i'm pretty far from expert

The lead into a card that should make my hand scares me. I'd call.

Good thread. I think I agree with up2ng quite a lot. I also agree with jlot that we have other value raising hands here.

I have a feeling when we hear villains hand I will end up thinking he just played it badly. Since he should really not be betting that river card very often at all.

If you're value betting AT+, then I assume you're never checking A3, A4, A6, 22, 55,77? Personally, I think this makes us far too bet heavy and exploitable against an expert. We should also want some value check backs not just to avoid being check/raised off hands with show down value, but precisely so we can threaten a value raise on most river cards

And even if we do value bet all the above hands on the turn, the ace will still nudge us into value raise territory with some of them, which means you should incorporate a corresponding bluff/raise ratio as well -imo. In this case, 77 might fit the bill. If we value raise AQ+ (which I think we should), maybe add in the black 55? It does seem to me that if we value raise down to AT it's going to be hard to come up with enough legit bluff/raises tho.
I could be off by quite a bit. All of this is just imo.

Eh. Just once I'd like to post something that doesn't contain a glaring oversight when spewing off the top of my head. 77 is probably way too high and a call. 55/black 22 might be as well. So maybe some King/queens? I didn't Stove it, but regardless, I think we should have some bluff/raises on an ace river.

I should've read this back and forth between you and OTR before making my idiot post lol.

I get that wanting to bluff more isn't a thing and that our action regions are dependent on how our range fairs against villain's when bet into. But even if where we are in our range when facing a bet on the river is irrelevant, shouldn't value raising still be a thing? Shouldn't we want to strengthen this range (by checking more turns?) so we are a threat to value raise more river cards if opponent bets? Otherwise as OTR said, we're allowing expert to turn too many of what should be his check/call hands into bets, depriving the parts of our range that would rather show down for free, while widening the range of hands he can check/raise us with. I'm obviously new to this and trying to learn.

Up2ng can correct me, but I think the problem is sometimes certain boards just contain asymmetrical ranges where there isn’t much one player can do to overcome it. Simple example is super tight player raises utg and maniac defends big blind. Flop is 222, utg has a much stronger range but it can never contain quads. So there might be certain betting lines where utg never ends up putting in a raise on the river since his range is capped and villain can have him beat. This might be wrong I haven’t had any caffeine yet

Villain had 95sooooted (no flush draw). I was pretty shocked to see that hand and I think he was folding to a raise. I guesss there is some merit to c/r the flop with that hand, but after many hours with villain he tends to wait for the turn with both value hands and semi bluffs. Personally, I would have donked the turn if I was him.

If you like a turn donk with that hand I think you should just CR flop for sure. I mean you are either gonna donk safe cards or check call scary cards, that seems suboptimal. CR flop should be standard

yeah this guy is overdelaying imo, and maybe small % chance he 3bets you on the river

I honestly hate delaying OOP, it checks through soooo often. Which means missing value bets when ahead and never successfully pulling off a bluff when you need to.

I agree with the consensus here. Against a competent player, this line is suspicious and he could be setting up a 3 bet, but we have to raise and call the 3 bet if it happens.

What consensus are you seeing? I see most saying to flat river, and a loud OTR saying we have to raise for balance (?).

Jfc that’s not what I said at all.


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Also not for nothing but villain had exactly the kind of hand I said he might when the consensus was that he’d be quite polarized.


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I'm still on the fence about this specific hand, but I agree with everything you've said conceptually OTR.
Regarding range construction, it's true that our value raising range is a function of villains bet/call range, but, we can take that a step further because villains bet/call range is a function of our ranges. When he bets we have to continue with 75% of the hands checked back turn with. That means villain should be vbetting anything that can beat the top 30-35% of our range. Once he bets he then has to call about 2/3rds of those bets once he gets raised. So a good player shouldn't have a super polarized range here.
I also don't think the A smashes our range as much as it appears. Yeah, villains range has a lot more trash in it than ours, but he has just as many or more Ax combos as we do. He could even have strong aces like AK/AQ still, where we prob wouldn't check behind turn with those hands.

You're saying if we don't vbet down to AT, we wouldn't have enough value combos to balance out bluff combos.

You think AT is near the top of our range. I would say you're being too aggressive on turn with AJ AQ AK A3 A4.

Why are you worried about balancing your bluff combos? That is wrong process. You should be looking at what hands you can raise for value, THEN decide how many bluff combos you should have. Not the other way around.

No. I said if you want to bluff raise then you need to raise this hand. Also it’s a wide range spot, and the hands you mention make up a very small portion of our total range, this hand is undeniably near the top of that range.

I also said that a very good explanation for an expert betting this river at all is that he’s exploiting the notion that we think his range is polarized. Thus, the mergish hand we see here. If his range includes a lot of these hands, as I suspect it does, it makes *both* raising for value and as a bluff a lot more appealing.

Finally, as a matter of order, and you should know this given how often you cite bots and game theory, our ranges when attempting to play optimally have nothing to do with our opponent’s. Paul alludes to this in his excellent post above so read that if you like. Obviously none of us play poker this way (we all care about what our non-perfect opponents actually have), but I do think it’s worth noting.


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How to play optimally doesn't depend on opponent ranges? Wut??????

If villain only has nut combos, we better be playing different than if his range is complete trash.

Gto assumes opponent is playing optimally. In real life opponents don’t play optimally. Optimal play depends on what opponent’s range should be not what it is. Do you really not understand this?


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Both Clayton and OTR hit his hand on the head. I was very surprised to see it. I would definitely check back AK on the turn here

you're taking the concept too far.

Against a player who throws rock 100%, it is definitely not optimal to randomize 33% rock/paper/scissora.

Bots can assign pre flop ranges. Any good player should instead assign their own pf ranges to villain. Any good player should assign ranges where available in a hand. You can also input player inferences and have the bot spit out better lines. That is what I would call optimal.

That's actually exactly what is optimal.

33/33/33 is THE optimal strategy.

40/30/30 is AN exploitative strategy.

100/0/0 is THE maximally exploitative strategy.

Phunkphish you are embarrassing yourself dude. These words don’t mean what you think they mean