Jj

Originally posted by akasoul
Hi,

Here I think that till the turn I was ok, but on the river Im not too sure of what to do

Party, $0.10/$0.20 Limit Hold'em Cash, 5 Players

Preflop: Hero is BB with J J
MP folds, CO raises, BTN calls, SB folds, Hero 3-bets, CO calls, BTN calls

Flop: (9.5 SB) K 4 T (3 players)
Hero bets, CO calls, BTN folds

Turn: (5.8 BB) 6 (2 players)
Hero bets, CO calls

River: (7.8 BB) A (2 players)
Hero???

I'd x/c. You want to see SD, and that A smashes your 3bet range so CO will fold or bluff-raise any unimproved draw, and calling would cost too much there. He will probably call with a timid Kx since it still has sd value vs your overall range. If you x/c and he is very SD bound you'd probably miss a BB from a Tx, but I don't think it's enough value for a bet; it looks pretty thin.

There aren't very many busted draws here, only the spade draws and one straight draw. Throw in the fact that you have the JJ blockers, and that you look showdown bound here. I don't see many bluffs on his part on that board. I don't see many value bets from hands that you have beat either. Nor do I see many hands beating you that will check back. A king is betting.

Checking and folding (C/F) requires a good read on the opponent (and some guts).
Checking and calling (C/C) loses money if my interpretation above is correct.
Betting and folding (B/F) to a raise seems like the natural play without further reads on the opponent.
Betting and calling (B/C) is 100% read based. (What can you beat? Nothing except bluffs!)

I think he will call with

• any king
• any T
• any PP

I don't think he has a K. You should have heard from it before. He might very well have an A. He'll call or raise with that.

Versus his A, you neither win nor lose money compared to checking and calling. He doesn't usually have kings, but still, these are betting if you check. Then there are the monsters. Same thing. C/C and B/F have the same outcome.

Now, versus the T, and the PP, the B/F line show profit. These hands will never bluff raise you (they might on $10/$20).

The conclusion is that this guy must bluff hell of a lot for the C/C line to be better than a B/F. If he is the opposite, then C/F is viable. If he is anywhere near normal, the B/F play is correct.

At any rate, the whole thing is a exercise in math once the read based ranges are in place. I haven't done the math for any complicated range on part of the villain.

/Johan =

Originally posted by YohanN7

• any king
• any T
• any PP

I don't think he has a K. You should have heard from it before. He might very well have an A. He'll call or raise with that.

vs a 3bet range to the CO do you think he would call a Tx? I'd guess he had to be extremely showdown bound to call on that T now, since every broadway has hit the board. I don't think he has enough equity for calling here with Tx, and b/f looks pretty weird. Now I'll ramble on, please correct me if you find many things wrong in my thinking!

Here is my point:

I don't think any hand you beat can call, since Kx doesn't his call flop call turn range, and Tx and lower PP (99-) would fold. So b/f kinda looks like turning your JJ hand into a bad bluff, while b/c looks spewy. A value bet like this is very very thin, and i think it lies in the x/c'ing range. I think your hand is a bluff-catcher now (although we should maybe see what would a thinking player bet range would be after a x in the river by the aggressor).

Lastly, see that you should balance this. Probably if you had a hand like 98s, you'd 3rd barrel here due to the apparent FE that the A as a scary card gives you, while you'd x/c hands like QQ, JJ, KJ, TJ, etc. This, however, makes our bluffing range too wide in these spots, making a 100% call by an opponent who has a decent read on us very profitable (unfortunately, profitable for him).

Just one point. If you think he is not calling with a T or other pairs, then he is not likely to bet them either. Status quo is maintained between B/F and C/F versus these hands. Note, he will not be holding many Aces either with your read (he mostly has two pair with them now), so it really doesn't matter much versus such a tight player.

Only if he is folding or bluffing a lot on the river, the C/C becomes the better play. Or, if he is bad enough to have a K that he checks back - or a tonne of bad aces he is checking back. Then again, he'll have T's and pockets in his range.

If he is a fish (some of them like betting - as a matter of principle - when checked to), the C/C is a good option. These players will probably call with with a T though. A calling station will not bluff, so there the C/C is losing.

The B/F is not a bluff by definition, it's an OOP value bet for which you need extremely little equity to make sense. Moreover, the B/F is not exploitable by calling. It is exploitable only by raising. It's completely different from a value bet IP where you need 55-60% equity. Then you should not bet JJ here obviously. This is the same reason as for that he is not going to value bet anything that you beat for you.

All in all, it's up to the reads.

EDIT: I took this to Equliab and used the standard CO open range. With reasonable ABC assumptions his range is heavily dominated by pairs of some sort. Most of the draws have hit big time.

With a C/C you would target busted non nut flush draws and gutshots only with a check/call. () There are precisely 16 of these using Equilabs ranges and range reduction, only 9 of which are very reasonable. There are about 52 pairs worse than yours.

/Johan =

Originally posted by YohanN7
Just one point. If you think he is not calling with a T or other pairs, then he is not likely to bet them either. Status quo is maintained between B/F and C/F versus these hands. Note, he will not be holding many Aces either with your read (he mostly has two pair with them now), so it really doesn't matter much versus such a tight player.

Only if he is folding or bluffing a lot on the river, the C/C becomes the better play. Or, if he is bad enough to have a K that he checks back - or a tonne of bad aces he is checking back. Then again, he'll have T's and pockets in his range.

If he is a fish (some of them like betting - as a matter of principle - when checked to), the C/C is a good option. These players will probably call with with a T though. A calling station will not bluff, so there the C/C is losing.

The B/F is not a bluff by definition, it's an OOP value bet for which you need extremely little equity to make sense. Moreover, the B/F is not exploitable by calling. It is exploitable only by raising. It's completely different from a value bet IP where you need 55-60% equity. Then you should not bet JJ here obviously. This is the same reason as for that he is not going to value bet anything that you beat for you.

All in all, it's up to the reads.

/Johan =

This is just my point of view about many things. It's definitely not up to the reads. Yes, some things are up to the reads. If he's loose passive, sure, go for a b/f, it's the best line always against these guys when you have slim value. If he's maniac, go for a x/c, he'll bluff you whenever he smells weakness.

But, apart from reads, there is one way this hand is played correctly, based on GTO. Whether it's b/f, x/c, x/r, x/f, or whichever line it is, that's what we are discussing. I now doubt if x/c is actually correct, because it's in the bottom 15% of your range now, so bluffs from an opponent should be very rare since you have SD value with many hands. I think however that x/c is good enough here, but it looks pretty borderline to my eyes.

So, a question Johan. What cards on your range (suppose it is 33+,A2s+,K9s+,QTs+,A5o+,KTo+) would you b/f here?

But, apart from reads, there is one way this hand is played correctly, based on GTO.

Now, a good read puts all of GTO in the shadow. You are playing one opponent (likely to be a bad player), not all of them at the same in real life. If you know in what way he is bad, then take advantage of it. GTO takes you nowhere in this spot. A good read will make you a big fraction of a bet here. GTO will make you a very small fraction. This situation is easily better handled using common sense and reads (as e.g. per your last post) than GTO.

There is an article (gold, with errors), "Advanced river plays" discussing C/C, C/F, etc.

/Johan =

Let me be more precise about what I mean by GTO being close to useless here versus any opponent not playing GTO himself.

The explicit EV formulas for B/F, C/C, C/F are, of course, relatively easy and well known - and they coincide with whatever GTO is in real life. Here is the point: These formulas are extremely sensitive to the behavior of your opponent. This makes a large fraction of a bet each time the situation occurs. It's not like on the early streets, where the optimal (truly optimal) decision and the GTO decision may differ by a very small fraction of a bet.

/Johan =

So, I made a little EV analysis of both hands, thinking that he'll call to our bet with about half of the Tx, many low Ax and many timid Kx. And also thinking he would just value bet us if we x/c. Mostly, since there isn' t much chance he'll fold better hands, i got these values for the EV

EV(bet/fold)=3.4
EV(x/c)=3.2

Simply adding a bit of bluffs when checked to and a couple of value (EDIT: no values, i meant bluff) raises, it's enough for x/c to be more profitable.

About GTO, i strongly disagree with that point of view. I got no reads from the CO in the OP, so why should I assume he's a bad player? what if he's completely unknown? I'm not saying that if we have reads we should do GTO anyway, that would be idiotic. I'm just saying that i'm playing this hand with my knowledge, and the GTO analysis is a valid one, no matter if it is particularly useful vs $0.10/0.20 player pool.

As I said, against unknown, I'd try to play GTO until i get my reads. And in this case, I think that GTO answer is a x/c. If you go for a bet/fold because you assume beforehand he's a LP guy although you got no reads from OP, I think you are assuming a little too much.

♦ Great conversation by the way!

A good read puts GTO in the backseat. This is what I've said, and will keep saying. Even if you go with GTO (no reads), it probably says B/F 95% and B/3-bet 5% or something like that.

/Johan =

I would play bet/fold here and our range that we 3bet preflop and bet 3 times is that strong, that i don't mind him doing a bluffraise on the River. Most of the times i got Kx Ax, a set or something being strong like that and then he pays off and what kind of hands he should be reasonably bluffraising the river with? He must be a complete fool to do so. Even the biggest fish should recognize that on AKT board, after preflop 3bet, it's not worth raising QT on the River and i think he could pay off with QT JT T9s maybe. Kx he doesn't have and Kx he's unlikely to have. He'd certainly raised this hand right away on the Flop and given he's got AJ AQ, he'll just call but not raise and if he raises, we're certainly up against AT or QJ.