Pretty good live 20 game. Villain in this hand is not the reason the game is good; I have played with him lots and he seems fairly competent. A bit passive, but almost certainly a winner. I gauge his range here to be reasonable (88+, AJ+, ATs+, KQ...and maybe some other suited broadways but I'm not sure about that).

The hand is played under weird blind conditions. The "should be" button busted out, and therefore the button skipped a spot. In this situation the button posts a small blind (2 chips) on the button, and there are two big blinds to the left of the button. I am BB1, and BB2 is to my left.

The hand goes off either 7 or 8 handed; I'm not sure.

UTG raises. It folds to me and I behold the mighty KingJack-Off. I peer to my left and Chuck Thompson is telegraphing a fold (my stars!). I defend.

Question 1: Combining the telegraph and the fact that I have a whole small bet, not just half, in the pot already, this is an easy call right?

5 small bets in the pot, heads up:

T93r

I check and call.

3.5 big bets in the pot, heads up:

T93-5 a flush draw now

I check, not sure if I'll call a bet, and he checks it right back after a bit of thought. If he has a pair, it's not bigger than 8s, and I doubt he has even that.

3.5 big bets in the pot, heads up:

T93-5-J

Question 2: What do I do now?

Call is fine pf Jesse. I would always bet this river and I think you can fold if he raises. The thing is he is gonna have a tough call with anything that didnt hit the river, but people will surprise you and throw a call in at the most inopportune times.

im cool with bet/folding against the player described

If I am going to defend this, which I am not, I am going to play my hand liek he doesnt have AA-QQ. To me, this means c/r the flop and bet the turn. Especially against a passive. If you don't, you are just playing hit to win.

I just bet the river-- although I think it would be an easier bet if he had bet the turn.

Yeah -- with the odds you are getting, seems like a call PF.

I'd check-raise that flop and keep betting until I heard differently.

The check call is less spewy and probably the safer move.

Anyhow, to the river:

If you bet, you are only getting called by better hands given your read - You might even get raised, which would suck and seems like you'd have to fold.

I'd check/call, either inducing a bluff or losing to a better jack/straight (maybe even beating suited QJ...however doubtful)

Agree with MitchL as usual.

So you guys think bet/fold is better than check/call here? I didn't mean to paint him as passive. He's actually more aggressive than most of my opponents. He's just not optimally aggressive is what I meant.

i'd fold this pf, but as played, b/f seems standard on river

I'm calling preflop like against 99% of opponents. There are maybe two people I can think of that I would lay this down against.

Flop I sometimes c/r.

River should be straightforward bet-fold.

If he's tight then pretty much every single hand in his range has some varying degree of showdown value. When that's the case, you should prefer to bet for value and hope he pays off with the worst of those hands. If you check to induce, you are hoping he turns his hand with showdown value into a bluff, which he simply won't do very often.

Middle limit's is where people start becoming good players.

It's also where people start experimenting.

It's also where some people don't give a fluk.

It's also where people really start acting on their different level thinking.

-- Bet/fold on the river is a line that is easily exploitable for both experiments and people that exploit established images. Once you start getting up here, its not the best practice to feel comfortable with this line.

It's limit and one bet, nahmean.

what makes you think he is going to bluff when checked to at all? let alone more often than he bluff raises?

actually you know what, i'm not even sure we can bet for value here unless we think he is either:

-paying off with almost 100% of his worse hands, so he is calling AQ/AK/88/77 always, and never bluff raising we should show a profit since we lose to AJ/KQ, and he never checks behind a strong hand on the turn... i dont think people pay off enough... he should be able to fold AK/AQ pretty easily imo, but of course he will call sometimes... and we will in fact get bluff raised sometimes...

or

-he has more worse hands in his range like QJo or 66-55

alternatively, if we check, we will be getting 4.5:1... I seriously doubt he will bluff nearly 20% of the time like we need...


so c/f is looking pretty good imo

Yeah Trypt you beat me to it. If villain plays like many decent live pros, he will fold Ax here a ton and check/fold is the clear play if that's true. I would CR this flop 100% though.

-DeathDonkey

I felt pgcounty was spot on. If he's a decent player he'll exploit the bet/fold. I like checking to induce him to bet and then call. Not to say that bet/folding isn't a fine line at times but you need to mixup it up enough in similar situations so that in the future it won't be exploited by a good player like him.

I really doubt villain is bluffing raising the river very often at all here. If he thinks Jesse is fos then most of his range has showdown value and will just call for 1 bet. There's no reason for a small pair or A high to raise.

If he is good I agree betting has not much value, but I don't really like c/f. If he is decent enough to realize AK/AQ can't showdown when bet into, he should realize they have no showdown value when we check to him, he probably doesn't know how strong we are, so what's so bad about turning them into a bluff to get weak pairs to fold?

Actually I just rechecked the description and maybe c/f is safe, although I never am able to pull it off.

You're essentially a BB right?

Go ahead and never fold this PF. Especially with the other BB about to fold.

I've heard about that BB thing and it still confuses the f00000k out of me

FWIW, I agree with what appears to be the majority here. Call PF, probably c/r the flop, and as played, bet/fold the river.

the general consensus tends to be to b/f this river

can anyone enlighten me to why we wouldnt b/c?

we lose to two hands KQ and AJ and beat everything else the way the hand played out

How should we interpret the villain check on the turn? What percent of time is he going to check w/ QQ to try to induce a bluff on the river?

yeah, but "everything else" has a very tough time calling.... "everything else" also has some showdown value, so it probably doesn't bluff us ... furthermore, "everything else" is very heavily weighted towards AK/AQ ...

i'm convinced that c/f is the play as the hand went down...

however, I have reconsidered the flop play and think c/r is not a bad play at all. normally when I have a king hi draw, I figure my hand works better as a bluff catcher, but imo this kind of opponent will not always look us up with no pair, so we actually do have enough fold equity to make it worthwhile imo.

Yeah Trypt you are biased by too much high stakes online play. This is a live 20/40 game, they aren't auto calling down ace high because they found a straight draw they can beat

-DeathDonkey

So if the river bet has no value because he won't call with a worse hand, would you bluff bet this river every time if it blanked off?

he will def call with worse hands, but it will be less than 50% of the time imo, so there just isn't enough value to bet...

as a bluff, it would be close as well. I think my range in my earlier post is going to be somewhat close... so we lose to KQ/AJ and we're trying to fold out AK/AQ/88/77... let's just make a wild ass guess that he calls with his bluff catcher hands 50% of the time... 36 out of 60 combos are bluff catchers, so he is folding 18/60=30% of the time still... we're getting 3.5:1 on a bluff needing to be successful 22% of the time to breakeven on a bluff... seems close but I'd probably lean towards not bluffing because I think 88/77 call more than 50% of the time, AK prob calls more often than not also, and AQ will probably fold mostly... so overall he prob calls with his bluff catchers enough that its a breakeven or maybe losing play..