50 euro 88 hand vs an unknown

Hi all,

I don't think it's a clear vb at all. If you're valuebetting here, whenever you check back turn you're always folding the river.

Just check back and pick off river bets.

Call down Ax, and fold KQ seems legit.

How isn't it a value bet?

2 FDs to call, Ax is unlikely for most opponents or at least like half of the combos. By checking turn we give away free cards for him to hit with his overcards also-say he flatted Kx, QT/QJ/Q9.

Also-what's the difference between calling down A2o here f.e. and KQ? They are both bluff catchers and I don't expect the average opponent to be c/r 7x and follow with another bet on the turn. Maybe u refer if villain is to check/raise here with a FD and follow up on any turn?

Originally posted by chenny8888
Hi all,

I don't think it's a clear vb at all. If you're valuebetting here, whenever you check back turn you're always folding the river.

Just check back and pick off river bets.

Call down Ax, and fold KQ seems legit.

he´s not exploiting you. for sure an easy value bet. i dont balance. plus this is a hand to go for 3 streets normally. since most villains wont have Ax because they would re steal pre.

Really, with 25bb? that doesn't sound great to me, Ax plays so well postflop even OOP, imo because of the inherent value of ace high.

Of course, I have less experience in this format than you guys!

PS: he is exploiting us IMO. I think we'll find our opponents folding a lot on the turn with worse hands, which is also exploitation. When he raises we are almost always beat, but losing value vs worse hands is not great.

Originally posted by chenny8888
Really, with 25bb? that doesn't sound great to me, Ax plays so well postflop even OOP, imo because of the inherent value of ace high.

Of course, I have less experience in this format than you guys!

PS: he is exploiting us IMO. I think we'll find our opponents folding a lot on the turn with worse hands, which is also exploitation. When he raises we are almost always beat, but losing value vs worse hands is not great.

he´s very unlikely to have Ax or sets . all 7x flushdraws call turn and a lot of times he´l call lighter. i get your point with something like 66 or K3 here, but 88 you can go for 3 streets here most of the time comfortably

Agree with kurkkabin, clear valuebet on the turn. There are very few Ax combos in his preflop calling range, and even less pocket pairs. 73 is rarely calling preflop either so there is a very, very small amount of his range that beats us. When we bet the turn we can be called by 7x, 5x (something like 5K, 56, 45) heart draws, KsXs, and even some bare Kx.

When he raises turn we're in a pretty sticky spot though, if this is readless, recs can call preflop with hands like A5 and A3, and call flop with 57, 46. But that is such a small part of his range, consisting of like 35 combos (If we discount some of the A5 and A3 to allow for him 3b shoving). But then again a c/c flop and c/r turn is such a strong line to take, I guess he can do it with 7sXs and 5hXh but I think that's an even smaller part of his range. His betsizing is interesting as well, straight up check/shoving it rather than raising to a more standard size, indicates a desire to gain fold equity or protect his hand, which pushes it more towards a pair+draw type of hand imo. I've typed whether I call or fold about 4 times, and subsequently deleted it, I can't decide ♦

Talked this hand over with a friend. I see the light now, I agree now that it's definitely a valuebet turn. Especially when we can check back a lot of worse hands than this and still call a river bet. I definitely see us getting valuetowned here a decent amount though, but there's too much value to be gotten to check back.

BTW, a bit of a rant here: I'm not too concerned with balance generally, however it's still nice to have it somewhere in the back of your mind to allow yourself to make strategic adjustments in game. For example: we have 5 matches with this player and find that he's a competent NL player. We bet turn here with 88, river comes an offsuit 2 he checks and we shove, and get called (win/lose doesn't matter).

Couple games later similar spot he bet flop check back turn with 65o or even 76o. He overbet jams a blank river into us, we can think further and decide whether it's because he thinks our range is capped (aka call), or if he takes the next level adjustment and valueshoves super wide (think T7s or K7), aka fold.

PPS: if he's check/raising or shoving this turn (which we don't expect), I think we have to polarize more with our valuebetting, though 88 isn't necessarily a check back still.