Beautiful

This seems too clever by half. I am having trouble seeing how the correct play is the same whether you have air or have him beat. As someone else pointed out, it's not like the situation comes up often enough that you need to balance out your play so as not to be predictable.

I think the overbet shove is too painful for a bluffcatcher. He may think you snookered him but he will consider it too expensive to find out. I think the hand as played was just about right.

I do want to say though that if the actuarial average EV here was greater from shoving, it doesn't matter that you won't run into this situation again. It's never exactly the same situation from hand to hand anyway, not in every detail. You just want all the hands you play to add up to the most EV possible, as long as you have sufficient bankroll to handle variance.

I just think, because this guy was not described as a complete calling station, that he was more than three times more likely to fold to the shove than to the PSB. So the shove increases variance without increasing EV, IMO.

I also think the PSB is in a Goldilocks sweet spot that definitely provides more average value than the little value bets. He might fold like 50% more often (at most), but the bet is 4x bigger.

I agree.. may be most honest evaluation ever.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-T337A using 2+2 Forums

I'd probably just shove because he might feel like you're trying to "own" him in the hand and his ego might encourage him to call. Him possibly being tilty and thinking hero is bad makes me like a shove even more. And I'm not even confident that he will call if you bet something small because then it looks like you're trying to get value.

limon told a good story once about how you maximize your chances of getting a shove called here. Basically when he shows his hand out of turn or with cards to come or whatever and you have him beat, you throw a huge tantrum arguing that his hand is dead, then, when the dealer/floor obviously rules that it isn't you ship. I would definitely not do this if I was reasonably confident that the villain wasn't trying to pull anything himself, but you're going to get called roughly 100% of the time.

definitely shove.

reminds me of a hand I played last year, only semi-related as I was in position for this one... but a fun story:


I held J8 on a JJ88 board, villain shoves turn, I snap, and he flips over AA.

then we realize we're playing PL and nobody is all in yet.

Hilarious conversation ensues, and eventually he asks if I want to just check the river down.

I reply: Sir, I have you beat, and I am going all in on the river unless an Ace comes.

Dealer deals a J river.. Table erupts in laughter as he realizes he may have just sucked out. I of course now have quads and am just trying not to show my excitement.

After a moment of alcohol induced tanking and overthinking it, he now shoves (!!!!!)

"I call."

It was great.

Now that could work. I might change my answer if you include this gamesmanship angle. Would this be considered ethical?

as ethical as acting out of turn id guess.

I think it's kind of borderline to do the whole production if the villain is just dumb/made an honest mistake/whatever and I don't think it's that hard to tell the difference. In that case I'm still shoving but would forego the song and dance. I can't justify the holdup if the other guy isn't playing an angle in the first place.

There is definitely no ethical issue if you're reversing villain's angle. Even if not it might still be legit, but if you think the guy just made a mistake then everybody else at the table definitely thinks so too and making them sit around and wait while you run this elaborate scam on a donkey is gonna be bad for business.

It's def an angle.. no question.

Yeah perhaps I wasn't explaining my logic as clearly as I thought. I'm not advocating for a shove for balance. I'm advocating that a shove looks bluffier than a PSB, and I give V the same likelihood of calling either bet, so I just want to jam such that in the few times he does call, its as expensive as possible.

MikeStarr -- on a similar logic track to the above -- I do think that if we can try to estimate villain's shove call likelihood (I threw out 5%, but that's up for debate) * $600 shove amount vs. small bet (I threw out $25) * V's call likelihood (I threw out 95%). In this case, $600 * 5% > $25 * 95%. Now, the variance between the two of these is not equal by any stretch, but I would argue that you can and should do this kind of estimation/speculation in a vacuum (single instance of a hand). I'm not arguing for some kind of game theory or balancing spot here by any means-- far from it -- rather I'm just using simple math to trying to define the most profitable action in this specific situation vs. this specific Villain. Clearly, if you disagree on the %s above, then you would come to a different conclusion which I can totally get behind. You could also argue that you'd rather have a 95% of getting $25 than a 5% chance of getting $600, even if its less +EV just because its more certainty of money. That's fine too and really defined by hero's risk-reward appetite.

Tl;Dr - wasn't intending to argue GTO/balancing, I just rushed my post and wasn't super clear. I intended to simply state that the high variance but most +EV play here is a shove, whereas the safest way to ensure you make some money is to throw in a green bird, based on my own estimation of V's likelihood of calling various bet sizes on the river.

Does anyone ever bet here when we can't beat 66?

I probably do not solely because I expect V to call any bet. I probably just sigh and check/muck my hand. Granted, I'm not sure how we would wizardly get to the river after calling pre/flop and X/r turn with air. AT played poorly maybe

That hit the nail on the head of what I was saying. I did vote for betting $300 though so I think there's a happy medium between trying to stack him once in a blue moon and getting $25 almost every time.

When I first read this hand, I missed we hit our straight on the turn and thought we had air, such that the question was whether we should bluff river. My answer was no, even a shove had way good a chance to get looked up. So, that means my vote is for shoving for value here.

well ya. if its not an angle im NEVER gonna re-angle a recreational player but if a guy tries to angle me hes entered a world of pain. Ive thought out all of the reverse angles in advance, stuff no-one has ever done so they arent prepared for it (like my calling the floor gambit)

Right, I understood your logic. My point was that if it's really true that "a shove looks bluffier than a PSB", then why did you say in the post I responded to that

?

It seems like you're having a debate with yourself. It would seem to me that if you really do believe a shove looks bluffier than a PSB, you'd make a PSB if you didn't have 66 beat. Right? Or what am I missing? I suppose you could jump to second level thinking and try to be tricky, but really that's more like third or fourth level and pretty soon it's the poison scene from The Princess Bride, and you're outsmarting yourself if villain is more than one level behind you.

Taking a lower variance less +EV line is literally coating you money. It's exactly like passing up good spots on a short roll. If you're not on a short roll you have no excuse to do this unless there are stack depth or tilt considerations.

@Mike- it seems to me you are getting the negatives of both plays by going in the middle. That's too big a bet to be trivial but isn't getting max when he calls. If he's calling $300 he's probably calling $600.

I view this as THE hypothetical over bet shove spot that we all could want. If you're not shoving huge here it's likely nowhere in your game which at these stakes is a shame because it probably should be.

Isn't this bad though? You could find yourself in other unusual spots and cost yourself some value when you use reasoning like "Well I will almost never end up in this spot so I'll just do something that I'm kind of sure will help me right now."

Sure, this exact spot won't come up again, but you will find yourself in other unusual spots that you don't expect to see 100 times.

Everyone makes good points and I cant argue any of them, but the fact is that we will never know if he would call a $600 shove the same frequency or even half as often as he would call $215 or $325 or whatever. Its all speculation. None of us can definitely say which amount is correct. I'm fine with the shove or a little less. I think anything less than $275 or so is too little though. It needs to have at least some semblance of a possible bluff.

Gotcha - that's a fair point. I retract my statement that we should shove when we're bluffing - because I continue to believe a shove looks 'bluffier' than a PSB.