yesatoshi
1 points
I've been having a lot of trouble recently in pots which limp to us on the blinds, and we flop mediocre tp type hands. This happens in live poker pretty frequently at $5/10 and below, so I've thought about it a lot, but I still have no idea how to play in these spots. We usually are desperate for protection, so checking seems bad. But by betting, we get folds infrequently, and end up with bluff catchers on the river >80% of the time.
Here's an example hand from yesterday:
Hero is BB with JTo. Three recreational, but not horrible players limp from early/middle position, a decent reg calls from sb and we check. All stacks are over $500.
Flop ($25): Jc7c3s. Hero bets $20 and gets one call from a nitty rec.
Turn ($65): Jc7c3sKs. Hero c/c? $25.
River ($115): Jc7c3sKs9s. Hero c/blindly guesses $35.
I feel like I get to this spot by the river a lot and it basically doesn't matter what I do. I expect villain to play KJ,J9s,T8s like this a lot, and maybe 33,77, AJ, J7s, K7s, K3s. Also for value he has random Kcxc, backdoor spades and possible some random 73s, AK type stuff that villain shouldn't have but does because he's bad. On the other hand, he can have a bajillion missed fds/straight draws/7x/3x which he may or may not decide to bluff, and I'm getting great odds. The whole hand feels bad, but I'm not really sure how else to play it. For example, say I decide to check flop:
Flop ($25): Jc7c3s. Check to villain who bets $20, hero calls? everyone else folds.
Turn ($65): Jc7c3sKs. Hero c/c? $25.
River ($115): Jc7c3sKs9s. Hero c/blindly guesses $35.
Additionally, when the flop checks through and the turn comes Ks, we probably have to fold to any action. I feel like when we check we're basically on a trips/2 pair draw and very rarely are able to show down our one pair even when it's good, but maybe 5 ways tpmk is a weak enough hand that this is our best option.
May 14, 2014 | 11:17 p.m.
hmm, that's interesting. Do you remember where in the book they showed this?
April 13, 2014 | 4:06 p.m.
If I'm reading your argument correct as, "If he's defending at a frequency that makes us indifferent to bluffing, then over 50% of his calling range on the river will be 9x, so we cannot value bet because we'll usually lose when called", I think this is wrong. I think it's possible for "value" betting to be correct even if we're good less than half the time when called, provided we're oop.
If we're good less than half the time when called, then betting is -ev compared to showing down our hand (so your rule is correct ip). However, oop we don't have the option to check it down, and his ability to bet implies that we're going realize less than 100% of our equity with T5. I think it could be preferable to shove and be good slightly less than half the time when called (in which case our ev would be close to the ev of checking it down), as opposed to checking and giving him the option (in which case our ev will be x% less than the ev of checking it down, where x is his bluffing frequency).
If you're not convinced by this logic, I could try to come up with a basic toy game to show that this is possible.
Found it, - it's game 17.1 on p198 if anyone else is curious.
The basic idea I was missing in my original post is that in the [0,1] game without raising, ip value bets wider than oop, so at the threshold point between bet and c/c, oop actually has a profitable call. It turns out to be profitable enough that oop ends up realizing exactly 100% of his equity by c/cing with the threshold hand, so he does need to be good 50% when he bets and gets called for betting to be as good.
April 13, 2014 | 9:25 p.m.