Had a somewhat interesting spot on Day 2 of the ME that I wanted to share.

Relevant history against opponent: I doubled up off him in a 100bb pot or so a couple hours earlier when I had AA, he stuck around on K42 flop with my 1/5 pot cbet then held on when he hit a J on the turn with his AJ and paid off my turn bet and river jam. He's been playing pretty aggressively--

Blinds are 800/1600 w the ante, I have 215k and he as around 400k.

Folds to me in the hijack and I open K5 to 3500. Folds to villain in the BB and he calls.

Flop is K47 rainbow, he check/calls 2400.

Turn is 10, creating a spade draw. He leads 6k, I call. Not sure if there's another play here, but if there is, feedback is welcomed.

River is the A. He bets 7k, and I raise to 42k.

I find these spots where players turn their hands into bluffs interesting.

Thoughts?

I guess I should include my thoughts. I don't think it's possible for him to have the straight or AK or sets, whereas I can, and Id use this sizing with each of those. Although it's likely I'd raise any set that wasn't AA on the turn

I def thought my hand could be good, but in the chance it wasn't, I wanted to apply max pressure to his made hands. I thought he could fold a weak two pair here since my value hands are nutted (QJ, AK, sets). Perhaps that's ambitious?

His 7k bet was pretty weak with a pot of around 24k looks weak. I like your raise but think you probably have the best hand too. It is hard for him to reraise you there given your sizing.

Pre is probably OK but definitely not a 100% open. Depending on how diffuse you wanna be, IDK maybe as a default 10-25% frequency we open this hand from HJ? Prolly 100% opening if I think I can exploit those still to act. Sounds like HU vs the BB is a dream scenario.


I think live V's will tend to x/f too much in this spot and also tend to not x/r frequently nearly enough and this is a pretty high frequency x/r spot for OOP player: You should be cbetting your range having such a large range advantage as you do, thus Kx is a very strong hand for V and furthermore he's facing a cbet range that's wide and has lots of air thus V can x/r for thin value/protection or as a bluff with a plethora of hand like 7x, 5x, 4x, gutshots, et al.

So the net effect is I think most V's arrive at turn exploitably strong (too much Kx+ relative to value).

Donking makes some sense since your range is still merged and wide and diffuse, meaning V has incentive to lead pairs for value/protection and also lead bluffs/blockbets (SDs, A-high) for balance. His sizing is prolly way too big but w/e. I think it's a lil harder to apply specific reads here since it's a pretty unorthodox bet, the sizing is almost surely suboptimal.

The reason it's important that V calls flop exploitably strong is because that river card is basically the worst in the deck for a range that's suboptimally constructed to be too-heavily skewed towards Kx.

When you raise river, you rep broadway. AK, 77, TT, AT, A7, A4 and a variety of bluffs (your Tx I think are your best bluffing combos because they block 2pr/sets and greatly benefit for getting Kx or Ax, etc to fold) .

You rep enough to force Kx AND Ax to fold basically always and force V to rely on his 2pr+ to bluffcatch.

In other words when you raise river you do exactly as you should be doing against a suboptimally constructed range like V's. Because he arrives at river with more Kx than he ought to have, he arrives at river with a suboptimaly large number of b/f combos which makes your best exploit to be to raise the **** out of him.

I think some V's will arrive with so much Kx that it makes sense for you to just exploitatively raise your entire range OTR and print by virtue of him b/f too often.

Very nice hand OP.

Wow eggs, that analysis was amazing--watching a movie but I look forward to writing more on this. Very much appreciated.

I thought your entire analysis was spot on, but I wanted to focus on this part of what you wrote. I agree that it's a spot that is not CR by the BB (or OOP player) nearly enough. I've started doing it quite a bit with the hands you listed and have had a lot of success....the PFR often just gives up.

But, it's also a spot that if you know your opponent is a thinking player, you can take advantage of it as the PFR since your range will always be more nutted than the OOP defender.

Here's a hand I played later in the summer during Day 2 of the Wynn Classic Main. Almost identical to this ME hand. I open HJ, BB defends, flop is Kxx rainbow (two baby cards). Only this time I had AQss, and my flop cbet got checkraised 3x by the Euro pro big blind. As I made the bet, I thought what I'd do if I got checkraised. When he did, I decided to float and see what he did on the turn. I also had backdoor flush/straight draws. Turn came a blank...the big blind checked..and I bet and took it down.

I'm not sure if that's a good play or not. It would be a sick spot for him to go for the double CR, and had he bet out I would have folded unless I picked up considerable equity (combo straight/flush card or an Ace only I think).

Just kind of rambling I guess, your post just got me thinking...

Don't see any reason to turn this hand into a bluff

thread is closer to r/circlejerk than r/poker imo. Seems way unnecessary in the main but hey go pio

What kind of range are you putting my opponent on? I def considered that my hand could be good, but if it was then there's no harm in raising is there?

I think his sets and QJ never play turn like this and he won`t have much of them anyway. (he 3bet TT+ pre)

Your 7x(which do`nt block missed SD) are best bluff raises then your Tx.
Its fine to overbluff-raise though but I think your sizing is a bit too large making you more polar to AA/straights and bluffs which won`t be a big deal if your opp would`ve been aware how weak is that range assigned to the line he took but my guess is he`s most likely not.
Add here the fact you would raise turn a lot like you said and you become quite polar but make it smaller and you would rep 2p+ much more naturally.

But I agree with your decision against just calling on the specific river card (bc he should never lead Ax ott)

Eggs made a good post.

IMHO check back flop and raise 2.5x turn lead

Example from last night $750 live:
Hero raise K7dd 2BB MP LP caller both blinds call.
Flop K83r checked through
Turn (10BB) J bringing heart draw, SB leads 4BB, hero raises to 10BB, SB calls
River 2, SB leads 10BB hero calls and wins v AQo (lol yeah I know)

Cliffs: K rag s plays well when you check back top pair. Multi-way or heads up.

True people prolly play the same in a live 750 and the main.

I had a long explanation typed up but as I got deeper and deeper. I like your play. Your sizing is pretty polarized which I like on this board because its like wtf bluffs can you actually have. If I am villian sitting there with less than A10 then I am pretty uncomfortable. The problem is he put himself in one of those spots where he looks like he wants to get to showdown cheap now that one of the worst cards in the deck came off. So he is basically asking to get bluffed and might level himself into a call. So I think Villian put himself in a pretty bad spot if he has showdown value that has K5 beat and he wasn't trying to induce a raise. I personally would never play his hand like he did if so.

I like your raise but I also think if he is a really good player thinking on a higher level, this is the perfect inducing size with this river. If he's bad and uses blocker bets a lot to get to showdown then yeah I like your raise as long as it wasn't against a guy like Ensan who is just going to get to showdown no matter what even if his blocker bet didn't work.

Thanks for the input--he seemed pretty inexperienced, but not a donk or anything, but I could rule out the inducing bet--can't see this player doing something that advanced.

The flipside, which you touched on, is that his bet looks so weak that he could level himself into calling since it looks like a bet that's gonna get raised. It's up to him if I'm doingit with a bluff or a monster--I don't think he's gonna put me on a hand that has showdown value but is bluff-raising--I think he'll put me on air or nuts when I made it, and not sure what air I can have besides missed flush draws.

For those interested (I always am) my opponent went into the tank for several minutes. He reluctantly put in the call and tabled K10 for the turned two pair, which makes a bit of sense when you put the hand together, although I think this particular opponent would've raised other players with his top pair in the flop.

After the hand he said that I couldn't have had the straight (which isn't correct) and that he didn't put me on AK (clearly, he called) so if we remove those hands from my range (a mistake imo) then it's a clear call for him.

When I made the raise I wasn't trying to get him off a hand like K10, I was mainly going after his weaker two pairs, aces, and better kings. I think my raise was a tad large, but other than that I think it was ok.

Thanks for the input everyone.

I agree with what Eggs said except for turn sizing. I think V's turn sizing is either about right or a bit small at <50% pot.

I like the turn donk because much of hero's range gets checked on the turn.

River bet is so small it looks like a blocking bet. Which it was. Except if I am villain I am c/c that river 100% of the time. Its a perfect bluff card for hero and the bet will have to be somewhat reasonable even if it is pot sized.

As played I think the river raise was too big. You accomplish the same thing at 3.5x or about 25k IMO.

After the hand villain confirms he has little idea what he is doing by saying you can't have QJ or AK. Unfortunately for hero that means he also believes hero is not likely to have a flush draw so a lot of the value of the bluff is lost because he might actually call down a lot lighter than KT. Still I like the bluff a lot and it was unfortunate villain was as strong as he was. He clearly was not inducing (he tanked) and I think he might have folded a smaller two pair...

this

IMHO no need to level ourselves in the live ME donkaments vs weaker oppos and try sophisticated moves when we have a somehow solid bluffcatcher

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