Two River Spots. To Bluff or Not?

1. Villain is an aggro reg. I fully expect him to blast this river with anything I beat. Pretty sure I'm almost never good when he checks here. I have some air inm my range here but no too much. My value range is fairly small though when I bet river. I guess I can rep aces up, AdX, and sets. Do we fold out weak Ax, TT-KK etc enough here?

PokerStars - $1 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 5 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

SB: 153.86 BB (VPIP: 23.50, PFR: 18.21, 3Bet Preflop: 8.96, Hands: 865)
BB: 145.31 BB (VPIP: 27.98, PFR: 22.92, 3Bet Preflop: 14.17, Hands: 349)
UTG: 180.39 BB (VPIP: 18.27, PFR: 14.62, 3Bet Preflop: 8.87, Hands: 310)
CO: 110 BB (VPIP: 23.89, PFR: 19.47, 3Bet Preflop: 9.09, Hands: 468)
Hero (BTN): 154.28 BB

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has T:diamond: 9:diamond:

fold, fold, Hero raises to 2 BB, fold, BB raises to 9 BB, Hero calls 7 BB

Flop: (18.5 BB, 2 players) 3:diamond: 7:heart: 5:diamond:
BB bets 12 BB, Hero calls 12 BB

Turn: (42.5 BB, 2 players) 9:club:
BB bets 25 BB, Hero calls 25 BB

River: (92.5 BB, 2 players) A:heart:
BB checks, Hero?


2. Villain seems like a standard reg. I don't remember tangling with him too much. My plan is just to barrel off here on almost all run outs. This is not one of my favourites though. That said he can't have too much Kx here surely and I can probably fold out all two pair combos, as it's kind of hard for me to get here with a bluff.

PokerStars - $1 NL (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

Hero (UTG): 186.2 BB
MP: 103 BB (VPIP: 22.24, PFR: 15.14, 3Bet Preflop: 3.49, Hands: 555)
CO: 124.54 BB (VPIP: 22.14, PFR: 18.25, 3Bet Preflop: 8.38, Hands: 425)
BTN: 170.8 BB (VPIP: 23.75, PFR: 19.79, 3Bet Preflop: 10.34, Hands: 390)
SB: 113.62 BB (VPIP: 34.85, PFR: 23.48, 3Bet Preflop: 1.92, Hands: 140)
BB: 153.25 BB (VPIP: 23.50, PFR: 18.21, 3Bet Preflop: 8.96, Hands: 865)

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has 5:club: A:club:

Hero raises to 3 BB, fold, CO calls 3 BB, fold, fold, fold

Flop: (7.5 BB, 2 players) Q:club: J:club: 3:spade:
Hero bets 5.8 BB, CO calls 5.8 BB

Turn: (19.1 BB, 2 players) T:diamond:
Hero bets 15.5 BB, CO calls 15.5 BB

River: (50.1 BB, 2 players) A:spade:
Hero?

How much do you want to bet in hand 1? I think you overestimate your fold equity, don't really love this spot for a bluff.

Hand 1 - check

Hand 2- on that particular turn card, all of his Kx that he could possibly have are calling again, so I'd c/f this river.

1) def weaker hands you can have in your range to bluff with, check.

2) griffey makes a good point

Yeah I think I like checking both, thanks for the input guys.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by griffey24

Hand 1 - check

Hand 2- on that particular turn card, all of his Kx that he could possibly have are calling again, so I'd c/f this river.

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100% agree

tempted to bet #2 because I don't think a 22/18 calls KQo utg vs co, so AQ QT JT constitute a ton of his range. He really HAS to fold AQ though for it to be a bet ofc.

I defo think he folds AQ, why are we expecting him to not have KQ but have QT/JT?

AQo (6 combos)
QTs (2 combos)
JTs (2 combos)
KQs (3 combos)
KJs (3 combos)
KTs (3 combos)
KQo (9 combos)

If he doesn't play KQo then he has a 10 to 9 ratio of folds to calls. If he does play KQo, that ratio changes to 10 to 18 fold to call.

how about overbet turn w a5cc since he can't have the nuts. then you can shove all blank rivers and not really care what he does (obv this aint a blank)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by gabe

how about overbet turn w a5cc since he can't have the nuts. then you can shove all blank rivers and not really care what he does (obv this aint a blank)

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thank you for this post. much admiration for your outside the box thinking

np. overbet when their range is capped. getting folds on early streets is harder than it used to be

Quote:

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Originally Posted by gabe

np. overbet when their range is capped. getting folds on early streets is harder than it used to be

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I guess I just don't understand the logic of overbetting all that well. I understand that we should typically do it when villain's range is capped, such that he rarely (almost never) has our strong valuebetting hands beat. However, it feels like when their range is capped, with our value hands we should tend towards sizing our bet to get calls from villain's likely marginal hand.

I suppose, in either case villain is likely to have a bluffcatcher, and by overbetting we can bluff more frequently, as well as charge him more when he does decide to bluffcatch?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Stacks

I guess I just don't understand the logic of overbetting all that well. I understand that we should typically do it when villain's range is capped, such that he rarely (almost never) has our strong valuebetting hands beat. However, it feels like when their range is capped, with our value hands we should tend towards sizing our bet to get calls from villain's likely marginal hand.

I suppose, in either case villain is likely to have a bluffcatcher, and by overbetting we can bluff more frequently, as well as charge him more when he does decide to bluffcatch?

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It's simple ISF Theorem. When villain's range is capped and ours is not, our range is stronger than theirs, and so we should apply more aggression. We traditionally use ISF Theorem to talk about aggression/passivity as a dichotomy (betting/raising vs checking/calling), but bet sizing allows us to look at aggression as a spectrum. This is especially the case when the SPR is large enough that you can't get stacks in by simply betting a traditional amount on every street, so that betting unusually large is almost like forcing villain to play an extra mini street--and being aggressive on that street, ldo.

In this case, betting traditional amounts leaves half of the original stacks behind, so betting large enough that stacks go is effectively the same as shoving for a 1/2 PSB on an imaginary post-river street. That's maybe getting a little carried away with the figurative explanation, but basically, you get twice as much money in, which means more aggression, which means better leveraging your superior range.

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Originally Posted by surviva316

It's simple ISF Theorem. When villain's range is capped and ours is not, our range is stronger than theirs,

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I don't think this is always the case. For example villain can have an airless range of value hands and bluff catchers that doesn't include the nuts/best sub group of possible hands, yet our range can be uncapped yet packed with air. In this case villain's range is stronger and we get called a lot because his range is stronger due to our polarity (is that a word?)

I like overbetting this turn spot, it's got all the right ingredietns, villain can't have the nuts, we have loads of equity and outs to the nuts on the river, and we can rep a lot and win the pot very frequently on lots of rivers. Overbetting must be best.

As one of the least legendary posters ITT, I hate to hijack the conversation, but I'm liking the discussion.

I'm sure there are exceptions, but for any situation where there is a lot of money left behind, I would think it would be rare that a range could be so polarized and so weighted toward air that it would make up for the fact that it has a significant amount of hands beyond the top of villain's range.

It's kinda like how our BTN opening range can be ATC and villain can be flatting in the BB solely with good hands that dominate a massive portion of our range, yet when the flop comes we still have initiative. Even ATC is stronger than a strong-ish, yet nutless range in that scenario because JJ+/AK is so important to a range that when you don't have them in your range, you're just treading water. (Of course, that's a case where there are 3 betting streets left and almost all of the money is left behind with large SPRs).

When villain doesn't have any hands that are organically strong enough to play for stacks (again, we assumed from the beginning that "playing for stacks" is a lot of money), then the only reason they would consider playing them for money is to avoid being exploited by our range. Maybe it's a semantics game of what a "stronger range" is, but we have complete control over how much of the stacks we want to get in and how often villain will have to deal with an all-in, and villain is just trying to tread water--just defending himself against getting exploited out the wazoo.

So when we have a range of {a fair amount of hands that are stronger than anything villain has, a shittonne of bluffs}, even though creating ways to play for stacks in these situations reduces the amount of hands we can include in a balanced range, it forces villain to play beyond the Level 1 comfort of his hand, which makes for more mistakes than when he sees bets that suit the strength of his hand (even though we may do that with a wider and more disguised range). It creates a scenario where our nuts get paid for stacks (which would, in theory, be 100% impossible otherwise), and it makes it much more difficult for villain to call our bluffs the amount he would have to to avoid exploitation.

I understand the ISF theorem argument you are making here Surviva, whereby we should tend towards aggression when our range is superior to villains. Which is typically going to be the case when villain's range is capped, and ours is not. And as such, I get that overbetting turn in this hand example puts villain in a rather difficult spot whereby essentially every hand in his range is a bluffcatcher, and he's left trying to determine how frequently to bluffcatch to avoid exploitation.

The thing that has me a bit hung up is that when deciding how to size our bets, the strength of villain's range has typically always been a deciding factor (more so than the strength of my range). And I've always thought that versus a range consisting of primarily weak/marginal strength that smaller bets were typically best. Essentially, when valuebetting against a weak range, a smaller bet gives him a better price to call and means he needs to defend more frequently. And when bluffing versus a weak range, we don't typically need to bet too large.

However, at least from a GTO approach the above doesn't appear to be correct. Since, while he will need to defend less frequently to a larger bet, he's still going to be committing more money on average to do so. For instance, a 1/2 PSB means he needs to defend at least ~67% of the time, meaning he's committing 0.5 * 0.667 or 0.334 PSB on average. Versus, say a 2x PSB where he needs to defend only 33% of the time, but now must commit 2 * 0.33 or 0.668 PSB on average.

I can't help but think that betting small in spots like those is kind of pandering the villain's range. When we're playing on Level 2, the best exploitative strategy is to vbet small enough to where he feels like he can't fold his weak range and bluff big enough to where it's almost impossible for a Level 1 thinker to find a call. Once we get to the point to where villain is thinking about our range, then it's so much of a leveling war that betting small probably doesn't accomplish what we think it does anyway. Sure, he calls more when we bet smaller, but he's doing it for correct reasons (because he's getting good enough odds that he can't afford to fold too often), and we're making it easy for him to form a correct range.

I remember years ago watching a nutsinho video on DeucesCracked, and he talked about how he bets more when his range can contain lots of bluffs, which is enough of a mindfuck that I remembered it and had an involved conversation with yAAwn about it. It seemed to make sense that it's our strong, balanced ranges that tend to have bluffs, so it kinda made sense, even though it was a little counterintuitive and went against everything that anyone ever says when commenting on hand histories.

In the end, I don't know how much I apply this in practice, and I think all the advice I've ever gotten has won out over the seemingly more game theory solid approach, but it has always nagged me. I somewhat suspect it's part of the small stakes poker community's growing pains going from Level 2 exploitative play to more perfect strategies, but it's probably about that time to let people who know what they're talking about chime in.

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Originally Posted by Stacks

However, it feels like when their range is capped, with our value hands we should tend towards sizing our bet to get calls from villain's likely marginal hand.

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i found that all my winnings came from nonshowdowns so i dont really worry about this stuff. i just blast away and sometimes i have a hand


as far as ISF theorem, i dont really remember it but its true you should leverage your stronger ranges vs weaker ranges. i think the main point is you should put yourself in those spots as often as possible, and plan to get to those spots, not just try to play aggro when you get to them