Kate & Tony: Is her hero call with K2o too insane?
This time, Kate and Tony talk about a king-high hero call on the river at a $0.50/$1 table, discussing if the call is profitable or not in the long run.
Kate: Hey Tony! I've just played another tricky hand and would like to get your opinion on it. The player in the small blind left a rather weak impression on me and she played roughly 40% of her hands in each position.
Therefore, I've increased my open-raising range on the button to around 70%.
We both miss the flop. I don't see any reason to bluff with the best hand. Therefore, I decide to check, hoping to get to a cheap showdown. The turn goes check-check and just like that we've reached the river. At this point she wakes up and fires a big bet. I would have to be ahead in 30% of the cases to make a profitable call and I'm convinced that's the case here. In my opinion there are enough hands like 
or 
in her range.
I'm pretty happy with my call. What made me a bit sad though is that she left the table rather quickly after it, probably embarrassed because her bluff was caught. In hindsight, I think I should have just folded. 
What do you think?
Tony: Hi Kate! It really seems you are only playing tricky hands. Sadly, I'm once again not 100% sure about your call. I think you're underestimating that weaker players tend to bet the river with all sorts of hands in a spot like this because they simply don't know what else to do.
In this particular case, that could be 
or something like 
. Often value and bluff ranges sort of blend into each other in such a spot. Therefore, 
is simply too weak for such a call because you're also behind against a lot of bluffs in her range.
Also, I'm not really happy with your pre-flop play. If your opponent tends to defend too many hands (40% in the small blind), then you simply don't exploit that by attacking the blinds with even weaker hands. Blind steals with weaker hands are profitable when your fold equity is higher than against solid opponents. So from my point of view, you didn't really play well in this spot but had the luck to get a good result, making you look a genius.
Kate: Thanks a lot for your input! I will definitely think about it. Are you interested in joining me on a parabolic flight this weekend? It's a really great experience! For a moment, you get to feel what it's like to be weightless.
Tony: That sounds interesting. Count me in!
Is Tony once again too pessimistic about this spot? What do you think about Kate's call and her raise pre-flop?
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