Can you call this $5k river shove with middle pair?

Today we're playing for a five-figure pot in a single hand and have to make the closest of calls... or not. The decision is yours!

It's been too long but now we're back with another review of a hand played at the highest stakes of online poker. And there's something new to take into account today: the hand was played at the exact same table we reviewed last time.

Consequently, the same players are around as well, so no further introduction is needed. If you don't remember exactly who we're dealing with since it's been a while, just read up on the players involved in the previous article.

One more thing regarding today's Hero Katya_18 though: something quite unique about his style is that he likes to mix in some calls that look rather bad or at least weird at first sight. When analysing these plays, you can often observe that these calls are indeed quite close but mostly correct. He seems to have a good feeling when it comes to detecting overbluffs by his opponents, even in spots where other regs actively try to bluff less often against him.

Diving into the action

Something to notice right away is that Hero is stealing for 3BB, while all the other regs at the table had been staying below the 3BB threshold before.

The reason is simple: the "high" steal size is still from times in which it was standard to use that sizing and Katya_18 fully optimised his game, including preflop ranges and postflop game plan, on these steals with 3BB. Changing that would be quite a task but wouldn't really pay off for him since the winrate would only slightly change long-term.

In this spot, low boards are good for both players since all the possible sets and the two-pair with 86 can definitely be part of each player's range. In contrast, any broadways and most high card combos won't have hit anything on this flop.

Hero's 3-bet has one specific reason: he wants to prevent antoha being able to check/raise too many hands on such a flop. The more often Villain is confronted with a 3-bet following a check-raise, the less often he's able to bluff with that.

In most cases, is being played bet/call here though. However, if you pick such a small 3-bet size that's not even double the check-raise size, following Hero's chosen line is a viable possibility as well.

A royal blank

The on the turn is a bit of a help for Katya_18 since no draws have hit and it's more likely that the king is part of Hero's instead of Villain's range. Generally, it should be a blank for both players though.

Since antoha only called on the flop, sets are less likely still in his range since you would rather raise those again on the flop. In contrast, Hero of course still has all those sets in his range and that's the exact reason why he should continue betting here in almost 100% of the cases. Choosing a small bet size of 1/4 pot is a very good choice for that purpose.

To call or not to call, that is the question

The board might be paired now but the doesn't really change anything. Hence, the instant all-in by antoha for roughly 2/3 potsize is quite a surprise. We still have a decent middle pair that's been an overpair on the flop. How should we react to the all-in then?

Of course, Villain could be worried that we'd just check to the showdown and therefore chooses to push. In that case, a fold would obviously be the right choice—after all, we're just holding mid pair here.

Since we're confronted with an all-in the only other possible line of action is to call. It's certainly quite a weird push that doesn't really fit to the way the hand was played, so getting out the bluff catcher here could very well pay off.

Our solution for the last high stakes hand

This conclusion is going to be rather brief since almost 70% of all votes picked the optimal answer anyway—and that is to fold with ace-high in the analysed spot.

Still, in the actual hand our previous Hero NLZWERVERNL decided to call, which is kind of alright as well since should indeed be a part of your calling range in 20% of the cases in such a spot. Small side note: if the ace was in diamonds and we were blocking the nut flush, you could certainly think about bluff-raising.

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