River Calls
Posted by Sam Greenwood
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Really nice in depth video with great mathematical arguments, thank you Sam
I have one thing I hinge to though.
What I'm thinking about is that it is super relevant to discuss our perceived range in these rivercalling spots, and more so what it means for the hand considering our opponents possible range. In these 2 particular situations I think the "value" of our perceived range is sooo different (I say "value" instead of strength bcuz it is kind of abstract what the strength is).
I guess you actually take in to consideration our perceived range in the first hand but I feel like you overlook it a little in the 2nd.
In the first hand the board favors us so much (esp when he 3/4 as you pointed out), because Ax is a better card for our range and our turn check-back often has showdown-value (including Ax-high). I think that he is aware of this and tries to exploit this fact (reversely) to make you fold non Ax hands (and you don't really have any Qx+ on turn). But case in point being: his bet is weird and we should consider bluff-catching since this is our board. Your mathematical solution to how wide we can bluffcatch is sufficient here I guess :)
But in the second hand villian crushes our range when he bets considering capped-ness etc, his top-range is so much better than our top-range. Since the board is two-tone and there's also gutshot options, we do not have very many slowplay checkbacks like Ax and strong Kx on turn. We probably have some weak Kx we checkback, but even those could easily bet turn, to extract value and protect, since Kx is going to call a river bet on blank anyway. With the same logic we could actually be betting turn with an even wider range for value and protection, thus leaving us with a pretty mediumstrength and low-to-nonestrength range on the river. Furthermore I think something that is very important here is to not just look at his combinatorics and suggest that they are all weigthed the same, since on this boardtexture I am sure he has so many more valuebets with his range than hands that select to bluff (i.e.: he bets every time with Ax and most Kx, but doesnt bluff all the time with 54cc). I think it is bad of him if he takes out K9 from his valuebetting, but I think you're right in leaving out QJ as a bluff bcuz QJ has decent SDvalue. This makes his possible range compared to our perceived range so crushing that I think you should have emphasized it a little more in such and in-depth analysis. And to consider in your vid a little more that we don't need to have much of a calling-range here because of this emphasis (the possibility of fold).
However, even though I think you skipped over our perceived range a bit in the 2nd hand, and that I think it is a spot where we really would like to fold a lot of the time, we don't have very many better bluffcatchers than small and medium PP in my opinion, so it's def worth considering to call with such. Case in point being: I don't necessarily disagree with the call, would have just liked you to argue a little more about the difference of our perceived range vs his range in this hand than in the other calling hand, since I think the difference is important and exciting.
I'm a little worried that I didn't get my thought out as clearly as I would in this reply, but let's see what you make of it first
I think the difference between the two hands is in the first hand our opponent's river bet doesn't fall within an appropriate river strategy for his range, but in the second hand it does. In the first hand we can make wider more exploitative calls, but in the second hand we want our strategy to be one that is closer to GTO.
I do agree that our range is capped in the second hand and that means our opponent should earn a larger share of the pot vs. us on the river, but even our weakest bluff catchers are appropriate bluff catchers.
Eg. If we have a pair between twos and kings OTR 30% of the time and air 70% of the time and villain full pots the river with a 2:1 bluffs value ratio. We are indifferent between calling with a bluffcatcher, but our opponent still wins the pot 70% of the time because we don't have a hand strong enough to bluffcatch with.
Small point but should you have taken out A3 and A5 from your combos of aces you have to call with on the river as you did with the combos you get to the river with? Or am I missing something?
Can you talk a bit about why you like to CB 100% here. Why don't you have a checking range? Don't you think our range is easier to play on rivers if we check back some hands?
I know we have range advantage, a strong one even if you dial back his defence range to 50%.
It just seems like we have a portion of hands that play well as a check.
Namely QQ-TT and some Kx. The QQ-TT block his floats and they don't need protection. It's a pretty easy board to play IP. Add some Ax, medium Kings and a couple of flush draws, maybe a nut trap or two.
I personally do a good amount of checking on this flop so I am interested for your thoughts.
The PPs under the King in particular, we can't categorize as value bets and they aren't bluffs or protection bets. They occasionally get called by 8x or a FD but they have no equity when we run into the decent pair part of his range.
Thanks
I think we autoprofit betting those hands and since we don't fear a c/r we don't need to worry about not realizing equity. It also makes us more likely to see two cards for cheap. In practice I think checking back some well protected hands like QQ is good, but for this video I wanted to make our pre river ranges unsplit to make working on the river easier.
would it be a viable option to raise river w K2s here? just throwing an idea out there. Or since like you said, he's not bluffing with better often enough for it to be good
Don't think raising the river would make much sense as he probably isn't turning 4x into a bluff enough of the time and a lot of his hands that want to valuebet for this size on the river are 2pr+ that he just is not folding to a raise and we have very little blocker value to those hands.
Bluffing here is not something we should do very often because our value range is to tight. If we were to bluff this hand is not ideal because it's a fine bluff catcher and we don't have the right blockers. We'd probably want to bluff a hand with a four so we block 44 and A4 , but that doesn't have a KTJ8 which will block some of his bluffs. A nine would also have blocker value, but is much too strong to bluff with.
I found this video hard to follow. I think you were giving good information but without elaborating on what you were saying it was difficult to absorb.
I'm sorry to hear that. If you have any more specific questions I can address them here.
thats such an interesting point after defending frequency and how it really affects things
great video sam.
One question I have about river calls is the ICM implications. If one does believe villains range does hold enough bluffs to make a call indifferent or slightly profitable how do you address the issue of ICM presence throughout the tournament? Obviously the implications are straight forward on the bubble or final table but what about the mild ICM implications throughout the tournament. Should a small gap be left between a GTO call and a profitable call? If so how large?
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