Hey guys,

Here's a four-handed $1/$2 hand where we end up betting the turn for thin value, based on a wide flop continuation betting range and a potentially wide turn betting range.

My video commentary on the hand

On the river, my friend who played the hand decided to over bet a bit more the the pot, which I do not like with a hand like pocket tens here. It seems to me that he does a great job of only representing straights or better. Maybe he'll be called by pocket eights though!

What do you guys think about the turn bet and about the river bet, along with the sizing?

$1/$2 No Limit Holdem
Prima
4 Players
Hand Conversion Powered by weaktight.com

Stacks:
Hero (CO) ($397.45) 199bb
BTN ($286.35) 143bb
SB ($480.50) 240bb
BB ($200) 100bb

Pre-Flop: ($3, 4 players) Hero is CO 10 10
Hero raises to $6, BTN calls $6, 2 folds

Flop: 2 A 9 ($15, 2 players)
Hero bets $9, BTN calls $9

Turn: 5 ($33, 2 players)
Hero bets $26, BTN calls $26

River: 3 ($85, 2 players)
Hero bets $100


Reid

First glance, turn sizing doesn't look like something people pick with Ax or better.

Dislike river overbet, which I think completely polarizes us to flushes, and not sure why we'd want to bet so big with that.

I seen anksy overbet a very similar board BvB and he said its fine. His goal was to fold out Ax. I think he only made a small overbet but he said he wished he made it 2x pot because he's probably getting looked up BvB.

EDIT: i cant remember anksys hand but his spot was more of an overbet or c/f spot because of BvB dynamics

However i think we probably achieve the same results by betting $70 on the river. I mean i think BTN should be folding AJ to the tripple here assuming heros image is clean.

I think he started bluffing on the turn

Meant to post the reads!

Villain in the hand seems like a regular given his stack size; although, we are at an anonymous table on Prima so it's tough to say much of value about the player.

I think that when we overbet this river, especially this size, it makes river an easier call for villain with all his bluff catchers.

I think $75 would actually get more folds.

isnt tt too thin to bet ott? we block 9t, he cant have worse overpairs, just too few hands to call that we still beat. i'd like it with jj+ (as a value range).
kind of like a c/c here but anyone solid gonna make my life hell otr with any holdings so that's prob not an option.. on the other hand at an anonymous table it's questionable whether villain would be willing to fire 2nd one otr with K-high/Q-high hands.

in your vid you talk about how we have polarized ourselves to flushes or air. combo wise you say we have a lot more air than flushes so bluff catchers should call.

one thing you seem to overlook is that our frequency of betting the river with our air is not the same as our frequency with betting our flushes. correct there are more air hands like QcJ but at the same time, we are not always pulling the trigger on this river so from villains point of view he cannot assume you have all the air combos that you mention we could have. thus it's not that easy for him to call with Ax unless he has a good grasp on your bluffing frequency on the river.

i dont think this bet on the river is necessarily bad if we have a read that villain if the type to misunderstand our bluffing frequency on the river and fold Ax more often than he should and thats probably a safe assumption to make at these stakes.

Why do we bet the turn? Get value from 88/66?! Or to prepare a tripple barrel- river overbet?

C/c turn can def. get a bit iffy otr, as many ppl would perceive our range to be weak sd hands like we do actually have here. But i think a c/c , c/c line vs ppl who don't vbet thin and have low f2cbet would be better.

wrt our turn bet being bad, I really think that a lot of time when people bet turns for 'thin' value its really just to avoid the ****ty c/c, c/soulread spots. In this spot it seems crazy to think that we will be called by worse >50% of the time. But if we check, we are pretty screwed as well. So betting turn may be the higher ev play even though when we get called it will be by better most of the time.

Think the turn card is a very mehhh one to bluff.

What portion of his flop calling range are we really trying to get to fold? And extending to the river, what portion of his turn calling range are we then attempting to fold?

I just think the subset of hands in villain's overall turn calling range in which we're attempting to fold is way too strong. We might be able to fold out some Ax combos, but he's pretty much calling or raising with everything else, or we have him beat.

I believe I mentioned in passing the whole frequency of bluffing versus value bets deal about how we aren't necessarily over betting a balanced range. We could just look at the argument the other way around as well, maybe our opponent thinks we only bluff with this size and value bet something close to 3/4 pot, which is probably the most +EV default against a lot of players, albeit unbalanced.

If villain is folding Ax often at all, then this is a fantastic play.

thats what makes poker beautiful. we cannot be sure villain is folding Ax and can only assume. if we assume well enough, this hand could very well be well played. if we cant and think that villain is calling Ax more often than not then this hand is terrible.

it all comes down to the OP's assumptions and that's not really something we can comment on.

TT goot hand to check fold cause he checks back 9x alot and bets better hands more often than he bluffs

I think DB is fine but I would check/back river.

Here is how I usually play JJ/TT with OC on board. I just played this like right now.

Poker Stars, $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold'em Cash, 6 Players

BTN: $149.68 (149.7 bb)
SB: $140.22 (140.2 bb)
BB: $100 (100 bb)
Hero (UTG): $127.28 (127.3 bb)
MP: $104.85 (104.9 bb)
CO: $108.17 (108.2 bb)

Preflop: Hero is UTG with J J
Hero raises to $3, 3 folds, SB calls $2.50, BB folds

Flop: ($7) 5 9 2 (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $5.01, SB calls $5.01

Turn: ($17.02) K (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $12.18, SB calls $12.18

River: ($41.38) 7 (2 players)
SB checks, Hero checks



K on turn brings FD so it's a really good card to barrel because my hand looks bluffy but I check/back river thinking he is not calling with worse often.

I prefer to overbet in spots where villain pretty much always has a bluff catcher (in this case he can easily have a flush and just call down although it's not like he has a ton of clubs in his range).

However, once we get to the river, given our limited reads, I would just overbet like 2x. I think betting the turn and not betting the river is bad.

I don't really agree that it's easier to call a 2x pot bet. It's not like we took a very FOS line in his eyes or that he knows that we know that his range is very face up. In that case I would agree, but the line we took looks pretty damn strong when we overbet river since he can easily have a flush in this spot and we can rep a lot of them as well.

Hm after watching the video I realized I wasn't thinking about how villain will think our bluffing frequency will increase on that specific river since it makes the board more scary. River could be a c/f I guess even though my plan would have been to always bet a non-club river if betting turn.

We can certainly comment on how justified his assumptions are given the information present to him at that time. I agree that discussing opinions doesn't help much and that with spots like this one, against a fairly unknown player, opinions seem similar to accounts of experiences. The reason people listen when a good player comes in and posts the typical "easy fold" type of post is because they weight that player's interpretation of the spot, or that player's account of his experiences, to be more important than their own account.

With no information other than the player seems to be a regular MSNL player and therefore likely a decent hand reader, we shouldn't have enough folding equity to justify a bet of $100.

Against the average (or unknown) MSNL player, betting a larger would dramatically increase our folding equity.

What ratio of non-flush to flush combinations do you think villain has on this river?

mm then in that case betting this sizing is bad but personally my assumption here for this type of player would be that betting this sizing is good as he is folding Ax here enough but thats just from my experience playing 1/2.

problem i see with this is we just don't have many flush combos. the other problem i see is, if we wanna have two different ranges on this runout where we size differently we don't really have many good bluffs that fall into a standard sizing range otr

just to clarify, when overbetting this size villain needs to call 100 to win 185, i.e he needs 35%. so we need to be bluffing slightly over a third of the time for him to be indifferently calling. if we're overbetting TcTx which is 3 combos, we just have to be overbet bluffing too much, if you consider JcJx, QcQx, KcKx, KcQx, KxQc, KcJx, QcJx as all potential hands we might also choose to bluff in this spot. reason for this is we can have like what, somewhere from 9-15 flush combos, no idea how loose youd generally be opening here. ofc you could change this slighty by overbetting other nutted not flush hands like 33/44 but i still think you'd be struggling because you'd have to hand pick combos of the above you'd want to barrel both turn and river with and my instinct is you want to be able to barrel them all

equally it means our standard river sizing range not only contains a bunch of hands that struggle to bet/call all in, but also likely makes it way too value heavy comparitively. i mean what bluffs do we use, QJo/QTo/JTo? 67hh/78hh/68hh? seems like these are all pretty average barrelling hands

i just think its better to have one wider range using one standard sizing on this river until you have exploitative reasons to do otherwise. i do realise that alot of this post focuses on our range more than villains which damages its usefulness slightly because it does assume some things of villain that probably aren't true at 1/2

vs alot of straightforward regs at 100nl overbetting the river 1.5x pot should be profitable.

Theres ~22 combos of AT-AQ and ~13 of 2pair, sets & flushes combined. I think the average 100nl reg is snap folding all 1pair hands and some will fold 2pair and sets with some sort of frequency aswell.

In my experience i have not been called lightly in similar spots when overbetting.

I think that was more true a year ago. Even SSNL is starting to catch up with overbetting tendencies, and I see it more often now than I used to. I know I've been snapped off light plenty of times by decent players in spots like these, but then again my image is far from clean where I play so there's always more danger for me when I do stuff like this personally.

If you're in fact Hero here and vs a guy you know has a fold button and whom you've rarely (or never) has been out of line against over a decent sample of hands, then sure go ahead and fire away. But chances are, that if the above is true, you're probably not the kind of guy who does these plays at all.

If you start overbetting K9 and stuff here it obviously gets a lot tricker for villain to bluffcatch, but in my experience people either have nuts or air so if villain feels like catching it shouldn't matter that much if we overbet or fire 66%. His rivercall kind of has the same EV either way so it just comes down to whether he wants to follow through or not, which is why this feels a bit like spew to me.

One thing to note though is that the ace on the flop is a club, so villain cannot both have TP and block the nutflush (which is a good thing for us as played), and given positions he should rarely have AxKc (which again, is good for us).

What I mean by that last part is that if villain has a bunch of combos in his range that blocks the nutflush, he has more reason to bluffcatch light because our overbet should make less sense to him (and it also lessens the chance that he goes for the sick nutblocker bluff himself. )