Hi,

I am more or less a beginner, and so in order to improve I am trying to plug holes in my game for the most common situations first. I think I'm doing quite well at estimating EV at the table, although I'm trying to almost pre-learn the EV in common situations so I don't have to think about them in so much detail when they come up (just estimate the relevant numbers and make the best play). One situation I find myself in fairly frequently is one like this, where I am very confident that I have started with the best hand, but by the river I am essentially playing a high card (or an otherwise weak hand). By that point, it becomes pretty hard for me to know whether my hand is good or not. Here is a recent example from my HH:

Full Tilt - $1|15/30 NL (2 max) - Holdem - 2 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

Hero (BB): 64.5 BB
SB: 35.5 BB (VPIP: 41.67, PFR: 33.33, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 14)

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, Hero posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has K A

SB raises to 2 BB, Hero calls 1 BB

Flop: (4 BB, 2 players) 2 9 J
Hero checks, SB bets 3 BB, Hero calls 3 BB

Turn: (10 BB, 2 players) 6
Hero checks, SB bets 5 BB, Hero calls 5 BB

River: (20 BB, 2 players) Q
Hero bets 10 BB, SB calls 10 BB

Hero shows K A (High Card, Ace) (Pre 74%, Flop 85%, Turn 93%)
SB mucks A 3 (High Card, Ace) (Pre 26%, Flop 15%, Turn 7%)
Hero wins 40 BB

I had only played a small number of hands against this opponent so my reads were very approximate, but he was raising roughly 30% of his hands and so far had c-betted 100% of the time.

In this case I was right and he called me with a worse Ace high, and I'm reasonably happy with how I played it EV-wise, but I was hoping for some more opinions as I think it could have gone better and I find myself in this kind of situation fairly often.

A few points that I would like to get some opinions on:

Preflop: I would think that calling a hand like this OOP is preferable to 3-betting since it plays so well post flop and a call disguises the hand. With not many reads, I didn't want to risk 3-betting and getting a fold, but I appreciate I might be overcomplicating this (for example, at $1 the villain might not even be thinking of my calling vs. 3-betting range and so I might not be able to fully realise the value of the hand later on if I hit). Would it be better to simply 3-bet a hand like this? I tend to 3-bet hands which I think are roughly in the middle of the opponents raising range, so that I can add some fold equity to what is otherwise about 50-50 odds.

Flop: Given that I called pre, would a raise have been better than a call? Given my limited reads on the opponent and the flop texture, he is betting here every time. Weighing it up at the time, I was confident that I had the better hand and that he might go for another barrel or two with air, but now I'm thinking it might have been better to raise and polarise his hand, or just get a fold right there.

River: I chose to bet on the river, because I thought I could get him to fold a better hand a decent percentage of the time, especially given the completed straight draw, and he could conceivably call me down with a worse hand like A or K high (which he did). If I checked and he bet then I would have a tough decision to make which I was not confident that I would be able to make correctly under time pressure, and so I opted for the bet. On balance I think I'm quite happy with this bet.

Sorry that I ended up asking so many questions, but any opinions on any of them would be appreciated, especially if it comes with a good explanation

Thanks

Welcome to the forums.

You will get a lot more value from your hand if you 3bet preflop. With roughly 30bbs effective, you're looking to get all the money in. Given your opponent is tight from the SB, if you 3bet you will get called or shoved on a lot, which is great.

On the river your bluff is almost never going to work against someone who half-pots two streets and is likely going to call very light. He did call with worse but that's an exception imo; in the long run it won't be profitable.

I didn't read your whole post but it looks like you might be over thinking the situation Force yourself to be a bit more aggressive and see how it goes.

That's exactly what I was looking for, thanks.

I decided to change how to play these big hands, since (at least in my experience at the micro stakes) people tend to be very frightened of 3-bets (or sometimes not frightened enough lol), and so my perception was that I was losing a lot of money by playing premium hands aggressively preflop. I figured that big hands like those tend to play pretty well post-flop, and so I've been trying to get the money in more gradually. I have been suffering a down swing though, so I wonder if that is part of it.

Given that I did call, would you suggest just check-folding at the river (or earlier?) My reasoning for the bet was that I imagined that he would play up to the river the same way with total air, and given that he had c-bet every hand he raised so far I thought that it was quite likely he
might be on air or at least a weaker hand than he is representing. I tried to weigh up the likelihood of him bluffing, the likelihood of him folding a better hand than mine and the likelihood of him having me beat. I think, as you suggested, I vastly overestimated his ability to fold (but not, as it turns out, his ability to barrel 2 streets with a poor hand) which was what I used as justification for the bet.

As it turns out, he called with an Ace high and so like you said, he probably would have called even with a pair of 2s and win. I'm interested that you managed to figure that out from two half pot bets... to my memory I've seen lots of people give up after two barrels on a bluff and even more people give up a decent hand facing a donk bet when a scare card comes on the river. This is obviously the kind of thinking I need to get better at because it skews all of my EV estimates and makes it easier for me to make dumb moves.