am I spewing or just confused?

[Pog0]

I find that sometimes I make a river call in a medium sized pot thinking to myself, "wow, there's absolutely no way I'm good here" and then being surprised when I take it down.

What's more likely to be my mistake,

1. Am I getting lucky by catching unlikely bluffs and getting influenced by results (that are making me second guess myself here)

or

2. I'm actually less of an underdog in the situations where I'm thinking "there's no way I'm good here" and calling is fine and I shouldn't second guess these decisions.

I know this is extremely arbitrary, but I'm trying to see if I'm making money while theoretically spewing or if I'm thinking incorrectly in these situations.

I can't think of many examples, but one comes to mind today, I hold the J[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img], I raised preflop and got 2 callers and I'm in position. The turn makes a 4 flush in clubs, SB now donks and I call because I have the third nuts and he could very well be bluffing. Now I figure if he has less than the Q[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] he will check the river because surely he has to expect another call from me on the river here. He bets, I figure I must be behind, I call and he flips 2 hearts and MHIG and I just don't know if I did the right thing there. I suppose one should be more inclined to call down in suspicious situations vs unknowns and known LAGs, but as a general rule, which mistake am I making in my reasoning?

[adios]

It's about the chances that you have the winner vs. the size of the pot. In your J [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] example, at some threshold pot size it's a toss up. Greater than the threshold a call, less a fold. But wait, what about a raise? Value raises and bluff raises should be considered as well, obviously consider all the options. Arriving at the chances of having the winner is the harder part. I probably stated the obvious so excuse me if I did. I'm guessing that the pots are big enough as well as the players playing loose enough and perhaps the players are overly aggressive making these calls +EV for the most part for you.

[crunchy1]

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which mistake am I making in my reasoning?

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I find that sometimes I make a river call in a medium sized pot thinking to myself, "wow, there's absolutely no way I'm good here"

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If you don't think that you're good why are you callling?