[DavidC]

I guess basically my question should be something like "When should you cap the river without the nuts?"

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also consider another thing that always must be the case: there will be hands he can 3-bet in his range that you beat. however, the added information we get from his 3-bet means that our equity is too low to cap for value.


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This is the part that I'm focusing on...

When he three-bets the river, he has a range of hands much smaller than when he bets the river. However, he is also sucked in to calling almost every single time you cap, because of the inflated pot, because he (at a live game) can muck if you win, and because he has to defend his image and folding here can hurt him for weeks if he plays the game regularly.

So... he's got incentive to call. You can cap and be almost guaranteed that he'll call.

Therefore when should you cap the river?

What would a typical river three-bet mean from a typical opponent? Does it almost always mean the nuts? Does it depend on what the board's like? Does it depend on how crazy they are?

I know that there are some players out there who wouldn't even raise without the nuts... obviously, if they three-bet the river, you have to look really carefully at the board before you go ahead and cap it.

Anyways, we're scratching a bit of the surface here... this is mostly useful in very rare circumstances, as these days it seems like there are few times when there's more than 2 bets on the river. Way different than a year ago, way different than three years ago...

--Dave.