How can I possibly be good here?

[shabamgoddam]

would he call down to the river w/ AK? that aside i would sigh and call, plyr dependent.i think possibly 1010-77 or A6/A4 enough for me to call 1 more against a complete tool.

[winky51]

[ QUOTE ]
Against an aggressive, tricky opponent, I check, because I hate getting bluff-raised in this spot, and it might induce a bluff. Against a passive opponent, I value bet, of course.

[/ QUOTE ]

What he said. If the player is a TAG then checking this river I think is best. Let him bluff you out of the pot if he has AQ and you save if he has AK. What hands are calling here anyways TT, 99, AK. More AKs than the other 2.
Check it.

[Spicymoose]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Oh, and no way do you check this river. Value bet relentlessly.

[/ QUOTE ]
If you pay off, you have to win twice to equal the 2 bets lost to one raise. Taking it a step further, you have to win 1 bet 7 times out of 10 if you pay off 3 times just to show a 1 bet profit. Win 7, lose 6.


[/ QUOTE ]

That is assuming he value raises a lot. I think far more often he simply calls you with the hands that might beat you.

And plenty of times he calls you with worse hands.

And a few times he tries some random bluff raise and you get paid even more (note this is not all that large, but it does contribute).

[goofball]

Everyone who says to check this river is horribly wrong in my opinion.

If I check, then he'll basically check any hand I beat that has showdown value including AQ, he'll bet every single hand that beats me 100% of the time, and he'll occaisonally bluff with a hopeless hand like 87.

If I bet then he'll call with lots and lots of hands I beat, he may sometimes just call with a hand that beats me, and he will sometimes raise with a hand I beat.

Without getting into teh specific mathematics here, against this guy's hand range I absolutely must bet, not betting here in my opinion is a large error.

[Nick C]

It's an uncomfortable spot on the river. Villain has been playing like he's chasing overcards, and the second-worst one (for you) just fell. Also, I don't really think you're getting called all that often by AQ or worse at 5/10. It'll happen sometimes, but I don't think it's something you should expect.

Has Villain been calling the whole way postflop up until now with TT/99, out of respect for your preflop 3-bet? It's possible, but a lot of players are going to take a more aggressive approach with an overpair. (I'm not sure a player who has been calling with TT/99 will always call again on the river, either, hoping for AQ or 88, now that the king has made its appearance, though I do think TT/99 will usually call.)

Throw in the occasional AA/KK that Villain has been trapping with to the river, and, if your only choices on the river were to bet-fold or check-call, I think you'd be losing a bet on the river more often than you'd be winning one, no matter which line you took.

AK/KQ is 24 combos (KQ should probably be discounted because of the turn call, though). TT/99 is 12 combos (and I think those should be discounted somewhat because Villain just called the flop and turn).

As for what you should do when you're raised . . . I'm not sure. Since we don't know, I think checking and calling the river is something to consider.

[The Goober]

I'm with goof here. I think at this level we can give an unknown at least a little credit for thinking about our play. Leading the whole way and then checking the river really looks like we're either trying to get to showdown cheaply and don't want to pay off a raise, or we want to get in a checkraise. I think that lots of opponents would be more likely to bluff raise this river than to bluff bet if we check.

I think this river is an easy call against an unknown. We're getting almost 10:1, it helps keep people from taking shots at us, and we'll learn a lot about this opponent when we get to see his cards.

There's a sort of similar thread on Daniel Negreanu's forum. I don't have the link at hand (help me out, please), but basically you have KK, are heads-up on the turn against an aggressive opponent, and an overcard falls. Most people argued that betting is correct here, but Danny made a very strong case for checking and calling. The people that were in favor of betting didn't give in until Danny called Jennifer Harman and Erick Lindgren and asked for their opinion. They both said to check and call for basically the reasons stated above.

[Nick C]

[ QUOTE ]
Everyone who says to check this river is horribly wrong in my opinion.

If I check, then he'll basically check any hand I beat that has showdown value including AQ, he'll bet every single hand that beats me 100% of the time, and he'll occaisonally bluff with a hopeless hand like 87.

If I bet then he'll call with lots and lots of hands I beat, he may sometimes just call with a hand that beats me, and he will sometimes raise with a hand I beat.

Without getting into teh specific mathematics here, against this guy's hand range I absolutely must bet, not betting here in my opinion is a large error.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think it's a reasonable estimate to say you're best on the river after the king falls (prior to any action) somewhere in the range of 55 times out of 100. When you're not best, I think you're usually getting raised, since Villain will frequently have been chasing with AK and also sometimes will have been trapping with AA/KK. It is true that occasionally he'll call with a hand like K [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] J [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] or KQo or QQ, though.

When you're not best, I think Villain is folding a good portion of the time, though he will usually call with worse pocket pairs and also occasionally with ace-high. I don't know how often 5/10 unknowns bluff-raise here, but we need to account for that possibility too.

All right, so let's say you bet 100 times and get called 40 times, 30 times by worse hands and 10 times by better hands, for a +20 total on the river so far. And you get raised 40 times, and 5 of those raises are bluff-raises (so you need to call). That's -60 BBs net when you get raised. The other 20 times, Villain folds, and we've netted -40 BBs on the river over 100 instances of bet-calling.

If we check-call, let's say Villain always bets his better hands (I think once in awhile he won't, when that hand is, say, QQ or KJs, but let's say he always will). That's 45 bets we lose right there. So that means we need Villain to bet a worse hand if checked to 5 times out of 55 to pull check-calling even with bet-calling.

There are a lot of variables in this, and maybe the ones I've provided are off somewhere. But if we can't fold to a raise, then checking hardly seems "horribly wrong" to me.

Edit: And if we can fold to a raise, it's still going to cut into the value of our bet that one out of 15 times or one out of 20 times (or whatever it is) when our opponent's raise doesn't actually mean we're beat and we fold the best hand and surrender the pot.

[Carmine]

[ QUOTE ]
Everyone who says to check this river is horribly wrong in my opinion.

If I check, then he'll basically check any hand I beat that has showdown value including AQ, he'll bet every single hand that beats me 100% of the time, and he'll occaisonally bluff with a hopeless hand like 87.

If I bet then he'll call with lots and lots of hands I beat, he may sometimes just call with a hand that beats me, and he will sometimes raise with a hand I beat.

Without getting into teh specific mathematics here, against this guy's hand range I absolutely must bet, not betting here in my opinion is a large error.

[/ QUOTE ]

I really disagree with this. The only reason to bet this river is if villan is a complete donkey. For the most part his only hope in calling down with a worse PP than yours is that AK makes up a big part of your 3-betting range. Hence there is no reason for him to call a river bet. Not to mention a majority of players are going to give action on the cheap flop street to see if their PP is ahead of your AK.

On the flip side the only other hand that can even consider being at this river UI because of pot odds (I'm not sure what the proper amount to discount AK overs here is as I am probably guilty of not discounting enough)is AK. Hence again it is foolish for you to bet out the river.

I'll agree there are many times when you must bet the river, but this board on the flop and turn is too dry. One example might be if villan opened and you 3-bet with QQ. Flop comes J43. Now someone might call down with AJ and might call a river bet

[Nick C]

[ QUOTE ]
It is true that occasionally he'll call with a hand like K [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] J [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] or KQo or QQ, though.

[/ QUOTE ]

It's too late to edit. For the record, though, I meant K [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] J [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] here.