This could backfire easily if opponent shows you a 9/4/T of diamonds.

But I guess if he shows you those cards, still fold?

I'm folding this btw. But doesn't hurt to ask if he'll show you a card.

This. Holy cow wow.

FWIW, my heart always skips a beat when I've built a decent stack and a random fills a seat at my table holding some greens reds and blacks. I've never encountered one of these guys to be a good player, they mostly play like bad lags. I've never had the chance to double up as big as you did but I do stack them quite often. I'd say you were gifted a prime opportunity.

For the lol live readers itt, the clock call is an interesting point. I would NEVER call the clock if I wanted a call. In fact, I have never seen a clock called by someone who wants a call.

I think it's interesting that you repeated that you are "NEVER good here" over and over (sentiments echoed by most of us here), yet somehow, ~0% became >33% needed for you to call. That's quite the 180 degree flip in opinion. Good live reads, I guess.

Nevertheless, congrats on winning that enormous pot.

So what was the point of this thread sir? You made a call that I and many winning players believe will be long term -EV but in this case you were correct to call. And you did this readless wrt your opponent.

Will this spot come up again? Probably not that often.

Congrats on being right this time.

As much as I think this is a fairly std b/f river spot I agree that there are live actions here that lean towards weakness. His calling of the clock being a big one.

Tao: The "we are NEVER good here" trope assumes a couple things that I questioned and ultimately rethought while tanking. I think my OP provided everyone with the information to do the same.

That doesn't mean my call was good. I could have used that information to incorrectly question my first instincts, and maybe villain almost always shoves the nuts but not this time.

This and both players were angle shooting at some point during the hand. Villain had the purple chips somewhat hidden in his stack and Hero flipping over his cards.

I felt like the hand was interesting and my decision was difficult so I decided to share it with you all. Sorry it didn't have some overarching point.

Was reading every post, but started skimming once it started going in circles. Pretty decent discussion overall. OP, I don't think you were getting flamed or lambasted in any way that shouldn't be expected for a big hand with a tough decision. Isn't a spirited discussion why you posted?

I'd be in the call camp for the reason mostly being that if V had a big hand (i.e. sets and 2 pair), I would think he would be trying to get more money in earlier so he could play for stacks. There are a ton of cards that could kill his action if he's got something like 44 or 9T. IME, usually players who buy in big at least know enough about the game to know when they should be raising because they beat your range, but you might get scared or suckout. Not that they understand those concepts, but just because they don't understand the concepts doesn't mean they don't reach the same end by different means.

At any rate, I think I probably call the river. This to me is one of those strange spots where I don't know how you can beat what V is representing, but at the same time, I don't know how he makes it to the river with a boat in this situation. I'd expect to see Tx quite a bit here.

I'm not sure you understand the argument being made by those of us who would bet/fold here.

The point isn't that V can't be bluffing here or shoving with a ******o flush. Of course, V can be bluffing here.

The point is simply that these bluffs do not happen enough for a call in this spot to be profitable.

If OP made a great soul read based on live tells and OP thought through and sifted through all the available live information correctly and came to his decision, then I 100% applaud OP and can sincerely say nice play.

But I'm not so sure that is what happened. What I think happened is that OP had a big hand and didn't/couldn't fold and thus rationalized calling using any information he could to justify a call.

Imo, this big call and win by OP is going to cost him 10 x more money in the long run because he is going to be more inclined to make these big calls more often and 95% of the time he will get prison raped by the nuts.

The last point I want to make comes back to Reciprocity. Everytime we make a +EV play our villains are incapable of making, we win. Everytime we avoid a -EV play our villains are incapable of avoiding, we win. In this spot, 90% of the LLSNL population would make this call. So what does that say?

OP, congrats and all that, always nice to take down a big hand. But you have to make sure you made the call for all the right reasons: ranging, villain tendencies, tells, reads, etc. so that next time in the same spot, you can make a big fold for those same reasons.

Pete,

Ignore the, "what's the point" bs.

This was a great thread.

Thanks for posting.

If villain had looked like a poker player and not someone who was just betting purple chips at the black jack tables, I would folded every day of the week and twice on Sunday.

You know, my "gut" is telling me that based on OP's post that he made a legit big time highly skilled read and not the typical donk "I haz big hand must callz..." call.

So, I take back what I said in my earlier post and applaud OP for making a big time call based on live tells/reads.

I'll give him the benefit of a doubt that he has the self control to "next time" fold the big hand when those live tells/reads are not as conclusive as they were in this case.

Good Job OP

I think this thread is results oriented and awful

What I was trying to say...but put much more succinctly...lol

I've actually only called the clock twice in my life, both times with the nuts, and both times against the same villain, he called the second time. For whatever that's worth.

I think everyone can agree that without the specific, in the moment, in person factors or "tells" this is a fold. Like many have said your going to see T9, T7, 77, much much more than villain mucking face down.

Like I said before, hero made a solid decision based on what was happening in real time. This can't be criticized. It should be commended. On the other hand, its hard to really comment on the hand past that because 96/100 times villain is not bluff raising 2k on the river. (Or raising 2k w/ a worse made hand either)

Nice hand, good read, what I would take away from this thread op is, make sure you continue to treat each spot independently.

Question: based on the responses in this thread is anyone thinking they might want to have a higher river bluff raising range? I haven't read every post, don't know what the call v fold break down was...

I wasn't even advocating anything either way. I was simply putting forward the notion that may be a flawed way of thinking about villains who haven't got one iota of a clue about what they're doing. I was just saying that you have to factor in things like V misreading board (happens a lot live), V overplaying hands worse than nuts (happens a lot), V not even knowing what hand ranking beats what (seen this a lot), V trying to bluff (happens a lot). To be honest i think it depends what game you play in, because there is no 'standard' outside of your specific game, imo. In my game i'm not sure i could fold this, but i don't honestly know what i'd do. FWIW, i think of most villains in my game as fit or fold, because they are. If the T came on the turn and they start betting, they've probably hit it.

I've seen people who play regularly who make these mistakes cause they're just there to gamble, they don't even know the rules properly.

Last week i saw some semi-regular try to scoop the pot himself when the board was 9KK92 and his A8 was all in with A4 and it took 2 minutes for someone to explain what a kicker was to him.

This was a great thread to read. Kudos to op for making a sick call. I'd likely have folded simply because I can't make those types of reads yet. Interesting to hear about being put on a clock... Anyone have insight into how reliable that is of a tell that villain is weak? Patchohare... You mentioned you did it twice with the nuts... Were you trying a reverse tell or just wanted him / her to hurry?

More often than not, bluff raising the river is burning money in LLSNL. Ironically, I will occasionally bluff raise the river against players whom I know are better players, capable of understanding what it means.

For me, the only tell described by the OP that really makes me consider calling is the fact that he called for the clock. As has been said by others, I've never seen someone call for the clock when they want a call.

The others, though, I think are reading too much into things. It reminds me of situations where a woman is pregnant and her friend says "You're going to have a girl, I just know it. I can tell.", then the pregnant lady indeed has a girl and the friend brags about her ability to predict gender. Did she actually predict gender or just get lucky? She got lucky and it happened to line up with her "ability", which is what I think happened here. The majority of the tells listed by the OP are things that could go either way. Sure, in retrospect it's easy to spin the various "tells" into making a case for a call, but they could just as easily mean nothing or go the other way.

For example, wearing a business suit and having a large stack isn't reliable enough of a tell to call of $900 in such an unknown spot. We've all seen great players and total fish wearing anything from suits to tattered rags. I'm not going to base such a large river decision on the fact that the guy is dressed well. Once in a blue moon we'll find someone with an obvious tell like KGB in Rounders, but I think it's much more practical and +EV to stick to math and let that make the decisions for us.

The results here were positive, but I can't imagine this spot being anything but -EV.

Yea if he was eating Oreos, I'm insta calling.

Yeah and like if you really tanked for 6 minutes I'd call the clock too.