Sickest call I've made in a long time

[mchilger]

PokerStars Game #14668046198: Hold'em Limit ($30/$60) - 2008/01/19 - 11:05:55 (ET)
Table 'Leda' 6-max Seat #5 is the button
Seat 1: boc4life ($1309 in chips)
Seat 2: LuckyBMW ($1563 in chips)
Seat 3: tasty poop ($2942 in chips)
Seat 4: silverlion99 ($2304.50 in chips)
Seat 5: gregpou ($827 in chips)
Seat 6: riverit ($973 in chips)
riverit: posts small blind $15
boc4life: posts big blind $30
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to riverit [Js Ts]
LuckyBMW: folds
tasty poop: folds
silverlion99: folds
gregpou: folds
riverit: raises $30 to $60
boc4life: calls $30
*** FLOP *** [6c 4d 9h]
riverit: bets $30
boc4life: raises $30 to $60
riverit: calls $30
*** TURN *** [6c 4d 9h] [Ks]
riverit: checks
boc4life: bets $60
riverit: raises $60 to $120
boc4life: calls $60
*** RIVER *** [6c 4d 9h Ks] [9d]
riverit: bets $60
boc4life: raises $60 to $120
riverit: calls $60
*** SHOW DOWN ***
boc4life: shows [8d 7c] (a pair of Nines)
riverit: shows [Js Ts] (a pair of Nines - King+Jack kicker)
riverit collected $717 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $720 | Rake $3
Board [6c 4d 9h Ks 9d]
Seat 1: boc4life (big blind) showed [8d 7c] and lost with a pair of Nines
Seat 2: LuckyBMW folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 3: tasty poop folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 4: silverlion99 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 5: gregpou (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 6: riverit (small blind) showed [Js Ts] and won ($717) with a pair of Nines

Comments?

[Fenris78]

Wow, what a call

Since you won I guess you had a good read that allowed you to make a profitable call here on the river. Villains play was absolutely consistent with having a 9 in his hand and I wouldn't even have thought about calling here, which is obivously a mistake.

[chrisjp]

Must have thought it was an ITHer in disguise playing 53o.

But seriously getting 10-1 odds...what are the chances that villain has 87, 75, or 53? Looks like less than 10% to me. Maybe not.

WIcked call!

Chris

[Willem]

I like the call. When I put villain on a pair (on the flop) or an OESD, I get almost 12% equity on the river. You are getting 1:11, giving you over over 3% overlay. But because villain is likely to just call with most of his mediocre hands, the chances of winning are even better than 12% (probably 20%-25%, maybe even better), making the call even more correct.

But I have my doubts about your bet on the river. You have close to 0% chance to get him to fold a better hand, nor is villain going to call with a worse hand. But you cannot check-call the river either after check-raising the turn. Pretty much everyone check-raising one street and checking the next is planning to call. Villain probably knows this so you cannot profitably check-call the river, because he's less likely to be bluffing. So I think given your aggressive line on the turn, you cannot do anything else but bet out on the river (and call a raise). The fact that villain is not folding a better hand is irrelevant here. Him folding a worse hand is better than you folding the best one.

[Fenris78]

[kpr16]

This is one of those hands where I wish we didn't have the result. What hands are you check-raising turn and folding to a river raise as played?

I'm thinking that despite the great result, a bet-call here seems bad in a vacuum. We have to fold something or else our opponent should never bluff-raise! In other words, I think it's right to let his river bluff raise succeed when we have J-hi, but I'm interested in more opinions.

[kpr16]

One line to consider here is a turn check-raise and a river check-fold, hoping it goes check-check.

This is definitely a line that's rarely ever used, but I think it should be used more often, allowing us to check a river scare card with medium strength hands following a turn check-raise, and still induce bluffs from busted draws.

Bad players usually bluff when you want them to, but a good player will not bet every busted draw following this action.

[Willem]

I don't think you need to make every crying call whenever you are above the break-even point in terms of pot equity. If you do that, you are calling too much and villain can exploit that by value-betting more and bluffing less. You need to make crying calls whenever you have overlay in the pot but you need to be calling with the correct frequency. If I remember correctly, the correct calling frequency is (P-1)/P (where P is the size of the pot). With a pot of 11BB, this results in calling around 91% of the time. So you should be folding some hands with overlay and I think J-high is a very good candidate.

I'm also not sure if you need to be check-raising this on the turn. How many bluffs compared to real hands are you raising here? Optimal would be something around 1 bluff for every 4 real hands. I'm not going to analyze the entire possible range you might hold here but I think just calling the turn (10 outs maybe) and folding the river is also an option. You need to call down and fold the river anyway sometimes to induce future 3-barrel bluffs.

Another question for you Matthew: How would you play the hand if villain just called the flop and raised the turn? Would you call the turn? And if so, I assume you are check-folding the river then. Reason I ask is that calling the flop and raising the turn is my standard line in villains' position.

[Willem]

[mchilger]

Wow, great analysis on the hand.

First of all, these hands go so quickly so I didn't put as much thought into my play as your analysis here. I agree with the analysis that if I thought there was a chance my hand was best on the river, I should have just check-called. I'm not sure I agree with the analysis that if I check, he is less likely to bluff. Many, many players will not try a bluff-raise on the river and if they do, it is with a very small frequency. Whether or not I am getting the proper odds is open to debate but I'll discuss that a little more below.

During the actual hand, my thought was that there was a decent chance he was on a draw also, so I check-raised the turn with the plan of betting out the river (I see the faults in this analysis but during the hand that was my thinking). After he raised the river, I took a little more time to think, and realized that if my thinking was right that he could be on draw also, that my J-high would be good. I also saw that the 9 on the river was the perfect scare card for someone to think about trying a bluff-raise. So the call was more afterthought and I agree that I didn't take the best line given my analysis.

But I also think that his chance of being on a draw is higher that what you guys seem to think. First of all, this is small blind vs. big blind. His calling range preflop is very, very high. Some opponents will call with 100% of his hands. I think this particular opponent would call with all but the very worst hands.

On the flop, there are a ton of draws: T8, T7, 87, 85, 75, 73, 53, and 52. Some opponents won’t call preflop with 73 or 52, but some will. What does my opponent’s raise on the flop tell me – not too much. He could have a pair or he could be raising a draw. It’s doubtful he has a really strong hand as some would wait until the turn to raise. I would think there is a higher chance he had a pair of sixes than a pair of nines as opponents tend to wait with top pair more than 2nd pair. As Willem says, some opponents would wait to raise the turn in either case, but in this particular hand I don’t gain that much information with his raise. Because this is SB vs. BB, an ace is possibly in his range, but I would have expected him to reraise preflop with an ace. So there are 8 combinations of hands where I have the best hand. Some opponents would fold the gutshots once I raised the turn, but many will not given that the pot size has grown

Willem may be correct that my turn check-raise is unlikely to get a better hand to fold. It use to be that a turn check-raise would drive small pairs out a good percentage of the time. Nowadays some opponents will never fold A-high. This is something I am trying to adjust to as I do get myself in trouble sometimes. On the other hand, that type of aggressive line also gets me more action. Check-raising the turn shouldn’t be a standard play, but I do think you need to semi-bluff check-raise occasionally to keep your game unpredictable.

Outside of the analysis of my particular line of play, once I bet the river, was my call good? I think the 9 on the river was the key card. As Fenris says, his line of play would have been consistent with having a 9 in his hand, but because of that, in an instant, that scare card might induce a player to try a bluff-raise. Combine that with a lot of potential draws that my opponent could be sitting on and I called. Whenever I am faced with a decision on the river, I always ask the simple question, are there some reasonable draws my opponent could be sitting on? If so, I call. I just don’t do it very often with J-high.

Matthew

[kpr16]

Great thread. I agree with Willem, I like a check-call on the turn most of the time. And because of your read of the situation Matthew, I think you did make a good call... but I think the hand forced you to re-think your original plan a lot which ended up being very telling.

When I was recommending more passive lines, I'm not really saying that villain is going to have fewer draws (I agree with you, he has a draw a ton here). The issue is that it would probably be a mistake to bet-call and check-call down with all of your showdownable value (A-hi or better), if you are going to always re-bluff with too many draws.

---Kyle

[Willem]

Any villain semi-bluffing with every possible draw is probably bluffing too often, which you can exploit this by calling down more often. In this specific hand against an opponent who bluffs too much, you may need to showdown AT+ also, unless a low card comes that gives every draw a strait or a pair (a 5, 7, 8 here).

But calling down with any jack-high hand is wrong since you are calling down way too often then, even though that jack-high might be the best hand. But you are going to the river here regardless because you may have 10 outs. And once you are on the river, seeing a showdown with jack high is probably correct.

[Misunderstud]

One of the first principles I remember reading was this: a common mistake is raising for a free card and then not taking it. So,

1. Should the villain have taken the free card here (i.e. should the primary purpose of the flop raise have been to gain a free card, or is there an overriding factor I'm missing)?
2. If he had checked behind on the turn, how would that affect the river decisions of both parties?

In short, although Matt's decision regarding the hand as played was obviously spot on, to what extent was the villain the author of his own misfortune?

[Fenris78]

Raising for a free card and then actually taking it, is horrible in HU pots imo. It turns your hand face up without you having any way to balance this out. So you either keep betting after semi-bluff raising the turn, because that's what you would do with your strong hands too, or you don't semi-bluff at all on the flop, which is my preferred line.

6max has gotten so aggressive that your EV is definitely negative when raising for a free card because you will get 3bet and then bet into on the turn so often that those rare times where you will actually get to take your free card will never make up for the times where you have to pay 5SB to see the river instead of 3SB. This is why the free card raise with a draw is virtually extinct in 6max games. Instead draws are raised to balance out raises with strong hands to disguise your hand range. This means you have to keep betting on the turn because that's the line that maximizes your EV with your strong hands. And in the end that's the whole purpose of your play, semi-bluffs are only used to balance.

So villain played this hand defensible, even though my preferred line would be to call the flop and raise the turn, following it with a river bet most of the time.

[mchilger]

quote]But calling down with any jack-high hand is wrong since you are calling down way too often then, even though that jack-high might be the best hand. But you are going to the river here regardless because you may have 10 outs. And once you are on the river, seeing a showdown with jack high is probably correct.[/quote]

Willem, I just want to make sure I understand your point here, as it seems contradictory. Are you simply arguing that as a practice, you can't call down with J-high here on the turn and river because that would be way too loose (I agree). But that in this particular hand, since you have 10 outs on the turn and possibly the best hand, you call, and then once on the river, since you've made it that far you would consider check-calling.

I agree with all of the arguments that check-calling the turn is the best standard play (but with a very occasional check-raise).

Matthew