9 handed:

I open 87ss from HJ. Button 3bets the button. Blinds fold, I call.

4 9 J rainbow

I c/c.

Turn is a 6 bringing a flush draw (not mine) and gives us an open ender. Turn goes check check.

River is an 8 no completing the flush.

Bet/Call, Bet/Fold, Check/Call?

Button is an expert who plays position well, gets thin value middle pair / pocket pairs with overcards on the board, and rarely falls into fancy play syndrome.

I can’t imagine he checks back the turn with a pair and I can’t imagine he bluffs the river with ace high. I’d bet/call

bet fold

it's clearly a bet but whether to fold to a raise is kind of a strange issue. on the one hand it's a really unusual way for someone to bluff but I think folding 87 is probably not optimal and against an alleged expert player might be deviating a bit too much.

you probably raise most jacks and QT on the flop which severely limits the number of strong hands you can have on the river and makes it somewhat questionable as to how high up 87 is in your range (depends on how wide you bet for value). he'd be betting 2 to win 5 meaning optimal is to continue with slightly more than 70% of your range.

you also happen to block his value raise range by having an 8, which is... 88 specifically? there just aren't many legitimate value raises for a normal 3bet range. 98 and QT are very unlikely to check back the turn. i'd almost rather fold a hand like A9 than 87 for that reason.

No spade on the flop?

x/r flop and barrel.

As played, easy river bet for value. Or you can x/c and make it tough for BTN to value bet thinly.

Is this in the Bellagio 80 recently?

Does my flop action change if there's one to my suit? Bay 80/160

I have a hard time constructing a hand villain would bluff raise on the river worse than mine. Confident villain raises TQ(no flush), KQ(flush), Ax + all his non A flushes. Discounting some Ax flushes as villain barrels turn at a moderate clip. I guess total air, KQ non flush are possible.

This spot seems common and important enough where getting it wrong or right adds up.

I would play it this way but once we pair the 8 on the river I would check and call (we're no longer bluffing). As played I would just check and call the river.

Agreed, against an expert x/r before I c/c this board.

Bet river for value and fold to a raise unless you know he loves being tricky on big streets.

Why check/call? Who actually checks back with QT or 9x and better on the turn? You're good here 90%+ of the time.

He'll very often have AT/AQ/AK and a variety of lower pairs like 77, A6, A4, 55, 33, 22, etc. that will be in a tough spot with and will probably (and should probably) call with far more often than he'll have 98/88/A8.

Your sparse selection of bluff candidates makes it seem weird to value bet that light but you probably have KT/KQ in some fractional representation, and A7s/ATs are slam dunk bluffs - which is roughly enough to balance a value range that includes 8x.

Do you also value bet 77? Maybe. A6s? probably not. 55/A4/33/22? Definitely not imo.

The lower you go the more it overlaps with his likely call range and so at some point you start chucking them into check/calls and the worst ones into check/folds. But 8x is I think clearly high enough that it's better as a bet.

I think you make some good points here Abba. Do we also have some 9's and better 8's in our range here? I would question whether or not button is 3 betting with hands like A4s, 33, 22 - might be too light. It's interesting that there is such a large variety of opinions on the right play here. You might be right though, we may have enough hands that can check call in our range that are worse than 87.

B3b


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Beast.

I want to learn to have a bluff b3b range lol

If they dont have A4s and small pairs then they also don't have 98s or K8s, in which case the hands that beat you are mostly limited to A8 and 88.

But they still have AK, AQ, AT, 77, 55, A6s and some other hands like KT/KQ that occasionally check back. Those hands outnumber A8 and 88 by a factor of nearly 10:1 because the 8 on the board and the 8 in your hand severely cut down on their combos of A8 and 88.

Given you're betting 1 into 4 their optimal call frequency is something around 80% of their range. So if they're calling down optimally your bet with 8x should expect to get called by worse easily twice as often and probably closer to 3x as often as you get action from better. It's not really that close with an 8 in your hand. The jump from 8x to 77 is substantial due to card removal effects.

On the rail is obviously a player to bet/call these kinds of rivers against.

You mean raise call? That’s fine. I wouldn’t turn this hand into a bluff at a high frequency but it’s a play I do and you should have in your arsenal and this seems like a good hand to use (good blockers and top of your folding range).


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