3 betting this river excessive?

[djoyce003]

it's extremely excessive on a straight and flush board. You should have check called the river. Flush there went an hour or two of work.

[I Play 2 Ski]

whoa, slow down. Yes the river is excessive

[StellarWind]

The flush is unimportant because A [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] is on board.

This player seems OK from his stats. When you cap the turn and bet the river it's about time for him to put *you* on AA because you 3-bet preflop.

Bridge players understand this concept. You've already "shown" your hand. Once you do that you need to stop raising unless you think he's an idiot. Raising the river with less than 99 is hopeless on his part.

[StellarWind]

[ QUOTE ]
Villain 31/16/2.5 over 1600 hands

[/ QUOTE ]
It's useful to provide a read for BB too. The first point of the hand may be that Villain turned up with 87o precisely because you're tight and BB doesn't defend his blind.

[Girchuck]

This has been mentioned, by why are you calling the flop?
Your flop bet is specifically designed to elicit a raise, so that you can 3bet, and hopefully have a capped flop. Most money in this hand must go in on the flop.
River action is unfortunate. Did you put the villain squarely on the lower set? This is the only reason I might've 3bet the river. But again, if you 3bet flop, you can get a better idea about the villains hand and the probability of him having a set would probably depend on whether or not he caps the flop. Also, a villain with stats like this would be raising the flop with draws a lot, so just calling the flop does not generate much extra action later.

[baronzeus]

Reading over this hand made me realize how bad a river cap is. His stats point to the fact that he's not an idiot, and his turn cap should have pointed me to the straight or a (perhaps lower?) set.

Anyways thanks for the replies guys.

One more thing: the reason I didn't cap preflop was because I wanted to steal an extra bet on the turn. His preflop raise pointed to Ax, maybe a mid pocket pair. I didn't think a free card would hurt me at all in this situation.

[mungpo]

This is a good point. I think you need to 3-bet the flop and just call villians raise on the river.

[Girchuck]

His preflop raise indicates a wide range of stealing hands.
This button is certainly on a steal, so you cannot give him credit for an A just yet. His stealing range will usually be a lot wider than Ax or a pocket pair. When he raises your bet on the flop, does this mean that he wants more action or less action? You don't know. Your hand certainly wants more action, because it is the nuts currently. If he raises a draw, as a 2,5AF will often do, you want this raise punished immediately. This because there is a good chance he is raising for a free card and you will not get any turn action. If he is raising a pocket pair, your 3bet might cause him to fold the turn, and you will lose an SB. If he is raising a weak ace, he might still be good enough to fold to your turn check-raise especially if the draw completes on the turn. However, if you re-raise flop, he will be calling his weak ace to the river more often, because flop 3bet is not as strong as turn check-raise. If he is raising a strong ace, he will proceed to cap the flop, and will call your turn and river bets, perhaps even raise your turn bet. If he caps flop, you still have an option of check-raising the turn.
The smooth call with a monster is not a default play here. It is a deviation play designed to make your game unpredictable. If you rarely re-raise a set in this situation, you are giving too much information to observant players and you are giving up too much value to aggressive players who raise their draws often.