Hey Zach,

I agree... I think my river call was questionable, even given reads...  I can't argue with anything you said.

How do you feel about his turn raise? I was a little bit surprised to see his hand, as it's a spot where I rarely, if ever, raise. I wonder if it's a mistake though, and if I'm undervaluing the element of protection with a raise like that (and/or the element of deception)

I meant that my hand is still pretty vulnerable against a large chunk of his range that would fold to a bet, which is not the case with KJxx, making that a better balanced semi-slowplay.  

When I check with KJ and induce a bet from a weak hand that was folding to my lead, I've made a ton of EV (because his equity will be very poor, as will his turn fold equity. He also has some reverse implied odds).  When I x/c with J865, many of the weak hands I've induced action from have somewhat reasonable equity against my hand, and I've gained myself very little EV, especially at the cost of letting him draw for free (another cost that is reduced when I have KJ).

Great questions okdude.

This is a pretty unique river spot, and as you could probably tell in the video, I'm unsure what the best line is.  I was unsure while playing, and I'm still unsure now.

I agree that our range hits this river much harder than his.  Because of that, we should be jamming into him with any hand that needs to bluff, as well as most of our value (since I don't expect him to value cut or bluff often here).

I feel like value jamming here is out of the question, so we're left with the decision to x/c, x/f or lead smaller.

To answer your questions:

1) I probably would jam 87 most of the time, and I'd likely only rarely check straights here to induce/protect.  My range is so strong on this card (especially since I'd lead jam the bottom of my range) that I don't feel an obligation to do much protecting of my checking range.

2) I think leading 1/4 pot will be called (or raised) by better more often than it'll be called by worse.

I'm still not positive, but I think that x/f here is probably my best option.

Phil, wasnt implying that his nor villains play wasnt standard especially in a vacuum. What he was saying is that if villain bet bet bets every time he has the As blocker than Phil felt that villain would be overbluffing. 

However given villain had the ideal hand to bet bet bet with given he had 10 outs vs straights and smaller flushes this doesn't imply villain is overbluffing. We would have to see him take this line with no equity on flop and follow through from flop to river making this assumption.

Additionally, Phil just said that his inclination was that betting thru everytime with the blocker was overbluffing but he asked us to confirm that and I have to run but will try to do so quickly.

Exactly what Zach said :)

When I say overbluffing I mean from a GTO perspective. Meaning, his ratio of bluffs to value would be exploitably high and unbalanced. If hero is folding small flushes often for the third barrel then he is over bluffing balance-wise but he is effectively exploiting us. So his over bluffing is optimal yet exploitable.

I'm making a reasonable assumption the times he fires all 3 streets as a bluff he has the As blocker. If his 3 streets value range is only K-high flush+ then hero (Phil) has a profitable call on river with any flush. On river he will have the blocker 41% of the time based on the numbers I ran above and even to a pot sized bet we need to be good only 33%. 

If he fires 3 streets as a bluff with additional hands to the blocker, then hero has an even more +ev river call down and he is overbluffing by a larger margin.

** side notes:

a) I specified we have a +ev river call but didnt mention turn because there are some hands he likely will bluff only turn but give up river and those would more often be hands not containing the As. Likewise he can value bet medium flushes on the turn and opt to check those on river thinking that we wont call 3 streets with worse. Accordingly we sometimes call turn and river goes check check because he was bluffing or gave up value betting a medium flush.  

b) On contrary, If his entire turn betting range was just K-high+ flushes and As blocker then we would be getting significantly worse odds because that range would never be checking river (lets assume river is non pairing for simplicity). If turn and river bets were pot sized in a 100 size pot we would be calling 100 into 100 on turn and 300 into 300 on river which would be risking 400 to win 500 or 1.25 to 1 requiring us to actually have 44% equity vs his betting range. 

c) This sim is for a HU match with a 95% opening range. It is my inclination but not simmed that with 6max opening ranges particularly MP and EP villain wouldn't be overbluffing if he fired 3 with the blocker every time because a portion of non suited A*** will be folded PF.

Yes I understand you meant we are not making phil indifferent when we know he has a flush on the river on a non texture changing run out. I'm wondering why you think that is an immediate indication of overbluffing strategy vs strategy.

Oops.  Thank you.

Hi Zach, it's my understanding  facing a pot size bet OTR we need to defend 50% of our range to be GTO (not 2/3). The 2/3 would be the value to bluff ratio by the better to make the opponent indifferent to calling for a pot size bet. Calling down with any flush OTR I would assume is GTO, since any river range I construct for OOP that contains more than 50% flushes would almost certainly be overfolding a previous street. 

The working you showed below my post is wrong.

Hmmmm.

I think when we check this turn, it usually will go check-check, because our preflop range should hit this board pretty hard.  That's not a disaster, as you point out, because rivers will be awkward once we've inflated the pot a little more OOP.

I think x/r would be fine, and I think he'd usually bet-fold if he bets (hands like dry AAxx, KKxx, AKT3), which is a decent result.  

x/c would also be okay, but I think x/r would work slightly better.

I actually am liking x/r the most now that you mention it... not because I think we'll succeed often (I think it usually get checked through)... but because it's the only way I see us making him fold AA or KK, and I don't see us having a huge advantage in the pot when we lead the turn and get called (he often will call with AA/KK and play rivers fine... he usually has equity to call and play rivers decently well IP)

I think betting is okay still, to put money in slightly ahead of his range in terms of eq, and to protect a vulnerable hand in a big pot when I'm not afraid of being raised (because it's rare and because I can call).

I guess we could construct our betting range to include stronger and weaker SD value hands (with draws), so that we have a good polarized range for brick rivers, and good coverage on non-bricks.  This hand, like you said, leaves us in no-man's land on a lot of rivers.

Good post!

Phil, 

Firstly thanks for the complimentary feedback.

Regarding your question of what I think of his turn raise with A9, I think its just ever so slightly better in vacuum than flatting. However,  I think the negative implications to his ranges dominate to make raising poor overall.  He gets some value and protection but I think his hand is pretty face up. Which means you are going to play really well vs it. Sure, you wont have better often given you most often bet AA on flop plus he has card removal for AA. You mentioned that you were surprised to see his hand but correct me if Im wrong but you might have been more surprised by being raised than by the actual holdings he had. IF we assume the following which I think we can:

 a) he isn't pure bluffing for the reasons I originally listed

 b) He isn't raising AXxx 1pair.

c) He isnt checking back flop with sets

then his range is pretty much solely A9xx and A8xx. If he is raising these hands it makes his turn calling range weaker when he is already at a range vs range disadvantage on this board. 

Basically, I think your choice to not raise in this spot is best.

It should be this: Pot 100, we call 50% vs his 100% bluffing range. He nets (-100,+100) = 0. (We don't net our own money after a bluff works). Or we can use the formula B/(B+P) where B is betsize and P is potsize to find breakeven fold freq (with 0 equity bluff). So 100/(100+100) = 50%

If we defend less than 50%, villain would have a profitable pot-sized bet with a4c. His maximally exploitative adjustment would be to bluff with all his air.

If we defend more than 50%, villain's bluffs lose money. His maximally exploitative adjustment would be to stop bluffing entirely.

Nice post. This part I understood and mentioned from start that it adds complexity to the analysis of the river. But it's so difficult to accurately map out compounding ranges through streets. 

I think my prior post got deleted but I simmed a turn range of 1/3 combos slowplayed sets, all straights that were strong enough draws to call flop yet not strong enough to raise flop, and all flushes. 2s4s was in the bottom 1/3 of our range. I also mentioned that naked small FDs probably are likely too weak to call flop with but I will leave them in for now. There are a lot more combos of flushes than any other category so even with a reasonable turn defense range I think some flushes will fall out of the top 50%.

        Board - ts8h3sjs2h
PLAYER_1
(97!(t8,t3,83,88,33,tt,j:ss,6:ss,t:ss),q9:(t,8,ss,qq,jj!ss,j9!ss),ss!(t8,79j,tt,33,88,t3,Ass:(j9,97,qt9)),33):70%
PLAYER_2
2s4s!sss