100 zoom - tricky river c/r

Originally Posted by baudib

Then what hands should we c/c there and how are we ever calling down with that range?

Well the last part is easy, you just call down "enough." The sad fact is that OOP play is often a matter of defensively calling down so as not to be terribly exploitable. Check calling with a nut flush draw or a set is not going to greatly change this fact. After all, it is very difficult combinatorically to have sets and flushes, so it wouldn't usually serve to balance your range at all, only to give you like 1-2% more hands to call down with.

You can make your OOP check-call game a lot stronger by using thoughtful hand selection with the medium strength hands that are, as ever, competed for by the c/c c/r and bet choices you have on the flop. Unlike sets and nut draws, medium strength hands are often offsuit, and are very frequent in your range, so how you play them strongly affects how others should play against you.

As to your 843cc flop, first of all that's a very uncommon flop texture, you'd be better served looking at more common ones like Txx Jxx, but whatever. Basically on 843 you'll want to check call with a range that covers bad runouts for your perceived c/c range. Clubs are a large category of those so I think its probably a pretty decent play to c/c with some weak flush draws. I would choose JT/J9/T9/T7/97 for this. Notice the problem we mentioned before, how this is only 5 combos, its not likely to influence his decision to barrel off on clubs, but it will influence the money we make with those individual hands by c/c instead of bet, which is good.

I'd also c/c with probably any flopped pair that has a K, Q, or J kicker, such as K8s Q4s etc. Notably I would be more likely to bet the pairs with ace kicker because we are already very strong on Ace runout because of our ace high calls. I'd also bet the pairs with very low kickers because they benefit from protection and contribute relatively nothing to a c/c range. In my opinion the worst runouts for our c/c range are K, Q, J and club, and I'd base my whole strategy around defending relatively often when those cards fall. Sadly there's just no way to defend on the clubs particularly often without sacrificing big value with your draws. You can, however, c/c with a lot of big one club hands so at least you'll not be folding the turn when a club comes.