The runout was QQJTK.

Agree that villain was bad, but this hand takes place within 3 orbits of play and up to this point he hadn't yet shown down a hand so I couldn't possibly have that read yet. All hero knows at this point is that V1 has a mountain of chips indicating he was likely both aggressive and lucky on day 1, and that he's played more hands than avg and made some big postflop bets.

Do you disagree that his line makes no sense for a value hand?

Thinking about this hand a bit more i would go with buzz and mixgameaddict. V1 doesn't really have any reason to expect to get decent value from smaller fullhouses with his line and can't really waste his bigger fullhouses large majority of the time.

For the value lines V1 would have to expect V2 to bet broadways or bluff quite frequently while hitting silly parlays where hero calls with a worse hand and then either V2 or hero call the raise with a worse hand.

If V1 would somehow balance his play for the river c/r in the second to last position then that would indeed be fairly bad unless V2 would be some one that sees red every time it's checked to him 3 times in a row. On the other hand if he was against opponents that would rarely fold a broadway for a single stab but would indeed fold to a raise then he would likely get away with bluffing more than the required 55% of the time. It's a highly exploitable play and setting money on fire when his read is incorrect regarding the hero (as was the case) but such is the nature of some of the the better exploitative plays.

The original HH was a KQQTJ runout and 2 pages of posts are about that. Doesn't change all that much besides giving more weight to KKxx to V2 from V1's perspective and a few other things like giving even less weight to smaller fullhouses for anyone.

Oh wow, this is embarrassing. The runout was indeed KQQTJ (I took notes) but for some reason flipped the K and J in my mind when thinking about the hand ex post.

But yeah, I don't think it actually matters in the sense that V1 pretty much doesn't have a credible value range w his hand.

I should clarify that I do not agree w amok that V1's bluff line is a bad play. I think it shows a very, very good profit vs most opponents. The fact that almost all responses here were to fold is a strong indication of how often it gets through.

Mainly, he just played way way too many (bad) hands, like the Q953 he tabled in this hand.

AWow do I feel silly. Nice call

Not sure what to call the villains line. Probably stupid. On one hand his raise almost certainly forces v1 to fold even his crappy boats. On the other hand hjs line is so ub credible he'd have to have read you and v1 as unthinking and brute force bluffable

Earlier i was thinking that V1 also has fairly little weight with bluffs getting to the river with this line. In that he already missed 3 opportunities to take a stab at the pot when that would be his only chance to win, but when the value range is almost non existent it doesn't really matter.

There are obviously players that lose excessive amounts of value by slowplaying in an FPSesque manner, but that's fairly rare with LAG's since they need a lot of their value hands to cover their bluffs on earlier streets.

Hands that are essentially bluff catchers that lose to slightly stronger bluff catchers make the most sense for V1 (weak Qs, J9 and maybe few other hands).

I mean if he has Q953 then your hh description is wrong, because he is clearly not passive pre, and that changes everything. He credibly reps QT and QJ here enough that i still think your call long term is pretty bad (given the information you provided in the HH). Given that hes clearly not passive preflop then yea, i guess it cant be horrible to look him up here from time to time.

Perhaps we have a different definition of passive? By that, I meant I had seen him flat quite a few opens w/o ever 3b'ing in the hands leading up to this one ...

I probably should have made more clear in the original HH the relatively few hands my reads were based on and how therefore they had to be rough at the time. The reads/profiles mentioned in the OP were confirmed through further play, but unfortunately this table was broken relatively quickly and the next one was a meaningfully tougher.

This is the key. In the hands prior to this, V1 was doing the postflop betting more often than not, and usually w large sizings. For that to make sense, he was either very fortunate and smashing those boards (possible but unlikely), or he was correctly using his chips as a weapons creating FE by betting thinly and semibluffing often post (my read). If the latter is true, would he ever, ever check the river w a nutted hand?

Also, I specifically mentioned V1 was a middle aged CHINESE rec player since that was a big part of my profile of him.

While the hand reading and analysis are not unimportant, this HH is fundamentally about trusting live reads to make exploitative decisions to profit.

There are a few key issues in deciding whether to call the raise on the river or not:

1. What is villain's value-range for checking the river with one player to act?

Based on OP description we know villain is skilled, a tricky postflop player, and has enough chips that he can afford to risk a big bluff being called. Even though he is decribed as 'passive' preflop, that really doesn't tell us very much when the rest of the table is weak tight - this is more likely an exploitative adjustment than a sign he is making fundamental mistakes.

2. How good are villain's reads on V2?
3. How good is villain's reads on Hero?


If villain does check the turn with either Ax broadway, or any boat, it suggests a few possibilities.

a. He is taking a conservative line with a weak boat (for example, maybe with pocket tens)

b. He has strong reads on V2. Whether it his value-range, intention to bluff, or a read on his specific hand, this is by far the most likely reason he would deviate from more standard value lines. V2 is described as a tight ABC player. Now, I actually don't think a tight ABC player is particularly likely to bet-fold Ax broadway hands or bluff on this texture.. there is really not a lot of value to be found. The postmortem actual suggests V2 has below average ability for this stage of the tournament, and this is tremendously important information.

All the information we have suggests that V1 is an above-average or superior postflop hand reader. For this reason we should be extremely cautious about ruling out a real value range from the betting.

c. If he has broadway, and is confident no one else in the hand has better, he has decided the best chance to win the most money is to check-raise.



4. How often does villain need to be bluffing for us to call profitably?

We are calling 24 to win 73.5, but against the villain, described, we will in fact be chopping or losing far more often than we are winning. Let's give the villain a frequency of
50% broadway (our call makes us 12.75K)
40% Boat (our call costs us 24K)
10% Nothing, but a K or Q blocker to boats (our call wins us 49.5)

On average, calling should net us 1.725K in +Cev. But wait... our calculation isn't complete. If we lose, we also go from an M of 28.6 -> 15. We also might go on mega-tilt. Given the additional negative externalities being wrong can create, this is a pretty marginal call even with these assumptions. (Boosting our M higher can also generate additional Cev if we play better deeper but i'm not going to go into the topic more)

I would not actually expect the villain to ever show up with air. My assumptions would more realistically be something like

65% Straight
35% Boat

In which case.. our calling now has a slightly negative expectancy of ~-.1 K, and the various other externalities of being right or wrong, reflected primarily in M and tilt.


Obviously, an accurate perception of the villain means everything in this spot. Based on the original description I still feel a disciplined laydown is the stand-out play.

Monikrazy, the key assumptions in your post are the frequency distribution of villain's hands and your numbers seem completely arbitrary.

Also, hero does not tilt.

It's just something that's lost in translation. Passive as in not aggressive. There are 3 broad categories for loose aggressive players, some play many hands in an aggressive manner on all streets, some play similarly on the earlier streets but much more selectively on later streets and some play like our opponent in the hand in that they play many hands preflop in a non aggressive manner but are aggressive post flop (and not too selective).

Before we had PT stats to describe opponents we used descriptive words in four different axis.

Tight-Loose
Passive-Aggressive
Straightforward-Tricky
Tenacious-Non Tenacious

Given we block 2 aces I'd probably weigh the distribution as something like this, as on combinatorics alone they are much less likely to have it

55% boat
35% air
10% broadway

Is it possible there's also a lot of confusion on positioning of the players ?

The action on the river was, Hero checks, V1 checks, V2 bets, Hero calls, V1 raises and V2 folds. That leaves very few possible boats to V1's range unless he has a very specific read on V2.

If V1 was last to act and Hero was in the middle then it's plausible for him to have any of the smaller boats.

Not arbitrary at all, and should give posters a good framework to approach this problem even when they differ on certain assumptions . Run some sim to see how often a villain will have a boat using what we know about our hand, V2 folding and opponents range. Your descriptions of other players in this hand, frankly, left a lot to the imagination. In the absence of deeper reads, we do best to assume capable opponents.

I'm not criticizing you for calling. It could easily have been the better play based on everything you observed. At the same time, I don't really understand why you are arguing with several solid MTT regs who concluded that folding was better. it seems like you actually have a lot less respect for V1 than your earlier posts imply, and maybe based on plays subsequent to the hand in question.

Absolutely no confusion on positions. I'm not always the best at counting down stacks from a distance due to my eyesight and remembering exact #s since from days/wks ago, and maybe will be vague on suits & non-key cards, but I am EXTREMELY positionally aware in plo8 and will never mix up or forget relative positions (should be accurate on absolute positions too 99% of time).

Agree w the relatively in unlikeliness of V1 having broadway. I think a boat is much much less likely than you guys do, clearly.

Monikrazy, didn't mean to sound disrespectful. What I mean is why don't we assume 5% broadway, 5% boat, and 90% air (which I honestly think is closer to the real case)? Nothing in your post suggests how you got to your numbers. Sims are great and all of looking at equities vs certain pf ranges and all, but not as useful as 3 streets of action on a hand + witnessed behavior in past hands.

Live reads will by their nature lead to less mathematically pure analysis, but the quality and importance of the result is higher imo.

If you think someone is raising 90% air in this spot, you think they are a straight-up MANIAC. Personally, I think raising with air more than 10-15% of the time in this spot all ready qualifies you as a probable maniac, though there is a little room for leeway based on table feel. Or to ditch the maniac categorization for a moment, I certainly don't expect most winning players to show up with worse than a straight more than 15% of the time.. in fact, I expect a lot of winning players to almost never raise without worse than a straight in this spot.

If that's your read, by all means call happily, but that's not the same scenario as asking what to do against a good LAG seeing a lot of flops in this spot.

Oh not from you but from people that think it's plausible for an aggressive player to risk the hand getting checked around when holding a boat and then spring to life after it's bet by the last player to act.

If they assumed the position in a manner where V1 was last to act he never risks getting no value from his hand and makes more sense for him to have qj/jj and to a lesser degree qt/tt.

Also. I think the fact that the villain checked trips 2 streets and row before turning his hand into a bluff, suggests that he should be capable of checking the nuts 3 streets in a row.

Nah. Villains play is perfectly logical for a LAG. Before V2 bets he most likely correctly assumes that he can't make any better hands fold with a single bet but still beats quite a few hands that he can't get any value from with a K-high straight. After the bet and a call he correctly comes to the conclusion that his hand no longer has any value. He made the correct read regarding V2 (optimistic value bet or ill-advised bluff neither standing any heat) but he was wrong assuming that the Hero would fold a broadway (he likely made the correct read regarding the hand just not the behavior). Oh and none of this applies to checking the nuts. Villain doesn't have to assume that V2 bets the river often for Q9 to make sense but he has to with QQ.

If it helps villain did have a straight :P