A8s.....river play?

[Schwartzy61]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
In this case raising pretty much guarantees you 1 more BB and the possibility of more. Calling only guarantees you the current pot size with the possibility of more...against unpredictable unknowns I would have to go with the more direct approach...

[/ QUOTE ]

It's not really fair to single out one poster here, but this quote exemplifies the mistake I see in how many people are approaching this problem.

You are probably right that raising guarantees one extra BB at least, while calling might get you zero extra BBs. (Technically, Villain might be bet/folding, but I'll grant that's unlikely). But poker is a gambling game, and it is frequently right to give up a bird in the hand if doing so gives us a sufficiently good chance to get two in the bush.

Let's assume for the sake of argument that BB will call a single raise but will fold if it's two to him. (That should be reasonable. Like I said before, he might be bet-folding, or maybe he's a fish who will call two more cold with an overpair, but I think the typical player will call one but fold to two.) In this case, there are basically two cases in which calling costs us money:

1. Everybody folds behind us after we call. That's extremely unlikely. Most of the time, at least villain will call with his crap pair or he will have hit whatever draw he was pursuing.

2. Somebody calls who was willing to coldcall two bets if we raised but won't raise himself if we just call. Again, this seems very unlikely. If we raise, we are folding out crap pairs and getting called only by straights and flushes. But those hands would have raised if we called.

It is very unlikely that we lose any bets by just calling. I'm not going to try to assign probabilities to those events because those sorts of numbers tend to be arbitrary, but suffice it to say that it would be surprising if we lost anything by calling.

On the other hand, there are a couple situations in which calling gains relative to raising:

3. We get overcalls from two opponents holding crap pairs that would have folded to a raise. Not too likely, but possible.

4. Somebody after us raises his straight or flush, allowing us to trap BB and possibly the other opponent for extra bets. I see this as being more likley than 1, 2 or 3. In this case, we at least force BB to toss in a couple more bets and also gain another bet from the raiser (who may very well have just called our river raise but now puts in 3 bets).

Not only is scenario 4 the most likely of the meaningful, non-break-even scenarios, it's also the one that involves the biggest payoff. The more I think about, the more call-reraise seems clearly +EV relative to calling.

It is true that calling has a lower downside than raising, but it also has a larger upside and a probability distribution skewed toward that upside. It's a gamble, but it's a good one IMO.

Even if one disagrees with this analysis, you absolutely have to get away from thinking about only the worst possible scenario for various plays and what various options "guarantee" you. Playing for guarantees is very rarely good poker.

[/ QUOTE ]

Alright so next time I'm in a situation I'll think of the absolute best possible scenario and base my judgement off that then? BRILLIANT! Optimism is great and all but I always thought we took into consideration everything that can happen. And in this case how can you say the absolute best result for us is also the most likely?

The pessimist in me is always gonna look to the dark side, I guess I will fail at poker, oh well won't be the first thing I've failed... [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

River
BB bets, Hero calls, CO calls, BU folds.

BB shows QQ
CO doesn't show.

[milesdyson]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
he's bad at poker. bad players make bad calls with pairs. his aggression factor is a result of calling too much.

raise the river.

[/ QUOTE ]

Common mistake in these forums.

His aggression factor means he calls a little more than he bets\raises. Period. It tells you next to nothing about his ability to fold.

AF = bet% + raise%\ call%

Just because he's a passive, or plays bad poker, can you reasonably expect someone to cold call 2 bets on this river with 1 pair.

AF can increase with a higher fold % BUT only because it effects the number of calls made.

[/ QUOTE ]
the difference between a tight aggressive player and a loose passive player is that we bet/raise with more hands and we fold more hands. we fold a lot more hands postflop than typical "passive" players do. they will still raise with top pair, two pair or better. the difference is that we find folds in the right places. they do not.

sure, the stat does not explicitly account for %folds, but believe me, the reason bad players have low aggression factors is generally not simply because they do not bet or raise enough. the biggest cause of their low aggression factors is their tendency to call too often.

and to answer the question posed in your post, yes, i do expect him to coldcall two bets with top pair pretty often.

[SCfuji]

im out pf
anybody like a flop raise or are we getting 3 bet here too often?
turn fine as it is.
raise the river as it is.

I'd probably raise preflop.

Is it bad to generally call here with two overcards when one of the overcards is pretty weak (along w/ the backdoor flush draw)?

The turn is good.

As for the river...you went for the overcalls instead of the raise. I think a raise here is good if there's at least a 50% chance one of the players behind you will call two cold, if not raise. If one of the two players behind you call, and the BB makes a crying call, then a raise will show profit. I'm thinking that a raise here may be good.