Good video.

14:32 Table 4 KhKsThTd:

My first impression was also to bet the turn. And initially I wasn't entirely convinced that checking back might be good. However, after running some preliminary numbers I think that you might be relatively spot on in your analysis.

I had him continuing close to 59% on the flop with around an 8% value CR, so he should be making it to the turn with around 50% of his pre flop range.

With that in mind it appears that around 11% of the time on this turn card he should have j6+ and have you basically drawing dead.
An additional 18% of the time he will have j+,qq+:(hh,cc) (his turn calling range presumably) against which you have 85% equity. (66 without clubs or a wrap is about 4-5% of his turn range)
And qq+,hh,cc,AKQ (not counting j6+) is 65% of his total flop calling range against which you have 95% equity total.

So betting gets him to fold the vast majority of his range on the turn, against a large portion of which (qq+,hh,cc,AKQ) you might potentially get a river bet out of.

Another consideration is that he might very well stack you over two streets with his 11% j6+ if you bet the turn (and potentially the river), when he might not otherwise.

Finally, if he does call the turn with J+ and you bet the river, you give him the opportunity to either fold or c/r bluff rather than call with some of these hands, for instance on flush rivers, when he does not know how thin or not you may be value betting. And assuming he does it in a somewhat balanced manner it really disincentives you from betting over the course of two streets.

So all told, it makes a lot of sense, at least in a vacuum, to check back this hand for it helps protect you from the part of his range that beats you, or can potentially bluff you, and also exposes the part of his range that is basically dead against your hand to situations in which it might lose another bet.

Nice vid as always, Phil. I am enjoying the series a lot!

I have questions about this hand by the end of this vid:

I agree that his tight UTG opening range should have a lot of Acc or Ac hands, with which he should be able to barrel a lot on most turn cards. That said:

a) If we had a K-high flush here instead (say AKJ5 with Kcc), would you be still folding that for the reasons you mentioned? Or, do you think we can call because we block his Kcc combos? If we are folding K-high flushes, that means our continuing range in this spot is extremely narrow, although folding might still be the right play under right assumptions. I was just wondering about how strong those assumptions could be.

b) Now say, we have Ac blocker in this spot (AcQsJsTh type of hands?) and UTG bets into us in this 3-way pot. Given the UTG's short stack, would you think this is still a slam dunk bluff on flop? I think the answer would depend on a couple of things, for example (i) how we would play out nut flush in this spot (i.e. do we slowplay sometimes?), (ii) how often he is value betting his Q-high flushes and worse (I think he might always bet his K-high flush, although I might be wrong), (iii) how often he bet/folds those non-nut flushes, etc. But if we were readless, what would you do with Ac blocker?

-- midori

Thanks midori!

a) I would call by default with Kxcc just because I expect some players to bet King and Queen high flushes on the flop, which makes a big difference in terms of our equity. It's okay to have a narrow range in a spot that dictates it - we just need to make sure to achieve some balance/deception with the parts we choose to continue with.

b) I think that the easiest way to work with such a narrow range here is to start by calling the flop with most of our continuing range. If we continue with only Acc, Ac, Kcc, and sets (and 2pr+flush and a few other random combo hands), raising Acc and Ac most of the time (when we strongly prefer not to raise sets and Kxcc) will make his life a little too easy.

There are some very strong removal effects when his range is narrow and somewhere near half of our range contains one specific card (Ac) - this makes it difficult to have a raising range containing hands that don't include it. If we raise with most hands that contain the Ac, this allows him to continue bluffing without the Ac blocker, which is an advantage that we can easily deprive him of given the strength of our overall continuing range.

If we don't raise anything (in practice my instinct would be to raise maybe 25% of the time w/ the Ac), continuing to bluff in his shoes without the Ac would be near suicidal. Given the strength of his UTG opening range, this means we can likely get away from 2nd nut flushes on the turn. We can use our position to bluff with 2nd nut flushes on paired boards (if they contain any blockers - we'd be over-bluffing otherwise most likely), and we can potentially find some bluffs on non board-pairing runouts (depending on our assumptions about his range).

When both ranges are narrow, position is pretty nice.

Long story short, I'd usually call with AcXXX.

Hi Phil!

You say this hand plays badly in a multiway pot, I must say I find it hard to understand why. Your straights have to be nut straights, your boats as well, 2nd nut flush. The argument about top2pair is semi-legitimate in my opinion, because only kind of boards we will have trouble on (with 2pair that is) are AK[Q-9], KQ[J-9] etc. What kind of hand would you rather have in spot like this? Middling rundowns get easily dominated, not to mention lower flushdraws, hands like Axxx with nut flush similar story (we have nutflush working for us thou).
With this hand we also have some value in hittting boards that are going to be generally perceived as better for our opponents (of course the more ppl are in the pot the less it matters). Could you explain in more details how you view range that we should call or fold here?

Enjoying the series so far, thanks! ;)