Hand Against Random Taggy Dude

[Lmn55d]

Villain is 22/15/2.3 after 4k hands with 35 WTSD. I don't think I get capped or donk much by this type of player on this board (right? wrong?). I intended to take the free river if I didn't pick up the flush draw. He also hesitated a good amount before calling my flop 3bet. Just to be clear, I do not 3bet for free cards with gutshots very often at all (I do have pair outs often).

Party Poker 10/20 Hold'em (6 max, 6 handed) converter (http://www.selachian.com/tools/bisonconverter/hhconverter.cgi)

Preflop: Hero is Button with J/images/graemlins/spade.gif, T/images/graemlins/spade.gif.
<font color="#666666">3 folds</font>, <font color="#CC3333">Hero raises</font>, <font color="#666666">1 fold</font>, BB calls.

Flop: (4.50 SB) Q/images/graemlins/club.gif, 6/images/graemlins/spade.gif, 8/images/graemlins/diamond.gif <font color="#0000FF">(2 players)</font>
BB checks, <font color="#CC3333">Hero bets</font>, <font color="#CC3333">BB raises</font>, <font color="#CC3333">Hero 3-bets</font>, BB calls.

Turn: (5.25 BB) 2/images/graemlins/spade.gif <font color="#0000FF">(2 players)</font>
BB checks, <font color="#CC3333">Hero bets</font>, BB calls.

River: (7.25 BB) 9/images/graemlins/diamond.gif <font color="#0000FF">(2 players)</font>
BB checks, <font color="#CC3333">Hero bets</font>, BB calls.

Final Pot: 9.25 BB

[sthief09]

bluffing the river when you've spewed on the previous streets is almost always right. i don't know why it's right but it seems to work a lot. you are making the pot so big then you are better off doing it. so i would've bet the river regardless.

also, this is not a board where i would've bluffed, and if i had, i'd usually raise the turn

[Lmn55d]

I had the nuts on the river bro! And I was taking free card on turn

Bluffing with the lock hand is really good for shania.

[sthief09]

[ QUOTE ]
I had the nuts on the river bro! And I was taking free card on turn

[/ QUOTE ]


i didn't see the flush draw. i know that you had the nuts. i was commenting on you saying you wouldn't have bluffed the river. i guess your 3-bet for a free card is ok. i don't understand what you're asking

[flawless_victory]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I had the nuts on the river bro! And I was taking free card on turn

[/ QUOTE ]


i didn't see the flush draw. i know that you had the nuts. i was commenting on you saying you wouldn't have bluffed the river. i guess your 3-bet for a free card is ok. i don't understand what you're asking

[/ QUOTE ]
he never said he wasnt bluffing riv, he said he wouldve checked turn UI.
BTW/ the whole hand l;ooks fine to me...

[Lmn55d]

by "taking the free river" i meant not bet the turn. Sorry for not being clear. My questions were:

Is 3betting the flop against this sort of player ever proftiable? If I do which turns should I bet instead of check? Was this turn one of them?

[sthief09]

[ QUOTE ]
by "taking the free river" i meant not bet the turn. Sorry for not being clear. My questions were:

Is 3betting the flop against this sort of player ever proftiable? If I do which turns should I bet instead of check? Was this turn one of them?

[/ QUOTE ]

i didn't see the flush draw and my brain somehow skipped the "if i hadn't picked up a flush draw" part, so i saw "take the free river" as you bluffing if you didn/t river the nuts. i think if you 3-bet, it's with the intention to check the turn. he has a pair almost always and he's not folding it.

[Catt]

Without some background on his flop-turn play in HU blind battles, I still take the free card on the turn. I don't think you take it down often enough with a turn bet after the flop action HU against the typical player with his stats in a pot this size.

I don't know what to make of the possible timing tell. Sometimes he's counting outs and putting you on a range; sometimes he's making a plan to see shodwon; sometimes he's considering a cap; sometimes he's watching a 3rd down play in the Denver game.

FWIW, I think the flop is fine if this is a pretty rare event. I do this on the flop against the right players probably more often than I should, but not with any tremendous frequency.

[sweetjazz]

How many taggy villains would semi-bluff check-raise with a gutshot on the flop (and obviously they will peel the flop 3-bet) but fold UI on the turn?

I'm not sure that happens nearly enough to make the turn semi-bluff profitable, and I actually I am pretty sure it doesn't.

So I still think the turn check-behind is probably best. Ideally, you have 9 flush outs, 3 more straight outs, and 6 pair outs. In which case, you still lose 28/46 = 61% of the time. And those times when he check-raises you on the turn, you only have 13 - 15 outs. (Even worse if he will check-raise with Qsxs here.)

You don't need much folding equity at all to make this semibluff profitable, but is there even a 5% chance that villain will fold here?

Maybe villain would smooth call with AK/AJ preflop and play it this way, and fold on the turn. Or maybe he would play 33 - 55 this way and fold on the turn (though why wouldn't he just fold the flop then?). I don't know, it's hard to detect something that would happen that infrequently. But I just don't think it happens.

So I still think the turn continuation bet is still fairly -EV. If you had an OESD instead of a gutterball, then it is close enough that this might be one of those "loose bets" analogous to Mason's "loose calls" that could be worthwhile for meta-game reasons, namely getting more value out of made hands in the future.

Personally, I find it psychologically discomforting to check behind on the turn, because it feels like I just gave up on my attempt to take the pot. But the only possible justification for betting this turn is for metagame reasons.

Finally, I agree with Josh that you should fire the final barrel on the river against an unknown. It doesn't have to work very often, and it might get someone to call you down with A high later, having noticed that you will bluff all three streets with just a draw. If it's the end of a session and you have any kind of a read that the player goes to showdown a lot, then save your bet as the bluff is hopeless and there is no metagame benefit. [It would be a much greater metagame benefit if you could check behind the river with your draw to set up a future bluff with a future missed draw. But you cannot, of course, count on anyone being that observant. On the other hand, it is quite easy to manipulate people into calling down, increasing the value of your made hands.]

[Jdanz]

i think this is a pretty good analysis, but it really nags me how incredibly rarely we need a better hand to fold on the turn to make this +EV

[disjunction]

[ QUOTE ]
bluffing the river when you've spewed on the previous streets is almost always right. i don't know why it's right

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm sure you do, but I'll write this anyway...

It's because each bet narrows your range a little more from the villain's perspective, if he has a small made hand, like 76 or something. If you give up half your bluffs after the turn, you're something like 2x as likely to have the villain beat on the river. You'd think this kind of matches the odds for the 2 bets he expects to put in when he calls the turn, but when he made that call (1) There was a possible chance of improvement (2) He knows he may not have to call the river

From the villain's perspective, I used to think the whole call the turn/fold the river line was a 2+2 FPS invention, because it's an attempt to "dance between the raindrops" of probability. I thought that the bluffer's hand range does not converge fast enough between the turn and the river. But I was probably wrong, there's some pretty big space between those raindrops sometimes.