Should I call this river raise after the turn has checked through?
Hi guys,
I was playing at my regular $2/$5 place last night. There was one limp before it got to me in C/O and I opened to $25 with T♠8♠. The button, who's been playing a pretty solid game all day, 3bets to $70 off a $500 stack (and I have him covered). I call and the flop comes T♥8♣4♦. I check to him, he bets $50, I call. I realise I can raise at this point but I know he's gonna cbet close to range here, and I wanted to keep his bluffs in (and I was intending to check jam any safe turn if he fires again, so I can get the money in good vs. a likely overpair). However, the 3♠ turn checks through. The river comes the Q♦ and I figure I can get value here from AQ, KQ and other showdown-bound hands that pot-controlled on the turn. So I bet $125, and to my surprise he tank-raises to $375.
Hero...?
Preflop call is a little light but no biggie.
I like the flop check-call, you'd expect most overpairs to fire again on most cards and also the whiffs to barrel a fair bit to get you off a single pair, as you say you can raise turn.
River bet is fine - probably better than a check-raise??? - if this opponent is solid then you can probably call here as you've shown no strength in the hand, although obviously overfolding to river raises is rarely bad. It's unlikely he's raising worse for value (snap call if he is!) but I probably talk myself into a call here.
It's CO v button, so ranges are wide. Nobody would blink at someone calling a 3bet CO V button with QTs or T9s. T8s is too light, but it's not egregious especially as the 3bet is less than 3x, and definitely not the most interesting part of the hand.
It's CO v button, so ranges are wide. Nobody would blink at someone calling a 3bet CO V button with QTs or T9s. T8s is too light, but it's not egregious especially as the 3bet is less than 3x, and definitely not the most interesting part of the hand.
I would be more likely to agree if CO had gone for a more normal 2.5x-3.0x open rather than the 5x open. In addition, the $70 is basically a 3x raise.
Preflop call is a little light but no biggie.
I like the flop check-call, you'd expect most overpairs to fire again on most cards and also the whiffs to barrel a fair bit to get you off a single pair, as you say you can raise turn.
River bet is fine - probably better than a check-raise??? - if this opponent is solid then you can probably call here as you've shown no strength in the hand, although obviously overfolding to river raises is rare
Sure I know the preflop call is a little light and I am folding this hand most of the time, but I felt like taking villain on this time.
Yes I agree this should be a check-call flop and then decide on turn depending on how villain proceeds.
I prefer betting river because if I check he is likely to give up with bluffs that didn't fire on the turn and check back with a lot of hands that want to showdown that I could have gotten value from.
I was concerned about QQ and QTs that pot-controlled on the turn. I don't think I'm beating much value as AQ is probably too thin to raise on the river - but maybe!?
So I guess the question is - what is the threshold for calling here when I am faced with the river raise? Is my exact hand indifferent, or a plus EV call? I suspect it's a plus EV call but I haven't checked yet with Piosolver.
Lol I mean that is about as low freq as it gets. Pre just seems bad but what ever. You’re stubborn af.
River is a fold unless you give me a reason to call. People don’t bluff in these spots or raise worse for value.
?
Equilibrium is equilibrium, and in any case the relevant decision in this hand is on the river.
The "reason to call" on the river is that he capped his range when he checked back the turn. Is he really doing that with overpairs and QTs? That's the question here. Most players at low stakes are not pot controlling the turn with overpairs.
For sure I'm only beating a bluff or a thinly played AQ when he raises the river.
I definitely call. There is still value that you beat here. It's certainly not unheard of to check the turn behind with the intention of betting big on the river after another check. Reg vs reg I think you see this line fairly often with AA/KK. Obviously you don't check in this hand, but I can still imagine him putting you on AQ or something like KQs with a backdoor flush on the flop and raising his overpair for value. Heck, it could even be a bluff, since your sizing doesn’t necessarily scream huge strength. You're blocking TT/88 (I wouldn’t expect those to ever check the turn though) and QTs (which he may not even be 3betting or at least not always). You're not blocking QQ, but I would just consider that a cooler. I'd also expect him to check less with QQ, because it would need a bit more protection against an A or K on the river.
To be fair, I would mostly expect someone who checks the turn behind with AA/KK to just call the river here and not raise, but this would still not convince me to fold. I'd rather make an incorrect call than an incorrect fold here.
I am also in the fold pre camp (fold to the 3 bet).
As played, I am kind of undecided between c/c and c/r otf, it depends also on how sticky V is.
As played, V's line between turn and river doesn't make a lot of sense to me. With which value hands would he raise a river which completes the oesd, after checking back a blank turn?
And which bluffs can he have?
His most reasonable hands might be J9s and QTs, if he is good/aggro enough to 3bet those preflop.
Maybe AQ?
I don't know, overall this looks like a tough fold, unless we have some read that V can take this line with KK/AA/AQ.
?
Equilibrium is equilibrium, and in any case the relevant decision in this hand is on the river.
The "reason to call" on the river is that he capped his range when he checked back the turn. Is he really doing that with overpairs and QTs? That's the question here. Most players at low stakes are not pot controlling the turn with overpairs.
For sure I'm only beating a bluff or a thinly played AQ when he raises the river.
Actually, if I’m not mistaken you said rake is really high where you’re from. So the decision starts pre flop. This is a just a fold.
I meant a reason as in a read. V being bad or splashy or what ever. V population I’m folding, they just don’t bluff these spots.
If you disagree tell me but I just expect people to call river with AA/KK/AQ if they pot control turn.
You are using preflop charts for evil rather than good.
What is your range for ISOing an MP limper in the CO and how does it compare with your CO RFI range? How does this difference affect your ranges for continuing to a 3b?
What strategy does MPT assume BTN employs when facing a raise from CO? How does this differ from the strategies you see in your game's population? How does this difference affect your continuing strategy?
What size (as a percentage of the pot) does MPT assume for a BTN 3b and how does that differ from the size you are facing? What rake does MPT assume, how does that differ from your game, and how much does this offset or accentuate the difference above? How (and to what degree) should this affect your continuing strategy?
What is your method for determining when to continue with the hands that are a mix between call and fold? What percentage of the time do you believe that leads you to calling with these hands? How does continuing with that percentage with all the hands that are in that bucket affect your overall continuing percentages (as a percentage of your actual, in-game ISO range, not MPT's CO RFI range)? If those continuing percentages differ from what MPT suggests, in what ways does this make you exploitable? How likely are your opponents to (whether purposefully or accidentally) exploit them?
Have you seen other preflop charts for similar spots? To what extent do they differ? How do subtle differences in assumptions affect the solver's strategy? What do the differences suggest about your application of these ranges? How does that affect this hand in particular or the bucket of hands in question more broadly?
Answer these questions and you'll come out the other side better at poker.
i would not fold your hand otr now but i think line leading up to him raising is not your best option. if you want to just c/c the flop id either bet larger otr or go for xr if you're targetting primarily rivered TP hands. (i just don't think you're going to see enough river aggression from them if you use a smaller size to justify that)
i get your reasonings for pre and am whatever about it but question if its actually +ev. you also aren't supposed to have a co range here given that you isoed a limper to 5x.
This is a pretty classic situation when "defending" poker actions - preflop is where OP got themselves into trouble and they refuse to go back and dissect that part.
The entire hand history stems off that poor preflop raise and call. You get yourself into bad situations when you get involved in bloated pots with mediocre holdings.
On top of that, the preflop sizing is huge. If that's "normal" for the table, then the adjustment is to tighten both your opening and 3! calling ranges. Not justify your actions saying you "felt like" playing the hand.
To be clear, it's fine to play however you want. But it's not optimal, and preflop is where this hand fell apart.
the thing about pre and defending vs the 3b is if the ev is v close, you're basically relying on yourself to play closer to optimal than your opponent which is difficult when you're oop / mostly readless / have a condensed range, otherwise you're likely just going to leak ev post while telling yourself you're playing well. would guess if you're not very good in comparison to villains your best bet by far is to just (over)fold all of the fringe hands and just accept you're opening yourself up to slight exploitation pre. there's no way someone is going to be able to tell you're folding 5-10% too often to 3bets oop in a 5 hour session.
to rephrase, is maybe obvious but the way these pre ranges are derived is by a solver that assumes both parties are going to play optimally post and calculating the ev of all decisions in all allowed areas of the game tree. if all you have is the guy is solid, it's very likely he's going to play better than you even if just accidentally by nature of position / polarity / equity.
Pre is probably not close at all when you take rake into account and by OPs own words rake in his game is really really high.
I guess I fold river, but the real mistake was calling preflop, as others mentioned. I just don't see him turning up with bluffs or worse value with this line.
Lol I mean that is about as low freq as it gets. Pre just seems bad but what ever. You’re stubborn af.
River is a fold unless you give me a reason to call. People don’t bluff in these spots or raise worse for value.
Slightly OT. Obviously nobody knows exact GTO in real time, but would any of you players who place close to GTO regularly have intuitively known or inferred that 44 is mostly a fold, whereas 33 is always a call.
Slightly OT. Obviously nobody knows exact GTO in real time, but would any of you players who place close to GTO regularly have intuitively known or inferred that 44 is mostly a fold, whereas 33 is always a call.
To be clear, the sim that this is taken from (in Modern Poker Theory) has 100% of 44 in its RFI range and about 50% of 33-, so what it’s doing is continuing with the same absolute number of combos to a 3!, which is a relatively larger amount of 33- that gets here this way.
In other words, it is raise/calling 50% of all 44-, but 44 is raise/folding the other 50% whereas 33- is open folding the other 50%.
I really wish these preflop charts made the square size proportional to how many of those combos are in the given range in the first place because not only does it lead to confusions like these, but you actively have to click back and forth between a bunch of charts (which don’t usually appear next to each other in the tree or in the book) in order to understand what the strategy ACTUALLY is.
All that being said, you can find some quirks like the one you think you spotted here on other parts of the tree. For example, there are sims that fold 100% of K7s and 87s from the HJ but raise a lot of K6s-K4s and 65s-.
For this I’ll say two things: 1) getting down to this level of minutia in exactly replicating a given sim’s output is silly given the fact that it’s noise that varies between sims and is literally a rounding error when applying in real situations with slightly different rake, stack sizes, etc and 2) to the extent that it might be important (perhaps in spots with very narrow ranges in very tough games where viability of strats is going to be very sensitive to these sorts of frequency and board coverage) there are ways you can study and apply the lessons inherent here. For example, I suspect the bottom of your pocket pair range is plenth represented in some ranges of <30% wide, so you should forgo hands that provide board coverage on those hands (like 7xs in the HJ RFI range) whereas when you fold a lot of the pocket pairs of those ranks you get more value out of patching them up with other board coverage options for that rank.
I don't like your half pot sized river bet here. I think this is a spot where you need to either check (induce bluffs on a card that favors Villain; get Villain to value bet Qx and go for XR) or bet huge (targeting rivered Qx which never folds to a big bet). I also agree that you need to fold to the 3bet pre-flop and I don't think it's that close.
As played I would call. Your small sizing may have induced Villain to bluff or raise a worse hand for thin value. Your hand is under-repped and any two pair is strong on this board in a 3BP.
To be clear, the sim that this is taken from (in Modern Poker Theory) has 100% of 44 in its RFI range and about 50% of 33-, so what it’s doing is continuing with the same absolute number of combos to a 3!, which is a relatively larger amount of 33- that gets here this way.
In other words, it is raise/calling 50% of all 44-, but 44 is raise/folding the other 50% whereas 33- is open folding the other 50%.
I really wish these preflop charts made
Thanks this is a really good explanation
