I may be a douche

[Danenania]

If by "obvious draw" you mean 76 or 88, because those are the only hands BB can have that beat us.

[Spicymoose]

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If by "obvious draw" you mean 76 or 88, because those are the only hands BB can have that beat us.

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What about the 8 combos of QJ?

[Danenania]

Lagtards don't check/call two streets with that.

[Spicymoose]

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Lagtards don't check/call two streets with that.

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Most of the time, no, but he is in a pretty bad spot with 3 opponents and in the middle to do anything about it. I would probably discount it, but I think it is a definite possibility. I really don't think our hand is strong enough to raise.

[Danenania]

That's why I said consider. Think it's fairly close. But we do have the caller beat almost always and UTG beat quite often. If UTG is the type to checkraise when he gets there, and many lags are, then a raise would clearly be best.

Regardless, the point I was trying to make is that folding would be insane. I think Catt caught a bout of results orientation from this one.

[Catt]

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I think Catt caught a bout of results orientation from this one.

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Yeah, the post was initiated partly out of results-oriented thinking and confusion about how the hand was played. The LAGtard had QJo for the straight and the caller-guy had T9o for a turn-counterfeited two pair, so I was ahead pre-, behind on the flop, ahead on the turn, and behind on the river. Why the LAGtard didn’t lead or C/R the flop, I don’t know; I would fully expect her to do so almost 100% of the time given my read; and I also would've bet dollars to donuts that MP would C/R my flop lead with a flopped two-pair. I don't know why my opponents played this one so passively and seemingly out of character.

So I titled it “I may be a douche” because it may have been totally uninteresting hand that was coming from a R-O influenced perspective. But I was still thinking about the river decision even as I originally posted it and then the next day (today).

A donk on this river is very, very strange, and I think it should be a bit unsettling and take us past the “easy call closing the action in a big pot” sort of thinking. The flush doesn’t come in; there is now a three-to-a-straight on board; the board is paired with A’s; and it’s three-handed. What hand could LAGtard play this way – passively check / calling down three-handed and then donking the river into two players -- that the river makes any sense at all unless it is (1) a bluff, or (2) a hand that beats me? I think there are so few hands that she can have that are good and that expect to be called if they are good that it seems to me that a bet on this board after this action is very much a bet that wants to be called (or the bluff).

FWIW I group her possible hands as:

1. A bluff.

2. An Ax hand. I certainly would have expected more action earlier in the hand, but it is not inconceivable that LAGtard goes for overcalls (I know this is pretty unlikely).

3. A PP that doesn’t want the river checked through. But what PPs does she have and play like this? I think JJ+ definitely get three-bet pre-flop. TT-88 all hit their sets and we almost certainly hear from them sooner with the possible exception of 88). So we'd need to believe that she leads 77 or lower on a A-paired three-straight board into two players, one of whom is the PFR who has not relinquished the lead all hand, one of who was a limper and trapped between her and PFR, on a board with cards in the playing zones of limpers and a good portion of PFR hands? She has to hope that I and the other guy have hands that have totally missed (i.e., we’re both playing FDs or KQ / KJ / or a smaller PP) and that we'll call the bet anyway.

4. A two-pair hand played so silly that it doesn’t realize the paired board counterfeits it? So she donks T8 or 98 or something? It would surprise me, though of course I’ve seen this sort of crap before.

5. Some bizarre KT / QT / Q9 sort of hand? Possible, but I think it more likely that this sort of hand checks intending to call when three-to-a-straight comes if it hasn’t mustered the gumption to bet earlier – some guys will always “value-bluff” hands like this and if I knew the player better I’d be a lot more comfortable that this comprises a big % of hands played this way.

These players aren’t geniuses, but they’re not complete idiots either, and, given the river donk and the caller there, I just don’t think this is quite so straightforward as it seems on first blush. I actually think it’s much closer to a fold than a raise without a better read on LAGtard (specifically that she is ready, willing, and able to run a bluff on the river in a pot this size into two players on this sort of board). In fact, it seems to me that you’d need a stellar read to make raising attractive. I called obviously; and I think calling is correct because I think we’re almost always ahead of MP when he just calls the river and I think the KT sorts of hands and stupid bluffs comprise enough of LAGtard’s donking range that we’ve got odds to call; but I’ve still been thinking about this problem for some time today and definitely seem to believe it’s a lot closer than you believe it to be.