Ill-advised c/r river bluff? (they usually are)

[Lestat]

I'm sure most of us will sometimes make a check/raise like this against a player who we KNOW is capable of folding. Say you got A3 in the BB and on the river the board is, AQT-6-T and you put your opponent on an ace. I think this is sometimes a good spot to check/raise the river. You know you're chopping and there's little concern of being re-raised. He just might fold his half of the pot. Of course, this is nothing I do too often.

The following hand I thought was similar, but I think I might have really botched it.


Party 30-60

There was a raise from early middle. A poster called as did the button and sb. I called from the BB with AQo.

The flop came KK6r. sb mucks out of turn, I check, and it gets checked around.

The turn pairs the 6 putting up a backdoor flush draw. I bet.

I can't decide if I like this bet or not. On the one hand, I thought the pot might be worth contesting and I wouldn't have felt entirely comfortable folding if I let the pf raiser bet it and now everyone folded to me. Then again, one problem is that I'm playing for only a chop against another ace. The other problem was I didn't have any hands on this guy. I thought he was a little loose, but his showdowns were all reasonable so far and I wasn't sure what he could have that wasn't a king or pocket pair. What do you guys think?

Anyway, only the pf raiser called. Oh,oh... Quads?! Pocket pair? Or flush draw? The river was a 4 completing the backdoor flush. I checked, he bet, I check/raised, he folded.

I'm thinking this had to have been poorly played by me and I just got lucky he must've played worse. I wouldn't normally make this play against an unkown. Then again, is it sometimes better to make this play against an unkown because people who know you will know you'll make this play?

[Dazarath]

It seems to me that if he folded, you had the best hand anyways. He's not laying down a K or a 6, and it would seem to me that if he has a medium pocket or an ace, wouldn't he be glad to take the free showdown, or do 30/60 players bet that board with A-high for value? I guess an argument could be made for betting that board with 88 for value because aces are calling.

[Lestat]

<font color="blue"> It seems to me that if he folded, you had the best hand anyways. </font>

No doubt, unless he made a bad bet with an ace which is certainly possible. He also may have folded a hand like 88, but its unlikely. I've seen some weak/tighties convince themselves that I must've slowplayed a king on the flop and realized when he called the turn, that he had an ace or some other pair and would bet if I check. It's possible he thought that.

[elindauer]

Hi Lestat,

This is a very complicated post so I'm just going to start to analyze the turn bet. You've given no reads, so I'm going to assume you are looking for the game theory neutral, base case answer.

Question 1: ok, you reach the turn after calling preflop and checking the flop. In your mind, what is your hand range here?

Now, the pot has 5 BB in it. How does the multiway nature of the pot effect how often we should bet? well, I'll speculate that we can start by asking ourselves how often one opponent, playing well, will continue against us to prevent us from constantly bluffing. Then, since we have to get past 4 other players, we're going to succeed much less than this, at least, if they all play well.

Now, the first caller can't call as much as he could heads up, because he still has those 3 guys behind him. I'm not sure how these concepts all interact, so I'm going to start by showing how you would play against just 1 guy. That will be an upper bound on the number of hands we should bluff and value bet, right?

ok, heads up, he'll continue with at least 5/6th of his hands. Given this, we should value bet, I guess, the hands that are favorites against 5/6th of his range, plus we should bluff about 1 time in 6 that we bet. On this board, it may be hard for us to get very far in front of the top 5/6th of his range though (side note: if we don't know his range, I suppose we should use our own game-theory-perfect range after all of his actions). Any pocket pair has us crushed, any K or 6 has us crushed. unpaired hands below kings will almost always have 6 outs to win and 4 outs to tie. That's tough for us to beat. With ace high chopping so often and the raiser having a much stronger hand range than us (he raised preflop, we just called getting 10:1) our value-bettable hand range is going to be much less than 1/2 of his calling range. Maybe we can only bet the top 1/6th of our range or so. If that's the case, we'll be bluffing very rarely, only the top 1/36th of our range. Tiny.

Ok, so we can't do much value betting against just one opponent who plays well. How about against 4? I'm not exactly sure how to model it with any precision yet, but it's obvious that we can value bet MUCH less against 4 good opponents then against 1. Given this, betting ace high for value doesn't make much sense. If you are choosing it as one of your bluffing hands, then fine, but you should be betting it very rarely, VERY rarely, into 4 good opponents.


So, short answer, no, the bet isn't good, unless it's kind of a "value-bluff" that you make very rarely.


Now, you may say that the opponents will not call nearly this often. You are essentially saying that they play too tight in this situation, and that you should bluff more. Fine. But if you always bet ace high here, you'd be "value bluffing" WAY more than game theory would suggest is correct. You'd essentially be saying that you read these guys as WAY too tight.

But you don't have any read on the main villain, much less the other guys. Without a clear and strong read that they are way too tight, you shouldn't bet. If you check and it's heads up back to you though, calling could be right, as could raising every once in a while. For example, your river play is probably wrong unless you only do it very rarely as a kind of bluff.


I'm new to this subject, but trying desperately to jump start the conversation(s). Please let me know if you see any logic errors.

thanks,
Eric

[1800GAMBLER]

Don't include results, you are going to get awful replies now.

[Lestat]

[ QUOTE ]
Don't include results, you are going to get awful replies now.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think you're right. I can see how this would influence responses.

What about the turn bet?

[Lestat]

Thanks for such a well though out reply.

The one thing I thought was key is that mid pocket pairs are very likely to bet that flop after being checked to! So I was not overly concerned that any of the later players had me beat on the turn.

As to the pf raiser... His hand smelled like that of a total monster or he completely whiffed with AJ or QJs, etc.

One last thought: I wouldn't say any pocket pair (like 99), has me "crushed" on the turn, since I have 6 outs to win and another 4 for a tie.

[flawless_victory]

id go ahead and bet the flop and i like the river checkraise.
also, im gonna reiterate what 1800 said, posting results in threads like this totally kills the discussion.

[Lestat]

<font color="blue">also, im gonna reiterate what 1800 said, posting results in threads like this totally kills the discussion. </font>

Of course, you guys are right, but it really shouldn't be that way. Most on here should be able to analyze a hand without being results orientated. Then again, there's really not much reason to include them. I'll remember next time.

[BradL]

I agree that most of the time I like leading the flop here, it really depends on the aggression of the pfr and the players behind. As it played it looks like you were trying to trap the players behind on the flop and the turn bet is good. River checkraise is fine, it has the potential to fold middle pockets and a poorly bet A high split.

-Brad