5/10HUNL, 3bet Pot with KK
Posted by Sean Lefort
Posted by
Sean Lefort
posted in
High Stakes
5/10HUNL, 3bet Pot with KK
Seems incredibly standard. But I was a little curious about just how much value the river jam had and what the numbers looked like so I looked into it. I think it's good to analyze hands sometimes even when you think they're completely standard just to re-affirm your thoughts and potentially tweak some variables to find thresholds. I was a bit surprised at what I found with this hand.
By shoving the river, we need to be called by a worse hand > 50% of the time for it to be profitable, of course. If we give him a calling range pf of the top ~40% of hands minus the top ~4-5% that he likely 4bets, he can (and most likely will) show up on the river with the following hands that beat us: (AT, KT, QT, JT, T9, T8s, 88, 33) All of which probably take this line close to 100% of the time.
So next, I added hands until I reached the threshold where KK wins > 50% of the time and I was a little surprised at how deep I had to go. This is the range I came up with: (AJ, A8, 99, 77, 66)
Arguably, some of these hands get played different on prior streets only thinning the frequencies and making us dig deeper to 55/44. And if we add T8o into his range pre-flop while taking away 99 (if he 4bets it) and adding suitedness to A8 (to represent that he might not flat A8o pre and/or float it on the flop) then we have to go as far as him hero-calling with AQ before we start showing profit with our river jam. Quite the result!
Of course, the cool thing is that if he's not calling the river wide enough thus making our bet with KK a -EV bet, the effect on our entire range is likely +EV if we assume that we bluff the river with an appropriate frequency and that our play on prior streets sets up properly for such a balanced river range. So I don't think anything but jam is really an option here but I found it very interesting to see how close it actually was and that its very possible that it can be a chk/fold (crazy I know!) against the extreme tightest/nittiest of opponents.
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obviously these opponents would be wonderful to play HU vs, so you probably won't find too many of them online grinding... but you find people like this regularly playing live ring games, and this spot would just require them to open in late and you 3bet with KK out of the blinds.
I think it’s crucial to know how liberally villain is calling the flop cbet. Would he call with for example 89ss expecting his pair outs to be good a lot and having a backdoor flushdraw? Equally could we therefore expect hands like QJhh, or do we expect him to shove the turn with this?
Using what I consider a more accurate range of AT, KT, QT, JT, T9, T8s, T7s, 99-33, A8s, A3s, AJ and then adding QJs, Q9s, J9s, J8s, 98s, 97s, 78s (specifically the heart, diamond and spade combos) along with KJhh I get a total of 110 combos I believe.
Our equity v this new range is 55.46% on the river.
Based on this I would still conclude it’s a c/f based on not expecting him to call with anywhere near 100% of the combos we beat but 100% of the combos that beat us, and how liberally I have attributed a flop and turn floating range.
Apologies in advance for possible mistakes with the numbers.
Additionally c/c seems like a very viable option if it increases the number of combos we beat, putting money in (a combination of him turning hands into bluffs and value betting worse) and we now have favourable pot odds. There could also be additional floats that turned flushdraws which are now air which I didn't fully investigate, and this would better protect our checking range which I assume (maybe incorrectly) is relatively weak atm.
This isn't correct, and it's important to see why not. Assume for simplicity 25% of his range beats us and the rest is air. If we jam for pot, he'll call 25% of the time and fold 75%, thus Ev(jam)=.75(pot)+.25(-1pot)=.5pot. If we check, he'll jam all his nut 25% and add 12.5% bluffs to make us indifferent with our bluffcatcher, thus EV(check)=.375(0)+.625(pot)=.625pot.
In the case (similar to OP's description) where villain calls 25% and loses, and calls 25% and wins, EV(jam)=.25(-pot)+.25(2pot)+.5(pot)=.75pot, and EV(check)=.625pot.
So, if villain plays perfectly vs our hand when we check, and holds a distribution of 25% nuts, 25% bluffcatchers, 50% air relative to our hand, then what's the indifference? Not surprisingly it's where villain plays GTO (of course, calling with any bluffcatchers is only GTO if OOP holds some bluffs- that OOP will hold some bluffs I take to be implicit in the example) with his bluffcatchers, i.e. EV(jam)=.25(-pot)+.125(2pot)+.625(pot)=.625pot=EV(check)=.375(0)+.625(pot)=.625.
I find it easier to employ this information in practice if I relate the two quantities with a heuristic I can use at the table. Something like, "If I jam for pot and win 33% at showdown, I'll be indifferent between checking and betting."
Ie. EV (jam) = .25(-pot) + .25(2pot) +.5(pot) = 0.75pot = EV (chk) = .75(+pot) + .25(+0)
So in essence, allowing him to act after us (ie. "having position") is a strategic advantage that's reflected by our EV (chk) = 0.75pot -> 0.625pot. We quantified position! Position = 0.125pot. Poker, solved. :)
For example, if we were to make a bad call vs his nuts range then EV(check)=0.75(pot)-0.25(pot)=0.5pot. Or alternatively a good fold then EV(check)=0.75(pot)-0.25(0)=0.75(pot)
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