$40/$80 ~7 handed game at Commerce.

Possibly relevant history with villain: He opened in LP, SB called and I called. Flop was K83. Checked to villain who bet, SB folded, I blatantly looked back at my hand and then folded. Villain is a taggish regular in the game.

I open AK on the button. Folds to Villain in BB who calls.

Flop: QT4. He check/calls.

Turn: 4. Check/check (I was planning on calling a bet on most rivers fwiw).

River: 3. He bets. I blatantly look back at my hand, and then raise.

Wow this is the fishiest tell ever that you don't have a spade. I would never fold a pair here if I saw you blatantly check your cards on a 4-flush board.

FWIW, I've definitely done this before when I had the A (villain was not in that game). I mean, if I have Axo black, I feel like I would always look back to make sure the Ace is the spade before raising the river.

bet the turn he calls with a lot of worse hands

this bluff is not a profitable one. you never fold a spade imo and most people wouldn't turn a pair into a bluff with this line and even if they did i wouldn't feel super confident they would fold to a raise. i have to conclude that even calling does better than a raise here.


is there any hand here that you would check behind and raise for value on the river normally? 33? thats pretty much all you are repping...

That's the question I guess. Would I check behind the A or would I bet it on the turn? I'm not really sure. I think that some AX hands I would check behind to showdown UI. Maybe that's incorrect, but I think I would do that occasionally. Also, I feel like I had a "tentative player" type image which would work at getting him to fold some smaller spades.

bet/fold? Or bet/call, fold UI?

First time, long time, so go easy on me please.

I actually think that this is a pretty reliable fake tell. I've used it before successfully. The problem is that the villian has to be a good thinking player who is capable of laying down hands and either doesnt know you well or doesnt think highly of you, because as PJ said...

PJ, i think you're absolutely right that it is a fishy tell. But it's because they double check to make sure they have the nuts before they raise. There arent too many below average players who would check their cards then bluff raise.

With all that being said, i'm not sure this is actually the best spot for it because i don't think he folds a spade higher than a 8. And even that is questionable. Would he bet anything other than air here if he didn't have a spade? Or, if he turned a pair into a bluff, you could get him to fold a better hand.

bet the turn so you get value from spade draws. if youre going to make this raise, do it instantly without hesitation on the river.

i'm thinking bet/calldown but that depends on how prone a taggy regular at 40 is to semibluffing. is he recognizing that the 4 is a scare card and potentially raising the turn with a naked spade? my thoughts would be yes, but i haven't played at commerce. what would you say his potential range is when he raises the turn?

I would say something like {A4, K4s, 45s, AsX, KJ, J9, AxJs, Js8x, Ks9x} but he probably wouldn't always do it with the bluffing hands since he has little history with me. I didn't think he could have a Q or T or flush very often at all when he c/c'd the flop.

Edit: I'm something like 48% against this (admittedly optimistic) range so enough to call the turn. On the river I'm 17.65% against the same range (though he might check the 4's that don't have a spade in them) and getting 8:1 so I would have to call there too.

yeah thats a good point about him rarely having a flopped pair given that he c/c the flop.

based on your read that he is capable of semibluffing, i would snapcall the turn and be committed to showing down on brick rivers.

a spade river changes things drastically though. he would need to be semibluffing with a straight draw that had no spade, and this is such an unlikely line imo. i think you can fold that river without thinking twice.

except tons of players from nits to hyperlags check call pairs on wet boards fairly frequently.

i was trying to be nice and understated in my initial post when i said the bluff was merely unprofitable. it really is awful though and it just can't be justified, its does not fold better hands for the most part (a key component to a successful bluff), and the few superior hands that do fold do not justify the two big bet investment.

private joker said he would call with a pair in villain's shoes! private joker. call. river. i rest my case.

as for the turn play, if you bet call you have to fold a spade river. you don't beat anything outside complete air. in fact you should probably fold the turn against most because all you beat are semibluffs that have a lot of equity and people don't semibluff as much as it seems. if you check behind the turn (the better play imo) and he bets the river, there is a strong argument for a call because a lot of people bet any spade for value and any sub 1 pair hand as a bluff and nothing else.

whoah i'm not in the bluff the river camp at all.

my discussion is about whether to call a brick river if hero gets popped on the turn (had he bet it)

regarding whether to bet or check the turn, we're gonna have to agree to disagree

what is your turn betting range and check behind range look like?

i am guessing most people aren't checking behind a spade if they are betting red AK. also, they aren't folding red AK or any spade to a raise (or at least i would hope not when it comes to the latter). nor would i guess they'd check behind a pair for the same reasons they'd bet red AK (any singleton spade will call).

if that is the case then their turn betting range is basically a disaster imo. and their checking behind range is tantamount to a resignation if it even exists...

ill give you the benefit of the doubt though when it comes to how well you balance your ranges but i am curious as to how you actually do it if you are betting red AK here on the turn.

If you're going to check ur hole cards in preparation to bluff, do it on the turn. This is why I always check my hole cards in spots like this on the turn. Also because I forget my cards.

i don't know why my turn betting range is going to be a disaster if i bet red AK here? or complete air for that matter?

i'm going to have lots of made hands as well that i'll be betting. TT+/Qx/Tx/4x/flushes i'll be betting as well so it's not like when i don't have at least a pair. but its important for me to mention that i consider AK to be included in my value range, not my bluff range, on this board and in a blind steal situation.

now certainly if i check you're right that this is going to be a huge sign of weakness. but that's ok because there's just not much i'm going to be checking behind on the turn. sometimes i'll just give up with air if the recent confrontations between me and villain have involved me getting caught barelling off, but otherwise i'm going to be betting at least the turn, and then the river again with my hands that have no SD value. typical live players who aren't 2p2ers are not comfortable showing down ace high and king high in my experience, so we should be running them over for this by bluffing with the bottom end of our range.

anyway im getting off topic a bit but regarding the specific hand in the OP i just think the turn is an incredibly easy value bet. this is a blind steal situation and so the opponent's range is incredibly wide. the turn card is one that is going to make him see a river with a huge portion of his range that we are ahead of. also given that he hasn't shown any aggression so far in the hand his pair combos should be discounted.

Imho checking the "nutspade" on the turn, then needing to see if you had it on the river = not a savvy play.

I don't really follow much of your post Tyler, but betting the turn here is pretty clearly the best line. Our hand still has showdown value, still has a chance to improve, but most significantly our opponent hasn't demonstrated any real affection for his hand. The 3rd spade is actually a fairly good card for us a fair bit of the time, as it will encourage a lot of his weak made hands that don't contain a spade to fold.

only if the board comes a 4 card flush and you triple barrel. i don't think you have any reasonable chance of folding anything i would classify as a 'weak made hand' otherwise.

basically the idea of my post was if you are nearly always double barreling, except perhaps a few combos of no hand/no draw where you just choose to give up, you can be value check/raised with near impunity. basically you are just a barrel monkey and any observant opponent could value raise really light and get to showdown really light profitably and probably profitably bluff fairly frequently. if you aren't particularly bluffable in this spot then you have to be showdowning really light because a nontrivial portion of your range is high card with a single spade and similar hands with little showdown value.

this is the kind of stuff that if someone smart picks up on it, you get destroyed because you are essentially blindly barreling and your opponent will be getting in an extra bet a lot when he has the better hand, will fold when he is behind, will win virtually every pot you check behind, and probably still bluff you on occasion.


so yea betting red AK is fine if you have some kind of balance. i rather use it to strengthen my check behind range, its also a hand that has a lot of outs but its value becomes really nebulous once raised. i also like checking behind a lot of non showdownable single spades bc its sucks to get raised w them and betting commits you to triple barreling UI imo and i don't want it to be reasonable for a bricked KJ to call down UI

i'm just not too concerned about balance when i'm valuebetting, which is what i am doing with red AK on the turn. As a corollary if i have AA and play pf strongly and then bet out on the flop it's pretty obvious i have a strong hand but i'm not gonna start checking for balance purposes. now course
it's not like we hold AA here, but i think the principle at play is the same. if we have a hand that is worth a value bet we should do just that. make our hand a little weaker and i could definitely see an argument for checking the turn, but AK is just a strong hand in our range.

i really think the value check is overused. you say that barreling off is easily exploitable, i think the value check is much more exploitable. any decent player is going to see that you are making a defensive play and wish to showdown, and they will be able to play perfectly against you as a result. i would rather just bet and take a free showdown if he calls. i do agree that it is a good play vs inducable opponents who are likely to fire air on the river, but imo these guys are found predominantly OL, and the dude in the OP certainly doesn't fit the description.

barrelling off can be exploited too of course. the adjustment that you mentioned would be for villain to delay his raise until the turn, getting us to fire the turn first. my beef is that i doubt villain in this hand is capable of making this adjustment. given the mubsiness of live players he probably won't delay his raises with Qx/Tx/PP, especially given that the turn brought a card that paired the board and completed a flush. he would probably put us on quads and just calldown (jk). but i dunno this is just based on how i've been told "taggy regs" in these games play. i'm of course assuming he's a nitty tag who isn't a freqent contributor to these forums (correct me if i'm wrong).

but of the two strategies i think it's more difficult from opponent's POV to deal with a guy who double barrels more frequently vs less frequently. he's gonna be kept guessing as to whether we are weak or strong, and his biggest adjustment imo will be to call us down lighter hoping to catch our bluffs, not to value raise us lighter on the turn. getting him to go passive is of course ideal for us since we're going to want to vbet him real thin without getting shown resistance.

i don't think we are really talking about the same concept when we say "balance".

i wrote kind of a long reply but i deleted it bc i don't think it would really convince you based on the progression of the thread so far. anyway, nice to see something come of this thread that started with a pretty pedestrian hand with a silly river bluff.

If you've got some different concept of balance Tyler, then I hate to say it but your definition is wrong.

Would you bet a flush here?
Would you bet TPTK here?
Would you bet a fullhouse here?
Would you bet an overpair here?
Would you bet a pair + nut flush draw here?

The answers to all these questions should be yes.

If, however, these are the ONLY hands we bet here, we've got no balance, ie we always have the goods when we bet.

We still check behind with a large range of hands, so we can't be called a "barrel monkey". Gutshots, straight draws, underpairs with a spade, all of these are viable checkback hands here because the freecard is can help us and we have a fairly easy decision if we're bet into depending on the river. Far from destroying us "raising light" is a terrible decision for our villain to make since it lets US get even more value from our big hands, which still make up a considerable percentage of our range. We have a name for opponents who raise us light on paired, 3-to-a-flush boards because they "put us on AK" and that name is FISH.

Bottom line, betting AKo here is an action in support of balancing your range. If you want to check back AKo here but maintain balance, that means you'd need to start checking back other strong hands. Since this is obviously a proposition that loses value we don't encourage that, but it would still be a "balancing" action.

As is obvious by the replies, no one likes this bluff and I don't really disagree too much. I do like it when my image at the table is "nitty and tentative" which I feel is occasionally the case because of the new way I've started putting my chips in the pot and such (Also is enhanced sometimes when I'm dealt the right mix of cards).

Bottom line is if my opponent doesn't think I'm capable of bluff raising the river he has to fold the K here. Now I don't expect that out of a random reg in the 40/80 game, but I do figure he will find a fold with all non-spade hands and even some hands like J8.

Results: He frustrately looked back at his hand and mucked. Now it's decently likely he had something like KJ no spade or something (I did see paint on at least one of the cards) so no assurances I actually bluffed here. I know PJ would snap-three-bet with KJ no spade so I can definitely say that villain wasn't PJ.