Blind vs. Blind

[rtucker5]

3/6 Party on a full table. I'm posting it here because I play alot of 6 max and the shorthanded principles apply to this hand.

The table folded to me in the SB and I raised with K 10 offsuit. The BB called. The flop was K 8 3 rainbow.

I bet and the BB called. The turn was a 2 completing the rainbow. I checked, the BB bet, and I checkraised. He called.

The river paired the 3 and I checked planning on calling a bet. Thoughts?

[rtucker5]

I think the preflop and flop play are standard. I decided to try for the checkraise on the turn because most opponents will bet any pair in that spot. I checked the end because I still felt my hand was best, but feared my opponent would fold a worse hand. I wanted to give him a chance to bluff the end and I didn't want to have to pay off a raise if he happened to hit trips.

[Nate tha' Great]

Turn check-raise is fine. Betting into him again would be fine too. I've gone through phases where I've overused this cute little check-raise move, to the point where my opponent seemed fairly certain that a check indicated that I had a hand, and a bet indicated that I didn't ... of course that tendency can be exploited too.

I think I prefer betting into him on the river. A weaker K, or an 8, seem somewhat more likely than a 3 if he's got any kind of reasonable blind defense standards. Oddly enough, I think this is one of those times where you're just about as likely to induce a bluff by betting into him as you would be by checking it to him. It wouldn't surprise me if the action went bet-raise-call, and he wound up putting two bets in with 87 or another second best hand.

[soda]

Eh, nice C/R on the turn. Bet the river.

He'd have to be overly stupid and aggressive to bet into you again on the river with an inferior hand after your play on the turn.

soda

[Nate tha' Great]

To clarify, here's the math behind my recommendation for the river play.

Suppose that he'll bet the turn with any pair when checked to. From a Bayesian perspective, there are 2 unseen 3's, 2 unseen K's (I'm neglecting the negligible possibility that he has say KJ or KQ and is extremely weaktight), and 3 unseen 8's. So he'll hold a 3 roughly 2 times out of 7, or 29% of the time. That's assuming complete indifference as to what he calls with before the flop, so adjusting for his preflop preferences, I think it's safe to reduce the possibility of his holding a 3 to around 25%. Might be lower than that. There's also some chance that he holds a pocket pair, but we'll ignore that.

I think that, approximately 25% of the time that he represents a 3, he'll be bluffing. I also think that he's equally likely to attempt this bluff whether you bet to him or check to him. As soda states, his inclination to bluff when checked to is going to be very much diminshed by the action that had just occurred on the turn.

I think that it's rather unlikely that he'll fold since the pot has grown pretty large now and since he can't expect that the 3 helped your hand. Let's put the probability of a fold at around 15%.

If you bet into him:

25% of the time, he'll have a 3, and he'll raise. (-2 BB)
8% of the time (e.g. he'll represent a 3 approximately 1/3 as often as he actually has one), he'll have a hand weaker than a 3, but represent a 3, and raise (+2 BB).
15% of the he'll fold. (+0 BB)
52% of the time he'll call with a weaker hand. (+1 BB)

Your EV from betting given these paramaters is +0.18 BB.

If you check it to him:
25% of the time, he'll have a 3, and bet. (-1 BB)
8% of the time, he'll have a hand weaker than a 3, and bet. (+1 BB)
67% of the time, he'll call. (+O BB)

Your EV from checking is -0.17 BB.

Betting is a superior play by a notable amount, enough that you can fiddle with these percentages a little bit it should still come out well ahead.

[rtucker5]

Thanks for doing the math Nate.

As it went down, he bet after I checked and I called. He had K7 and my hand was good.