How would you play the River?
We return to NL50 looking for value against a weaker oppo knowing holding might not be enough. Can we leave an open limp unpunished?
After a while we finally return to NL50 in search for more value, and we don't think twice about isolating a seemingly weak player even though our holding may be not good enough. But we just can't leave any open limp unpunished, can we?
On the Preflop, you may argue that our Hero's hand is simply bad for isolating any player, weak or not. But if we always played 'by the book' poker just wouldn't be exciting enough. Still, in order to pull this off, he needs to either be ahead of the Villain's range (which is definitely NOT the case here) or have some Postflop reads he could exploit, like high frequency of folding to c-bets. We can only assume that the player in question may be a recreational one but we can't be sure.
The Flop is dry which is favourable for a bluff c-bet. We can kick out a big chunk of the Villain's range, like many Broadway semi-connectors and bottom pocket pairs. Our Hero's c-bet looks good here except he could have bet a bit bigger. A couple of blinds more don't seem like much but it can make a huge difference in fold equity against a recreational player.
The Turn card gives us a flush draw. If we continue to play aggressively, it will be a semi-bluff this time. Whether it's worth it or not – that's an entirely different question. Meanwhile, let's see the River since our opponent is not eager to leave the game just yet.
The River card gives us a flush and the Villain donks for half the pot. If he really is a recreational player, he definitely represents a strong value range. Since our hand isn't the best on this board, the question is: do we have any value here and how should we play the hand?
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Previous poll's results
Last time we were trying to keep our snowmen from melting on a tricky board with two all-ins. This hand is a great example of how one card can ruin our plans and turn our hand into a marginal holding.
As it was played, the best decision on the Turn is to give up because we don't have enough equity even considering our re-draw. But, what's more important, we should have raised on the Flop to maximize our value. With a hand like ours we want to play for the whole stack and we can't push until the pot is big enough. So by raising early we make sure the pot is big enough for us to extract as much value as possible on later streets. Besides, even on boards like this we need protection against more than one opponent.
