60-120 at Commerce, 5 handed late night game. Villain (UTG) is a good Asian TAG, I think he is a pro, might be a poster here, but I don't know who. We don't have a lot of history except a few 40 sessions we played before. I never saw him capping HU OOP before and don't know what his range looks like in this spot. Also, FWIW, I think he hates me.

He opens, I 3! red sevens next in, blinds fold, he 4 bets and I call
Flop 8J3hhs and I call his c-bet
Turn is another low heart (below 7) he bets quickly and I call quickly, as well
River is the fourth heart, low card again (no straights possible), he now checks.

First question about the turn - in absence of a good read on his preflop 4bet range, was my call correct?
Second question about the river - what is optimal here? I think he is good enough to bluff kr me here as well as to properly balance this kr with his value range.
I really need to play with stove here to see how much the turn heart improves my hand vs various possible cap ranges that villain may have...

Played fine thus far now value bet because he calls with far far worse.

Given the read you provide, river should be bet/call

i agree with betting for value (and calling, if he can bluff c/raise) as a default. from a balance point of view i wonder if checking is ok here, because

- we probably can't vbet all heart combos in our range unless we turn a lot of other hands into bluffs, and 7h is one of the worst hands that we can 3bet pre.

- this opponent who is good may c/c stuff like 9h9/ThT and also c/f with Ahi or worse without a heart, and possibly c/f some non-heart made hands because so much of our range that can call the turn contains a heart.

Only heart hands you worry about are the ones that just beat you, and only certain players check in that spot. The fact he bluff cr's gives you extra value, balances the times he cr's the Ah (assuming no one really cr's k and q here, which is fairly safe imo) and he'll pay off with almost all good non-flush hands.

1. This has to be correct...good player (scottish begby voice: or da so called good playah) that is c-betting when he has the lead vs. your probably wide pf 3-bet, call pf, call flop. . . he's betting, you have a pair and a heart.

2: re: studying oop hand ranges. "I really need to play with stove here to see how much the turn heart improves my hand vs various possible cap ranges that villain may have..." how would this change your approach to how the hand played out?

Good insights here. I think a good villain should check 100% of their range on this river unless they expected a bet to induce a lot of spew. Is the Jh on board? That's probably important. Can we river a set? Probably important too.

Just handwaving, I would bet OP's hand, our worst flush, and bluff my no heart 99, TT. I would fold our hand as we'll have plenty of better to bluffcatch but I don't know where the line is between bet-fold and bet-call.

I dont think i would bluff anything that i could showdown.

I dont think i would bluff anything that i could showdown.

Folding turn seems pretty bad. If you can't continue on this turn, you should just fold the flop, imo. Your basically saying his range is JJ+ w no AK.

We don't need to have very many bluffs at all before it becomes correct for villain to bluff catch widely. Pot is relatively big at this point.

That's because there's no cap HU at Commerce.

FWIW I would check this river behind because he can't be expecting you to bluff given the action so far, so he would be good enough to fold non-flushes a lot of the time. That means if you're getting called, it's by a hand that beats you. Then there's the problem of getting checkraised.

My apologies for the lack of rigor. I meant, didn't see him 4 betting.

agree that we don't need many bluffs compared to value hands because of pot odds. haven't done the combos but bluffing 99/TT no heart and vbetting all heart hands sounds like a reasonable ratio.

slightly generalizing, it appears hard to find hands to turn into river bluffs that call but don't raise the turn (unless we peel with stuff like AK/AQ no heart), which might be one reason not to vbet all heart-containing hands.

im sure as hell calling the turn w AK and definitely bluffing this river when he checks.

betting TT/99 w no heart would be nearly pointless imo

Serious question. If he's check/raising a lot of things and check/folding a bunch of other things, can't we just say there's no right answer here?



I'd check.

you've played the hand perfectly so far. i think the river is actually pretty thin if you're actually up against a winning professional, but betting feels right to me.

The board is J83? Villain should be insta-betting A/K and maybe the Q as well, and he maybe/probably doesn't 4-bet TT/99 preflop. This seems like an easy value-bet to me.

I haven't thought about the specifics yet but there's 7.75BB's in the pot, so we need to be vbetting pretty wide when checked to here.

IDK I think big red pairs are something to worry about because he could just be like "what's he calling w/ on the turn, he's gonna bet if I check". I agree though in that I c/r rivers out of tempo more than most but it's hard to pull off in rhythm with like Ahks here when you've been betting with the worse hand & suddenly 'get there' as showdown becomes really embarrassing after the check/check...anyone else feel this way?

Yah, every instinct says bet I'm not sure it's correct vs this player.

Which is exactly the point of the OP. I agree with Jesse this is thin/close, so I don't really care in the end of the day.

In section 4.1 (page 16) of the paper, "UNIFORM(0,1) TWO-PERSON POKER MODELS" Ferguson supplies a graph for optimal play for two players in a two bet maximum game. Of course this graph can also be found in Phillip Newall's book, The Intelligent Poker Player, and I think the regions displayed in this graph are interesting.

For instance, in this specific hand, I assume that if we bet and get check raised we are not going to fold and thus this puts us in the Bet-Call region which is an entire region away from the check behind region and thus this appears to be an easy value betting hand for us.

I think hands that we could / should be bet folding on this river are hands like TPTK or two pair.