Suppose a theoretical situation on the river where:

* The only hand that is a good value raise is quads
* The paired card on board is not the highest on board (i.e. KTTxx)
* No straight flush is possible
* You hold either hold quads or a quad blocker (you may or may not also have a non-nut FH)
* Let's assume if you raise the river bet, it's a full pot raise

From a GTO perspective, when you raise the river bet, you should have quads 2/3 of the time and a bluff 1/3 of the time in order to make your opponent indifferent to calling.

What are the ideal quad blocker hands to use to get the right bluff frequencies?

i am curious what dyanmic forces any value raise to be quads? e.g., in your example, what would make KKxx on a KTTxx board not a value raise?

Yeah, you need a specific hand to discuss, or better 3-4 hands / boards that you think this question actually applies to and then we can work on answering it.

Let's suppose some scenario where are in position with KTxx (xx may include another T or it may not).

Flop KTT
villain c/c

Turn KTT2
villian c/r full pot

River KTT3
villain leads full pot and we have one pot sized raise behind

I think we never raise here holding the T so I can’t relate this spot to your original question.

I'll do your job for you since a hand just came up that might more aptly make provide a point of discussion:

UTG (good reg) opens, CO (good reg) calls, we call on button with 9 9 4 4.

Flop (12): K 4 8
x, x, I check.

Turn (12). 4
Bet 6, Call, I call. (Debated raising)

River (30): 9
Bet 9.9, Call, I raise pot.

I can have more than quads though, but what bluffs? Probably almost none?

So when you raise here with a T in your hand you always have quads? We can at least acknowledge that this is not optimal from a GTO perspective.

You never raised in the hand you created. You got raised by villain and you hold the T and no, with your hand, KT, on a KTTx board after getting check raised I am not going to be reraising ever. I am going to crying call his river bet though.

I think I'm not understanding you so I'll bow out of the conversation.

So in this situation: "quads is the only value raise" because we determine villain will fold worse than top-boat 100% of the time we pot river.

And we determine villain will fold even top boat some %, which is why we consider bluffing with the quads blocker

And we have made these determinations based on the betting action (in particular, the turn check-raise) combined with our reads on villain.

Do I understand your example correctly?

What are we trying to figure out in this discussion?

a) How often should we be bluffing with quads blockers?
b) How often should we bluff-catch with nutted full houses against someone repping quads?

Hellifiknow

Yes you got it. In any case it cannot be hard to imagine potentially other scenarios where the only +EV value raise is quads. And therefore it must be correct to have some quad-repping bluffs in some of those situations.

I think a more common scenario is something like

UTG raises, you defend bb with 5xxx.
Flop: 555, check, bet, call
Turn: 555 3, check, bet, call
River: 555 3 9, check, bet, Hero raises the obv quads. But what are the bluffs to pick from?
Stuff like QQ87 when Hero might realize he´s not beating the value range anymore (as well as on the turn, but whatever), and understands he probably has more quads in range than UTG open?

I think its a somewhat common and severely underbluffed spot with trips on the board. I´d guess almost all opponents struggle to find a high enough bluffing frequency ( I certainly do). And if you try to find bluffs, if you pick all your non-quads bluff-catching range you arrive with otr you are severely overdoing it. Figuering out on the fly which side cards are ideal for either play (eg using FH blocking AA as bluffcatcher, using FH w/out A-blocker as bluffs, which FH to use as a c/f, and comparing that to the general perceived quads-advantage) is impossible to do for me.

Its a spot that I mess up pretty severely I think, and worth discussing, its not that rare.

Hey Sean! You used to coach me in NL waaay back in like 2007. Hope all is well!

I think in your scenario, holding KTxx is the bluff combo we want as it blocks KK and TT from our opponent. It allows us to fold out opponent’s KTxx and potentially KK. Without doing the math, my gut says shoving with something like 1/4th of our KT hands as a bluff will balance out our TT.

sauhund’s example is very different which is why the original question is difficult to answer. In his example, I would tend to bluff hands that may no longer have SD value (like QQ) but would prefer to have an A blocker or a 6 blocker to block opponent’s AA and 56xx combos.

Hello again, yes all is good.

I reach a similar conclusion that KTxx is the hand you want to turn into a bluff occasionally against tough competition, but I worry that it may be too good to bluff with.

Exactly. KTxx is beat by exactly 1 combo, and chops with exactly 2. ... but all of those combos also know THEY each lose-to-1, so getting them to fold such nutted hands seems hard.

AQJT makes a lot more sense as a bluff hand ss played imo;

a) ATxx thinks it is behind on the turn but has a chance to improve over KTxx
b) 4 broadway cards means villain is less likely to have a rundown hand with a T.