River-filled flush

Hey,

Should be a pretty straightforward river value bet here, just keep sizing on the smaller side given flush completes on the river. 1/2 pot is usually fine.

Opponent is never folding a flush here btw, but he also has enough worse Ax hands in his range given his flop line that we should be value-betting.

We are afraid that weaker Ax would not call a bigger river bet?

I think we are more afraid that he will raise our bet with a flush and we would have to fold, I guess.

That's the concept of thin value betting, if I get it right (to still bet river, even if we're not sure we hold the best hand)

A) Bet, as I did, hoping that he will call with weaker Ace, but will fold small flushes, even if he's got it. Like expected in normal poker.

Not expected. Put yourself in his shoes. You're facing a river bet, so you're going to fold 7h6h but call with ATo?

Originally posted by Zhuvyte
I think we are more afraid that he will raise our bet with a flush and we would have to fold, I guess.

You shouldn't miss value bets because you're afraid of getting raised. The amount of times you're called and win should more than make up for the amount of times he happens to have the nuts (it's NL10 so let's assume him bluff-raising the river is on the rare side).

I think this hand reveals some holes in my sub-optimal river play (or at least I feel it to be so).

If I was in his shoes:

1) I don't think I'd have called Turn with 7h6h. It's against the odds, at least if I only think about getting flush, isn't it?. But maybe I should - after a scary Ace showed up, it could be easily a delayed donk bet with air. On the river several good things can happen - flush fills up or he checks.

Let's say I did call. If he bets again, I need to put him on a high Ace, delayed set or a flush. And here we arrive at "holes":

2) I think I would call with AT+ a la "He's bluffing after an unsuccessful delayed donk" (although there's barely a hand that I'm beating - I'm going down against any set, flush and same AT+. And he shouldn't bet a lower Ace himself).
3) I think I would fold all flushes below ThXh a la "He's not afraid of the possibility of the flush on the table. He has to hold a superb flush himself to do this bet" (although I beat sets, all Aces, two pairs and a nice portion of lower flushes).

I think I quite analysed this situation from the other side by myself, but if anyone could please indicate some flaws in my thought process that would be nice - I'd like to avoid drawing a false conclusions by myself.

Originally posted by Zhuvyte
2) I think I would call with AT+ a la "He's bluffing after an unsuccessful delayed donk" (although there's barely a hand that I'm beating - I'm going down against any set, flush and same AT+. And he shouldn't bet a lower Ace himself).

3) I think I would fold all flushes below ThXh a la "He's not afraid of the possibility of the flush on the table. He has to hold a superb flush himself to do this bet" (although I beat sets, all Aces, two pairs and a nice portion of lower flushes).

You must see how these don't make sense? You fold your strongest hands and call with your weakest. If Ax is a bluffcatcher, so too is a small flush.

It makes even less sense when you consider that if we hold Ax, he's less likely to have top pair; if we hold two hearts he's less likely to have a flush.

That's not even taking into account that he has a ton of AQ/AJ type hands in his range after he calls pre twice and checks back the flop.

Folding a weak flush but calling with TP is nonsense.
We should call with the flush.

Have u considered bigger bet on river ? Because TBH his range is very poor of made flushes like up to 6 combos K♥:Q♥:, K♥:J♥:, Q♥:J♥:, J♥:T♥:, K♥:T♥: Q♥:T♥: and this is looses scenarion considering there is A♥: on the board. so Imo his range is very AX heavy and bigger bet might strongly increase ur long term winrate , but if i am wrong someone please correct me

Oh and forgot to mention , hand played perfectly WP

what about cbetting flop? or do we prefer to check back AK for showdown and cbet something like KQs or AJ or even all the weakest 3B bluffs we have?

All PPs will call and some Broadways that we dominate will fold. Check sounds ok.

Originally posted by mattyvx
what about cbetting flop? or do we prefer to check back AK for showdown and cbet something like KQs or AJ or even all the weakest 3B bluffs we have?

We often have the best hand and we don't have any backdoor equity (apart from the runner-runner wheel but that's hardly worth mentioning). Cbetting in this spot keeps in hands like 98 and 77 while folding out hands like AJ and KQ, which we don't want.

EDIT: I wrote that not noticing we were talking about a 3bet pot but my point stands.

so whats our cbetting range on this dry board, only 3 combos of AK (hh/cc/ss) and 18 combos of QQ+? - debatable if we want to use JJ too which makes 24 combos value and AQ to make +3 bluffs

even if we throw in JTs,87s it's still low on bluff combos... (counting 98 as a value / protection)

Looks good to bet T and R but sizing is probably too high

Originally posted by mattyvx
so whats our cbetting range on this dry board, only 3 combos of AK (hh/cc/ss) and 18 combos of QQ+? - debatable if we want to use JJ too which makes 24 combos value and AQ to make +3 bluffs

even if we throw in JTs,87s it's still low on bluff combos... (counting 98 as a value / protection)

That's assuming we cbet QQ 100% of the time. It's NL10 though don't worry about balancing your flop cbet range in 3bet pots.

You do not have to warry about exploitability on that limit and on that superdry flop.

I don't play at that limit and I'm interested to understand some better game theory for moving up to 50nl as i'm close to shotting from 25 at the moment - also it's good to understand where our advice is founded from. e.g. why isn't AK a cbet, showdown value etc? and hows our range playing

so we either need to cbet more overcards or check more overpaired to become more balanced

You do not achieve much by cbetting flop. That should be enough to stop the "unexploitable" tactics...