Checking back the turn and facing big river lead
Posted by bigpeachclub
Posted by
bigpeachclub
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Low Stakes
Checking back the turn and facing big river lead
I feel like I run into this situation a lot in both live and online, particularly in multiway. The general line goes ...
1. Postflop checks around to me (last to act) and I Cbet and 2+ people call.
2. The turn provides me with no further equity so I decide to take a free card when it checks to me.
3. The river does not complete draws so OOP villain fires a sizeable bet and I fold a junk or marginal hand.
Example hand:
Preflop 100bb effective
UTG+1, HJ limp in.
Hero at BTN raises to 3bb with JhTh
SB calls, BB folds, limpers both call
Flop comes Td, 2h, Qc (15bb pot)
Checks to me and I decide to fire a CBet 1/2 pot due to disconnected board texture and my backdoor draws (BDFD, three to straight). Everyone calls.
Turn comes 2c (45bb pot)
Checks around to me. Because I gain no equity, I decide to check back for the free card.
River comes Qd (45bb pot)
SB fires out for 25bb. Everyone else folds. Hero?
In general I feel like this line of flop aggression followed by turn checkback for a free card gets easily exploited on river by more aggressive players. I think a lot of players read turn checkbacks after flop action as weakness and try to steal river pots OOP and often winning mainly because they had the first opportunity to show aggression. I'm put in a spot where I need to make a thin call. Whenever the info is available to me, I feel like I'm often wrong. I called down too light, or I folded to a bluff, or I raised into a monster.
Has anyone struggled with these situation? What helped?
Thoughts:
1. I could checkback the flop to hide hand strength and consider turn delayed cbet or even raise
2. I could "check strong" on the turn more with borderline hands like second pair? I feel like I try to do this but the situations come up so rarely
3. I could double barrel with a wider range on the turn, but this seems dangerous esp in these multiway pots.
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Just a few thoughts on this:
1) When you find yourself in MW situations, I would polarize my flop betting range (playing hands like above as a check). Against a hijack limp, I doubt you isolate with 22, so you have TT/QQ/KK/AA/AQ/KQs and maybe a tiny bit of QTs to value bet. JT is too far down in my range MW. Heads up, betting is obviously fine.
2) Bottom line is that River probes are over-bluffed. MW river probes are slightly more tilted towards value. In spots where we are getting bluffed a lot, we have to call more. One of the ways to counter guys who study lines is to bet turns more often. The guys who want to attack checks by probing river typically hate getting barreled in to. I know I hate facing turn c bets when I am planning to attack checked back turns.
3) The simple answer is we have to find more calls when we get to the river in this line (cbet flop and get called, check back turn, face river bet). I do this by simply getting to the river with more calls and less folds. I barrel the turn more often, even with weak stuff. Here I would have been betting BDFD's on this rainbow board and looking to bluff turns with some junk and also the draw that we tuned along with my fat value.
4) Figuring out how to set up your ranges against this line is going to have positive effects on your showdown winnings.
In the above hand, I would have checked back JThh MW and bet it in position heads up.
As a side note, I am not in love with the isolation size you close. The price you offer is just too good. 5bb seems better preflop.
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