I thought about this hand some more, and I realized that with these stack sizes, he could easily check/call the flop with lots of hands intending to c/push the turn. I think that might make this a call.

You should call because you are beat and he's Patrik Antonius.

All,

You guys make it seem the Antious is c/ring us with every hand he gets to the river with and is behind with along with the hands he doing it with for value. This makes it a clear bet/call imo.

So he is never ever check folding this river?

results?

FWIW your hand def. looks like an ace.
you C-bet the flop get called, pick up top pair so you have showdown value so obv check behind.
then when he checks again to you time to value bet the ace.
for that reason from villian's perspective its a great spot for a value shove river CR.
i def. agree with what magic ninja said about the fact that if you are going to value bet the river in these spots vs good tricky players you def. have to be willing to call some of theses shoves.
however i think in this spot your beat.
the thing is ppl keep talking about how thin of a value bet this is on the river, but its not a value bet its a bluff because he's never calling here with a worse hand, and when he does CR bluff river he puts you in a -EV spot so you have no real value to betting the river, because the combined times when he makes you fold the best hand on the river and call with the worst hand on the river takes away any value.

that being said if you are going to "value bet" river in this spot you have to call sometimes so whether you called and lost this hand or called and won is irrelevant cuz you have to be calling sometimes and about 1/2 the time you'll look silly.

guess what i'm trying to say is i prolly wouldn't bet this river vs good tricky opponent however once i do i am going to make the call at least 1/2 the time.

This is why aba is sick good.

Aba is obviously really good but this isn't why.

isn't it highly unethical if not illegal for a ftp pro to advertise himself as who he is and let patrik antonius play under his account.

how can ftp let you play this high and be tricked about who your opponent is like that?

I read this hand and thought that this bet probably was not better then checking behind in the long run, but I dont have much experience in this game vs antonious or whoever is on that acct.

The thing about river checkraises is this: when they are for value they are often carefully set up before the river. Occasionally a gin river card gets there and then a good player goes 'oh ya its time to CR river now', but usually it is setup way before the river.

When someone CR bluffs the river, it is often thought of on the river. Diablo used to tell me that he CRed the river when he had a draw, and a different draw got there. That would be one example of a time people CR the river and only decide to do so when they get there.

In these spots on the river usually its a guessing game, but I find that I can sometimes pick up timing tells or patterns that let me know if the CR was concieved on earlier streets or if it was a sudden knee jerk reaction on the river.

About this hand, I have no idea what to do. This is a very tough board for him to have a hand he is CRing for value. For bad players at this stakes, this usually means they have the goods because many mediocre high stakes players dont bluff on boards where there are not many logical hands to represent. The good players can bluff on the obvious bluff boards and that makes them harder to play against.

I called. He had 22.

In hindsight, I don't think he is ever calling with a worse hand. However, I don't think he can have a better hand except for 88 or 77. I think the call of his shove is actually standard in this spot, but the bet itself has no value except for inducing the c/r.

I agree with those who said that a c/r is his only river play with a big hand, and I agree, but I don't think he can have a big hand besides 77 with the flop action. I think an ace bets the river too almost all the time.

So yeah. I think betting may have been a mistake or is marginal at best, but calling was not.

lol, whoops.

NH jman.

-JP

why cant he have a 9 here?

He's been checkraising so many flops. Like, he rarely check called a flop against me. c/c'ing a big hand here on a paired board, when some turn cards kill his action, with his image would be foolish and not something he would do.

well if that's your read and you're so sure about it, that would obviously make this an instacall... right? i mean, that's obviously what it comes down to...

of course he is god so crai with an ace for value would be soooooo sick. but yeah if u dont think hes capable of that and you dont think he slowplays a big hand, you're right, 77 or nothing.

The riverbet is completely unnecessary. He wont call you with anything worse, you say that yourself at least, and now you are facing a tough decision whether to call the allin or not. If you bet in order to induce the c/r on the river, why are you posting this asking whether you should call river or not? Either, you bet in order to induce a bluff and then you don't post asking whether to call or not, or you bet for value. It doesn't seem to be neither of these, it just looks like you got greedy on the river.

Yeah, I suppose a lot of it is read based, but it's not like I have much more info than I'm giving. I didnt pick up anything in the way of timing tells, and I dont think the flow of the match was anything particularly special.

I just don't think it'd be smart for him to slowplay this flop. I mean, he's been c/r'ing so often. Part of the reason for that is to win pots, and the other is to setup for times like this when he can get paid off with a big hand. Theres no reason for me to give him much credit when he c/r's this flop which is why I think he would do it if he wanted action. I guess he could just c/c 86 because of his image, planning to take it away on a later street, but I also think that's unlikely.

Theres still the possibility of 88 which would be so sick, but I think it's likely enough that he's bluffing to make it a clear call.

There's always the chance that he knows what I'm thinking as well as I do, and knows that I call this c/r with any hand I vb, because he is Antonius. That thought is a little scary.

J,

If you felt he was more aware of your play (and willingness to make calls like this and the other one I mentioned), then I like your call a lot less. Since you didn't think that was the case, I think it was fine.

(warning, very small stakes player asking a question; not for the faint of heart or those with a blood pressure condition)


So Im curious as to why he c/r'd you with 22. I'm trying to understand the river c/r as a move in general.

Is it because he thought twos had showdown value, then when you bet he figures that showdown value now has gone out the window and that you are valuebetting a medium hand often enough that the c/r gets you to fold x amount of times?

I think it went something like this.

Antonius: Might as well check my 22.

Jman: Gotta thinly value bet my pair of 7's. Cuz Antonius is a nit and will call me with 22.

Antonius: Who does this guy think he is? Trying to value bet Mr. Antonius with a marginal hand? I'm Antonius, so if I push, he HAS to fold. No one calls Antonius, not even if he has the nuts.

Jman: OGMOGMGOMG WHAT THE FK DID I DO? HE WASN'T SUPPOSED TO PUSH! ...... ...... everyone expects Antonius to win, so if I call and lose, who cares... but if I call and win... everyone will think I'm the next aba. Plus I'im a ship it holla balla.... err..er.... CALL!l!l!!l!l

River VB was good/great only in the case you knew he would C/R a weak bet with a hand like that.

On the other case, I think check would have been good.

Btw, what you think of a pot sized bet on the turn? Just curious.

J,

A few quick thoughts... If you think your hand is worth a value bet on the river, then you would need to call a shove because PA will be able to recognize from your line that your hand is almost never one that you want to felt. Additionally, the chance that you could be bluffing here (this seems like a reasonable enough spot without any info to the contrary) could create a thought process here for him like "Well he could be bluffing here often and obviously he would have to fold all those hands, and additionally there is a decent chance he is making a thinnish value bet and will fold to my AI.

With all that said, i strongly disagree with your river bet in general. When you say that he has been c/r many flops and is probably doing so that he can fastplay hands in the future and get paid off, i imagine that to be completley true, it's pretty standard operating procedure in any mid-high limit NL game. However PA is one of the most sucessful NL players out there, and he is going to very his play a lot and do many counter-intuitive things in all likelyhood. I would imagine that there are many situations where he would take a line to [censored] with you, like here you discount the possibility of trips right away because he doesn't c/r the flop. Now I am honestly not good enough to discern if this is a spot where he would very rarely make that kind of variation in his play, but he's gotta do it somewhere right?

Furthermore, by your logic that he should never be very strong on the flop, if you had held A-T in this hand, you would basically have to felt the turn 100% of the time right? I mean he would re-raise better aces Pre-flop and can't have trips or a better two pair so your hand would be the nuts! My point is that with good high limit players who mix up their play, and will do weird counter-intuitive [censored], i mean it's only like 3rd level thinking. I would expect that your line of thinking there is pretty dangerous. And of course lastly, the board has gotten pretty bad for a lot of his hands. You could have Ax of course, the 7 fills gutterballs, your turn/river combo looks like pot control with perhaps a middle to large PP, and unless he has a huge leak to C/R bluff the river i just don't imagine that he pays off enough to make the bet worth it, especially considering that pure floats with be fairly common here by him (Unless like i said he c/r bluffs the river WAAAY to much) So overally, i think the river bet is pretty bad with the knowledge you had, and the call of the c/r is fine, not obviously correct, but fine.

Good post strassa. Good post by OP. Good stuff in HSNL for us wannabe's.

What ggbman said.

It is very dangerous to assume that he will always play certain hands certain ways and immediately discount them.