one more random thought to keep in mind. imo usually when people that don't think in ranges (it's obvious he doesn't as this is a 0% node from the flop on), they randomly decide to just bluff a chosen hand and kind of blow up as a result. ie they float a cbet or whatever and just blow up stack on an unfavorable runout or something, or they 3bet something stupid and just barrel off.

also i think looking at population tendencies here is kind of a mistake because > 99% of the population has probably never taken this line, so implications should be that this particular player is an outlier in general. i don't see many reasons to fold, and i see quite a few to call from your op - (rec, changing up game, trying to be more aggro, down alot of $ lately, spewy) and the line is just super complicated for value to the point where i have a hard time believing he comes up with it in the heat of the moment. add in you have pretty good blockers, pot odds are good, and i find it difficult to believe calling can be much of a mistake

think you're mostly going to get unhelpful advice here as the forum is risk averse / nitty for the most part, and when opponents go down 0% nodes it's really going to be entirely villain / read dependent. i think mdf is an ok way to look at things if you really don't know what's going on but even then it's going to be hard to figure out what % of 9x you raise w earlier, and what your river betting range looks like and if you actually find 125 as the size with all of those bets. generally, fish end up overbluffing and regs end up underbluffing as a blanket heuristic (probably even more so lower) at least live below hs, but this is obviously an unorthodox situation that you aren't going to be able to solve with a random platitude

it's good you're thinking probabilistically (he's bluffing 10% of the time!) bc most ppl seem to think binarily can i be beat here which isn't how math / poker works, but it's important to realize you are literally making that number up based on realistically nothing. at least if you have mda stats or something, we could talk about it, but even then, this is a wonky enough line from a player type (anyone that has this line in their arsenal is going to be diverging dramatically from the population in several nodes) that i think you're going to need to make a personalized decision on. given that you play w him regularly, i would want to see this showdown because i think it will give you significant reads on how he thinks and how he's constructing ranges (if he somehow has KK here that people are talking about that's a huge piece of information where you get to open 80+% on the button all of a sudden and cbet way more vs checks, and also potentially change how you're approaching his donks)

also re river xrs, while they may be underbluffed as a whole its important to distuinguish between xc xc xr and other situations where ip is capped where i think people are more apt to put in raises

Sure, will change how I post in the future.

I'm confident T9o is a profitable button RFI in this game, and indeed I open a lot wider than this.

I have played villain regularly over the last couple of years. When I say I have nothing specific on him, I mean in terms of player-specific leaks. Like most players at these stakes, he plays loose and passive preflop (limping and calling a lot etc instead of 3betting/4betting) but despite that is still a decent player and certainly a winning player. He's not big on theory but he's an experienced, thinking player - and recently, as I mentioned (and by his own admission) he's been trying to broaden his game to include a lot more postflop aggression and non-showdown winnings. Naturally I cannot say for certain if it was these changes that resulted in how he played this hand - maybe, maybe not. But I can say that it has not been like him to donk much in the past.

He has only been "losing so much money" since he started trying to broaden his game. Before that he was a pretty consistent winner. He's certainly not averse to firing off bluffs; I've seen him blast off his stack with air numerous times. But in general I would say that he is more value-heavy.

Yes I agree that the general player pool is underbluffing on this river and the correct adjustment is to overfold.

Just FYI, if you're open folding the button w T9o and all similarly situated hands, you're folding (at least) a quarter the hands you could be VPIPing here--which is a full half of the hands you could be VPIPing at the lowest possible raise size in a rakeless game, without accounting for bunching effects, etc. (Which obviously you should be accounting for rake and bunching effect and all, just wanted to specifically call out that the quarter number already accounts for that.)

Probably the opposite of the adjustment you want to be making in these loose-passive games.

I'm confident T9o is a profitable button open in this game against the vast majority of the player pool.

Villain is certainly capable of donking this flop with value or air; he's an unorthodox player.

I agree raising flop/turn is definitely fine and would do both a certain percentage of the time, and also make my decision dependent on the villain too.

Yes the river check-raise certainly felt like K9 or perhaps even KK. I honestly don't think there are many bluffs here, and to bluff in this situation really feels like a desperate hail-Mary at winning the post after all else has failed. So - ultimately I think this is a value-heavy situation as far as villain is concerned.

In my experience paired boards are over-cbet by players with theoretical knowledge, and played more passively by the general low stakes player pool (unless they flops trips of course).

open folding t9o otb is great advice. lets you know immediately who not to listen to on a pseudonymous forum

"One of the most confused posters on this forum".

It's unclear what you are trying to achieve with this comment. This is a forum where we are collectively trying to solve problems; comments like this do not assist us in doing so. If something is unclear then you can simply ask me to clarify it. Responding instead with ad hominems is counter-productive and ultimately absurd.

"Don't understand how we say this and then also consider a fold".

I have over two years of playing against this villain. It's only in the last month that he has started playing more loose-aggressive, and it's not like he's turned into a maniac who's going after every pot and reloading all day long. If that was the case then obviously I would have a straightforward call. He has just dialed his frequencies up somewhat.

Sure, please see my post from earlier today for more information on villain.

no one is trying to solve problems lol. people are trying to gain validation either on their in game decisions or on our mediocrity posing as authority. probably 5% of the forum is willing to look at a solve even when ss are posted, and no one is open to changing their mind (including me for the most part).

perhaps 2p2 has turned into a giant social experiment on advanced dunning kruger effect

Sure that's a good point that he probably doesn't think I have many 9x here. And it's a good question then whether that induces him to bluff more/value bet thinner, which of course it should. His take is almost certainly that my range is a lot more capped than that, and his thinking may have been that I went for thin value with a rivered king and that he can get me to fold a one-pair hand if he jams.

I'm almost certain that this villain is check-calling a rivered king, rather than going for value or turning it into a bluff.

Agreed that these posts are just irrelevant nonsense. Let's try and stick with the poker please.

Yes that's true for the average player, I agree. This villain is unorthodox and could donk, check-raise or check-call a 9 on this board.

Yes for sure this opponent doesn't think in ranges (he never talks in terms of ranges) and is more of a gut player. He's not going to bluff raise this river with an expected range for doing so with; he's going to do it when he thinks I can't call, and his hand is largely irrelevant to this process (other than having little showdown value). He can certainly blow up in spots like this and bluff when it doesn't make sense, or with the wrong hands. I've seen him do this occasionally. That said, I'm certain he gets a lot of bluffs through as well, and finds bluffs where other's wouldn't.

Sure, the donk/donk/check-raise line is super rare. But I think the relevant part here is the river play, and if we isolate that from the rest of the hand and look at the general population at low stakes I'm sure it's an underbluffed spot and I would imagine it's equally underbluffed in a donk/donk/check-raise line (but I could be wrong). This fact of the river being under check-raised as a bluff would be the main factor in my finding a fold here, regardless of what happened earlier in the hand. But as you listed, there are many arguments for calling too.

I'm going to take a look at the MDF shortly, which will of course involve many assumptions/approximations etc and so is not ideal, and I expect my hand to be mandatory call, but it's always helpful to take a closer look at the ranges in any case.

I agree that fish end up (somewhat) overbluffing and regs end up underbluffing. But even then I would say that most of the overbluffing that fish do is on the earlier streets, rather than the river.

Yes the 10% bluffing is complete guesswork and speculation. But I'm certain the true value is nowhere close to 27%.

Good point that it might even be worth taking this showdown, suspecting to be wrong 80% of the time or whatever, to make adjustments in future hands and get an insight into how he thinks and plays. We play at least one 10-hour session each week, so it would certainly be useful information.

I think I'm fairly capped on this river after only calling on the flop and turn and the obvious draw missing on the river.

Sure, I'm opening the button significantly wider than equilibrium in this game.

Lol, sure.

Sure, I get it. Well hopefully we can separate the wheat from the chaff.

So, you folded? Did he show? Very curious.

the issue is the chaff are usually the stronger players who end up getting frustrated / trolling bc they're "debating" with people under false pretenses - is impossible to reason with someone who's entire premise is based on feelings and are unwilling to examine / change that. look at the KK hand from this week as fairly good evidence of this

is my last try and only bc you do genuinely seem interested in getting better.

it defeats the entire purpose of analysis, study etc if you start from the basic premise of "i dont think people bluff x/r the river" and have that be the only relevant data point. like that may or may not be true in your pool, in the past, in the present, in the future, i have no idea and it doesn't matter that much. you don't have any stats in the way proving this (yes i've seen online mda that suggests this but bear with what i'm saying for a minute) but if thats the point, what is the point of ever looking at a hand when facing a river x/r? what do you do if the general population trends change? maybe if you think they bluff less you call 10% less of the time or whatever as a starting point, but doing these large binary polar shifts w/o evidence is going to lead to you getting wrecked when you change player pools or the game changes in general. or if you're just wrong, or the context is slightly off or what have you. it also really precludes improvement in general (how can you ever get better in river x/r bluff catching spots if you've decided unilaterally that they are never bluffing?)

even if you've decided this is the case for river x/rs, when you start thinking like this you're going to end up going down the line until you end up with this very polar, binary thought process in all lines that occasionally max exploits the opponents who play the way you expect them to, and leaks ev in a way you're not going to be able to compensate for or even recognize vs anyone else (is literally why we study game theory for poker strategy)

anyways, i don't want to keep going in circles and you seem to be pretty set on how you view the situation so we will have to save our long diatribes for subsequent posts

final edit worth thinking about. Why do you think river x/rs are underbluffed? Is that in all populations or just yours? By what % do you think they're underbluffed? Where did you get 10% or definitely not 27% in this context from? Are they all underbluffed or are there some contexts where they might even be overbluffed?

I just put almost the exact line of OP into GTO wizard, and it folds T9 like 80% of the time. I think if your lesson is “exploit, but dont overexploit”, then you want to use your judgement in spots where gto mixes, exactly like this spot.

GTOw is basically doing this exact line including the donk bet with 77, very occasionally T8, and bottom end of Kx 7x 4x as a bluff.

Sure, I understand what you're saying. Just to be clear, my view is that the general player pool at low stakes are under-bluffing when they check raise the river. I'm not saying it never happens, but at least in my experience it happens a lot less than it's meant to at equilibrium. The simple fact is that most players are straightforward in their play at these stakes, and they do not have much concept of the necessity of balance. Of course there are loose-aggressive players who can and do check-raise the river as a bluff a lot more often, but they are undoubtedly the exception rather than the rule (in my experience anyway).

Personally I doubt that these trends are going to change given the nature of the average low stakes player, most of whom are unstudied, not making any effort to learn/improve, and learned how to play "organically" through their own experience and watching the professionals etc. The vast majority of these players play in a straightforward and transparent manner that is value-heavy and risk-averse. When such players check-raise the river - at least in my mind - it's a very clear alarm bell and the correct adjustment is to overfold. My "evidence" for this is simply what I have observed over many years of playing live poker. But that said, if I observed these tendencies changing (as they can if one is playing in a notably loose-aggressive game) then for sure I would adjust.

I was under the impression that even if villains are underbluffing 0.1% then we should fold all bluff catchers (but I could be wrong). Sure I see what you are saying that nobody will improve in these spots if they don't study them, under the assumption that "villain is never bluffing" - but I don't think that's the case and on the contrary I'm gonna take a look at the MDF shortly. That said, I think its use is somewhat academic, for the reasons detailed above. But it's still interesting to consider it and to see what equilibrium etc looks like. I'm not a big proponent of MDF, but for one thing it protects players from being exploitable due to their own inherent biases (overfolding, overcalling etc) but absolutely has to be used with caution and making adjustments according to the player pool is of course crucial.

Yes I totally agree that to be blinded by such biases is of course a huge mistake and it's important to be flexible and adjust on the fly whilst playing and according to the player type that you're up against.

I've played low stakes poker in many countries and in many player pools, over many years. I think I could probably count on two hands the number of river check-raises that were bluffs. It's rare for several reasons in my opinion - firstly, the dollar value involved in usually much larger than, for example, check-raising the flop (which is a lot more common) - and as mentioned most players are risk-averse and loathe to piling in their chips without a hand. Secondly, the general player pool don't even check-raise that much in general. They are for the most part loose, passive players and there is a lot more slow-playing than there should be. Additionally, if they do check-raise monster hands, it's often earlier in the hand than the river. So this narrows down the hands that get check-raised on the river (at least to some degree) to hands that rivered monsters, which are of course rarer than hands that flopped/turned monsters. I'm sure this changes drastically at higher stakes, where players are a lot more balanced. "Definitely not 27%" is just an estimate, but if rivers were getting check-raised as a bluff 27% of the time, then those bluffs would get shown down a lot more often than they do. There are other factors too, like pots often being multi-way and having less bluffing in them as a result, etc. The only context in which river check-raises would be overbluffed is when we're facing a particularly bluffy player, which are rare at low stakes - there are perhaps a handful of these out of a regular player pool of 100+ players in my local game, for example.

gtow is pure checking the flop as bb, yes u can sim out weird hypothetical w fractional balanced ranges if u want but flawed for all sorts of reasons.

my main point is kinda he has no reason to think river x/rs are underbluffed (note, im not arguing that they arent) - beyond human memory and collective wisdom (both of which are dangerous to rely on)

mdf is going to be near worthless here because its going to rely on u understanding ur range well on all streets and mixing well / executing well without a randomizer pre river in a line you have no experience dealing with / looking at. and also i said this earlier, but its really easy to mess up range / river sizings in unorthodox spots and either go too big or small w value or bluffs or whatever in real time if that makes sense. would honestly think ur better off mixing up cards and calling if its a 9, recs love that **** too

Without really strong reads, I call the jam, though not really loving it. If we don't call with this hand, it seems like we'd be way over-folding. Hard to give V credit for many better hands that play this way, and he's got a ton of missed draws that could easily play this way.

I just ran it through Pio and found a couple of things to note. Firstly, it's calling (rather than raising) with my exact hand on the flop and turn, and there's a significant difference in EV there. Secondly, facing the check raise on the river, all 9x hands have a profitable call, but it is absolutely minimally profitable, for example an EV of 15 when the pot size is close to 1000.

Yeah, it's a very close spot by almost all accounts. I agree that folding this hand is probably overfolding, but it's hard to escape the fact that we're only beating bluffs and it's very unlikely to be a bluff.

stealth bonus to call: thread would have only been 12 posts long