Also Sauce, sorry if the wound is still fresh but I'd be curious to hear what you have to say if you have any input!

Good analysis. It is quite possible that the decisive factors in this hands are reads from WGCRider, would it be timing tells, flow of the match, what he felt Sauce would do at this time. Sauce's line is kinda weird, maybe for some reasons he didn't expect to play a value hand this way at this time.

by Calling river i guess he is saying he dont Think sauce will have much 4x 3x? I do Think the Ax flushdraws will be put in to the more passiv check call line here tho.

Not sure what his 3bet range pre looks like btw what do you guys Think about his 3bet sizing? I dont really play Heads up 100bbs. But looking from HH standard is often ~2k here.

I highly doubt sauce expected Doug to call with Khi here.  Question: If doug folds his King highs, does sauce bluff become profitable?  

Excellent post. Great analysis.

I think he thinks I would never (or rarely) value bet here, so he can call with anything which beats a bluff.  I don't see why I can't have 2pair/AK/AQ/AJ on this line, but maybe WCG realizes I can't.

You're right, if I never have the hands I'm representing for value, and I almost always have my bluffs, WCG can hero call a lot

btw I think the internet was invented for people to be sarcastic to each other :)

Um I don't think he was being sarcastic. Take a chill pill

Don't think he was being insulting either.

Btw, You're paying 99bucks/mo to watch the highest quality poker training videos on the internet.

Hi Sauce, thanks for all your comments! I have been trying to figure this out but can't quite get there. If you are jamming all (or most - as you would need to be to be balanced in this spot) of your Ax and 2 pair combos, how do you protect your river checking range? In my mind I would be playing flop and turn with some Ax, some 3/4/9x and mid pairs and then check them all on the river. This way I could check/fold the weaker part of my range and call with like 9x+ (as rough idea to be unexploitable). However, if you are going to be jamming the top x% of your range  then surely he can shove this river wide with both value and bluffs and leave you in a very tough spot with the rest of your range (alot of Ax and 2 pair removed).

Obviously I'm not asking for your ranges in this spot and how you balance it but just some general concepts/ideas and correct any false assumptions I am making. Thanks!

So are you specifically repping AQ/AK? You protect your checking range by checking your very strong hands and then jam your 1 pair Ax and your bluffs? I assumed you jammed your 2 pairs because otherwise if you only have AQ and AK then your range looks bluff heavy. Do you have every combo of each? I obviously have no idea what your ranges look like. If the only bluff you get to the river with is 56 then you are unbalanced the other way and your range is very strong here, thus making his call bad.

You obviously know your own ranges and I'm sure you have developed them to be mathematically sound in spots like this but it is difficult for me to understand because I just don't take this line with any hand. I play 2/4 - 10/20 and am looking to improve to move up. Do you think I am making a mistake if I am using the strategy I outlined above? Do you feel I need to develop leading ranges in spots like this because currently I don't really have them. I kind of check everything and then call x% to be unexploitable, deviating if I know they bluff too much/not enough in certain spots.

I'm not as strong in therory as many of you other guys, but I find this hand interesting. I can see the points that A on the river changes ranges, but I kinda agree with phil long's points that Ben's range is to bluffheavy, and he might be having a problem with his check/call range on river.

I just made a quick kombo counting. They are surely not acurrente, as I dont know Ben's range for flat/3b PF, and ranges for x/y on flop. Bluffs=33 kombos: 16xKQ, 16x56, 1x7d8d. Value=34 kombos: Ad7d-Ad5d/Ad2d=4x, 9x sets, 16xAK, 2xJ9s, 3x43s.

If the openshove has to be a cool move, I think alot of it comes down to 56 being the only bluff hand he has got in his range and his value range is depending on that he does not bet 43/sets/AK/J9s on the flop for moving towards a 2/3 value range and a 1/3 bluff range on river.

And that leads me back to the trouble with Ben's check/call range on the river.

I might be wrong about my points and lacking a level of understanding, but hey, if you never put yourself out there and try to get better, you will never get better.

Looking forward to seeing Ben and Phil discuss the subject :).

Seems like hero call based on what is likely an incorrect assumption meets bottom of range.

Sauce,

If you don't mind, I'm curious about your flop/turn play, it seems like with a hand that has such strong equity, but such poor showdown value we would want to be maximizing fold equity on flop/turn/

if Sauce has a decent amount of non pair combos in his range(which he probably doesnt given line a board) doesnt mean he has to bluff all of them, like what would the need be to bluff qk etc, whats wrong with chk folding a certain %(which u need to be doing as a blaanced range obv)

The main thing here is wcg blocks some of the value combos in sauces percieved range AT and ak, and dint think sauce would bluff kq,

by the river its pretty tough for sauce to have pure air really( depending on how he plays his flush draws, by the time sauce gets to the river a lot of hands in a chk call range have showdown if not a pair like qk etc which makes no sense in bluffing. the 65o hands is beaten by every bluff in wcg range. the ace on the river after a chk call chk call line is hardly ever getting barrelled so it makes sense to have a lead range in this spot.

without knowing a lot about sauces 3bet range and how he splits that range post its pretty hard to make a comment, but assuming sauces pure air hands with no SD value are 65 and missed flushes and his value combos are mainly the AT-AK hands then wcg hand is pretty good hand to bluff catch from a blocker POV compared to say 9x not including K9 q9 etc. 

only one question I have for sauce, The ace river is like the perfect river for you apart from hitting obviously which gives you the chance to win the pot without hitting, whats your plan on other rivers( im guessing just chk folding and the ev you gain from wcg bluffs when you hit more than make up for it?)

Juan,

Fold equity differs on each street, as a function of pot size, and the fact that each bet that enters the pot narrows both players ranges. The main problem with checking flop IMO is if WCG has a hand like KT or JT or or A5, we let him realize his equity, either by showing down a winner or making a pair or draw.  Consider vs his specific hand if we c/r the flop we win 25bbs without showdown, compared to allowing him to play in position with a wide undefined range that has strong equity vs our hand. For this reason I would have to think bet flop or c/r flops is better than c/c.  I think once we c/c flop I like sauce's line including the river jam, and I have no idea how WCG called KT. 

I'd also add the only reason I can see WCG calling KT, would be that he would expect sauce to check river with his AK AQ because WCG has a range that is fairly bluff heavy, meaning that since WCG has a lot of air in his range Sauce should be checking river with all his strong hands to induce bluffs. If that's true than  when Sauce donks he's weighted towards bluffs, and KT will beat all of his bluffs because I don't think he would bluff any pair or KQ.

Looks to me like you got levelled. since it looks like the j and then the a are good barrelling cards so it appears to be a better chk raising spot. realistically you will have already chk raised or c bet alot of your stronger hands before the river so what are you really repping. And if you are chk calling nut hands its because you think hes barreling so this contradicts why you would donk jam river. I think it looks like you were frustrated and though hes likely to bet this river and i have to fold alot and i think donk jamming has more ev than chk shoving so ill just donk jam it. its looks very wierd thin suboptimal 

I haven't read any of the comments here or even the math part of the post so Ill just chime in read less.  First off Im not a huge fan of balancing a check call range here with a six high draw to the nut straight (sure it gives you wider coverage on runouts where you shouldnt have the nuts, but balancing with a flush draw essentially accomplishes the same thing, but definitley think its intresting.  2nd, when i looked at this spot without knowing the shown down hands, it did look alot like sauce had an Ax type hand or a pair he was planning on check calling with. When he doesnt check raise the flop I feel pretty confident he doesnt have JJ or AA often at all.  I think the biggest thing in this hand that lead WGC to hero with K10 is that some but not all of sauces AQ, AK combos fold the turn.  Sauce is rarely turning say 9x into a river bluff and half of the Ax combos that do still check call the turn will likely bluff catch on river to pick off a busted draw (at least most of the time in theory)  Obviously WGCs call won him the pot, but im not sure its a winning play considering Sauce could turn bottom pair into a bluff on this river.  Its rare that sauce has a busted draw on this runout so im leaning twards sauces play being better than WGCs on this hand but not by much since WGCs range is uncapped.  

I think someone needs to check their computer for trojans.