's no reason to risk getting blown off your hand here. You're either way ahead or way behind. And, when you do call and win, and folks ask you why you didn't raise, just tell them it's because you're a fish.

Hate it.

It's too glib and sarcastic to be taken literally. Anyone with a clue will take that to mean that you're clever.

When asked "why didn't you raise"

Stare blankly and say "He could have had quads"

I honestly think you're beat vs most his range, but can't fold getting 3:1.

Results: Hero calls to get shown

Grunch.
Fold.

Why don't you tell me what hands you think that he is 3betting the river with that we are beating?
And if we really think that he is 3betting them otr (which is normally the nuts) why isn't he betting them on the flop or the turn?
I'd say you're losing here 90% of the time.

Also raise the river bigger.

I think preflop and flop are obvious.

I will sometimes fire at this on the turn. No one bet the flop and the most likely one to be slowplaying an Ace is the SB, and he's checked again. Our hand could actually be good at this point, or we could also fold out a better hand (ex. 88 is going to have a hard time continuing here). Our story also makes sense (i.e. we checked an Ace in EP on the flop and now we're betting our trips). I would fire out a 1/2 PSB a decent amount of the time here (and pretty much be done with the hand after that if called).

I would raise a lot more on the river, why the minraise? It now really looks like the SB was slowplaying an Ace all along, and he's never going to fold it. I would actually raise huge to like $75 for big value.

As played, weird spot. We just got 3bet on the river. A river 3bet is always a near nuttish hand, because the 3better always has to be afraid that the 2better has the nuts. The question is whether this guy thinks any old Ax is a nuttish hand. I would probably just call against the majority of opponents unless this guy is a real drooler.

GcluelessNLnoobG

Really surprised by this response. For his range, AA, KK, and AK highly unlikely with no raise pre flop unless he is suuuuper passive. We lose to A6, 66, and A4, we beat all other Ax. I'm never folding to the small raise on the river. If he 3-bet shoved the river, then I would agree we need to find a fold but just not for this silly little raise. IMO, the decision is whether to raise to make some more value when he does have Ax or just call, not really seeing folding as an option yet.

I do absolutely agree our initial river raise should have been bigger.

Grunch.

Raise river bigger. As played, call.
We see A6 here alot here i guess, but we beat all other non-boats Ax that villain might be overplaying

Am I the only one who donks the turn a lot, or is this heading towards spewy territory?

GNorthwestSpewyterritoriesG

4-5 way, I'm probably not taking a shot at it on the turn. I'd expect most Kx to call at that point. But then again, you probably have a much nittier image than me. =p

Betting the turn would be spewy imo. Kx isn't folding.

Never folding river. Only question is do we just call or put in more chips.

I'd make it $125/fold. Maybe I get ambitious in the quest for value, but there's nothing wrong with that if we can get it. Yes, we're facing a river 3-bet, but it's a very small pot and a very strange line from V. There's only 2 copies of A4, 3 of 66, and 6 of A6, and, for both, we need to believe that he is checking flop and turn with two pair+. If he limped pre with checked down AA, KK or AK, he wins my raising chips.

If he's playing those hands slow, I think he's just as likely to show up with a bunch Ax hands, and Ax has a ton more combos. Each unpaired Ax is 8 combos, so if we were to know he'd have four of those (say AJ, AT, A9 and A8), that's 32 combos. I don't think he folds any of those to a relatively small raise from us, and that would nearly be fat value.

We don't always win when he calls, but you're not supposed to always win when you value bet.

The other option is to call, sure. But I gotta 4-bet for value.

Folding is obviously not an option getting nearly 4.5:1.

With this many villains this is a terrible situation for donking turn. Facing 1 or 2 villains that I know have a fold button then I would sometimes, sure. The bigger the pool of opponents the more likely somebody is to have an ace and the more likely they are to check it on the flop. So the chances of a bluff working drop fast as you add opponents. 2 is probably the optimal number of opponents for this, because a single opponent is likely to get sticky with any pair, forcing you to bluff river also.

WOW, what a spot. Hand is WP so far.

This is so sick because we have two really solid, powerful arguments that contradict each other.

Argument #1: River 3-bets are always the nuts.

This is just true. One of the most accurate "generalizations" we can make about the player pool. Even maniacs won't 3-bet bluff much (although we can consider calling them down if they are true maniacs or there's some serious leveling going on).

In 600 hours of play haven't seen a single river 3-bet that was a bluff, and I can't recall one not being the near nuts, either. I think I would notice...river 3-bets are so rare they make my ears perk up every time they happen (like once every four sessions).

Argument #2: He could be overplaying trips. And WTF else can he have on this board?!

Seriously, the board and action just severely restrict what he can have. First, the optimistic side: how many combos of trips can he have? Most villains complete the small blind ~100% of the time, so let's just give him all of the trips: 72 combos. (fixed, counted 80 before but just double checked and got 72...)



72 COMBOS?!

That's insane! We see players overplay trips all the time. If we could somehow get past the wtf-we-got-3-bet-on-the-river problem, and knew he could have trips and call with them, this would be a slam-dunk value raise.

Anyway, we know he won't be overplaying 100% of trips 100% of the time, but we can find the breakeven % once we look at the losing side. 80 is our baseline.

Now we'll look at the hands that beat us.

1) AK - 6 combos. Limping in AK from the SB is not unusual; many players hardly ever raise from the SB and many would dread this spot and limp. Most players would lead out with top two, but some really passive ones will slowplay it. But seriously, like NO ONE checks this turn with the immortal full house nuts. Even the most passive players will bet here -- they may do it stupidly, like betting $5 on the turn and $5 on the river, but they will do it! I'm considering giving AK 1 combo, but 0 might be more accurate...

2) A6 - Again, very unlikely not do bet the turn. But he could be afraid/careful of AK the whole way. We'll give em 2 combos. Overestimating most likely.

3) AA/KK -- Let's generously give him 0.5 combos of KK.

4) A4 -- okay, his line makes sense for A4. Good thing we block the hell outta this thing! We will give him all 2 combos of A4.

6) 66 - 3 combos. Again, it's kinda hard for him not to bet this at some point. Let's be generous and say he checks 3 streets with a flopped set 33% of the time (lol). Discount him to 1 combo.

That's 6.5 total hands that beat us, if we don't count AK.

Seriously, WTF. 6.5 combos with very generous estimates. 6.5 to 80!

Now if I were playing, I would probably have a deer-in-the-headlights instinct kick in and just call. But yeah, here in forumland, I'm really tempted to say he just does something stupid with trips 10% of the time. And that means we are beating 8 hands.

I think we can safely assume two things here:

1) If it's possible for him to have trips here, if this poker miracle is true, he will call a small raise. He will not fold, and he will not raise us again. This is close to accurate.

2) He only raises here with full houses. Again I think this is accurate.

Which makes this a small value raise(/fold). At least in my fairyland where he shows up with trips here sometimes. I dunno, because it's a limped pot, the bets are still pretty small. Maybe he's considering the dollar amounts but not the number of bets? That's what makes me think it's possible. But is 10% a huge overestimate? If he only plays trips this way one in 20 times, he has only 4 hands we beat vs. 6.5 hands that beat us, which makes the river a call instead.

So yeah, I would make a very ambitious, perhaps terrible, raise/fold here. I would make it $100 to $125 total. Very weird. I have certainly never done such a thing at the real poker table.

This spot basically isn't that important because it's so unusual. Being 3-bet is unusual, no matter the street. But it's really fun to think about.

edit:

It's always interesting reading these discussions.

The Villain wasn't purposely slow-playing and there's no reason for anyone to think that he was. Probably the only hand he plays this way is A4.

He wasn't over-playing and there's no reason for anyone to think that he was.

He turned out to be the very typical super-passive fish that probably would've check-called the river if he hadn't boated up. I doubt he's ever betting the river with worse, much less 3-betting the river with worse.

If hero would've 4-bet the river he probably would've taken forever to tank call.

Shrug call. Weird spot.

I would raise the river larger for value the 1st time after he bets, at least $40. You know he has an ace and isn't folding it. From my experience most recs are passive in these situations unless they know they have the nuts/near nuts. So using that read, I would fold to any further raises. Also if he wanted to get crazy with an ace, he passed up many opportunities to do so. If he shows A2 after you fold then congratulate him for blowing your mind and mentally label him bad button clicker.

Easy call with how you played it.

*shrug*
When reading the hand my first thought was fold.
And it still is.

I think that I call at the table (or raise) almost every time, but I think it's a leak.
I believe that when we tell our self that he will 3bet the river with worse (AQ,AJ, whatever) but that he won't bet those on the turn, then we are lying to our self to make it an easier call/raise.

River 3bets are always nutted. Esp without history.
Misplaying your hand till the rive with a strong nutted hand happens so often that I just can't ignore it.

As an aside (I know it's been said, but it's worth repeating) if we raise the river more, we get value from worse and Ax and we play correctly when we get 3bet on the river. Win win.

iraisetoomuch,

youfoldtoomuch,

willyoman

BTW, I think we should have raised quite a bit more the first time - more like $50-$60 for value. Then I wouldn't 4-bet, and I might have found a fold to a large 3-bet (but it might still be a call). Either way, the sizing was weird, and you really can't fold getting nearly 4.5:1 man. I hear your point - you feel V is pretty nutted. You're probably even right. But you're still not making a correct fold when you only require 18% equity.