I just played a hand where I had aces on a J105 flop 2 spades, villain called my continuation bet so I assumed he was either drawing or had a Jack. Turn was a rag so I bet got called. The river brought a Jack, at this point I knew he either had a Jack or missed his draw so I had to bet to prevent a steal.

Typically how much should I bet relative to the pot size as a defensive bet? I had made it about 4/10 of the pot size and he just called showing KJ. I felt maybe I could have gone just a bit lower.

This is not really the place for this, it should go in a holdem strat forum for your game and stakes.

I actually disagree with your decision to bet the river though.

~3.50

B/f is good for 1/3 pot.

4/10 is fine.

CLIFFNOTES: We can actually just check river. Draws typical check back and surrender. Tx and Underpairs typically think we missed our draw or have AK and their hand is good. Less than 20% of players are sophisticated enough to turn their hand into a bluff here.

Back up a bit.

What the hell did you bet on the turn? Your turn bet coupled with your read on V should enable you to range V fairly well.

Also, what type of player is V. Is he a rec-fish, is he an aggro thinking player, is he an ABC player, is he an OMC, is he a nit, a station, etc. etc.

Reason the above is important is because it should impact how we play this hand.

There are a ton of passive rec-fish out there that love to chase, love to draw but when they MISS their draws they never bluff. Despite being in position, despite the PERFECT scare card hitting, despite us showing weakness and checking into them on the river and serving the pot up to them on a silver platter... they still won't bluff at it. They will just shrug, give up and say, "I missed."

This is around 50% or so of the LLSNL player pool.

The remaining player pool, it should be possible for us to discern if they have a Jack based on their flop and turn calls and how they called. There are certain players that abhor drawing and hate drawing, a lot of the OMC and ABC players absolutely despise drawing. So if we bet 3/4 pot on flop and turn and they call, we can 100% put them on Jx because this player pool is NEVER calling these bets with draws or Tx or underpairs.

This represents 30% or so of the LLSNL player pool.

So, right off the bat we can eliminate our need to burn money with a defensive bet in this spot roughly 80% of the time.

Or put another way, 80% of the time we can just check/fold here and save money and be extremely confident that our check/fold is correct. Most of the time, draws will just check back and surrender and if there is a bet we can have a high degree of confidence we are beat and just puke fold.

As for the remaining 20%, (thinking players and maniacs) will be tougher to read. but even among this part of the player pool, underpairs and Tx will often check back the river thinking we have AK or missed our draw (even if it makes no sense based on our line that we were drawing) and that their hand is good.

So if you really think about this spot, depending on your image and your flop and turn bet (assuming they were correct) we can check back this spot on river 80% - 90% of the time and have a high degree of confidence in check/folding this spot if our villains bet river. Similarly, a large percentage of the time if our villains DO NOT have a Jack they will simply just check back.

So, if you think this spot through, in actuality you can save the river bet and just check.

Sorry for the post in the wrong forum.

Thanks dgiharris, I really appreciate the thorough response it made a lot of sense and was very helpful. I had bet a little under 3/4 the pot on the flop and turn and like you had said I was fairly confident he had the Jack. Had I check/folded I wouldn't have doubted my fold very much at all and looking back it would have been the ideal play.

yeah seems like the wrong forum.

also betting this river isnt a blocker bet, more of a thin value bet imo.

For those saying this is posted in the wrong forum, what forum would a question like this belong to? And how do I locate that forum? I would love to look at more questions like these.

Poker Theory? Under General Poker.

My best guess.

This post belongs here. I think Rusty moved it here from somewhere else.

As DGI said, it depends on a lot of factors, and we usually discuss such questions with those other factors included. Having general discussion can be OK too, as long as we realize that the right answer will more and more frequently be "it depends" the more we are talking about a general "common spot," and the less we're talking about a specific hand with specific V's, stack sizes, etc.

I think this is a pretty standard thin value spot.

While of course the complete answer is "it depends", IMO most of the time (>51%) the most profitable answer will be to get 1 more bet in there, since as DGI said, they're not going to bluff raise us. But there are lots of Tx, PP and 5x hands that "don't believe" and will call, but will not bet themselves.

So I rather b/f here for value, even a small amount, then x/c.

Agreed. Its not a blocking bet. Its a bet for thin value.

ETA: definitely belongs here. However, per usual, OP should not have put results in. E.g. Just post the hand history up until Hero's turn to act OTR and leave it as an open question for at least 24hrs.

I think this is a super thin value spot. Will Tx or underpairs call three barrels more than the frequency we value own ourselves against a Jx hand?

If the answer is yes, then absolutely we can go for a thin value bet.

But if the answer is no, then river is a x/f.

Obviously the answer will be it depends. If villain was one of those "I put you on AK" type players then I'm all for going for the thin value bet. But if villain is one of those ABC TPMK call down monkeys (which is the most common type) then we really are just lighting money on fire by betting river when the J pairs .

To be clear, if we think V can call us with worse, then we can absolutely go for a thin value bet. But that will be dependent on our villain type and unfortunately OP didn't give us any player descriptions.

In a vacuum though, I would just x/f here if we fired decent flop and turn bets as I feel we don't get called by worse often enough for a thin value bet to be +EV since the overwhelmingly large percentage of our villains in this spot that DO NOT have Jx are either folding or never bluffing.