I think Zach is more balanced than most in this spot and will have sets/AA/KK some %. He's also smart enough to realize QJ and QK are bluff catchers and is certainly capable of folding them. He might fold AQ but I'm not certain.

Its pretty impossible for me to bluffing here unless I have exactly AK or maybe 78s and when he c/c the turn he always has Ace high beat. PF/Flop/Turn are all pretty standard but river is close and I'm not really sure if I like bet or check.

Played the hand on my laptop but here it is from memory

Blinds 20/40 5k deep.

Zach makes it 120 UTG+2 I flat AKhh in the HJ, everyone folds

Flop(pot 300) Tc9h5d he bets 250 I call.

Turn(Pot 800) is the Qh he checks I bet 700 he calls.

River (Pot 2300) 9d he checks. Hero?

looks like a good bluff spot to me, i think he will have a lot of medium strength bluffcatchers by the river and like you said the only bluffs in your range are AK and 78, and he probably expects you to 3b AK sometimes and fold 78 sometimes, so i doubt he expects a bluff here very often at all

Turn does look like he's playin D. Tough to tell if that translates into calling reasonable river bet also. From a solid guy I'd guess yes.

I'm thinking Eagles only chance to win here is a 4th qtr Hail Mary bomb.

BTW I'm a Giants guy and happy they're looking to trade McNabb after finally getting him weapons on the edge. Guy booked a lot of wins with the Freddie Mitchell's of the world.

I don't know much about villain but I think the majority of tourney players will be clicking call with any Q if we bet less than the pot. The Q is a very good card for us when he checks, but the 9 is a really bad card for us once he's called turn. Think if you're going to bet river something in the 3K range is going to be best.

I like the idea of having bluffs in our range here but i dunno our value range here is probably pretty thin as well. So in theory he should make some biggish folds here but in practice he looks at AQ+ once the board pairs and thinks he has the nuts. I mean good chance we get him off worse a lot of the time I'd have to think. i think we have to bet big enough that even KK and AA start to feel like bluff catchers in his mind I guess is what I'm trying to say, or maybe small enough to fold out the weak part of his range while laying ourselves a good price, but I"m still not sure I like it and think playing straightforward for value here is probably going to be close to optimal against most.

I like the bet that reps TT/maybe T9/KJ/maybe QT getting greedy better than the one that reps QJ. I think he's going to have better than TPMK too often once he c/c the turn for us to make the small bet.

Ya this seems right

I think im happy to check and lose to have 4k here vs CZ. I agree w having to bet big on the riv to make him fold and I just dont think its worth it here when there will be tons of play left with a 4k stack

He c/c a pretty big bet OOP on the turn after opening utg and I dont think hes planning on doing that to c/f a pretty safe river enough to make bluffing worth it for us.

I agree with pretty much all of this. I agree that typically playing for straightforward value is best here but I think my hand is too strong to fold on the flop in position and than I turn gin.

There are lot of people who I would not try and bluff in this spot but I know Zach is good/smart and plays tight in general. He is capable of folding strong hands here although obviously as we go from QJ to QK to AQ to QT to KK to AA it becomes less and less likely he will fold.

Ya I'm all for how you got here and agree that if you're ever going to bluff here this is the time to do it. Obviously only do it against really good hand readers who also know you're a really good hand reader, and in donkament land thats probably not that many

I agree with what you've said here. I think he can also get to the river playing JJ in the same way, and probably place it somewhere around his QJ/QK calling range, for the reasons you said in the OP.

I think i'm still leaning towards check, as I don't think he will lay down on the river enough after calling the turn. After your flop call, the queen doesn't help you that often unless you have QJ, QT, or some float, while the river card doesn't complete any draws. Given his turn call and this relatively safe river card, I think he calls more often than not.

Edit: I think this is a really interesting spot, as there aren't many (/any?!) one pair hands that are in our river betting value range, therefore, we should either have > 1 pair or air, where most of our range is weighted towards >1pr. As TheNewf said however, you need a very good hand reader to be able to be able to fold to a bet.

strongly in the camp of don't bluff this river. this textured board no one is able to separate relative hand strength from actual how low or high up they are in their range for the line taken. Don't bluff, seriously.

Any comment on what it is about the texture of the board that makes people do this?

don't bluff.... zach isn't folding much to that river after calling on the turn and the hands he is folding you already have beat. what u reppin? also keep in mind its hard to rep kj here

Only hands you should have here that are valuebetting are 55, TT, 99, KQ+. Maybe 9Ts, QJs, KJs but few combo's of those. Of those I think you'd not bet any queens very big as that's kinda bluffing instead of valuebetting and you'll raise the flop with sets/T9 a lot or at least some of the time. That leaves you basically only repping KJ when you bet big, or a wider range with a small bet that's not going to get KQ+ to fold (as he'll think you might valuebet worse). He'll put you on turning 22-88 or AK/AJ into a bluff too much I think, and probably has the Q or better most of the time after c/c turn.

i dont really like bluffing the river here
id prob just give up now on riv
agree that a large bet is prob best to bluff the river and given the types of hands he has, i think he calls too frequently to make it worth it

aq could also be in value range

basically the gist is that when every hand one has is a bluffcatcher to a given course of action, almost everyone is really bad at separating their bluffcatching range into percentages. like people are the worst at figuring out how they need to call with 38% of the bluffcatching raise and folding 62% and figuring out what is what. people just say i have a bluffcatcher he is bluffing some amt of time x, call all fold all. there are a couple other facets having to do with the fact that hands that hit this board are prettier then other hands, but the above is the main issue.

Isn't this only wrong if a) our opponents are adjusting to us being stations by v-betting thinner or b) our assumption about the size of x is wrong in the first place?

I get why it's a big game theory error to be calling with all of our bluffcatchers but in a vacuum as long as x is high enough shouldn't calling them be better than folding them?

point A is a super easy adjustment for people to make. Point B is just a given, no one is ever right about X, you are as good as how off you are. People also tend to choose call-all when all the bluff-catchers they have have high absolute value, like top-top or 2 pair+. They incorrectly think something like well I have top-top here must be towards the top of my range so I call, when its actually way down on it based on the board and the action taken

Thanks for your input Scott that all makes a lot of sense.

Only hands you should have here that are valuebetting are 55, TT, 99, KQ+. Maybe 9Ts, QJs, KJs but few combo's of those. Of those I think you'd not bet any queens very big as that's kinda bluffing instead of valuebetting and you'll raise the flop with sets/T9 a lot or at least some of the time. That leaves you basically only repping KJ when you bet big, or a wider range with a small bet that's not going to get KQ+ to fold (as he'll think you might valuebet worse). He'll put you on turning 22-88 or AK/AJ into a bluff too much I think, and probably has the Q or better most of the time after c/c turn.
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this

What combos of bluffs do I have?
I would flat KJs pf a lot of the time and would rarely fold it on the flop. I would never(more or less) flat KJo here pf.
I would raise sets/T9 on this flop sometimes but I would call the majority of the time.

I wouldn't read too much into my betsizing I tend to bet big with my entire range when stacks are this deep.

I'm not trying to argue a bluff is profitable mainly because it depends on how much of the above Zach is aware of. But I felt obligated to point out how many of your assumptions about my range are wrong. Simply unless you know someone's game very well making such assertive assumptions will not allow you to properly evaluate their range.

Well, while that's true, you have to make your decision based on some assumption, so then I just go with what I think a good players ranges should be in that spot.

Honestly, I don't really know how much you guys are flatting in the early stages, so then I'll just go for the straightforward point that if he c/c's a near potsized bet on the turn he's probably got a good piece and is not folding the river very often on what is a very good card for his range (and not so much for yours, as I don't think you're betting a naked 9x very often on the turn).

I agree that my value range is narrow but my bluffing range is also narrow. I think if you posted this hand from his perspective with AQ most people would say fold. Whether they do in practice is another question of course.