Decent 4 handed 40 game last night built around one maniac. I've been blessed with the seat of Jesus for these festivities.

BTN is vil in this hand. Strong LAGTAG pro whose game I've tons of respect for. Has seen me get out of line quite a bit tonight, so it's pretty logical that I'd be playing MP+ like a big hand because, well, it is.

I've been running well, and opening pots pretty light. Vil is aware of this, as I'm trying to play lots of pots IP vs BB in this hand.

Action: I am in CO has T 8

I raise, vil 3!, blinds clear and I call. Vil is aware I don't 4 bet this spot HU without a clear read that someone under-cbets.

Flop: K 8 5

I check raise. Vil calls

Turn 6

I bet, Vil calls

River 4

I check, villain bets...

Me would call. Although you didn't ask, here are my two cents on pre-flop.
Four handed, all things being equal, your hand strength is probably marginally a call. However, your image and the strength of the player on the button strongly would push me to fold.

Call, pretty nice odds

Why did you check the river?

What do I arrive with that's worse than a pair of 8's besides a stone flop bluff?

iluv-> given the bb in the hand, you can't fold T8o. even if the bb was a bit of a stronger player, i'd still raise T8 in the CO w/ strong lagtag on the btn.

jdr-> i thought about posting this as it shows a great deal how i think, and i normally don't post things that either a) i've put a ton of work into, or b) show precisely how i think about a relatively common spot that i will end up repeating relatively often w/ the people that i play with that read here. but then again, that's a very small %, and even if they do read it, it probably wouldn't change how they play against me.

first, that turn + river are almost the two worst cards for you in this spot. i'd say 66/77 were a decent part of his cd range that, on the flop, you'd expect to get value from (along w/ possibly A5). he probably calls down some Ahighs but not nearly enough, and def not w/ that runout, to bet the river for value, so good no bet.

the problem i have is this:

the way you played your hand looks...precisely like what you should have.

and similarly, the way he's played his hand, makes it look precisely like what he "should have" (A8, 99-JJish -maybe QQ). the more agro lines like b/c then raise turn line (or 3bflop) i'd expect him to have been balancing between his kings+ (and the wait til river to raise line not to be used w/ this specific board, so very small % there, if any, depending on how aware he thinks you are - i.e. whether you'd notice that he does his balancing taking all boards into acct or uses boards to balance %s of overall lines). so the TP bucket probably isn't using this type of board to 'wait til the river to raise.' this slightly helps you in your river betting frequency and in his relative distribution of hands vs. what you hold here.

aside from that, and relative to my first point, i'm usually quite suspicious of hands that look like precisely what they "should be" given the play when i have precisely what it looks like i should have (pair< K or draw).

so, my first q is what has btn seen from you on the river? have you k/r'd in this spot before (and i'm not asking if you do it w/ a balanced range, just has he seen you do it whether the hand was shown down or not)? if you don't (or rather you haven't been seen by the villain at all ever doing this - so the actions he's seen from you on the river have been just bets or k/cs), you have to call more often here.

if you have k/r'd in this spot, i'd be more likely to k/f.

i also just reread the op and this:
usually implies you've been doing the betting/raising and not calling out of line. so had this been a nondiamond river, you should be generally valuebetting some more to take advantage of the (few) times he'll curiosity call down w/ the flush Ahigh.

ignoring that, have you c/f'd other rivers?

i.e. what is he doing w/ nonflush AQ/J/T in this spot? is he tossing them on the turn? which brings up another problem i have is that in his mind, you may have an over played/out of line mid-high Ahigh. when i see people get too agro with their Ahighs (which might have been done earlier), i know i upgrade the top of that range into more of the value cd or value bet group rather than release on the flop or turn.

this means you should be c/c'ing here more frequently than you'd otherwise want (because he may be value betting against your, ostensibly weaker, Ahigh). given the board though, this is a minor thing. but it is something to consider

further, his expanded pf range, given that you've been in a race to the bottom to play against the bb, means that HE'LL be in more awkward positions (Though in position here and he'd probably ditch the bottom of that new lower range on the flop or turn most often). buuuut, that also means that there are some hands that HE'LL misplay or take too far or get out of line with. i rarely see this discussed, but if you are in that type of dynamic, in some spots, your calling has to increase, and in some spots, you have to call less (not many people i've ever played with do this part properly).

when playing against solid players in that spot, he may make a misread that causes a misplay. it's very much more expensive to over-fold than to over-call in spots like that since the range you give him has to include "and some things i probably haven't considered/thought about".

so in addition to that, the things that tilt this river one way or another are precisely on display in this hand/general spot. so imo, you could have told me that you k/c'd or that you k/f'd (and you can probably even sell me a k/r) and w/ the right dynamic and overall & recent history, i'd say 'nh.'

i could just as easily say "wow, that's a terrible decision" w/ the same action lol.

FINALLY-> is there any chance HE'S folding <K >8 here? b/c those cards that were bad for you are also VERY bad for him (you could have made 2pr, straight, flush very easily given the play of the hand). i'm assuming there's basically no shot he's folding 99/TT+ here so i've ignored the betting aspect. if there is some chance, or if he'd go to the wrong level (he knows i've seen him get out of line so that means he'd expect me to show up w/ the goods more now etc.), then betting becomes mandatory.

so in a vacuum, and assuming you won't ever get him to fold better, easy fold. not in a vacuum-> need more info about your relationship/play history vs. a "strong lagtag pro"

PS - these types of hands are ones that i enjoy most at the table. ofc i'm sure i've messed some hands all up lol. but overall, these are great fun. and nothing wrong w/ taking the "standard" line here, which is what i think you did.

I'm not sure how you play the flop. Probably a pair of fives since you admit you've been getting pretty out of line.

I'd have chk called the flop and gone from there, but as played I don't agree that 66/77 make up enough of his range to chk the river here. If your image is really nutty you should get looked up with worse and he should have put in more action with better.

Normally I'd agree, but not with that specific runout. That should tighten up his river calling range a little bit.

I'd open 10-9o so pf is close but I think it's a fold.
I'd bet the river, but as played it's probably a check fold, even though I almost never do here.

If ur calling the river here you might wanna consider a bet/fold instead you have some fold equity in this spot vs 99, bigger 8, etc. it could also be for value if he's showdown bound with aq.

I'd fold preflop cus I don't want to play this hand out of position for 3 bets 30% of the time.

I'd check call the flop and calldown almost all runouts.

As played, I think it might be an example of a principle from Further Limit Holdem. I'll paraphrase:

If you make a value bet and check fold the next street, your value bet was a mistake.

---

Of course sometimes bad cards fall and this probably isn't true sometimes, like now when you have an overrepresented hand on the river. You're weaker than you appear imo so you can't value bet as thin as you would in a more advantageous postflop position.

Does this make your flop check raise a mistake? You may have exhausted his possible bluffing hands with the flop and turn action and now you're playing the river out of position with a bluffcatcher.

I think you gotta do a value bet combo count and see just how often he can bluff here.

i'm pretty sure i'd play this hand differently on every street.

no way does hero have any fold equity vs better hands.

I can't believe there's disagreement on the river check. If he looks you up w/ A-high on that runout he sucks imo.

Firstly, wow great post. I'm going to try to do my best in responding to it. I do agree that it sucks that my hand is so face up; it's definitely one of the risks I run from check raising this flop (besides opening myself up to a raise bluff, or valuetowning myself). I do think turning T8 into a bluff here is silly, as I can just keep firing random flop airball (which he knows I'm capable of) if I'm so inclined; and I clearly would on this runout.

Secondly, I'll address your key questions

1) I do tend to go for river screwplays in some spots. Villain should know, however, that this isn't likely one of those spots. What hands do I really want to go for a screwplay here with, AA/86 exactly? Even those are debatable. This board run out and flop action really favors me, so it'd be odd to go for a check/raise here with any value hands. So this means he's likely to more correctly assume my range is weak, meaning this hand nudges towards x/c.

2) Villain should know i'm almost never doing something like x/r AQ on this flop texture. If I were to throw up some random garbage for a check raise, it'd be more likely something in the JT/T9 type family. Given that, I don't think he's automucking his strong A-hi OTT, hence why I'm comfortable continuing to bet my 2nd pair.

3) I have x/f rivers in the past, but villain knows I don't like to get to the river to fold an excessive percentage.

4) If I thought there was any chance I could cause him to fold better, I'd probably have just bet the river. I mean, maybe I can get him to lay down A8 on this runout (even this is dicey), but I feel like that's a sufficiently small percentage of his range, so that it'd make 0 sense to try to turn my pair into a bluff. I'm obviously hoping he checks behind something like AQ or A5, but the issue is that villain is smart enough to know AQ is almost never good here (A5 is almost never good here either). So I risk getting myself bluffed out by checking myself.

So in summary, no, I don't think he thinks I'm particularly foldy here, And I do think he has a pretty strong grasp of what I have, and how any of his particular holdings are doing. What really sucks is that I think vil is good enough to vb a hand like QQ in this spot, which makes me want to fold more obv.

Even riv?

I can get behind just x/c the flop. Would you x/r J85tt?

You should know as well as anyone that this is against my religion preflop

jdr-> given your clarifications, k/f all day. if he happened to own you with some weird holding here, make a note of it (though i will say "i told you so" since this tends to happen at some point when you do a race to the bottom of the pfr range raising war lol)

also, i was totally with your post until the very last sentence where you said "he's good enough to bet QQ"... if you're NOT betting QQ after that action (k/r, b, k) given the descriptions you gave, you are simply leaving $ on the table. that's, in part, why this IS a fold (is b/c you can easily be getting value towned by precisely that type of holding. i'd even bet TT here, depending if you'd 4b JJ pf or not some or all of the time). that said, this also would come to how often you've river k/r'd. the more i've seen you do it, the more checks you'll get from me with marginal value betting hands (which is why you'll often see me mention how valuable this can be when deciding river actions).

the response to that is that a K9 type of hand could lead me to valuetown myself with JJ-TT, but i think betting K9 is way the better river decision that k/c'ing with it. and i'd also def bet K9 as the villain here and play it precisely the same way.

disagree. i'd bet a range analysis would show this is fine and the line is closer to 87o than T9o. i'm folding 97o and 87o though so i do agree it's near the bottom. but i'm still raising it.

[/quote]I'd check call the flop and calldown almost all runouts. [/quote]

also disagree. if you're not k/r'ing 2nd pair on this type of board, your k/r range is probably either a) too narrow, or b) too polarized.

i don't think i've outright disagreed w/ newall about anything before but i absolutely disagree w/ that general statement. esp in tough sh holdem games. totally normal to bet the turn, have a bad card fall and then k/decide on the river. or bet the turn against somebody who could easily have Ahigh or a draw and then k the river to induce a bluff, or to allow an overly agro river bettor to valuetown himself. so the statement of "if you valuebet one street and check the next, the valuebet was wrong" to me seems quite inaccurate.

of the hands that he holds that get to the river, very very few are bluffing, if any. one of the reasons that this can be such a clear k/f in a vacuum is that it looks precisely like he has what he should have and he "should" just k/c it. given that, the villain should be valuebetting a ton and bluffing virtually nothing here except the absolute bottom of his range (though that is still very close to the bottom of his value bet range when checked to given this hand and how it played out. so it's still super tiny).

this is another example of where i think gto is wrong. bluffing "optimally" here would have us turning hands we have at the bottom of our range but don't want to value bet into bluffs. the argumetn is that well if hero is folding to these value bets then we should be bluffing more...but with WHAT precisely? villain simply doesn't have enough hands to get to the "right" bluff frequency unless he's calling his good Ahighs on the turn, which we've established earlier probably isn't right.

so "optimally" bluffing this river means you have to add hands that CAN bluff profitably to the river range, which means you're loosening your turn range and owning yourself. i disagree w/ this also.

personally, given a) the initial description jdr gave, and b) the subsequent clarifications he provided, i think this hand was well played. i'm clearly not the end all or be all lol, but i am kinda picky about giving praise as i usually play the devil's advocate (to myself as well).

so nh jdr (assuming you k/f'd and even if you did get owned lol).

Just because I'd chk call this hand doesn't mean I'm chk calling all mp hands. If you chk raise all mp hands, it's just as big of a problem as chk calling all of them.

What's so bad about being polarized?

otr&bob (kinda answers both)-> right, but this specific one is a great hand to k/r since it looks like we can have either a) kings, b) a draw of some kind, or c) some other pair. if we are limited to just a or b, then in general it makes villain's river play easier. adding middle pair to what we can normally be value betting given the flop k/r def helps.

and ofc i don't mean k/r ALL mp hands, but on this type of board, you're better off k/ring all 3 hands (sometimes k/c'ing draw and kings+ and k/r'ing turn. THAT is a spot that being polarized is fine as long as the %s line up). most of your turn k/r's (of the % of time you don't k/r) will be for value, and a few will be semibluffs. i also am not of the opinion that you need to show up with complete air (the draws on this type of board will balance it out)

I generally xr mp+bd draws on two tone flops in wide range spots. So like Td8x here or T8cc

So more weighted towards backdoor big hand potential versus kicker orientation (so while we x/r A8 more than T8, we don't always x/r A8)?

What do you guys think button folds to the flop check raise? I ask because the more he folds, the worse our flop check raise and turn bet become. By making him fold stuff on the flop, we eliminate lots of hands that we're beating to the point that, if he folds enough, we're an underdog going into the turn.