33 set

[udontknowmickey]

Playing 1/2 at empire

Alright so I'm on the button wiht a pair of 3s. 5 limpers to me and I call. One person who has bought in a huge stack but other than that nothing significant.

J43 rainbow flop, perfect for me. Someone bets and i raise, 3 callers.

The turn comes up a J. I think that its good for my hand now because I'll get a ton of action from any jacks. Person who bet out on flop bets again, I raise, reraise and capped. One bystander following all the way.

River is a K and it gets checked to me. Now I figure that the person who was capping was holding AJ or KJ, so I think he's going for a checkraise in the latter occurance. I check as well and the bystander shows KJ (hitting his full house jacks over kings) and the bettor mucks AJ and I watch a 42 dollar pot dissapear (that really would have made my day too..).

My question is that check on the river card. If I do indeed have the best hand (two people holding Jx) and I bet it probably would haved been capped as well, with me losing an addition 8 dollars. Now balance that against the likelyhood that the K didn't help anyone and me gaining 16 (assuming both follow to the capping). Should I have bet out on the river?

[huzitup2]

I bet here.

You got beat by a runner-runner full house. (Yikes)

Bets made on the river are allowed to backfire now and again; if they show ANY profit whatsoever, they are (by definition) "profitable bets". (No emoticon, it just sounded sarcastic - I meant it to be serious).

If this situation occurred 1,000 times, do you think betting the river would show a profit ?

I do - not a doubt in my mind !

- H

[ramjam]

I would not bet. If you have the best hand, you can figure on making up to $4 extra if they call. As you say, if you don't have the best hand (and that K is pretty worrying) you may set off a betting frenzy where you lose a lot more because it's going to be very difficult to lay down your baby boat. You can only show a substantial profit if you are against two idiots who both believe that trip jacks are going to take down this pot - and I believe that any such idiot (or somebody hoping in desparation to buy the pot) would have bet into you on the river. Also, those types of idiot are less prevalent at Party 1/2 than they used to me. If it was heads up, bet - but three way and with no draw on board, anybody rational person holding a J must realise that only one of his other two adversaries can have the case card and that the other is probably not capping with just a pocket pair.

I say this despite having taken down a 33 big bet pot a few weeks ago with 66 against one presumed maniac (JT) and one reasonably sane player (QJ) and a board of JJ6AK. When the maniac raised the river I was not confident about my chances.

[slider77]

With that many callers, you have to think you're beat with the J on the turn right?

[ramjam]

On deeper thought, I think I might revise my analysis!

If they both have trip jacks, I would assume they'd both make crying calls and pay you $4. It's highly unlikely they both have boats and both checked, so if you bet out and get check-raised you'll almost certainly get to a showdown for $4. A bet therefore looks like positive EV if there's less than an evens chance you're facing a bigger boat. Assuming they both have jacks, you could be facing AJ (4 combos), KJ (3 combos), QJ (4 combos), JT (4 combos) or J9 (4 combos) - we'll assume that nobody was loose enough to enter the pot with anything worse but if they were it's compensated by the fact that many unsuited JT's and J9's might have been folded preflop. That would make the probability you're facing a boat 1 - (16/19 * 15/18) = 30%. I guess that makes it a bet - but not if there were two threatening cards on board to go with the jacks. Also, if you tighten the assumptions to nothing worse than JTs and J9s possibly being out there, you have a check.