Homework: Turn decision IP vs polarized range

I haven't actually analyzed this myself yet, but I wanted to start the thread anyway. With a little luck, someone else will end up doing it for me, and if nothing else it will remind me to come back and do it later.

Basic situation: $200NL, 100bb stacks. You open in late position with KQo, and the big blind - a 23/20 aggressive reg - calls in the BB. He 3-bets 10% in that position, and he folds his BB 70% of the time.

The flop comes K-7-4, two spades. You have the king of spades. You bet $9 into the $12 pot. Your opponent check/raises to $33. With the limited read you have on him, you decide that his range is primarily made up of flush draws, sets and "air" and here we include pocket pairs in the air (because he will play them the same - give up if called and doesn't improve).

I call his checkraise. I don't know if you do the same.

The turn is the 9 of diamonds, which changes very little. But he doesn't fire again, instead he checks.

This type of villain often does this with his entire range, I find. He checks with his flushdraws, hoping for a free card, and he checks with his sets hoping you'll bet. He checks with his air because he intends to give up now that you've called.

If you bet, he'll checkraise many of his flushdraws and all of his sets all-in. If you check back, he'll bet $60 on the river with most of his range, regardless of what the river is; if he has a set, he'll bet for value, if he has a flushdraw, he'll bet hoping you missed too (or if he hits his flush, he'll obviously bet as well) and he'll bet some of his air, too, hoping he can push you off TT or whatever.

What is the most profitable move on the turn given that? The cases that need to be analyzed are:

1. Bet/folding turn.
2. Bet/calling turn.
3. Checking back turn, calling river.

Great post.

These are the kinds of hands that give me fits. If you plug villian's range into PokerStove it shows you as a 3:1 favorite...so the initial response is to get your money in there.

Board: Kc 7s 4s 9d
Dead:
equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 75.962% 73.77% 02.19% 4447 132.00 { KsQh }
Hand 1: 24.038% 21.85% 02.19% 1317 132.00 { 77+, A7s+, K9s+, QTs+, JTs, ATo+, KTo+, QJo }


Option 1: If the pot is at $78 (not sure if my math is right?) and you have $122 left you could bet around $60 on the turn. The problem arises when you consider that you don't want to end up playing for stacks with TPGK.

Betting the turn on a hand like this seems to get me into trouble sometimes, so lately I've been going with...

Option 2: With TPGK I might consider checking the turn and calling a reasonable bet on the river...the thought process being that I don't want to build a huge pot with my marginal hand.

I'm curious to see the responses from other members. Do you go with the stats and get your money in when you are most likely the favorite? Or do you limit your potential losses and give villian a chance to catch up on the river (if he's not already ahead)?

I don't have it on this computer, but wouldn't PokerRazor give you the relative frequency of the various holdings, given your range for him? Then simply plug the frequencies in with the actions and find the most positive line in the decision tree?

I would rather check back the turn and call the river here against this particular player. If he has an ace high flush draw, j10s or 56s that's really the only hands that has legitimate equity against you that you beat, so i think betting here only serves its purpose against a small % of his range. If he has a worse king (kj or whatever) it's debatable weather you get 3 streets of value off him, he may even make a good fold to your turn bet. When you check behind the turn you minimize losses vs sets, induce bluffs from air, and increase the chances of getting an extra street of value.

Well, I this is tricky and this has caught me a couple of times as well. I think with what he has done so far, he is likely to shove on the river with any spade and then you are caught if you bet the turn, pot committed. It doesn't mean that you can't walk away but the check on the turn seems to be the sign that he isn't that strong, but that with the right card, he could be. I am reading a book right now that talks about betting/raising a nut flush draw because if the card lands you will probably not be able to pump any more money out of your opponent. He wouldn't just check if he had top pair in this situation because if he checks then he may have just given you the pot by letting you catch. This is assuming of course that he is a some what smart player. He would have bet with top pair here or two pair right out the gate, because he would want to make you pay to speculate, so my guess is that he has the flush draw and assumed you were making a continuation bet and thought he could just push you out right then and there. With this logic, I may shove on the turn. I am really just a beginner, though. Take it for what it is worth.

(I'm thinking through this on the fly, feel free to correct any math / logic errors)

Just making sure I've got my figures straight first: the pot's $78 on the turn and we've both got about $160 behind, right?

I really don't like Option 1 - while he's shoving all his sets, they only make up a small part of his range and we're folding to a worse hand way too often. We'll be saving about $100 the 10-15-watever % of the time when he does have the set, but we'll be giving up much more that the rest of the time when he doesn't and we're a significant favourite.

So Option 1 sounds -EV to me.

Option 2 seems a little better, since the biggest part of his range is still bluffs / semibluffs. We lose $160 maybe 30% of the time when he does have a set or his draw chases us down, but we win $238 the rest of the time.

That makes Option 2 significantly +EV if my math and reasoning is right: (0.3 * $160) + (0.7 * $238) = +$118.60

Option 3 is similar. It's obviously got the disadvantage of giving him a free card with which to improve, but if he doesn't already have us beat he'll be no better than 17% to catch us up. I'm going to stick with the 30% figure from above (when he's got a set or has caught us up), in which event we lose $60, and the rest of the time we win $138.

That makes Option 3 +EV as well, though not as much so as Option 2: (0.3 * $60) + (0.7 * $138) = +$78.60

It strikes me, then, that if we're going to check-call the river we might as well bet-call the turn, because why leave the money on the table? Factor in the times when villain had total air and we take the pot unopposed on the turn, and in a vacuum I choose Option 2.

Metagame considerations might sway my choice though - Option 3 pegs you as a much more reasonable and conservative player, and if that's something you rely on to win other pots you might prefer to err on the side of conservatism.

Option 2 pegs you as much more spewy - whether you're right or wrong about the villain's hand, people will notice that you called not one but two check-raises with just TPGK. You can use this image to your advantage as well, obviously, but to what extent will depend on your playing style and opponents. If you think that image will cost you money in subsequent pots it might be better to take Option 3.

OzExorcist said:

It strikes me, then, that if we're going to check-call the river we might as well bet-call the turn, because why leave the money on the table? Factor in the times when villain had total air and we take the pot unopposed on the turn, and in a vacuum I choose Option 2.

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like they say, you're better off betting yourself if you're willing to make a call (even though these are different streets, you are assuming you are calling the river no matter what card falls, so it still applies).

excellent post btw, i always love problems like this. i was thinking about doing the math myself, but it looks like everybody else already figured it out.

whiteboy said:

like they say, you're better off betting yourself if you're willing to make a call

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Thinking about it, I'm not sure that theory really applies in this situation.

What we're saying with Option 2 is that we're willing to call a shove. The reason we do this is because we figure (for better or worse) that the villain will be shoving with a lot of hands that we're ahead of.

Applying the logic above to the situation, however, would mean if we're willing to call a shove then we may as well shove the turn ourselves. I think this is a bad idea for two reasons: one, we only get called when the villain has a set and two, the times that we're ahead we only win $78 as opposed to the $188 (or whatever your figure might be) equity we have in a pot where the villain gets all in.

With that in mind, I really think this is a circumstance where we don't want to make the bet ourselves - we want the villain to do the betting for us and put his chips in bad.

Would Option 1/2 even appear? I mean, check raising both flop and turn seems kind of, I dunno, weird I guess. If he has a set, then isn't he going to lead out on the turn, particularly with the spades there? Especially if, like you say, he's an agressive player

F Paulsson said:

I haven't actually analyzed this myself yet, but I wanted to start the thread anyway. With a little luck, someone else will end up doing it for me, and if nothing else it will remind me to come back and do it later.

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Bump / reminder - definitely keen to hear what you've got to say on this one FP