More importantly nobody is calling a raise in that spot with a naked 5.

I just don't understand why we would want to give away one of our major advantages, which is our ability to read hands, Not to mention why we would want to play villain's game when we have no experience playing it, and given how shady players are in general I certainly wouldn't show first even if I was willing to show (he wants to play the game, so let him show first).

This reminds me of the rec players that want to put in $X and check it down. No thanks. I'm here to play poker and stack people, and I'm not really interested in playing little games that can hinder my ability to do that. It would be a damn shame if you showed As and the board runs out 2 spades.

Finished reading through this thread and listened to a couple of your podcasts. I hope things are going well for you as you seem like a balanced and thoughtful-not to mention courageous fellow. I'm in a similar spot with a cush government job I'm considering rejecting to focus on poker. Did you ever succeed in explaining things to your mom or was that something you just conceeded?

So villain had AQ? He probably put you on a weak Ace and wanted action. How'd the hand play out?

Not sure what he had. I 3bet flop to 505 and he folded.

Main villain is rec player in his 60's who has been playing loose passive pre but very tight post for a few hours, can't even recall him being involved in anything.

5/10. Full game recently down to 4 handed, I open QQ UTG to $35, villain calls on BTN, blinds fold. Villain starts the hand with $900 and I cover.

Flop 766, pot $85
I bet $50, villain raises to $125, I call.

Turn J, pot $335
I check, villain bets $175, I call.

River T, pot $685
I check, villain bets $375, I call.

The funny thing about this hand is his table talk was the main reason for his undoing- he mentioned several hands ago that you had to be aggressive when it gets 4-handed and I'm pretty sure he forgot he said that by the time this hand occurred (that seemed more likely for this guy than him going for the double reverse psychology).

In addition to his table talk, his sizing seems bluffy. I would think that if he had a monster by the turn at this depth, he would try to set up his sizings to get stacks in with his turn/river bets, so that helps discount 6x, 77, and TT which would be the bulk of his value range, although JJ/98 still seem reasonable with those sizings. And of course, it's worth mentioning that JJ/TT are discounted due to preflop as well. Specifically, with the former, I would expect his turn->river sizings to be something like $225->$500 instead of leaving $200 behind. Finally we must always consider what bluffs he can have, and while there isn't a ton of things that stand out, I strongly feel river is a call here given pot odds.

With the two factors of his talking + sizing combined, I made the call on the river after tanking for quite some time and was shown A7.

Hmm ran into a pretty close equity protection spot here. I still can't really decide whether I like c/r turn or c/c turn better.

Main villain is extremely loose passive preflop (likely to flat everything from 52s to AKs preflop), and ridiculously loose/bluffy post with some slowplays. In this hand, I felt he would call as light as any pair or gutshot on the flop, and would be likely to bet this turn with pretty much his entire flop calling range with the amusing exception of some of his very strong value hands. Hero's image is solid/tight pro so when I c/r him here, he will think my range is almost entirely strong value.

5/10. Hero open MP with QT to $30, villain calls in LP, both bilnds call. $1500 effective.

Flop Q86, pot $120
Checked to hero who bets $105, villain calls, blinds fold.

Turn A, pot $330
I check, villain bets $225, I raise to $505, villain snapfolds.

OK so this is a bit interesting because in terms of made hands, we're unlikely to fold out better or get called by worse- thus, equity protection. Keep in mind our unusual villain profile, and given our assumptions above, we're obviously way ahead of his range. However, my hand isn't crazy strong or anything- in fact there is even a chance villain folds better here (specifically, KQ and QJ), which is an additional factor in favor of c/r vs. c/c.

The most important factor is that I thought that this particular villain would play rivers in position fairly well in that he would be accidentally balanced. By "accidentally balanced", I basically mean that his instinctual reaction with exact hands leads him to be bluffing at a frequency reasonably close to optimal- I will probably dedicate an entire post to this topic sometime.

With these considerations, I decided to make a small turn raise primarily for equity protection. While it's a very rare play in NLHE, I felt this was a good spot for it as I didn't really want to "trap" with: 1) middle pair 2) on a wet board 3) with poor visibility 4) against a draw-heavy range 5) while being out of position. Thus, I felt losing the raise amount when behind was worth capturing villain's equity on the turn even when we are ahead.

Turn is a pretty easy call, if he's like you describe he's a complete idiot and calling down on non-hearts is going to be +++EV to the extent that we don't really care about the fact that he binks sometimes.

How about calling the turn with the plan of calling non-heart rivers and check-raising heart rivers?

i dont like anything other than folding or doing what aesah did. think aesah played it good considering how aggressive the LA player pool is

I would have thought bluff-catching river has greater EV. Villain doesn't even have a pair sometimes on the turn, and has a fair few 8s and 6s in his range, so he's not going to improve that often, with your equity on the turn probably still around 60%. I'm guessing what you mean by "accidentally balanced" is the fact that he can bet any heart, K, J, T, 9, 7 or 5 as bluffs on the river. But if you believe he's betting nearly all rivers, then isn't check-calling turn and check-calling most rivers a more profitable line? Can we assume that Villain is sometimes checking on heart-rivers for showdown (if he has a non-K or J of hearts), which, conversely, means we can call most of these heart-rivers as well? From what I can tell, the only heart-rivers that significantly reduce our equity are a 5, 7, 8 or 9, so maybe these are the only rivers we can fold.

I don't mind this play but equity protection isn't as important in NLHE compared to PLO - just calling when we're ahead is already printing money. If a bunch of his range a.) has paltry equity vs our hand (like random 6x without a heart, gutshots without a heart, etc.) and b.) will almost always bluff brick rivers then it's kind of a disaster to prevent him from doing so.

Also like DrTJO implied you can actually bluffcatch even on heart rivers since he shouldn't really have the K of hearts in his range ever unless he already turned the nuts/he might not want to valuebet say the Th or even the Jh in a bloated pot if he gets there and will just check it back.

I see there is a lot of misunderstanding when I say I think this particular villain's river betting frequency would be close to optimal. For some reason people interpret that to mean he's betting a ton of rivers which would definitely NOT be "close to optimal". As we already determined his range would be weak equity-wise overall, I was trying to say that he would be bluffing infrequently but enough to make river decisions difficult.

i stated that is the case for a couple reasons. The #1 reason by far is that this guy usually was a one and done bluffer from the few hours I played with him. Simple as that!

Second, because my image is a tight player, he probably wouldn't expect me to continue on the turn with worse than Ax, and he probably doesn't expect me to cbet flop with AK or worse, so my percieved range for him here is extremely strong combining flop/turn action (checking to him makes sense as we both know he is percieved as aggro).

C/r heart rivers seems like a pretty nice play if we c/c turn, I didn't consider that in game

I mean, the way you describe him in the first paragraph, he's either a fish or a whale, so your image doesn't really matter.

Well that was more of an aside to the first point, but since you mention it:

In general and not only pertaining to this hand, I strongly disagree with that statement. This guy is a self-made millionaire, extremely smart, and regardless of how much he splashes around, I think it would be silly to assume that he wouldn't have noticed that I hadn't played very many hands and only shown down value in a few hours of playing with me. When we're looking at 80bb pot going into the river, I'm 99% sure this guy is going to consider that.

Going back to "in general", I feel most random players fitting a similar description would also notice it. I mean even at the extreme, I've witnessed plenty of blackout drunk super-whales who literally are trying to give away money call out another player for being too tight, or fold to a 3-bet from a particular guy to "not give the nit action" while he's calling 100% vs. anyone else.

Thanks for the comments everyone, let's keep it up!

He bluffed the turn, so why is it unreasonable to think he might try to bluff the river also?

ehh I think I'm thinking about this differently but lets assume (not a safe assumption but it's really hard to calculate) that you play the river with the same net EV if you call or if you raise. Then you are risking 280 more to protect some equity (lets assume 20%) of a pot of 780. So net ev of 156. He has to fold 280/(280+156) 64% for this to be profitable for purely protecting your hand stand point. I don't think he folds that often IP... I think why this could be valuable is not cause it protects your hand but because rivers are more profitable in a raised situation here (if he flats turn he always has khx and wont call a shove river... if he raises you have little equity and fold 100% of time and never pay off another bet). This situation happens a lot in live games where people will play less bad in standard situations so creating wierd situations they're not used to unbalances them and lets you play extremely exploitably to be extremely profitable.

Obviously if you assume he has more equity on average (30-40%) and he folds 50ish% this could be good enough to raise just to protect your hand.

To reiterate what I already said I played with him several hours where he made a bunch (maybe 10) one and done bluffs whereas I never saw him double barrel bluff. However most of the situations were a bit different than here, so I think he would be capable of it and thus I would not be able to profitably play rivers with my exact hand.

I mean obviously if we are going into the river and he bets rivers with most of his range like a lot of people have mentioned, it's clear call/call is the highest EV if we have more equity to begin with come on guys

If he doesn't bluff rivers then we get to realise 100% of our equity with a call turn fold river line.

Of course this is generally true for all hands. Not sure if you meant that as a general statement but that's not very relevant to this hand since I said in 3 separate posts I expect him to bluff some rivers.

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I mean, I don't see how you reach that conclusion, at all. That's my point. Even if you've played like 200 hours with him it's still a very small sample to reach grand conclusions about river bluffing frequency, given every other element of the player type suggests he's going to either start bluffing far too much or far too little.

Don't you think 0 hours is a bit too small of a sample to reach a grand conclusion about his river bluffing frequency?

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Generally, as pertains to pretty much all things in life and not just poker, we are almost never going to have perfect information so we make our best estimate and go off that.

Thanks for the comments/discussion!

Inference innit. I'm not drawing a grand conclusion, merely suggesting that given this guy sounds like a fish, he's really really really unlikely to play any street well.

He does not have to be playing well for me to want to avoid seeing a river. We have to consider our opponent's range as an unknown, as you have suggested in the previous post perhaps he bluffs too much or too little. If we can't rule out either possibility, which I could not against this villain, and my response is unclear on rivers, which it was against this villain, then it is necessarily true that it is disadvantageous for me to play a river (compared to not having money behind) under the assumption I either c/c or c/f rivers. Of course we can choose to c/r some rivers or lead out with a valuebet if we improve, but I'm not addressing this right now as it would just fall somewhere amongst all of the other advantages/disadvantages offered by c/c turn vs. c/r turn.

To take an extreme example as an analogy, let's say we are offered a one time deal to pay $11 to win $10 playing against the worst rock-paper-scissors player in the world. Our opponent plays so badly, he only knows how to play 1 thing and doesn't ever consider the other two options, similar to Bart Simpson. But if we don't know what that 1 option is, this is a losing bet for us despite playing against the worst player ever because his range as an unknown player to us is still 33/33/33 even though in actuality it is a "fish" range of 100/0/0.

Well that is a big change for you! GL to you and please keep us updated .