How long have you been playing with villain? What has he shown down? Honestly, I know it's passive, but I think I go check/call a small to medium bet on the river. If he was going to shove to bluff, he would have shoved here after your $200 bet I think. It's more likely you would call a shove after betting $200 than if you checked the river.

Again, I know it's passive, but if you check and he bets more than your $200, say $300, you are only losing $100 more if you call and are beat. But you get to showdown.

I guess my main questions before deciding are:

1) How does villain play AK preflop? Is he a 3-bettor with that or a passive nit who doesn't like the hand and waits to connect?

2) What does he think of top two hands? Or two pair in general?

Umm...this is just backwards result-oriented thinking, or I do not think you understand the value of bet/fold in LLSNL.

LLSNL players do not bluff raise river in these spots often enough for bet/fold not to be the right play in this spot.

My question with this hand is whether we have alternative lines to max value against draw.

And you are missing my point that LLSNL often think two pair is the nuts. So we are going to bet/fold and be wrong at least a percentage of the time.

And, since we have showdown value and just check/call, we actually get to see the freaking showdown.

Very few LLSNL players will raise two pairs on such wet river for value, and furthermore, river rarely makes two pairs, other than K/8. I also doubt villain is slow playing any other two pairs, such as A/K on a wet board, so we can remove that as well.

I just don't see any value raise less than flush that makes sense in this spot.

I'm pretty sure the only plausible two pair (AK) would have raised turn. If deciding not to raise turn, he would elect to showdown. No sense in raising two pair on the river when the flush hits, unless villain is turning his hand into a bluff. I also think a rivered two pair (unlikely but possible I suppose) would call river not raise

well it's reads dependent. a lot of players you know with certainty that 90% of the time they're raising 2pr on a two-tone flop, or on the turn if he made aces up. so against a solid-ish player we can c/f river because his call-down range is mostly flush draws and he checks back his TP. if you think this player is like that (meaning he mostly raises 2pr/sets OTF or OTT) then c/f river.

if he's kinda random (which is possible, given the AQ hand) but not really spewy (and maybe not actually drunk) then maybe he plays 2pr a little cagey but doesn't raise the river without a flush, so we can b/f river.

if he's kinda random and spewy/drunk then his river raising range is a lot wider and we can b/c river.

i would bet larger on flop and turn to not miss value against this player, not to make river decision easier

but again, i was mostly assuming this guy is spewy/drunk in my responses, which is why i said snap his raise OTR. from your replies it seems perhaps this is a more complex read situation where i would have to be at the table to know exactly what this guy was like.

+1

+1

Kolb is incorrect imo

i just don't think you guys play enough live poker if you don't think villains are capable of recognizing a scare card, overvaluing their own hands, etc. again, i want more of a read on this player to determine he can't before i am autofolding here. endodocdc has yet to provide me proof that this guy is a player incapable of either of those.

I have done enough field research to say with confidence that majority of LLSNL players do not raise thin on the river. I am talking about calling a bet with nut straight on possible flush board, calling a bet with nut flush on paired board, checking top set on possible straight, checking two pairs on possible straight, and etc...

If anything, we need proof that villain is capable of bluff raising on the river, not the other way around.

In fact, we have proof that villain does not value bet light when his cards have showdown value as shown in previous hand with AQo.

Maybe you didn't read everything clearly, but a real drunk guy does not bluff two streets with PSB and then check the river when his hand improves.

It's quite clear that he's not your average drunk.

*Grunch
Terrible runout. I cant really think of anything u can beat except AK. I'm not gonna bet river, I think c/f is best.

Ok, some more thoughts.

Obviously this is a player that over-values big Ax as shown in previous AQo hand. Along with the action on flop and turn, we can pretty much eliminate AK from his range, in fact, we can probably eliminate AK from his range base on pre-flop and flop action alone.

We can also eliminate 66 and KK, both hands would raise on the turn given the texture of the board, and are very rarely going to raise on the river. But this is more of an afterthought, since we are more concerned about plays on the flop and turn.

I think that we should definitely had better plan for our hand, and given the clue pre-flop and the flop texture, I think it's safe to say that villain will call most draws, and raise most TP+ hands. So I might make a decision before betting on the flop whether I want to get my stack in the middle, or play small ball.

I think either choice is fine, but obviously if we're going with the stack decision, villain is more likely to reveal his hand before the river, but since we're going to try to shove most of our stack in the middle by turn, it really doesn't matter. Unfortunately we're just a bit deep, so it will probably call for some over-betting to get our stack in the middle.

Other than that, I think you played the hand fine, and I'll probably take the same line in real time.

Really late in the game here haha. Haven't read replies.

I think you played the flop and turn well, but I think the river should be a check/fold.

My reasoning is that villain cannot really ever call us with a worse hand here - he'd 3b AK PF, the only AQ and AJ he can have is the diamond combos that made flushes, and if he called us OTF with top pair, he cannot consider calling the river with 2nd pair when an ace peels off, the oesd gets there, the flush fills, and we could plausibly have any of them. I think justifying betting would need some extreme scenario where villain is a super calling station with FPS and likely to have floated us on the flop with ace high and no draw, and if that was the case, theres no way you would have missed it / not mentioned it.

If we check, I don't think villain ever can have a missed hand to bet as a bluff, and if he's not going to go for value in clear cut river spots such as the AQo hand, then he's really not going to be trying for some fancy thin value here, so theres no reason to consider calling.

TBH i think the biggest issue is on the turn. With the prior action, I think after his flop call, he can have Kx, QJ, Axdd (usually AJ/AQdd), but I'm weighting his range heavily towards drawing hands and not made hands like AK, K10, 66, due to his flat with the random player behind. IMO the turn bet has to be 3/4 pot or more to properly charge what is almost always a big drawing hand now. If he ships we can call profitably.

When that ugly ugly river comes, he has us beat 90% of the time with QJ and Axdd. C/f river.

I have been looking at and thinking about this hand too much @ work and I think c/f river is the best along with betting more on flop and turn.

how do you make conclusions on how much we play? that's kinda akin to saying i'm a crap poster (as inexperience surely = poor quality) and I'd like to think I play a decent amount of poker. poke4fun usually has good stuff to say, so i'm gunna say the same for him.

I don't think villains (with no history of being good) can recognize a scare card and bet BIG. I really don't.

We all know villains overvalue their own hands. But they are also horribly afraid of scare cards. How can this guy be overvaluing his hand+recognizing scare cards to bluff us? It's one or the other.

poker is a game of incomplete info. maybe OP didn't know the info you want. in general I think it's fair to assume he's not bluff raising the river.

after reading all the OP again, I want to say I think c/f is horrible fwiw.

I b/f all day here. I heart value. He's only raising the nut flush here basically. So betting still doesn't get raised very often. We valueown ourselves sometimes, but I think it's still a bet.

For the sake of the argument, let's assume that villain is capable of turning his hand into a bluff.

Standard villain will be far more likely to bluff after a check, because it's obvious that we don't have a flush with river check, than to bluff raise our bet on the river.

In fact, you can probably go through 5 sessions before you'll see 1 river raise bluff. It is simply that rare in LLSNL. But before you attempt to turn it into a move, keep in mind that most LLSNL players do not understand the concept of bet/fold, hence the reason why raise bluff is so rare.

So if we are to check/fold on this river, we will probably be bluffed out with best hand more often than not.

I like the way you played it. I would have bet a little more on the flop and the turn.

This is a clear bet-fold. If he got you to fold vs. his 1 or 2 pair then so be it.

Thanks alot to everyone who contributed. I learned alot from you guys and it seems other than disagreements over betsizing, I happened to take a line on the river that is consistent with many of you. I think calling a bet was the worst choice of the three.
Papagavin presents a nice explanation of why this is a ch/fold spot.. Can't disagree with any of it.

@ibelieveinkolb.....I shared with you what I saw at the table at the time as well as relevant history. I agree this is a game of incomplete information and we have to act based on what info we have.
What you present with is consistent with the play of a novice villain who overvalues mediocre hands on a dominated board. This villain is quite a bit more sophisticated than a novice villain.