Call all in with straight on the river?

Hello Feathersnake ! Nice pseudo

Standard call pre.
OTF I wouldn't raise anything here as you are completely capped on this texture ! It's gonna be hard enough to play by calling and it's gonna be so easy for him to float not to mention he has all the nuts.
As played your turn barrel should be bigger if you decide to keep on.
River is really meh, I'd fold because he is supposed to have a lot of flushes and some Kx with which you're gonna split anyway. Hard to find enough bluffs.

Against a min-raise I defend K7'o too.
The rest of the hand I think you got played when you're trying to play him.

Flop: I prefer to check-call OTF and lead OTT on good cards like this. If you want to show strength and bluff, I think this is the way.
OTT I think you can bet 2x pot. That 1/2 looks very weak after the check-raise. He has position and won't fold sets, DP here to 1/2. I'm curious to know what you'd do if he raises OTT.
River: He didn't buy that turn bet for sure. You tried to bluff him and he used his position very well to put pressure on you. You can be behind OTR easily. I LOVE his river shove. LOVE LOVE LOVE.
You are not inducing anything by checking. You check-raise OTF, lead OTT and check OTR. If you had it (I mean, the flush) when the 9 comes you would ship it. That's what makes sense.
He check call twice and ship on a check on a scare card. He can definitely have the flush.

You already got some good replies here and I pretty much agree with those. You spent some time to analyze this spot and calculate some EVs and such, so I could try to better comment on your thought process and stuff.

First, you didn't give any info on villain. You said that they seem to open about 20% range no matter what the position is, and for me that is quite hard to believe. Additionally, if the other 4 guys are totally fishy it doesn't mean this guy would be. You can't just put villain on a top 30% range if you have no info. That would be quite nitty BTN open, even when considering the population tendencies, and the population opens the BTN quite nitty (still higher than 30% though).

Then it is quite difficult to understand how you have created these ranges. You don't separate whether they are off-suit or suited, but I guess you did that on purpose so it would include both? At least it looks like you used the equities from equilab with both off-suit and suited hands added?
Now, you said that after he called your raise you put him on "AA, KK, QQ, JJ, TT, AK, AQ, AJ, A9, KQ, KJ, KT, K9, Q9, J9, t9, 99, 98s, K8s, QJ, QT, JT"... According to my Equilab that would be a range of almost 18%.
In your EV calculation you put that villain folds over half of his range that he did cbet with, so if villain's opening range was just 30% you can not use the above-mentioned range to check your equity. Even if we assume villain would cbet 100% of his 30% opening range, and would fold over half vs your raise, he would have less than 15% range left, not 18% like you have.

Also what you need to know is that the equities you get from Equilab are your rundown equities (from that point forward till the showdown, assuming there is no further action). Since there can be further action and you have some reverse implied odds and could end up losing with straight vs flush, you can't calculate the EV of your semibluff if the raise is not all-in.
And yea I wouldn't call that a value raise since you have a draw..

Are you doing the same thing OTT?

Then OTR.. While it could be true that villain's turn calling range has only 20% flushes or AK, it doesn't mean that he will shove the river with his whole range. This board is straighty and it is flushy, do you think he would shove there with overpairs, 2pair, sets, straights? Probably not. So you need to figure out the range he shoves with and then see your equity against that range. He probably shoves those flushes and then some busted draws or weak made hands that have very little showdown equity.

and this is why you never try to make anyone fold anything on nl5

villain is totally uncapped, hero has far from the nuts given the respective ranges and runout, and yet hero is calling an 1.8x overbet jam because "don't believe him". villain's galaxy brain thought process turning his 2pair into a bluff didn't quite work out, did it? this is not a great hand to be turning into a bluff here anyway...

Who knows, Tomaloc, maybe villain was valuing thin. Frankly.

Originally posted by Tomaloc
this is not a great hand to be turning into a bluff here anyway...

I haven't seen a hand in this forum that people say "you played it well by turning your hand into a bluff".
But maybe it is because most of the hands people post here are NL50- where bluff and fold equity are twins separated at birth.

i mean that more in the sense of the first hands you wanna consider turning into bluffs are hands with a ♥.
ATo AJo AQo with the A:h make decent candidates, they're 1 pair hands which are unlikely to be good very often and block villain's nutflush combinations.

now, in "our games", of course i'm always just jamming the nutflush otr, but if you are playing "very tough opponents" you should check them at some frequency. also, some opponents randomly check the nutflush otr, so having blockers still helps.
next candidates are other hands with one heart, like J:hA.

that's probably enough bluff combinations. twopairs might not be good at showdown very often here, but that's not a good enough reason to turn them into bluffs.

Originally posted by zetozinho

Originally posted by Tomaloc
this is not a great hand to be turning into a bluff here anyway...

I haven't seen a hand in this forum that people say "you played it well by turning your hand into a bluff".
But maybe it is because most of the hands people post here are NL50- where bluff and fold equity are twins separated at birth.

There are several reasons for good bluffs showed here being so scarces : people just don't know or they know and thus don't show, they succeed so they trust them etc.
It's possible to have bluffs and FE at any stake, just not in the same spots. I keep telling NL2 is the stake where the population has the highest fold to third barrel. I'm not making this up.
Well maybe Lemon did.

So even CS fold a lot but sometimes make ridiculous calls because they tend to reason in absolute order of hands, not relative, I mean they're gonna say "I've top pair here it's strong" even on what should be a scary board, whereas on a really dry board they might not understand how wide they need to float on the opposite.

Anyway the rule is that you don't turn a decent hand into a bluff, especially when opponents aren't capable of folding good hands. That's why we always say "don't turn this or that combo into a bluff". Bluffing hands are supposed to be bad hands that have nothing to lose most of the time. Even at higher stakes. You don't try to make someone fold TP when you have the second pair. That's also why you hear so often "don't turn this combo into a bluff" in fact. The said combo often happen to be too high on our range for that use.

the reason why we mostly don't turn decent hands into bluffs is because, in most cases, we have plenty of worse hands that make up better candidates to fill up our "bluff quota" with.

in this runout the preflop aggressor shouldn't really have any real air hands (we probably don't have to defend A:hx vs the check/raise), so we have to turn some one pair hands into bluffs. we have some fold equity against better hands (idiot end straights with 98, two pairs, maybe the occasional TT)

One thing I notice in my games is that the higher I play the less I go to showdown. Players try to outplay their opponents more often. I often open some NL500 tables and just enjoy watching it. They are so agressive. Take notes when I can see the cards.
I've survided so far without putting myself into bluff spots often. I bluff ocasionally, like every good player should do.
The one thing I think it is the most difficult thing to master in poker is to find good bluffing spots. Then comes the sizings on those spots.
I've been digging and found some videos of a french player Floxy once mencioned here: Alexander Luneau.
He has some NL1k- NL25k videos, HU too, but I don't know HU and it seems extremely difficult. Another difficulty I found was to understand anything he says when talking through the hands

Theoretically (so aside from the question that villain might be too bad to fold and all), we sould have a few bluffs in pretty much any spot except when the runout doesn't really gives us a real bluffing range or villain a decent folding range.
What you are calling "good bluffing spots" then are spots where you think you can overbluff. As you move up in micros and low stakes it becomes more and more important to find them indeed, like good overbetting spots. There is of course a link between the two.

Alexonmoon best player ever. ♠_thumbsup:

Thanks guys! Some responses on my original thought process on your questions:

Originally posted by la55i
Then it is quite difficult to understand how you have created these ranges. You don't separate whether they are off-suit or suited, but I guess you did that on purpose so it would include both? At least it looks like you used the equities from equilab with both off-suit and suited hands added?
Now, you said that after he called your raise you put him on "AA, KK, QQ, JJ, TT, AK, AQ, AJ, A9, KQ, KJ, KT, K9, Q9, J9, t9, 99, 98s, K8s, QJ, QT, JT"... According to my Equilab that would be a range of almost 18%.
In your EV calculation you put that villain folds over half of his range that he did cbet with, so if villain's opening range was just 30% you can not use the above-mentioned range to check your equity. Even if we assume villain would cbet 100% of his 30% opening range, and would fold over half vs your raise, he would have less than 15% range left, not 18% like you have.

Also what you need to know is that the equities you get from Equilab are your rundown equities (from that point forward till the showdown, assuming there is no further action). Since there can be further action and you have some reverse implied odds and could end up losing with straight vs flush, you can't calculate the EV of your semibluff if the raise is not all-in.
And yea I wouldn't call that a value raise since you have a draw..

Are you doing the same thing OTT?

Then OTR.. While it could be true that villain's turn calling range has only 20% flushes or AK, it doesn't mean that he will shove the river with his whole range. This board is straighty and it is flushy, do you think he would shove there with overpairs, 2pair, sets, straights? Probably not. So you need to figure out the range he shoves with and then see your equity against that range. He probably shoves those flushes and then some busted draws or weak made hands that have very little showdown equity.

Yes, I didn't separate to include both suited and off suit, but I see that he would probably not c-bet with the entire range.

When it comes to equities, I indeed use the equity for playing entirely until the end. I guess better would be to have a look on equity graphs for the next street to see how much time I can continue betting with and how much time I am running into risk of calling better hand than I have. I am then doing the same at turn.

Originally posted by Tomaloc
i mean that more in the sense of the first hands you wanna consider turning into bluffs are hands with a ♥.
ATo AJo AQo with the A:h make decent candidates, they're 1 pair hands which are unlikely to be good very often and block villain's nutflush combinations.

now, in "our games", of course i'm always just jamming the nutflush otr, but if you are playing "very tough opponents" you should check them at some frequency. also, some opponents randomly check the nutflush otr, so having blockers still helps.
next candidates are other hands with one heart, like J:hA.

that's probably enough bluff combinations. twopairs might not be good at showdown very often here, but that's not a good enough reason to turn them into bluffs.

Thanks for this! This definitely gives insight to what bluffs I might be facing and also what hands I could be bluffing with if I come to the same situation on villains side.

Originally posted by zetozinho
Against a min-raise I defend K7'o too.
The rest of the hand I think you got played when you're trying to play him.

Flop: I prefer to check-call OTF and lead OTT on good cards like this. If you want to show strength and bluff, I think this is the way.
OTT I think you can bet 2x pot. That 1/2 looks very weak after the check-raise. He has position and won't fold sets, DP here to 1/2. I'm curious to know what you'd do if he raises OTT.
River: He didn't buy that turn bet for sure. You tried to bluff him and he used his position very well to put pressure on you. You can be behind OTR easily. I LOVE his river shove. LOVE LOVE LOVE.
You are not inducing anything by checking. You check-raise OTF, lead OTT and check OTR. If you had it (I mean, the flush) when the 9 comes you would ship it. That's what makes sense.
He check call twice and ship on a check on a scare card. He can definitely have the flush.

Thanks as well! Normally, I would not be shoving a flush on river, I would be betting smaller, but I will definitely add this to the repertoire

Originally posted by Qwetzalcoatl

Flop: I read the bet from BU as standard C-bet, not really restricting his range. I raise for value for my OESD.

Couldn't pass this.
There may not be as many cbets as you think. F.e., 7s6s would check and maybe delay cbet. Hands like Mid pair + SD probably check as well. Cbetting range here is not that weak.

How can you raise for value here? What is value?

Originally posted by AthleticAZ

Originally posted by Qwetzalcoatl

Flop: I read the bet from BU as standard C-bet, not really restricting his range. I raise for value for my OESD.

Couldn't pass this.
There may not be as many cbets as you think. F.e., 7s6s would check and maybe delay cbet. Hands like Mid pair + SD probably check as well. Cbetting range here is not that weak.

How can you raise for value here? What is value?

Hmm, you definitely have a point with the c-bet range restriction here. Previously I have taken c-bet mostly as a very standard almost 100% of the flops kind of a thing from some players.

Regarding the value, makes sense - I am not raising for value, but as a semi-bluff. Previously, I have been thinking that the value here would be in the 20% of the cases that I would hit the draw as it might be more difficult to get a call if it indeed hits. Thanks!