NL200 Bluff catch river?

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NL200 Bluff catch river?

Blinds: $1.00/$2.00 (6 Players) BN: $159.65
SB: $285.20 (Hero)
BB: $291.89
UTG: $240.61
MP: $470.27
CO: $297.41
Preflop ($3.00) Hero is SB with Q Q
4 folds, Hero raises to $6.00, BB calls $4.00
Flop ($12.00) 8 J 9
Hero checks, BB bets $8.00, Hero calls $8.00
Turn ($28.00) 8 J 9 5
Hero checks, BB bets $22.00, Hero calls $22.00
River ($72.00) 8 J 9 5 J
Hero checks, BB bets $110.00, Hero folds
Final Pot BB wins $69.20
Rake is $2.80

Thoughts on my play? Is this a spot we should want to bluff catch river? I do think I maybe need to bet the turn instead of ch/c. Any feedback appreciated!

Thanks.

21 Comments

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FIVEbetbLUFF 9 years, 11 months ago

looks good to me. good to mix in the flop c/c with QQ and why u say bet turn instead of c/c? that seems silly because idk what other hands ud c/c flop lead turn on bluff so prob not best to that with value. on the river, good fold. u shud have hands like QJ JT J7s J6s J5s and some KJ or JJ. So, QQ is probably not a call for this sizing.

UpUpAndAway 9 years, 11 months ago

Agreed. Villain also doesn't have a ton of bluffs (unless he's going to just fire off 3 barrels with any two cards) since everything but backdoor hearts got there.

sunhild 9 years, 11 months ago

Sorry, I must have mixed this hand with another one! Of course I don't want to lead turn here. Thanks for reminding me though :)
And thanks for your feedback!

FIVEbetbLUFF 9 years, 11 months ago

upandup, i wud say there are a decent amount of misses actually. KT, T6s, T5s as well as some Q7 K7 Q6 K6 (they turned double gut shots and are reasonable flop bluffs.. its just a matter if he has all of theses off suit combos). I also think 75 and 65 are reasonable bluffs given that once called on flop, 5x isn't good that often (unless OOP c/c AT and AQ stuff). nevertheless, its a fold I believe because a big part of our call flop/turn range will be Jx. We will probably have hands like TT T8 T9 Q9 QQ and some AA/KK that will fold now but for this over bet sizing, i think we defend enuf by just calling with Jx.
Blockers are interesting tho because I'm not sure if we want to have a Ten or not (like if we had TT is this good or bad?)

UpUpAndAway 9 years, 11 months ago

Good point, there are definitely more bluffs he can have that I didn't consider.

And I think TT might be worse to have if villain plays most of his Tx like this since, although we block QT and T7 for 32 combos of value hands, there should be a lot more Tx combos that we block by having it.

FIVEbetbLUFF 9 years, 11 months ago

his bluffs with Tx wud be 16 combos of KT, 4 combos of T6s, 4 combos of T5s. thats 24 combos of bluffs we block and 32 combos of value. thing is, we dont know if he barrel off with all these bluffs at 100% frequency but he does triple here with value at 100% frequency so its unclear.

sunhild 9 years, 11 months ago

Hmm, I really can't reply to you correctly when playing at the same time! Forget what I said about the T9, I meant JT. I think he 3b most of his 99 pre, so a JT would block a big portion of his hands that will bet this big for value.
But for sure, we don't really know anything about what hands he choose to bluff with. But isn't it just best to try to bluff catch with a hand that blocks his hands that will bet this big? Like JT?

sunhild 9 years, 11 months ago

Yeah, you are right. It is an auto call. But we can't expect anything worse going for value, or can we?
The whole thing about blockers seems like a "leveling game" sometimes. But from villains prespective we want to bluff with hands that contains a Tx? And we dont want any 8 or 9, because these are the hands we want to fold out (A8, A9 etc.) So yeah, the best bluffs must be the one you mentioned above for villain.
And if this is true (which i don't really have a clue about) we want to bluffcatch with hands that are not blocking his bluffing-hands.

How far would villain go here for value? JT? Or is it just straight or better?

Nick Howard 9 years, 11 months ago

i don't know a single villain at 200nl that would be overbet bluffing enough on that river. Your range is protected by Jx, and most will give you credit for that. When he has straights+, he'll try to take advantage of you by getting extra value, since he doesnt perceive you'll ever fold Jx. He will pass too often on overbet bluffing for the same reason.

Also i think your hand plays better as a flop c-bet .. there are a lot of other Qx hands that you can XC if you're looking to protect your range on certain runouts. And a lot of stronger hands that you can slowplay for general protection.

Nick Howard 9 years, 11 months ago

You probably need to XC some v strong hands but i dont see QQ fitting the bill. I wouldnt be surprised if a model showed that QQ should be xc'd at a small fqcy, but the qualities of QQ don't jump out at me as a hand that desires to be XC'd as a main line. esp in practice where i think it performs better than it should in the c-bet line. mainly b/c i think villain's wont bluffraise turn/river enough after calling flop. also a lot of guys will probably call 3 too often on blank runouts since a lot of hands that call flop/turn have good blockers on this texture ... and that will raise the EV of QQ in bet-bet-bet line

shibulon 9 years, 11 months ago

Nick, theoretically should the ev of checking the flop with QQ be the same as the ev of betting the flop with QQ? I think I heard that somewhere but I wasnt sure if its correct. Obviously in practise this will be nowhere near true.

James Hudson 9 years, 11 months ago

Shibulon, theoretically the ev of betting and checking should be the same in cases where we should be betting some % of the time and checking some % of the time. If the ev of a hand is higher by betting then we should always bet, in theory at least.

JulianR 9 years, 10 months ago

I'd be interested in peoples thoughts as to why they think villains aren't x/r bluff raising enough rivers and especially turns on this type of flop?

I think it's worth emphasizing that a mixed strategy is a 3rd separate strategy, where inside that strategy, the ev's of betting and checking are equal.

The ev of the other 2 strategies, the always checking strategy and the always betting strategy can be very different.

Nick Howard 9 years, 10 months ago

I'd be interested in peoples thoughts as to why they think villains
aren't x/r bluff raising enough rivers and especially turns on this
type of flop?

basically i just think that over large sample sizes at 200nl on stars and merge, the player pool in general uses suboptimal aggression when raising turns and rivers. i think that tendency is accentuated on a texture where a lot of the flop peeling range has significantly +EV turn calls -- im referring to a lot of OESD's and pair+gutters. As for rivers, like i mentioned a lot of those hands still have good blockers to call and i think the general tendency will be to not bluffraise enough, just b/c it's the harder of 2 marginally +EV lines to force with those hands.

Nick Howard 9 years, 10 months ago

I think it's worth emphasizing that a mixed strategy is a 3rd separate
strategy, where inside that strategy, the ev's of betting and checking
are equal. The ev of the other 2 strategies, the always checking
strategy and the always betting strategy can be very different.

A mixed strategy is just the result of a hand that has the highest EV when bucketed into 2 or more strategic options vs a particular (optimal) villain strategy, at a particular action point in the hand. Unless villain is deviating from optimal to exploit hero's failure to mix, the EV of always betting QQ or always checking QQ (in this instance) will be the same.

I just think it's important to clarify that if we are considering not mixing a hand that should be mixed, then yes technically we are looking at 3 different strategies (always bet, always check, or mix at a specific frequency), but the EV of the hand in question does not shift in any of those strategies until villain deviates from optimal.

So you can play pure strategies with hands that should be mixed vs an optimal villain and not be penalized. But if villain deviates from optimal to exploit you (nemesis), you'll start wishing you had mixed.

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