I'm not a HU player just start tables, just want a line check, Villian is 88/64 21% 2b,

Thoughts on River call?


Winning Poker Network - $0.50 NL - Holdem - 2 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

SB: 95.64 BB
Hero (BB): 113.68 BB

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, Hero posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has 5 3

SB raises to 2 BB, Hero calls 1 BB

Flop: (4 BB, 2 players) 4 T 3
Hero checks, SB bets 2.52 BB, Hero raises to 7.56 BB, SB calls 5.04 BB

Turn: (19.12 BB, 2 players) J
Hero bets 12.12 BB, SB calls 12.12 BB

River: (43.36 BB, 2 players) 6
Hero bets 28.24 BB, SB raises to 73.96 BB and is all-in, Hero calls 45.72 BB

Looks fine to me. Sometimes I 3 bet this hand preflop but vs a min raise calling is fine too. Raising flop is fine. So is calling. Betting turn is probably fine too, you can get some value from draws (you beat say Ahxh or 56/A2 etc) and you have good equity vs Tx as well. The only problem is I would bet larger on the turn and shove the river myself. Now that he shoves I think I would call vs an unknown. Vs some players you can hero fold this since they are never bluffing and if they are never bluffing or raising thinly for value with say a straight or rivered two pair, you are never good.

Why bluff the flop when you're likely to have the best hand?

As played i can't see vilain bluffing but it's hard to fault you for calling

id play every street (even after playing previous one the same way you did) differently except river (where id jam, dont like your sizing much)

+1
Our hand have about 60% equity vs villain range. I prefer to switch between 80%-20% in 1/2 proportion value/bluff

You guys have odd concepts of bluff and value. You could make a living shoving this hand here if the villain always calls with Tx. He is handing you money with an edge multiple times greater than a roulette table and 20 times greater than a blackjack table.

A pair + flush draw is the nuts. Just because we don't have a hand yet doesn't mean we are bluffing when we raise. We are going to hit a flush, two pair, or trips around 60% of the time by the river (plus backdoor straight draws, that might give us 2% more equity).

It's not like bluffing a 3 here without a flush draw is terrible either, what else are you guys doing with it? Calling down and praying you hit two pair?

Ravzar come play NL100 zoom more ofter plz we miss you there

Calling pre is fine, arguments for 3betting are also fine, although against an unknown this early my default would be to flat. C/c flop, c/c turn(if required) and this early c/c river.

No u

Could you expand on this please?

Is this a case if just not liking his sizing or his lines? C/C, C/C, Shove?

Your equities are off (we're flipping vs most hands) and are never a 60% fave unless opponent has something like Jh2h...

But apart from that, I'm not sure why everyone else disagrees with this. Were we to have a hand like Th8h on a Ts4h3h board then calling would clearly be best. But with this hand here? Sure, we're likely still ahead but do we really want villain realising his equity with 2 overs? Or bluffing us off the hand on the turn or river? Or giving him a really easy time with a weak made hand such as 55-99, weak Tx or 45/46/A4/K4/A3? Or do we want to be putting villain in a tough spot?

Spladle would have a field day with this thread, starting with the (mis)use of the word "bluff".

The irony.

I am also not sure how they know too much about my game. I have 700 hands there total and that probably means only 40 - 50 on each player. I would have been playing straight forward though.

If some of my plays don't make sense perhaps you should look into it further instead of just dismissing it. I am happy for everyone to know that bottom pair + flush draw is in my flop check raising range on a lot of board textures. I am not 100% sure how you plan to use that information though since that's just one hand in a range.

If many or all hands like 55-99, weak Tx etc are giving us a really tough time on this turn then we should be putting him in a tough spot at that point imo.

The problem is these hands are the most likely candidates to check back turns which means we're going to struggle to put villain in a tough spot short of over-betting river where it has to work often to make it very profitable.

And even when villain does bet the turn - assuming we missed, our hand now has much less equity than on the flop meaning we are now just pure bluffing - so if we raise and get shoved on, we are now in a pretty horrible spot. On the flop, our raise is thin value - we are favourite vs his range and OTT we can continue to value bet if we hit - or be betting our hand as a semi-bluff.

The other point to note here is that our flush draw is very weak. As such there is some RIO - but if we try and put our money in whilst we are ahead of other flush draws, then RIO is less of a problem. In addition because it's a flush draw it's also going to be harder anyway to get paid if we do hit. (I mean, it's HU - so we will get paid but because it's a weak flush it's less clear whether we should raise over a river bet if we hit our flush.

Now if we have more reads/stats on our opponent and know they are double barreling a high% with a really wide value and bluff range then we can get more value by a turn c/r.

But overall w/o reads I think c/r the flop is definitely my preferred action 80% of the time.

Id prefer flop c/r with a stronger kicker 3xhh hand than this one and I don't want to be raising all of my 3xhh hands.
I will be giving up OTT quite a bit so this hand again looks like a decent c/c candidate. I dont think our flush/2pair outs are THAT great anymore esp. 2pair OTT.
And yeh, Id jam river.

Huh - what stronger kickers can you possibly have? Ah3h 3-bets pre mostly and any X over a 5 is too un-gapped. We really don't have many 3xhh in our range so when we do have one it makes it a great candidate to raise. Secondly if we did have Ah3h it has better playability on later streets because of zero RIO. A hand like 3h5h is much harder to play on later streets - as you said if we hit our flush or 2 pair outs it's not so clear cut how to extract the maximum.

As for jamming river - trying to merge our range in this spot by making us seem polarised is not great when we have no history. It probably leads to him calling all flushes (all of which beat us) and folding all worse. Plus it's not like we have many bluffs in our range by the river so just shoving every flush seems bad.

Your calling range pre is very nitty.

Is it? So what 3xhh hands do you call with? 73, 83, 93, T3, J3, Q3? Seems awfully loose OOP even when ranges are wide. Haven't played HU in a while though and I'll admit to maybe not knowing how wide it's correct to defend against vs a min-r.

Even so - if we're calling even wider pre-flop then that shouldn't alter 3h5h being a flop raise because we're going to have an awful lot of hands that are just garbage on the flop.

you mean except for every suited 3? lol

there's no way villain can bluff us off our hand on the turn, unless both your call and raise button are malfunctioning

this makes no sense either

As I said I've not played HU in a while and don't tend to experience much min-r so maybe my defending ranges are off but I'd rather 3-bet a lot of these suited un-connected hands than flat them unless villain is defending to 3-bets too much.

Regardless of 3xhh being in our range or not though I think raising flop as a standard default play is best. But guess I'm in the minority. Curious the % people defend here to a min-r and also their flop raising range?

What is your reason for c/c turn? Do you think you have SD value? Do you expect villian to bluff us off our hand if we bet the turn?

i think if the villain only calls with flushes and doesn't go overboard otf/ott with jamming random stuff (like tp/any 2pair hands) then he's really not calling enough otr and our bluffs become ridiculously profitable. It also might tell you that the idea of c/raising this hand otf isnt that great if you cant valuejam your outs.
also if you dont have any bluffs otr then i really dont see why others cant have it. The minority of my flop c/raises would be fds.

How often would you say you are c/r flop and what bluffs are you c/r flop with? Gutshots with bd draws? Random air? Raising hands with too little equity as bluffs gives villain a much easier time in b/c a lot of his marginal hands because they still have plenty of equity vs our range.

The problem with shoving river in this spot is that Hero's sizing on flop/turn is too small. Were it sized better then shoving river would be fine. I mean it might still be +ev here but a smaller bet-size is probably more ev.

Honestly I'm struggling to see how c/r this flop can be bad and less +ev than calling. No, I'm not going to be folding OTT forthelulz if I just call flop. (unless I c/r turn and get shoved on) - but we have a pair of 3's!! So often villain is either going to be allowed to realise his equity and either we call down with bottom pair and lose a lot or we end up folding river (sometimes by a bluff, other times by a hand that might have folded to aggression from us on an earlier street) Sometimes we hit our 2 pair and flush outs but then what's our plan to maximise value? Do we donk anywhere? Or c/r when we hit our flush.

Maybe I'm thinking about poker in the wrong way these days. I always thought being aggressive was good - it gives us 2 ways of winning the hand. But these days I see so many people advocating a passive line if they were not the pre-flop aggressor. I mean, why do people even 3-bet bluff in HU poker?

If it would be like T93ss with the 9+FD i would like to checkcall but with the 3 obv raising the flop to fold out some worse hands is fine.