Fairly early in Sunday $1.5M. Table has been typical loose/passive so I played it straightforward preflop rather than hoping someone "did something".

Villain who cold-calls is +25% ROI at reasonable stakes, but would be loser except for one larger win. Only other read is that name suggests he's Korean.

Do you value bet the river, and if so how much and why? And if your bet leaves a reasonable amount behind do you call a shove?

bet 2225 and call a shove

check or ~1400/fold.

so your turning your KK here into a bluff on the river ? if your going to bet 1400 then fold id prefer just checking back

against someone who cold-calls the 3bet oop, i would prob size larger - make the bet size otf congruent to that ott, and easy b/f otr.

fyp

wtf @ bet/folding river ? are you guys on crack ?

Easiest b/call evar?

the guy is clearly v. passive. what worse hands does he raise with? (just curious, still unsure about my opinion )

I would like to bet bigger ~1940/ call

EDIT: on the WTF@ b/f train too

i wouldn´t mind to b/f here, cause he´ll never shove worse.

Maybe you could enlighten us as to Villain's range to CRAI on the river.

Also:

My thinking, said out loud to my companion at the time, was "I'm not sure if I should bet here. My hand is basically face-up and he should have only been calling with a flushdraw or a set."

Of course "should" is not what people do, and obviously my hope is to get paid off by a stubborn Queen (and I believe a reasonable bet would).

My instinct was telling me to bet, and upon further reflection I believe that was because... would he really be THAT tricky with a set, check/calling to river? Wouldn't most players with a set have sprung a raise at the turn at least, to build a pot and/or get action from a flushdraw?

That leads me to believe he is calling along with something like AQ-KQ-QJ. Hopefully not QT.

On the other hand, a pocket pair is the type of hand any player would be comfortable calling preflop OOP vs presumed big hand, much more so than some QX broadway hand. Which should weight his hands more heavily toward sets.


The two spades are what make the spot tougher, I think, both because he may put me on the flushdraw and pay off weak, and because a large portion of his calling range is flushdraws.

Of course I mostly get no value betting at the river into a busted flushdraw -- unless maybe he makes a crying call with a T, or if I sell weakness AND am willing to call a bluff shove.


But for bet-folding... if I'm always going to fold to a shove, bear in mind villain is Korean, and if he's anything like those snow-happy Badugi players, he would not at all be above shoving AX at the river and I fold like an idiot.


Even if we "know" player is straightforward and will only CRAI with > KK, there has to be some tipping point where bet-fold is less profitable than checking behind. Some formula for the percent of sets/flushdraws in his range vs QX, and how many chips we are risking throwing away at the river. Or get fancier and add in a percent where we get bluffraised. I'll try to come up with some maths on that.

Overall checking behind starts to look pretty good to me, but I'm haunted by that image of Ivey looking goggle-eyed at Tilley checking the river. You know the one!


I still don't know... I would very much like to hear more from the bet-fold camp. I believe bet-fold is a leak in my game (the fold part, that is) as I am generally pretty honest in my late-street bets and thus reluctant to fold a good hand which what is often a big pot. Of course if others know I'm honest in late-street bets then I suppose I should be more likely to fold.

1550/fold. If they is good enough to bluff ya then nh them.

Ya bet/fold is fine imo. It's not turning our hand into a bluff.. We get called by worse a tonne of the time, and for the most part when he does raise he is (almost) never bluffing.

Thinking about it some more, if we're going to bet/fold river, then why not underbet the pot, e.g. just repeat the turn bet?

Maybe that would get some more crying calls from pocket pairs or a flushdraw that paired and tries to pick off my AK or flushdraw (I really shouldn't have flushdraws here, basically only AK, but many players may not recognize that).

Those extra calls would help make up for the times we fold to a raise. We lose value vs Queens but I'm not convinced those are a big part of his range.

Perhaps the biggest downside is that it might encourage more bluff-raising since we don't force him to essentially shove to do it?

I'll try to do some more specific ranges/math.

how much would u bet with qq

A lot more, in fact probably a push after he checks.

If I have QQ, then my bread-and-butter payoff hands (top pair) are very unlikely.

So he probably has very little (pair less than Q), nothing (busted flushdraw), or a big hand -- AA, KK, or a set.

Rather than try to eke out a small extra bet vs his weak pairs I'd go for the gold hoping he has been coolered or decides to hero vs my "obvious" desperate AK bluff.

If u underbet the river, I don´t like bet/fold because the little bet and the fact, that your hand almost faceup, may induce some spazz.

I agree with bet calling the river because the villain can really shove AQ there, and maybe even KQ.

I would also bet a little more OTF this deep. This would help you to build a bigger pot and I don't see really a big difference between his calling range of half pot bet and a a 65% pot bet.

im still with the opinion that if your going to bet/fold here then you should just check behind

On the river you have like 3600 behind if my math is correct and if u are going to VB 1800 u have 4.5:1 when he shoves, can't really find a fold there.

Was thinking about shoving ther river, because maybe the villain would c/c KQ or AQ there, would really like to hear some thoughts about this.

pretty strongly disagree with this against a v. passive opponent.

Re: cassiopak and bet/folding... I agree, if we bet that much the stack sizes make bet-folding look real bad.

I also think you are right that shoving is better than bet-folding. We want to maximize our value vs AQ/KQ stations to make up for the times we run into a better hand. By betting less we let our opponent play more correctly.

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Re: llabwol, I would agree if by "very passive" you are referring to a player that we have a good read on -- i.e. we know they are a huge station and overprotect when they do have a big hand.

But if by "very passive" you are referring to this unknown's line in the hand, then I'd disagree because that line could be things other than just QX, some of which always fold at the river anyway, and some of which are tarping us.

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I have gone exhaustively through a hand range analysis (and will post it when I've slept and double-checked my work) but basically I think there aren't enough QX hands in his range.

If I'm right, at the river we are only slightly ahead of the range that can give us action -- somewhat shocking to me.

Since it's early in a tourney without blinds pressure yet, and we're better (obv ) than our opponents, that tells me we should check behind and hope to win a pretty nice pot, while preserving a good stack if we're behind.

That seems better than betting thin value and risk crippling ourselves (bet/folding) or busting out (shoving or bet/calling), and also avoids the whole bluff-raise nightmare.

What if when you bet he calls you with a worse hand 50% of the time, folds 25% of the time and ships it in with a better hand 25% of the time, do you still want to check behind?