Too thin to bet this pairing river w/ nut straight?

[BorisTheSpider]

Villain seems competent, if occasionally a bit spewy. Think standard TAG.

River too thin?

Poker Stars, $0.10/$0.25 No Limit Hold'em Cash, 6 Players
Poker Tools Powered By Holdem Manager - The Ultimate Poker Software Suite.

Hero (BTN): $44.16 (176.6 bb)
SB: $25 (100 bb)
BB: $67.01 (268 bb)
UTG: $45.15 (180.6 bb)
MP: $50.55 (202.2 bb)
CO: $21.16 (84.6 bb)

Preflop: Hero is BTN with A Q
3 folds, Hero raises to $0.62, SB folds, BB calls $0.37

Flop: ($1.34) J T 5 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero checks

Turn: ($1.34) K (2 players)
BB bets $0.75, Hero raises to $4.50, BB calls $3.75

River: ($10.34) K (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $5

[Pelion]

I think b/f is fine. Our flop check/turn raise looks highly polarised to 2pair+/air while villains line certainly has showdown value so we probably don't get bluffed often.

I think we are usually ahead on this river, and he isn't really going to be able to fold anything. Turned sets/2 pairs are going to want to raise a 3-flush, 3-straight board at least a sizable fraction of the time, and he is likely to fold a lot of the unsuited boat hands (KJo/KTo) pre, whereas he can probably have all combos of KQ here. With how polarised to nuts/FoS we look, we might even encourage the occasional calldown with something like AJ/AT.

I'd definitely bet this flop though. We aren't going to hit all that often when we check, but we have enough equity that he doesn't need to fold too much if we semibluff.

[Cobra_1878]

Yeah I would cbet this flop, hits our opening range pretty hard.

I'm not sure I agree with our range being polarised here. Would Hero play like this if he was bluffing w/ complete air? I think it looks like a pretty strong line Hero has taken.

Definitely betting the river, folding to any raise.

[Savy]

We want our bluffs to look strong so yes.

[Pelion]

I'm not sure I agree with our range being polarised here. Would Hero play like this if he was bluffing w/ complete air?

You're asking the wrong question. What you should be asking is, would hero play like this if he had a strong but not nut hand? (e.g. KQ on the flop/turn). The beauty of poker is that we can just about always have complete air. Polarised means we don't have the hands in the middle.

edit: KQ is maybe not the best example since the OESD puts it on the boarder between calling hands and value raising hands. AJ/AT are more clearcut. They have enough equity to consider calling down, but certainly not enough equity to be value raising.

[Cobra_1878]

You're asking the wrong question. What you should be asking is, would hero play like this if he had a strong but not nut hand? (e.g. KQ on the flop/turn). The beauty of poker is that we can just about always have complete air. Polarised means we don't have the hands in the middle.

I understood what polarised meant but that post makes things a lot clearer in terms of how I should be looking at our range.

I'm just not sure what we're trying to rep when we raise the turn if we were bluffing...AK/AQ/KT seem the only plausible hands as I imagine Hero would cbet all hands like AJ/KJ/QJ/JJ/TT/55 on the flop and probably bet most of his draws like KQ/98/any FD's a lot of the time as well.

[Pelion]

Agreed that we don't rep a huge amount on this turn raise, so we won't be able to bluff raise that many combos. KT is probably the only really common legitimate raising hand as played, followed by AQ/occasional slowplays if you haven't cbet them. That doesn't mean you can't bluff raise though. It just means you can't do it often (and many aggressive players will do too often).

What I meant with my post is that, if we can't hold medium strength hands and villain holds medium strength hands, then villain is forced to bluffcatch. When he is bluffcatching a medium strength hand there is no point in him raising as we are never folding a winning hand and never calling a hand he beats. i.e. We bet. Sometimes we hold a 1 and sometimes we hold a 3. Why would villain ever raise a 2? He should call or fold.

Does that make sense?

[BorisTheSpider]

Agree with Pelion - but I think betting flop sucks, we just set ourselves up to get blown off our equity.

Edit: forget I said that, for some reason I was thinking the flop was monotone. Still don't mind the check but don't hate betting either.

[Pelion]

Meh - you only have 3 nut outs in the deck. Not too worried about being blown off.

I'd rather gain some fold equity, buy a river card and build the pot for the times I hit.

[Cobra_1878]

Yeah, that makes perfect sense.

[BorisTheSpider]

We want our bluffs to look strong so yes.

LOL @ bluff raising turn for 2.25x pot then spewing for balance on river. 25NL?

[Savy]

LOL @ bluff raising turn for 2.25x pot then spewing for balance on river. 25NL?

It's not for balance, it's for making our bluffs profitable.

What do you do when bluffing; take completely different lines that you'd never take with a value hand?

[BorisTheSpider]

It's not for balance, it's for making our bluffs profitable.

Surely that's saying the same thing? A bluff can only work if it looks like a value bet. So you're saying on the river that if we want to be able to bluff in that spot that we must also value bet thinly, but there is no way at 25NL that if I only ever get to the river with value hands anyone will ever notice - I'm not expecting anyone to ever bluff catch the river with AJ

What do you do when bluffing; take completely different lines that you'd never take with a value hand?

Can I ever have a bluff after that turn action?

[Savy]

No, I'm saying that if you're only ever raising with value hands then you're doing something vastly wrong, so probably missing out on value from your value hands because people do notice when you are never bluffing and getting no value from your non-value hands.

End of the day though cbet the flop, I have no idea why you didn't. And don't make your bet sizing so painfully obvious that you're scared on the river. Why would you bet less than half pot? $6-6.75 would be much better imo.

Can I ever have a bluff after that turn action?

Yes.

[Cobra_1878]

Surely that's saying the same thing? A bluff can only work if it looks like a value bet. So you're saying on the river that if we want to be able to bluff in that spot that we must also value bet thinly, but there is no way at 25NL that if I only ever get to the river with value hands anyone will ever notice - I'm not expecting anyone to ever bluff catch the river with AJ



Can I ever have a bluff after that turn action?

You just agreed with what Pelion was posting, unless I am mistaken, he was advocating that we can bluff-raise in this spot just not very often.

[BorisTheSpider]

No, I'm saying that if you're only ever raising with value hands then you're doing something vastly wrong, so probably missing out on value from your value hands because people do notice when you are never bluffing and getting no value from your non-value hands.

I don't think there's anything "vastly wrong" with never bluff raising to a size that would need over 70% folds to be profitable. No-one at 25NL is ever going to notice if I never raise that big with a bluff.

And don't make your bet sizing so painfully obvious that you're scared on the river. Why would you bet less than half pot? $6-6.75 would be much better imo.

I'm not scared, I'm betting for thin value.

[Savy]

Betting for thin value isn't a reason to bet stupidly small when you probably bet bigger with every other part of your range. You're just missing out on value with your value hands (which is all your range because you never bluff apparently) and if you're varying your bet size on the river based on the strength of your hand that's exactly what I meant by betting scared.

Thinking about bluffs in the sense of whether or not they are profitable in a vacuum is also horribly wrong at this level. This should be pretty obvious.

[kickass]

hows this even thin??

[Carroters]

I think it's fine to have a bluffing range here on the turn since we can for sure rep KT AQ K5 type of stuff. When we're bluffing we likely get a lot of folds by raising turn a normal size and firing river. As villain has a good deal of pair + straight/flush draw hands in his turn bet/calling range that fold rivers. This size is likely good for value and as a bluff if he's going to call these combos and fold river. I'd go a little smaller though to make sure he calls turn then our river bet should be really good with bluffs and with value on better rivers than this one obv.

[BorisTheSpider]

hows this even thin??

Villains range at the flop: [JJ-22, AJs-A2s, AJo-ATo, KTs+, KTo+, QTs+, QTo+, J9s+, JTo, T8s+, 97s+, 86s+, 75s+, 65s, 54s]

Say he bet-calls turn with FDs, OESDs, Pair+Draw, 2 pair.

Turn bet-call range: [AhJh, AhTh, Ah9h, Ah8h, Ah7h, Ah6h, Ah5h, Ah4h, Ah3h, Ah2h, KTs+, KTo+, QTs+, QTo+, JTs, Jh9h, JTo, Th9h, Th8h, 97s+, 8h7h, 8h6h, 7h6h, 7h5h, 6h5h, 5h4h]

On the river, of that range, 72% is a pair or worse. 18.5% is the boats we don't want to bet into anyway.

The only hand he can have that we can value town on the river with a smallish bet is trips, and he only has that 9% of the time.

So it seems pretty thin to me.

[BorisTheSpider]

Betting for thin value isn't a reason to bet stupidly small when you probably bet bigger with every other part of your range. You're just missing out on value with your value hands (which is all your range because you never bluff apparently) and if you're varying your bet size on the river based on the strength of your hand that's exactly what I meant by betting scared.

I'm not varying my bet size on the river based on the strength of my hand, but rather based on what he might call me with that I beat. If he can't have anything to call me with, it doesn't matter whether I have quads or 8-high, I can't bet for value. If there are tons of worse hands that can call, then sure, I can bet bigger, but if there are very few worse hands that can call I'm going to need to bet small enough that they are tempted to look me up.

I really don't think just under half pot is that small anyway, I often bet much smaller than that on the river to extract a call from a weak range of hands that would just (correctly) fold to a bigger bet.

[griffey24]

River I would bet bigger ($7-9). An amount that I would be more confident about NOT inducing a bluff raise, given my plan is to b/f here. Also he probably can't fold KQ, Kxhh now. Might not even be able to fold QJ.