Call the check/raise or not? And why

Personally I'd prefer 3betting to calling from SB with a playable hand here. Once he calls and discards three, the question isn't whether he'll ever c/r two pair for value, it's whether he'll ever c/r an unimproved pair as a bluff. You're polarized here because you discarded one, so he's burning money if he'll c/r two pair. You have to call 50c to win $2.25, so you only need to be good 50/(50+225) = 18% of the time to break even, but I doubt that he's bluffing that often, because he should realize that he's isolating himself against the top of your range by check raising. You could probably work out the GTO solution to this if you were feeling keen, or at least keener than me

Don't you have his XR postdraw stat? And may be at least his postdraw aggression frequency ?

Most of the time the SB will show you QQQ+ but some players do C/R with aces up and some players do C/R bluff. If you only bet aces-up+ and bluffs so as to make the SB indifferent with an unimproved pair ( say KK ), then so as to not be exploitable by the SB's C/R bluffs, 777 will be in your calling range. I think if you caught an ace instead of the three of hearts, you'd be in a tougher spot and might even find the fold button if you believe the SB would rarely C/R bluff. Change your hand to 222Ax and you can find a fold.

As mentioned, a C/R by the SB w/ any two pairs is a mistake and obviously you should never check back any hand as good as aces up+ from this spot.

The pot will have $3.10 after you call the C/R ( after the rake ), so you need to have a probability of $0.50/$3.1 ~ 0.16129 of being good here ( excluding the value of extra FPPs and the virtually uncalculable future EV by calling vs folding in future hands ).

Originally posted by bigpooch
Most of the time the SB will show you QQQ+ but some players do C/R with aces up and some players do C/R bluff. If you only bet aces-up+ and bluffs so as to make the SB indifferent with an unimproved pair ( say KK ), then so as to not be exploitable by the SB's C/R bluffs, 777 will be in your calling range. I think if you caught an ace instead of the three of hearts, you'd be in a tougher spot and might even find the fold button if you believe the SB would rarely C/R bluff. Change your hand to 222Ax and you can find a fold.

As mentioned, a C/R by the SB w/ any two pairs is a mistake and obviously you should never check back any hand as good as aces up+ from this spot.

The pot will have $3.10 after you call the C/R ( after the rake ), so you need to have a probability of $0.50/$3.1 ~ 0.16129 of being good here ( excluding the value of extra FPPs and the virtually uncalculable future EV by calling vs folding in future hands ).

Thanks for that!

His x/r is 50% -- but that includes this hand, so I doubt it means much after only 250-odd hands.
His AFq(ad) is 37%, AF(ad) is 2 -- not much to go on.

As jb points out, it is a bit much to expect that at this level people would even bluff (or x/r with worse) 16% of the time.

His pre-draw calling range *may* be a bit wider, too -- his vpip in SB is 35%, but still I think he's just calling w/ worse trips.

This hand was so close to the borderline.

I always feel like such a mark when I fold these...
(and worse when I call and lose).

All through December I had a real problem calling post-draw too much.

Cheers,
--VS

You raise from CO really, so his important predraw stat is Fold to overall steal from SB and if you have it - Fold to CO steal from SB. SB vpip is virtually irrelevant on those limits as it includes rather frequent overlimp and complete from SB.

XR stat is very strange. How many samples does it include? Not overall hands, but ofc hands where he check OOP and receive bet from opp?

I'm not sure how to tell how many situations he COULD have x/r
I suspect it is not many.

The sample size is 260 hands roughly -- 81 at this limit, and 188 at $0.10/$0.20

His FBB2COsteal is 80%, but total sample size is so small.

The main thing I get from this is a note:

I think that the main Q still remains (amended slightly)
How likely is he to x/r worse as a bluff or for (presumed) value?

The conclusion seems to be:
"Not enough to make this a profitable call"

I intended to try this today the other way 'round. From the BB -- call, D3 vs D1 and x/r post-draw.
The only times I could villain checked behind.

Cheers,
--VS

Why is it not profitable just to check back after the draw?
If you can't stand a C/R then why is betting for value profitable?
Do you really think he will call with worse after the draw?
Just a thought.

Well, they DO call with worse -- a lot.

I would expect Queens up + to check/call
Even trips that beat me could check/call

Also, a fair number of players at this limit raise FDs pre-draw, and CBet them, made or not. If a player is known for that, opponents in the blinds can even call post-draw w/ unimproved pairs. I don't think that this particular opponent would have seen me do that, however.

Following this discussion, I had a look at my lifetime vs post-draw 3Bets.
I can't tell if these are x/r or not, but overall trips don't do so well.
In 249 tries calling a 3Bet post-draw holding only trips, I won a mere 70 of them.
Only AAAxx was break-even.

I looked in my database to see what my winrate is when holding trips and betting post-draw and going to showdown (ie villain called)
Of 982 times, I won 930 of them. That seems astonishing -- my query is likely wrong somehow.

I chose hands where:
I held trips
My post-draw action was 'Bet'
Went to showdown.

There were a further 1226 hands where I held trips, bet post-draw and got folds.

When OOP lately, I've been following your suggestion check/calling these vs opponents who would be likely to bet out with worse

It seems to be improving my $ take, but I get a lot of check-behinds that might have called a bet, so it is hard to tell.
With trips where post-draw action is x/c I'm 109 for 237 -- and just about exactly b/e

When I held trips and checked and wtsd unmolested, I'm 301 for 369

All of this suggests that if you hold trips -- bet post draw unless you have a REALLY good read that opponent will do it for you, or that you're already behind.

In the hand under discussion, I did not have any indication that I was behind, so the bet is OK.

Just for curiosity, I had a look to see how I faired check/raising trips.
I won 34 of 40 of those -- mostly QQQ+ with a smattering of weaker ones.

Now, after all that...
BigPooch says you only need to be right 18% of the time to be profitable, and jb puts it at about 18.

For ALL of the trips where I played bet/call I won on average 27% of the time.
I only bet/folded 3 times -- I clearly can improve my bet/call percentage by folding more

So I need to do a bit more work here.

Thanks for asking the question!

I never would dug this deep otherwise.
--VS

So about your question there are 3 lines of answers I suppose:

1. What should you do against typical opp of this limit? Answer is fold, he wouldn't have enough worst and bluff hands. Answer was from jbpatzer and bigpooch

2. What should you do according to GTO? Answer is call, I suppose. Otherwise you are exploitable. You probably should bet here at least AAxx+ and you shouldn't fold 50% of your range for such a small raise. (Don't forget: you shouldn't play GTO in this situation, cause opp didn't play GTO and bluff too little.) Both jbpatzer and bigpooch made some hints about it.

3. What should you do against this particular opponent? For me it's more interesting point, cause you win when you adjust to your partticular opponent. Here we need his stats and your notes on him. And here we don't have enough stats from you.

We need his predraw stats to understand his predraw range. I don't know what stats are available for you (I never use PH) but I guess you should have some relevant stats.
There is no need to put SQL query cause you can't do this later on when playing. Some standard stats for his SB position or his overall stat.
CPDR: Call Pre-Draw Raise. Overall and it's great if you have it for his SB position (BTW he is on SB, why do you give us his BB stats like FBB2COsteal?)
Fold SB to steal
Whatever else you have relevant for his predraw

The same for postdraw.
"His AFq(ad) is 37%". It's rather large for his 28% vpip, so he is (for me) more aggresive than average, but ofc is not a maniac. His donkbet and may be contbet is also intristing here.
Most important - his CR stat. (BTW If it's really 50% it's definitely a call from your side.) And 260 hands IMO enough not to have real knowledge but some kind of a flavour of his check-raise.
I don't know PH but as a rule any HUD software give number of relevant samples for any stat something like 7/125.
I think for your future here is a situation where you could really make some SQL just to understand could you belive CR stat from PH, and why it give you so large number here. BTW if anybody really have 50% of CR I think you could have some notes like "CR very frequently" for him.

Originally posted by Anykey444
Overall and it's great if you have it for his SB position (BTW he is on SB, why do you give us his BB stats like FBB2COsteal?)
Fold SB to steal
Whatever else you have relevant for his predraw

That was a mis-type -- the stat was FSB2COsteal

The stats are only relevant if there are enough samples.
I cannot tell from my hud (or elsewhere) how many opportunities he had to c/r

I'm guessing that in 250 hands it is fairly low. So 50% might be 1 out of two even.

I was hoping to do some more math to find out if I really am ahead calling 3Bets post-draw w/ trips (x/r or b/c)

But it's late, and I'm off to bed.

Cheers,
--VS

The problem with your approach that you could find only what is profitable to do at the current limit in average. It's much more profitable to adjust to your opponent, not to the limit. And as soon as you go to the next limit profitable actions could become unprofitable and vice versa. BTW it's ofc better to split your research by limits.

You're quite correct, but I'm just not convinced 250 hands (in this case) is enough to go on.

If I ignore his play at other limits it is down to 81.

Cheers,
--VS

Bet is obvious since he will catch 2 pairs more often than trips+ (16% vs 12.7% if I remember correctly) and there is a chance he will call you with unimproved one pair.

If his range is QQ-AA and I would guess KK-AA for most players, than It doesn't make a difference whether you have 222 or JJJ, does it? But side cards does as Bigpooch mentioned. I would tought fold with Ace as a side card since now It's less likely his X/R AAup and unlikely fold trips unless I have a good info that this player is only X/R strong.

although not familiar at all with 5CD, i guess trips 7 is too far up your valuebetting range (i guess you'd have a lot of twopair style hands you'd be betting), so from a GTO standpoint, I'd say it's a bet/call [unless it falls exactly into one of those ultraweird bet/3bet bluffs haha]. the best thing you can do is ask yourself what kind of hands you can valuebet after drawing only 1 card. then, from there, the 16% bottom of your range [odds you get to call] should be thin valuebets with bet/fold [GTO-wise, you can expand it to higher numbers if you believe he underbluffs]

id say it looks like a call to me.

There are a few -- very few -- players at this limit that can x/r as a bluff with worse.

There are a few who can x/r for value with 2 pair.

For the most part, they have hit trips or better, and in this case tips is usually better than trip 7s, as almost no one calls a UTG raise OOP w/ less than QQxxx

I think that these hands are bet/fold.

I just have such a tough time folding.

When I have 300 or more hands on a player, I can fold in these spots much more easily.

--VS