6max ZOOM - River play with TPGK

With that price and the nut blocker I'm OK with calling the minraise. He still has a ton of flush combos in his range, but I think it's a profitable call with those odds.

Originally posted by MJPerry
With that price and the nut blocker I'm OK with calling the minraise. He still has a ton of flush combos in his range, but I think it's a profitable call with those odds.

That's what I thinking too. Thanks for your reply MJPerry

This is not at all clear cut in spite of the great odds. As far as value betting goes on the river. AQ is about the rock bottom. All draws got there, all sets, flushes and straights are in his range. well, deduct some for slowplaying of course, also not all play 54s. The point is that if he played a draw - it got there. Since AQ is rock bottom for value, it is rock bottom for bluff catching as well.

I may sound inconsistent sometimes when it comes to bluff catching. We recently had a similar thread, but held a full house facing a river min-raise. That is sort of the top of the range. The same reasoning by several people (They ALWAYS have it, bla bla...) that applied there applies here as well. The difference is that we have the worst bluff catcher. Folding the bad bluff catchers and calling with the good ones prevents from the great overthink, where we try to read players better than the poker gods themselves and try to figure out what they are actually holding. Calling with the good ones and folding the bad also sometimes snaps off misplaced value raises. Here AT and worse in not going to raise for value. (Needless to say, sometimes I am truly blatantly inconsistent :f_biggrin:)

Originally posted by YohanN7
This is not at all clear cut in spite of the great odds. As far as value betting goes on the river. AQ is about the rock bottom. All draws got there, all sets, flushes and straights are in his range. well, deduct some for slowplaying of course, also not all play 54s. The point is that if he played a draw - it got there. Since AQ is rock bottom for value, it is rock bottom for bluff catching as well.

I may sound inconsistent sometimes when it comes to bluff catching. We recently had a similar thread, but held a full house facing a river min-raise. That is sort of the top of the range. The same reasoning by several people (They ALWAYS have it, bla bla...) that applied there applies here as well. The difference is that we have the worst bluff catcher. Folding the bad bluff catchers and calling with the good ones prevents from the great overthink, where we try to read players better than the poker gods themselves and try to figure out what they are actually holding. Calling with the good ones and folding the bad also sometimes snaps off misplaced value raises. Here At and worse in not going to raise for value.

I agree with everything you said, but I think it's still ok to call here (marginally). One of the areas I'm trying to work on is considering pot odds a lot more in these types of situations (and thinking about villain ranges and how they played the hand), rather than spew-calling or folding when it would be +EV to call with those odds. But I hear you and I think I should have checked behind on the river.

Originally posted by beefpuff

Originally posted by YohanN7
This is not at all clear cut in spite of the great odds. As far as value betting goes on the river. AQ is about the rock bottom. All draws got there, all sets, flushes and straights are in his range. well, deduct some for slowplaying of course, also not all play 54s. The point is that if he played a draw - it got there. Since AQ is rock bottom for value, it is rock bottom for bluff catching as well.

I may sound inconsistent sometimes when it comes to bluff catching. We recently had a similar thread, but held a full house facing a river min-raise. That is sort of the top of the range. The same reasoning by several people (They ALWAYS have it, bla bla...) that applied there applies here as well. The difference is that we have the worst bluff catcher. Folding the bad bluff catchers and calling with the good ones prevents from the great overthink, where we try to read players better than the poker gods themselves and try to figure out what they are actually holding. Calling with the good ones and folding the bad also sometimes snaps off misplaced value raises. Here At and worse in not going to raise for value.

I agree with everything you said, but I think it's still ok to call here (marginally). One of the areas I'm trying to work on is considering pot odds a lot more in these types of situations (and thinking about villain ranges and how they played the hand), rather than spew-calling or folding when it would be +EV to call with those odds. But I hear you and I think I should have checked behind on the river.

There is nothing wrong about thinking about their ranges. There is also nothing wrong with going 100% (either calling or folding with all bluff catchers) with your particular read. I just say it is damned difficult to play that way = playing 100% exploitative poker. One price to pay is that you become exploitable yourself.

B y the way, here is one more thing from a game theory perspective: The pot odds you see here is not what decides how much you should call. What you should consider is the opponents investment in a possible bluff. Here is investing roughly 9 to win 20 if he is bluffing. He needs to win close to 1/3 of the time, so you should fold the bottom 1/3 of your bluff catchers. Note that this is much different from what the pot odds may say. (They say fold the bottom 17% or so).

I think I would fold here but since we get so good price, calling is maybe ok, but we will lose with a very high %.

No matter the price we should fold here. How often you see a bluff river raise at nl2 when draws complete?

Originally posted by YohanN7
B y the way, here is one more thing from a game theory perspective: The pot odds you see here is not what decides how much you should call. What you should consider is the opponents investment in a possible bluff. Here is investing roughly 9 to win 20 if he is bluffing. He needs to win close to 1/3 of the time, so you should fold the bottom 1/3 of your bluff catchers. Note that this is much different from what the pot odds may say. (They say fold the bottom 17% or so).

If he is bluffing at this spot, it has to work 41% of the time aprox.
Anyway, about the parte of he needing to win 1/3... why this means we should fold the bottom 1/3 of our bluff catchers? I m not getting the point of this thought.

Sorry, I misread the details. It is 9 to win 13, and I trust your 41% there. This does indeed mean that you should fold your bottom 41% of bluff catchers in order to be balanced. This means that he simply cannot exploit you by bluffing at every opportunity or by never bluffing or anything in between. You can deviate from this in order to exploit (and be exploitable:D).

I would fold to the raise OTR.

Originally posted by YohanN7
Sorry, I misread the details. It is 9 to win 13, and I trust your 41% there. This does indeed mean that you should fold your bottom 41% of bluff catchers in order to be balanced. This means that he simply cannot exploit you by bluffing at every opportunity or by never bluffing or anything in between. You can deviate from this in order to exploit (and be exploitable:D).

As interesting as your GTO stuff is (and actually you need to send me some links because it is) I don't think it's hugely relevant at NL2, where you can play 100% exploitative.

Originally posted by YohanN7
Sorry, I misread the details. It is 9 to win 13, and I trust your 41% there. This does indeed mean that you should fold your bottom 41% of bluff catchers in order to be balanced. This means that he simply cannot exploit you by bluffing at every opportunity or by never bluffing or anything in between. You can deviate from this in order to exploit (and be exploitable:D).

Interesting.
Based on that info, u think AJ here is on the bottom 41% or not? How can we make such calculation?

Originally posted by Afulibador

Originally posted by YohanN7
Sorry, I misread the details. It is 9 to win 13, and I trust your 41% there. This does indeed mean that you should fold your bottom 41% of bluff catchers in order to be balanced. This means that he simply cannot exploit you by bluffing at every opportunity or by never bluffing or anything in between. You can deviate from this in order to exploit (and be exploitable:D).

Interesting.
Based on that info, u think AJ here is on the bottom 41% or not? How can we make such calculation?

This is easy - away from the table. Just write down the hands you take that line with. Then rank them by pure hand strength. This particular had, I am not even sure the last bet is okay for value, so for me, this is a clear GTO fold. I'd need a read to call. (And population reads count too, but I am still folding.)

Originally posted by MJPerry

Originally posted by YohanN7
Sorry, I misread the details. It is 9 to win 13, and I trust your 41% there. This does indeed mean that you should fold your bottom 41% of bluff catchers in order to be balanced. This means that he simply cannot exploit you by bluffing at every opportunity or by never bluffing or anything in between. You can deviate from this in order to exploit (and be exploitable:D).

As interesting as your GTO stuff is (and actually you need to send me some links because it is) I don't think it's hugely relevant at NL2, where you can play 100% exploitative.

It is certainly not hugely relevant. But it is relevant, and I'll list my reasons:

• In this particular hand, I am pointing out what is an error whether you play 100% exploitative poker or GTO. Pot odds are to be handled very differently depending on whether you get raised or face a straight bet. Very much so on the river.
• A large portion of hands posted here is about whether we should call a bet. Everyone here (except me) is trying to figure out whether villain is bluffing (they always have it here, the bet is too large to be for value, yada yada yada, ...). I provide an alternative that takes away guessing and even takes away extremely silly plays.
• Even a master hand reader will at times be uncertain (do they really always have it here, can't that overbet be for value after all, ...).
• Even playing NL2 Zoom you encounter guys with $25 stacks on four tables. These players are better than almost any live NL1000 players you will encounter. Make no mistake, they have stats on you and will try to squeeze out every cent extra they can get.
• When you move up from NL2 to NL5 to NL10 to NL25, things change. There is no harm in having knowledge about advanced poker in advance.
• You can't make any big mistakes playing GTO. Sure, you miss out on a thin extra value bets, tight folds. But then just go with the read first and turn to GTO whenever you are unsure.

That said, perfect 100% exploitative poker will beat every GTO player - as long fish are around. The GTO player will still win because he cannot, by definition, lose, but not as much as you.

Originally posted by YohanN7

Originally posted by Afulibador

Originally posted by YohanN7
Sorry, I misread the details. It is 9 to win 13, and I trust your 41% there. This does indeed mean that you should fold your bottom 41% of bluff catchers in order to be balanced. This means that he simply cannot exploit you by bluffing at every opportunity or by never bluffing or anything in between. You can deviate from this in order to exploit (and be exploitable:D).

Interesting.
Based on that info, u think AJ here is on the bottom 41% or not? How can we make such calculation?

This is easy - away from the table. Just write down the hands you take that line with. Then rank them by pure hand strength. This particular had, I am not even sure the last bet is okay for value, so for me, this is a clear GTO fold. I'd need a read to call. (And population reads count too, but I am still folding.)

Maaaaaaaan, I just did it on this hand -> https://forums.pokerstrategy.com/forum/thread.php?postid=2256759#post2256759 before reading this.
Check this out and say if I did it right ♠_drink:

Yohan, also liked the thinking of going w ur reads first, and gto when not sure about what to do. This gives us always something truthful to handle in our hands.