10-20: bet ace-high?

10-20, online, 7-handed. I am 3 off the button (or 2UTG, if you like). There is a live $10 and dead $5 posted on my immediate left (gotta love that).


UTG folds, I have AdTs and raise. Poster folds, cutoff cold-calls, SB and BB call. I have played very few hands with all the opponents in the hand and I don't really have a line on any of them.


$92 in the middle. *** FLOP *** [2s 6h 8d].


Checked to me, I bet, cutoff calls, SB folds, BB calls.


$122 pot. *** TURN *** [2s 6h 8d] [6s].


BB checks, I bet, cutoff folds, BB calls.


$162 pot. *** RIVER *** [2s 6h 8d 6s] [9c]


BB checks. Check or bet?


If you are interested in the identity of the combatants (and the results), this is hand 6279816 on PokerStars.

I seeno reason to bet the river here. Itcertainly cannot be a value bet. You can sometimes value bet with Acehigh but the situation here ain't riaght andbesides, I think you generally need AQ orpreferrably Ak to value bet.


As for betting asa bluff, I don't see him laying down a pair. Plus, the 9 on the river could give him a straight. If he happened to be calling all the way with a gutshot such T9, I don't think he folds when the 9 comes on the river.


Show it down.

Check. Since this is online 10/20, I would expect most of the players to be somewhat aware. With a preflop raise, you're opponent must put you on a pair or an Ace. Plus this board is a BB kind of board. What hand can they call with that you can beat?

I checked, BB had 5c2d and won.


I agree with the advice given here; a missed ace-high is usually a bad bluff-bet on the river, although I have successfully *value*-bet good ace-highs in the past.


I posed the question because the pot was reasonably big, and while a hand like 52 is about the only thing an opponent would consider folding that I can't beat with my ace-high, I second-guess myself only because the pot is fairly big. A bluff bet only needs to make a better hand fold 1 time in 9 here, so I'm fence-straddling a bit.


Of course, given that he called on the turn with bottom pair, he quite possibly would call the river with it every time, too.


Anyone have a problem with the turn bet? I thought it was a good card to bet on. I probably would have bet any turn card, to be perfectly honest, so maybe I'm rationalizing.

Good turn bet(what other play is there?), even better river check. Well played.

>


If the river was scary, say a King it might be worth a bet, but I doubt it.


The big pot also makes a call almost mandatory, if they can beat a bluff. If you have to bluff because the pot is big, doesn't the BB have to call because the pot is big? So you're logic sort of works against you, because a call only has to be good 1/10 times to show a profit. Course, I'm from the Izmet Fekali school of calling on the river, so maybe others would laydown a hand here.

Nothing changed from the turn to the river, and, in fact, there probably wasn't a card in the deck that was going to make him fold. He put you on AK, decided he had the best hand. Had an ace or king come on the river, he probably would have re-evaluated your hand to something else he could beat, and called [1]. By the time the river rolls around, I usually decide my AK or AQ might be the best hand, but there's a better chance that I've got a third-pair bulldog attached to my leg, and of the hands I beat, most of 'em won't call. So I show it down and say, "Nut no-pair!"


Regards, Lee


[1] I say this somewhat facetiously. Usually when somebody plays like that, he's just decided that he likes his pair, and he's going to the showdown with it: "If you show me a bigger pair, you win." Typically, he's not thinking, "Hmmm, he can have (4c2) AA and (4^2) AK..."

Well, I see that everyone is saying that the check on the river is the best play, and I'm not debating that because without any other cues to go by, I agree. But this is the resson that I don't play online. For me to decide the proper play in this type of situation, I go mostly by visual cues given off by my opponent. In the $15-30 (and most 20-40) games that I play in, most players will "tell" me if they'll lay down the hand or not, and I conduct myself accordingly. Without those visual cues, I'm lost.


When playing online, are you allowed to "sit on the rail" and watch the action of a particular table for a while before joining? At least then you could pick up player's betting patterns and habits.


Riker