AA runs into trouble.

[RunDownHouse]

Abso 2/4. Neither of my opponents has done anything to raise an eyebrow, and neither of them have any notes, which means I haven't played more than a few hands with them in the past.

Hero is SB with A/images/graemlins/club.gif A/images/graemlins/heart.gif

UTG limps, couple folds, <font color="red">Button raises, Hero 3bets</font>, UTG calls, Button calls.

Flop: 7/images/graemlins/diamond.gif 5/images/graemlins/diamond.gif 4/images/graemlins/spade.gif
<font color="red">Hero bets</font>, UTG calls, Button calls

Turn: A/images/graemlins/diamond.gif
<font color="red">Hero bets, UTG raises</font>, Button folds, Hero...

More after a couple responses.

[Catt]

I'm inclined to 3-bet this; when I get capped, I plan on hitting my 10-outer on the river. I hope that's not spewing because I do that more often than just calling here against an unknown. If you had KK and the K/images/graemlins/diamond.gif fell on the turn, I'd be more likely to just call the turn since I think a lot more people limp Axs than xxs UTG (though I don't play on UB) and the reasonable flush handrange for Villain starts to feel big enough to be cautious on the turn. I haven't run the handranges, but my gut says with Aces that this unknwon has Ax (and possibly two pair) rather than the flush often enough to 3-bet.

[Surfbullet]

I like catt's analysis - I 3bet here, and intend to hit a boat on the river.

Surf

[RunDownHouse]

Catt, its Absolute, FWIW. Anyways, my thought process at the time was pretty much the same. I'm 99% sure I'm ahead on the turn, putting villian on an Ax, with maybe Ax two pair (which would be a lot better for me, obviously). I ruled out A with a good kicker given pf, but definitely considered any A with a diamond kicker.

Anyways, the more I thought about this hand - during the first half of the Spurs game, which was god awful - the more it became pretty standard to me, so I'm just going to put up the rest. I 3bet and UTG called. The river brought the absolute worst card in the deck: 6/images/graemlins/diamond.gif, making the board:

A /images/graemlins/diamond.gif 7/images/graemlins/diamond.gif 6/images/graemlins/diamond.gif 5/images/graemlins/diamond.gif 4/images/graemlins/spade.gif

I really, really made an awful play and bet. For some reason I decided to go Clarkmeister, even though I also knew (in the Heat of the Night) that I would call a raise. How bad, in terms of BBs, was the river lead?

[Catt]

Sorry, yeah, Absolute. Don't know how bad it was in terms of BBs though in this specific case it sounds like ~2BBs.

Not too long ago I would have bet this river in a heartbeat and called the raise. About a month ago Dynasty visited the SS forum and commented on a similar hand there, and his post has stuck with me. Thread. (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=&amp;Number=2427580&amp;page=&amp;view=&amp;sb=5&amp; o=&amp;vc=1)

[Surfbullet]

Looks okay to me. He'll call with 2 pair and 1pair (aces) hands. I dunno about calling a river raise, though.

Surf

[RunDownHouse]

Villian folded to my river lead, so I have no idea what he had. Anybody else think that bet/fold is an ok river line? I thought it was pretty bad to bet that river, although I guess if he has Aces up he might check behind, so I miss a bet by not leading. But pretty much any other hand he plays like that on the turn got there on the river (maybe he was on A6?).

[krishanleong]

I read dynasty's response and I'm afraid I don't agree. Clarkmeister's Theorum should work if you have any hand less than a flush. That includes top set. He seems to be considering more when deciding to bet the river. I think this is good as we probably apply clark less rigourously than we should. I think checking and calling here is terrible and just shows people getting too attached to situations that don't warrent it.

Krishan

[krishanleong]

[ QUOTE ]

I really, really made an awful play and bet. For some reason I decided to go Clarkmeister, even though I also knew (in the Heat of the Night) that I would call a raise. How bad, in terms of BBs, was the river lead?

[/ QUOTE ]

Less than 1 BB assuming you did the right thing and folded.

Krishan

[JrJordan]

3-bet. The flush is scary, but button could also be doing this with any Ax hand, or a slowplayed set of 4, 5, or 7's. If he caps, then vomit, pray for a paired board, and make the crying river call.

[JrJordan]

I could bet/fold this river without too much hesitation. You 3-bet a player who showed surprising aggression on the turn. He knows you have a big hand. If he raises the 4-flush on the river, he's telling you he can beat that too. The only reason to check/call the river would be if he's tricky enough to make that pure bluff and you'd rather not put in 2BB. This doesn't seem like the case.

[Catt]

I am more inclined to Dynasty's view when I have a very strong hand that beats almost anything other than a flush. Against an aggressive opponent or a tricky opponent, bet-folding a la Clarkmeister can be an extremely costly mistake, even if it only happens rarely. I use Clarmeister with more marginal hands, but I've adopted the ck-call in certain situations that might otherwise call for the CT. Not enough situations to compare results, but the logic of it has me convinced enough to give Dynasty's approach a whirl.

It doesn't seem to me that ck-calling can be "terrible" in situations like this -- it might be suboptimal, but I'm not yet convinced of it. Are you saying that if someone checks that they then need to fold to a bet; or that chekcing means only better hands will bet (miss a bet when winning; cost a bet when losing)? Against a reasonably aggressive opponent, surely you're snapping off some bluffs in a big pot and not folding a winner that you would have had you bet-folded? You can argue that we're missing value bets too often to make up for this, but I think it a stretch to call it terrible.

[Surfbullet]

[ QUOTE ]
or that chekcing means only better hands will bet (miss a bet when winning; cost a bet when losing)?

[/ QUOTE ]

This is the essence of clark's theorem - you're virtually never inducing a bluff because the board is so scary, but when you check you allow your opponent to check behind all worse hands (lower sets, 2pairs, 1 pairs) that would very often call. You are also paying off villain's value bet when he has a flush.

Surf

[krishanleong]

[ QUOTE ]
It doesn't seem to me that ck-calling can be "terrible" in situations like this -- it might be suboptimal, but I'm not yet convinced of it. Are you saying that if someone checks that they then need to fold to a bet; or that chekcing means only better hands will bet (miss a bet when winning; cost a bet when losing)? Against a reasonably aggressive opponent, surely you're snapping off some bluffs in a big pot and not folding a winner that you would have had you bet-folded? You can argue that we're missing value bets too often to make up for this, but I think it a stretch to call it terrible.

[/ QUOTE ]

Here is the thing. Whether to apply Clark doesn't depend on the strenght of your hand. If it is less than a flush it can apply. The thing to consider is the agressiveness of your opponents. Against the majority of opponenets I'm convinced bet-fold is much better than check-call. Against the few that are capable of bluff raising, check-call is vastly superior. I'd check call with 2 pair against these players as well. So the strength of your hand doesn't really matter in deciding whether to apply Clark or not. It's your read of your opponent that matters.

Krishan

[Catt]

Oh, I know it is the essence of the theorem. And I know that the underlying rationale is that way more people and way more hands will call a bet than bet when checked to here. The issue I'm taking on is the one Dynasty raised: when we hold a hand that beats pretty much anything except the flush, bet-folding can be a very costly mistake. Ck-calling can be a much less costly mistake (Villain could check a hand he would have called that we beat) -- whether we bet-fold or ck-call, we're still losing a bet either way when Villain has the flush. CT also doesn't preclude bet-calling, depending on the opponent, of course, but I interpreted Krishan's post to imply that we really, really need to fold to a raise, even a hand like top set on an unpaired board, absent a very strong read (maniac donk, etc.) My point is that Dynasty's approach in certain situations may be better with particularly strong hands that are invulnerable or nearly so to all but the flush.

Clark recently popped into the Micro forum to respond in a thread regarding the Theorem when he thought I was disregarding the "bluff" vale of the CT bet (I wasn't, but that's neither here nor there). He explicitly called it a "value-bluff" bet. There is no bluffing value to such a bet when we we hold the non-flush nuts (or very, very, little value since I think hardly anyone folds even the babiest of baby flushes to one bet on the river in a big pot).

[Catt]

[ QUOTE ]
Whether to apply Clark doesn't depend on the strenght of your hand. If it is less than a flush it can apply. The thing to consider is the agressiveness of your opponents. Against the majority of opponenets I'm convinced bet-fold is much better than check-call. Against the few that are capable of bluff raising, check-call is vastly superior.

[/ QUOTE ]

Here's where the crux of it lies, I think. I wholeheartedly agree that the nature of your opponent is very important. But I don't wholeheartedly agree that the strength of your hand is immaterial to the decision. You can play your hand in such a way that convinces your opponent that the chances that you have a flush are small enough that his top-two, or other reasonably strong hand is worth a raise on the river. He has a strong hand that he thinks only loses if you do have the flush; and he has a ton of folding equity when he raises and you don't have the flush. Along this line of thought, he is not bluff-raising the river -- he is raising for value since he thinks he has you beat if you don't have the flush, and he calculates that the chances that you do have the flush are low enough to compensate him for the times he is called or re-raised and loses to the flush (especially in these big pots). This doesn't take a wildly over-aggro opponent, IMHO, just an aggressive thinking opponent. And the times you bet-fold in such circumstances are really catastrophes.

[Surfbullet]

[ QUOTE ]
This doesn't take a wildly over-aggro opponent, IMHO, just an aggressive thinking opponent. And the times you bet-fold in such circumstances are really catastrophes.

[/ QUOTE ]

There are very, very few opponents who will be capable of a bluff-raise on such a river. If you think he is capable of raising a number of hands that you beat, then bet-call. I seem to remember in clark's original post where the theorem was originally postulated that whether you fold to the raise or call the raise is not the important part, because most of the time you are just going to get called, and you are going to make $.

It is not a catastrophe to fold to a bluff-raise, because it is not just 1 hand - if you get raised 100 times and fold 100 times, but you got bluff-raised twice those 2 folds are not catastrophes - you've saved yourself quite a few bets. I think we may be overestimating the frequency of our average opponent bluff-raising us here - if he's known to raise 2 pair etc here, or a worse set, then call.

Surf

[Surfbullet]

An additional thought:

When was the last time you bluff-raised a TAG on a 4flush river expecting him to fold a set of aces(or some other similarly strong holding)? I can't remember doing it even once in the past 10,000 hands...I think we'll have the LAGy opponents pegged already and will know to bet-call them.

Surf

[Catt]

I agree that it is the rare player that will bluff-raise the river with a hand he suspects is no good, even if his opponent does not have a flush. I disagree that players who will value-raise with a strong holding on the view that his opponent does not have a flush, likely holds a worse hand, and may fold a better hand in any event fearing a flush, are quite so few and far inbetween as perhaps others do.

I don't think I've ever raised an opponent expecting him to fold a non-flush set of aces. But I have raised reasonably strong hands (sets less than top set, non-flush straights; two pair hands with favorable boards) when I suspect my opponent has a worse hand and does not have a flush. I have won some of these hands, and folded some opponents, and lost a bunch to flushes or a better non-flush. I have no way of knowing if I folded a better hand, of course, but I suspect I have; just as I suspect I have folded the best hand to someone else's raise when I fold something like 2-pair after a CT bet-fold.

I'm a big fan of the CT; I think it is extremely helpful and a really nice insight into river play; but, just as most would agree that there isn't an "always do this" rule for most situations in poker, I don't think the CT is an "always do this" rule; and more importantly for this discussion, I don't think departing from the CT's "always" aspect is dependent solely on the nature of one's opponent. To repeat, the nature of our opponent is extremely important, but the nature of our holding, the board, and the action up to the river is not immaterial. My argument is that if we're employing CT or not employing it solely on the basis of player reads, then I think we're employing it suboptimally.

[Surfbullet]

[ QUOTE ]
My argument is that if we're employing CT or not employing it solely on the basis of player reads, then I think we're employing it suboptimally.

[/ QUOTE ]

Excellent post - I agree.

Surf