I saw this tell a lot in LHE, but you're right that it doesn't carry over to NL because your opponent doesn't know what the bet size is going to be. And if it does mean something like weakness for a particular opponent, we might consider our optimal response to be betting more than the pre-measured amount rather than less (which could be read as a transparent attempt to milk for value).

Thank you all for the comments. Admittedly, Q9s is probably a fold preflop given that a splashy player in the BTN is reaching for chips.

I think the interesting point in the hand comes down to the river decision. Some people in this thread have criticized my sizing, and other have questioned whether check/call would be a better line. GG raised an interesting point, which is that we don't know whether Villain is a splashy calling station, or whether he is a splashy player who overbluffs. This calls for a deeper analysis.

My hypothesis is that Villain is splashy, and therefore, he is floating the flop with a huge percentage of his range (any two Broadways, any Ace, gutshots, backdoor flush draws, and 1 pair+). The turn call narrows his range to Jacks, spade draws, gutshots, Q9-QK. By the time we get to the river decision, we are ahead of J9-JT and KJ-AJ (42 combos) as well as a countless number of missed draws and weak pairs (>60 combos) and behind QT,KQ (16 combos) and behind a slowplayed 9T or JQ (I'll generously give him half, for 9 combos -- the timing tell should cut this down even more).

The point of this combinatorics being that, as long as we bet small enough on the river to get a call from a Jack, we will be ahead of his river calling range (way more than the requisite half), and therefore whenever he calls the river our bet will be profitable.

I claim the river bet is a win-win, even when he puts in a raise we can call and the call will earn us additional money over what is in the pot already (i.e., he will be bluffing more than half the time). This is predicated on the fact that his slowplayed nuttish hands which would raise make up such a small portion of his river range, and missed draws make up such a large portion of his river range. His air+nuts range is overwhelmingly composed of air. If we assign a 50% chance that he is a bluffy-type of player and 50% chance that he is a calling station type of player, then once we witness a river raise, the reason for that raise will overwhelmingly be that he is in fact bluffy. Again, this is because it's so hard for him to have value. Even if he's only a bluffy type 25% of the time, because he has value less than 10% of the time, it is still more likely that he is bluffing.

TL;DR I think that one can use Bayesian Inference (fancy name for using logic to update our priors) to deduce that Villain is probably bluffing the river, given the assumptions that there is a >25% prior probability that Villain is a bluffy type of splashy player. This is predicated on the fact that it is so difficult for him to have 2pair+.

Double gutter, and it's a pretty common pattern.

Which hands are double gutters on these boards?

QJT
2368

What's the largest gapped Kx that can still make a double-gutter? (KQ has a smaller gap than KJ, KJ smaller than KT, etc.)

Let me just post the math to justify that inducing a bluff raise is profitable if we assume just a 25% chance that Villain tends to overbluff.

A quarter of the time Villain overbluffs with his 60+ combos of air -- let's say a bluffy villain would bluff raise half of those combos. So a quarter of a half of 60 combos equates to 7.5 combos.

Villain is always raising his slowplayed nuttish hands, whether he's bluffy or not, which corresponds to 9 combos.

So it's very slightly unprofitable to induce a bluff raise.

If we incorporate the turn timing tell (this reduces the 9 number) or assume that a bluffy Villain would bluff more than half his air (this increases the 7.5 number), this changes to a profitable outcome.

TL;DR using small bet-sizing to induce a raise is a good thing under very reasonable assumptions on our unknown villain.

For me it still comes down to this: it is a *very* rare beast who bluff raises the river against an opponent who has raised preflop and barrelled all 3 postflop streets and no hugely scary reppable draws have come in.

Gsasquatchsighting,imoG

Nobody bluffs you because you're so nitty. OP is raising Q9, barreling off, thin value betting, etc. Theres a huge difference in how a laggy splasher plays between player types.

While image certainly comes into play somewhat, it's still a rare beast that does this and I doubt a raise/bet/bet/bet/call line is going to be a profitable one for most in general in the long term. FWIW, I don't believe OP mentioned his image, plus I also would open a decent amount of the time here preflop, plus a nit is more likely to fold a mediocre hand (i.e. TP) to a river raise.

GcluelessimagenoobG

45 on turn, c/c river

Grunch:

Three streets of value with top pair no kicker is not going for thin value. It is suicide. It also ensures that you have no reasonable x/c range and opens you up to be exploited every time you check.

I think this is a solid point. I was stuck on the fact that your description of V didn't include any evidence of aggression or bluffiness, but when we're trying to figure out a really unlikely line of play, even the possibility that he's bluffy as well as splashy can carry a fair bit of weight. I call this type of player "opportunists", they splash around and then they do stuff like represent random draws that come in or, as here, bluff raise weak looking bets from TAGs. It's not a horrible plan at LLSNL, honestly. He'd probably murder GG's regular game.

Top pair is a much stronger hand when the top card turns rather than flops, since there's no particular reason for either player to have it.

We have plenty of x/c hands (jacks, basically) and we're not going to get exploited in any case because our opponent is unbalanced. His flat on the turn in the hands of most LLSNL players denies anything as strong as two pair (although some can have exactly T9). When he raises the river it's difficult, because we then have to decide which of two unlikely things he has done (i.e. bluffraised the river or flatted the turn with something strong). That's why I said this:

That's because that gives me some kind of hint about which unlikely thing he has done. So many LLSNL players literally never bluffraise the river that I want to assume at first that he can't be doing that, but any small piece of evidence that he can will move the needle pretty strongly in favour of the alternative conclusion that he can't have flatted the turn with a strong hand.

It's the wrong approach in LLSNL to think about balancing your ranges without first considering if the opponent is badly unbalanced and whether that can be exploited. Exploitation takes precedence over being unexploitable.

Wait, ppl are saying not to bet 3 streets vs described villain?

Despite also blocking the nuts?

So bad