Should I call this river raise after the turn has checked through?

Okay well I hope you now understand that villain is a decent player.

My range is certainly theoretically capped a large percentage of the time when I check-call the flop. However, I was referring to the river play. Most of the capped part of my range from the flop (weak one pair hands etc) wants to get to showdown as cheaply as possible and therefore is going to check the river, hoping it goes check-check, but also willing to check-call a reasonable sized bet. However, that same range from the flop also contains many hands that have no showdown value, such as floats from the flop that intend to try and steal the pot on a later street (like the river after the turn checks through). In addition, my range also contains hands that slowplayed the flop (like my exact hand T8s), as well as hands that rivered thick value. That polarized range of air and value want to bet on this river in order to get folds/value.

I'm still calling this hand preflop at low frequency for balance and board coverage.

MPT is Modern Poker Theory; the book that I'm getting these ranges from.

Yeah we agree here but the point is, if villain believes you can't have flopped 2pair+ then I want to call river a lot more than I did before because this villain seems capable of attacking a capped range. Which I believe you're saying too.

So yeah. Good discussion regardless, interesting hand.

Post results.

It's a fold but it's also your money.

Thanks.

***REVEAL***

I called and villain had AK.

Admittedly I have not followed all the discussion in detail, but the above doesn't seem right to me.

With a polarised range, you'd bet close to pot or even overbet.
A 1/2 pot river bet is almost always a value bet with a medium strength hand, just like in this specific case.

I'll agree that my range is somewhat capped after check-calling on the flop. But it's certainly not as capped as the range that checks the river. Nb villain's range is also capped after he checks back the turn.

I know and accept my river sizing is not indicative of a polarized range. I made an (exploitable) adjustment and used a smaller size with a value hand. I would use a much larger size with bluffs, and I know that that is imbalanced and exploitable.

So.,.,you do with this what you want...

You seem to use solver outputs to justify what you're doing. I'm not a solver guy myself. I have no idea if you're just looking at pre-solved scenarios, or solving for equilibrium, or node-locking, or whatever.

That said, I think it's a huge mistake and a big leak to make GTO plays against super-exploitable opponents, and I think this V is exploitable.

You described him as playing solid all day. If your read is right, he's not getting out of line pre, so he shouldn't connect with this board very much, other than showing up with TT or 88, which we block.

This board is pretty dry for a 3B pot with a ~3 SPR. He really doesn't have very many, if any bluffs on this board, and very few of those are going to c-bet the flop for over 1/3 pot and continue to barrel turn, unless he makes a hand. His low equity draws are NEVER going to double-barrel unless they hit, and in that case, we're dead.

So, we're not losing value when we check-raise the flop and he folds his low equity draws, because he wasn't going to bet them on the turn unless he hit. We're picking up value from his over-pairs and high-equity draws that aren't folding to a flop check-raise on a board that looks like it would favor us more than him, allowing us to have more bluffs in our range.

Like, what's the absolute best draw he has here? J9s? Is a solid reg 3B'ing J9s pre, to $70, off a $500 stack, at 2/5? Really? I very much doubt it. If he is, he's not barreling the turn on any card that isn't a 7 or Q. I wouldn't expect him to barrel if he picks up a flush draw on some other card. I'd expect him to check back, a lot. He's not barreling turn with KQ, KJ, or QJ once we call flop.

Likewise, if he raised pre with JJ+, or two overs, he's not barreling the turn with all those hands when we raise pre, call his 3B, and flat call his flop c-bet. He might barrel a low disconnected brick with his over-pairs, or barrel when he picks up equity with a draw, but otherwise, he's going to be playing pot control and checking back a lot with both his value and his high-card hands, even when he makes top pair.

I think it's a big mistake to check-call a monster on this board, expecting him to barrel very often on the turn. When we raise pre, call his 3B, and call his c-bet, we're saying, "I can beat top pair, top kicker" or "I have a very good draw, so I'm not going anywhere". If that's our range, he doesn't have a lot of reasons to barrel the turn unless he picks up a draw to the nuts.

As for your check-raise plans, versus donking - again, I think you need to step back and reconsider your views on how opponents react. Check-raises tend to generate more fold equity than donks. Turn check-raises tend to generate more fold equity than flop check-raises.

I don't care what a solver says he SHOULD do when we check-call flop and then check turn, hoping to check-raise. Think about what most humans ARE doing. A lot of humans are going to check-back, not bet, denying us the opportunity to check-raise, and if they do bet, and we do check-raise, they're going to be over-folding with all their 1P holdings (see baluga theorem, “You should strongly re-evaluate the strength of one-pair hands in the face of a raise on the turn").

I don't know why you're trying to make a hand like this fancier than it needs to be. If we check-raise the flop, and barrel the brick turn, we have enough bluffs in our range to stack his over-pairs. When we check-call flop, and check-raise turn on a brick, we really don't. We just have a lot of thick value that sand-bagged the flop to jam turn on a brick, and a good opponent won't give us the chance often enough to make this line more profitable than just playing a two-street game with a flop x/r and a turn jam from up front.

The 1/2 pot river sizing of $125 into $240 with $375 behind is terrible. Part of the problem is that our hand wants to bet for value, but we have no idea how strong our opponent is on the nut-changing river, unless we're restricting his range to omit draws (like J9). In which case, his range is all over-pairs, top pair, combos of QQ, and AK/AJs type hands.

I think the right sizing is to jam all-in for 1.5x pot. Betting 1/2 pot puts us in no-man's land when he jams with AA, KK, AQ, KQ, QQ, J9 (if we think he's got J9 in his range, which we apparently do when we expect him to be bluffing on the flop), etc. And when we bet 1/2 pot after taking this line, it looks weak enough to induce raises.

I think it's a big mistake to use the same sizing for our value and our bluffs on the river. We don't need to be balanced here. He's never folding AQ+ to a 1/2 pot sized bet, so if we want to bluff, we should target his Tx and and A-high holdings, which will fold to a much smaller bet, like $180, or even $160.

For that reason, when we have value, we should target the stronger TP and over-pair hands in his range, that aren't folding to a big river bet, when we have so many busted draws and worse 1P hands that we might turn into a bluff.
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If we jam all-in and he rivered a set with QQ, nice hand, good game. He's got 3 combos of QQ, versus 6 of AA, 6 of KK, 12 of AQ, and 12 of KQ. If he has J9, we'll check-raise the flop every time we find ourselves in this situation, flopping a monster after calling a 3B light.

i dont think people check back overpairs on this turn at this spr basically ever. i pretty sure they are just going bet bet bet

dont know what frequency it happens at, but i think overbet jamming the river is the best way to get him to fold range in practice (hes supposed to pure call AQ / some BOP without an ace / whatever slowplays he has / have some j9ss and AA - would think most people dont have the slowplays or j9 either bc they 3bet pre or just bet the turn bc dunno what to do, and then usually fold 8x and sometimes unsure what % fold QJ / AQ which r never really supposed to fold; interestingly kq is mostly fold and probably ppl call that more than they should so maybe the Qx evens out idk)

GTOw gives free solve per day. is worth looking at this because solution is sort of complicated. its betting as light as 77 i guess with the idea ip is just supposed to bet everything ott and ends up ultra capped by the river. 500nl 50bb is gonna be closest i think to whats going on here

dont think logic for 50% otr makes much sense w what you're targetting though, esp if you think one pair never raises vs it (way too much ev loss and suspect u see them pure fold weak bluff catchers that are indifferent vs this sizing, so ev loss w this size will be pretty high id think)

OP actually answered my questions! 😀

How many hands could you say this about? If it's true for a S1G, surely it's true for suited connectors. Small PPs? Suited wheel aces?

Where our answers have gotten us so far is "this factor means call a little tighter, this factor means call a little looser," etc, so I think it'd be helpful from here to actually look at percentages and combos.

I'd start with taking your raise percentage for this spot (which you've said is tighter than MPT's CO 2.5x RFI of 27.8%) and multiplying that by the percentage MPT suggests you continue with a call specifically. How many hands should you be showing up with here, as a percentage or as a number of combos? Compare this against how many SCs, 66-, A5s-, etc there is and see what your range composition's looking like if you include all of them.

Which gets us to your mix strat. So overfolding to some players while underfolding to others might (big "might") make your fold to 3b number converge on the appropriate percent, but I think this misunderstands how people process information at a poker table. There is no HUD, and even if there were he wouldn't have a good enough sample on you, and he wasn't paying that close of attention all the times you've raise/folded to a rec-fish. Every time someone that looks like you called his 3b OOP looms AT LEAST 10x's as large in his mind than a hand where he didn't even VPIP.

Players' strategies are most attuned (either through study or intuition) to the way their opponents playback against them specifically. He's used to playing against people who think he's 3!ing a lot relative to the field with a small amount for those games. I'm sure this player is accustomed to getting too many calls to his <3x sizing and then getting an avalanche of folds post, especially in these games where your particular deviation from equilibrium aligns with population tendencies. Downsizing one street so that you can play more aggressively on the following streets is one of the oldest bait and switch strategies out there.

Just to blow through some of the other questions in quick order:

So MPT assumes a slight less than PSB raise with rake capped at 0.6bbs, so the OOP caller needs to earn almost exactly 1/3rd of the pot on average to justify a call. In your spot, you need to recoup a little more than 31% of the pot. So not a big difference.

Fair enough.

I use solver outputs to see what GTO equilibrium looks like for hands. Of course one cannot treat them as gospel for live poker play (far from it) but they are a very good baseline. I agree that one can and should make massive exploits in comparison to what game theory suggests.

A solid reg like villain in this hand has plenty of 3bet bluffs. Here is the default GTO range for BTN vs C/O in a single-raised pot:

Red is 3bet and black is call. His range is going to be tighter than this, as I isolated a limper and raised to 5bb, but it still shows how wide the BTN is meant to 3bet the C/O, which is relevant for this hand. As far as connecting with this board is concerned, his value is going to be sets, overpairs and the many Tx hands he has.

Many villains are going to cbet close to range in 3bet pots and I suspect this villain is no different. He's going to bet pretty much everything that missed as well as including many middle strength hands such as pocket nines (a hand that should often be used to protect one's check back range, but I suspect this villain likes to barrel). The turn in this hand is an absolute blank and there is no flush draw so yes certainly he is going to give up on this turn a lot with many bluffs expect for perhaps QJ, Q9, J9 and A5 (it might seem too thin to double barrel with gutshots but the distinct lack of bluffs on this board probably make it necessary in order to balance the value hands). In fact, the lack of draws on this board is one of the reasons I decided to call the flop and not check-raise.

So I think it could be argued the other way that we do lose some value when we check raise the flop and fold out his low-equity bluffs, especially as my check-raising range on this dry board would be somewhat value-heavy. And in any case he has the range advantage in this hand and in that case I need to play more defensively.

How do you think this board favors hero rather than villain? What are the bluffs you mentioned that we have in our range on this board?

This villain can certainly 3bet J9s and when he does he is certainly double-barreling it on most turns. In theory he should continue to barrel with all gutshots too. He has a ton of overpairs and top pairs that he's barreling and he has to balance them with bluffs. He's also going to bet any turned top pair.

The reason I check-call this board with this hand is because I know the vast majority of $2/$5 villains are cbetting close to 100% in 3bet pots. When I call and then check to them on a blank turn, they will give up with many of their airball bluffs (i.e. not gutshots or better). They will also continue to bet their value hands and strong draws, and this is the point. When I check to them on the turn they are going to give me very clear information about where they are in their range. If they bet then I am sure they have TPTK+ a lot of the time, and that they are unlikely to fold to a raise, allowing me to get max value most of the time. If I instead do this on the flop, when their betting range is close to 100% of their hands, it gives them a much easier decision as their range contains so much garbage like overcards that completely whiffed the flop.

Donk-betting is just outright theoretically incorrect 99% of the time, and it's something that I never do. After studying quite a bit of theory it is immediately clear to me that the only way to play one's range when out of position and without the betting lead (some people even argue with the betting lead) is to check with 100% of hands. For one thing, it's a much easier than splitting one's range into donks and checks, and donk-betting by its nature massively weakens your checking range, and removes hands from your check-raising range, which are both huge issues.

Solvers of course will not donk bet any hands in this situation, which is in agreement with established theory since long before the solver age. Most humans are terrfied of giving free cards or getting outdrawn and as a result are very rarely checking back this turn with hands stronger than top pair middling kicker.

You claim more than once that we "have enough bluffs in our range" on this board. What are those bluffs? There is no flush draw, even on the turn.

Yes I agree with your point that we don't have many bluffs when we check-call the flop and check-raise turn. In fact I'd wager a large amount of money that a solver would use almost all gutshots for balance on this board due to the distinct lack of draws. The problem with the point you are trying to make is that yes, we don't have many bluffs on the turn, but we have even fewer on the flop.

As I have made clear numerous times in this thread, I used a small sizing on the river with a value hand because villain capped his range by checking back the turn and I want to ensure I get called by all of his Qx holdings and as many of his bluff catchers as I can. We have a very clear idea of how strong our opponent is on the river after he checks back the turn. He's capped at Qx and perhaps a small amount of top pairs/overpairs that pot-controlled the turn. I can ensure all of these hands call, as well as many Tx, by using a smaller size. If I go large I massively reduce his calling range to perhaps the small amount of top pairs/overpairs that pot-controlled the turn. It wasn't my intention to induce him to raise as a bluff when I used a small size, but that is another benefit of using a small size here against an aggressive player - of course he's much less likely to raise if I use a large size. Sure, I was in a tricky and unexpected spot when he jammed the river, but the price is really too good when I have two pair and he has capped his range on the turn.

I would bet much larger with bluffs on this river, which is imbalanced and incorrect from a theoretical point of view but an adjustment that one can get away with against unobservant recs or players against whom one does not have much history, like the villain in this hand. I only play this way live and online try to remain as balanced as possible and would be betting huge with value and bluffs on this river. In any case I certainly don't think we should bet smaller as a bluff on this river. He has already capped his range on the turn, so let's just go massive and remove any doubt or any possibility that he finds the hero call (I like to go 2x pot in these river probe spots).

Cool I will check out GTOw although I have to say I love Pio.

Yes in hindsight I could have gone bigger on the river, but I think anything more than 75% pot is too much.

What I mean with T8s not being dominated is that villain's 3betting range is A and K heavy; this is why the C/O folds many dominated Ax hands vs the 3bet and tends to call more with hands (amongst other things) like suited connectors that flop well but are unlikely to be dominated in the manner that hands such as KQ and the various suited aces A8 and below are.

The black hands in this chart are the hands that hero is meant to call with in the C/O vs BTN 3bet:

As we have established, my range needs to be tighter than this due to the fact that I opened to 5bb as I was isolating a limper, and because the rake is higher than that used for the ranges in MPT. So the question then becomes - which hands do I remove from this range in order to tighten up? As indicated above, I would be more inclined to remove dominated hands such as A9s, KQs, KJs, KTs, K9s and the low frequency of smaller pocket pairs that decided to iso-raise (due to their lack of playability OOP in a 3bet pot) - let's say pocket 7s and below. The remaining range has some big Ax suited, QJs, QTs, JTs and lower suited connectors at a low frequency down to 65s, and pocket pairs. As I've indicated, I think T8s is a fine call here some of the time. And nb I am calling a lot wider against this villain than against most players at the table (against whom I'm snap folding T8s almost always).

I'm certain villain had me pegged as a tight player; everybody does. And yes I'm well aware of the benefits of 3betting wide in position against fish and taking them on a nightmare journey postflop; that is of course the modus operandi of sharks everywhere, myself included.

Well, if you're not going to do the math yourself as suggested, one way you could cheat is by swiping over to the chart on HJvBTN 3!, as this will tell you exactly what the sim's range is for continuing against a BTN 3!er when your opening range is only 3/4s as wide.

I would recommend opening Stove or some other preflop chart editor and actually playing with the ranges, though, because I'm not so sure you're eyeballing these frequencies and mixes as well as you think you are.

I honestly don't think it's necessary to do the math for combos we continue with vs a 3bet in live poker; approximations are fine and very little is gained by figuring out specific combos.

I am definitely not "eyeballing these frequencies and mixes" closely, because I don't think it's necessary. Additionally, it involves making large assumptions about villains range. If those ranges change significantly in practical application (which they probably do when transferring study away from the table into live play) then the work done is meaningless. Are we meant to do this with every player type at the table? That would be an awful amount of work with very little gained in return. Do you do this for your live ranges?

Unfortunately this conversation is teetering into “information I would not divulge on a public forum for free” territory. Hope you understand 😃

Lol sure...

lol 30 people read this forum and 3/4 of them don't believe in computers

I did a solve with Piosolver for the hand. Some things to note:

1. OOP checks range on the flop (no surprise).

2. Don't ask me why, but IP is not cbetting much with J9 on this board (seems that checking with this hand and betting have similar EV) and in fact IP cbets at a relatively low frequency of about 53%, including all strong top pair + hands, most of the gutshots and several of the overcard combos. Here's the betting range:

3. When faced with a 33% pot flop bet, OOP has very few check raises (similarly to IP, check-raising and calling have similar EV - but this is not that unusual on the flop as there is so much "noise" to get through before showdown):

4. OOP should again check range on the turn (again no surprise).

5. IP should continue to barrel with a polarized range on the turn, again betting all strong top pair + hands for value, as well as some gutshots and overcard combos:

I assume the absence of flush draws is what has resulted in so much barreling with these gutshot and overcard hands. But it's perplexing that J9 is not included.

6. If IP instead checks back the turn then OOP is probing about 43% of the time on the river, with a polarized range (as expected) that includes bottom of range bluffs and T8s. In the case of T8s the highest EV option is to jam:

(which I also find somewhat perplexing, but it's perhaps explained by the fact that the bottom of range bluffs also like to use this size).

7. If OOP instead uses half pot on the river as I did, then IP responds as follows:

Raising quite a large 18.8% of the time, including KK and AA for value. It's interesting to note that jamming is the highest EV option with all combos of AK, but (presumably for balance) the solver only jams with it about 10% of the time. Perhaps villain was onto something?

8. Faced with the river raise, OOP has a slam-dunk call with T8s:

Good night!

would recomend u use gtow instead of whatever u did in pio. the pre ranges u have look really wonky to me and the outputs in general don't match. its going to work better if you look at 50 bb ranges given the sizings used and what the spr will be if you call preflop

Long story short, based on what I assume to be my opponent’s 3! percentage for that situation, I can figure out at the table what percent of hands I want to continue with and have ways of building a few different compositions (polar, linear, some gradations in between), etc.

Any more detail than that is for subscribers only. My DMs are always open.

You have no idea how much fear I have in my heart that some day I’ll be sitting in a cardroom only to have gobbledygeek walk in and sit on my direct left armed with the knowledge of the heuristics I use to build 3! continuation ranges.

So the #1 thing to understand about postflop solutions is that the first actions on the flop are predominantly a reflection of the assumptions (especially the ranges) used for the sim. I'd think of it like a filtering function where the aggressor bets an amount and the defender calls an amount to make the ranges cohere with each other (though obviously with very different compositions), so that the solver's shows up on the turn (or facing a flop raise or whatever) like "alright, NOW we're ready to play some bot poker with coherent ranges!"

ALL ELSE BEING EQUAL, board texture is going to be the main factor for how far ahead the aggressor is (or not), so if you run a script using the same assumptions it's going to give the illusion that board texture is king. But the majority of poker happens in all the idiosyncrasies we sanded off by making our abstractions. So when you get a surprising result, it's instructive to ask "what does this say about the assumptions I made."

This isn't a good assumption/bad assumption thing either: even using solved preflop ranges, the aggression on the flop is going to be higher if they used smaller sizing pre, for example (4bps in 100bb poker have the highest flop aggression because 4b sizes are small relative to the pot, for example).

In these low SPR spots, solvers hate bf'ing equity IP (especially on the turn), and so they often have bluff ranges more concentrated in air than draws. The best draws that can't continue to a raise are the ones most prone to checking back, so combo draws and NFDs still tend to play aggressively for example.