$200 NLHE 6-max: Weak overpair against fish - line check

ChuckTs

ChuckTs

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$200 NL HE 6-max: Weak overpair against fish - line check

He's 26/12/2, 65 fold cbet, not much info on later streets, %24 wtsd, 700 hands, and we don't have much info on his bet when checked to type thing. Seems on the fence between aggressive and passive fish.

Thoughts on general line? Are we check-calling/-folding or bet-folding river? What if he bets bigger, 1/2-3/4 pot?

poker stars, $1/$2 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players
Hand History Converter by Stoxpoker

BTN: $200.70 (100.4 bb)
SB: $200 (100 bb)
BB: $801.85 (400.9 bb)
UTG: $533.90 (267 bb)
Hero (MP): $236.65 (118.3 bb)
CO: $129.95 (65 bb)

Pre-Flop: Hero is MP with 6:spade: 6:club:
UTG folds, Hero raises to $7, CO folds, BTN calls $7, 2 folds

Flop: ($17) 2:club: 3:diamond: 2:diamond: (2 players)
Hero bets $12, BTN calls $12

Turn: ($41) T:heart: (2 players)
Hero bets $24, BTN calls $24

River: ($89) 7:club: (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN bets $24, Hero calls $24
 
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feitr

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Yea this is perfectly fine. Definitely draws and A high hands in his range (esp. a4/a5) and he is representing so little by betting the river (set of 7s really or maybe oddly played A2 or something but bet sizing doesn't look like either of these are possible) as most non-aggro players certainly can't vbet 99/88 Tdxd/7dxd sort of hands on the river.
 
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GrantGreen

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This line looks fine. That bet could be so many thing that you beat, and you only have to be good about 21% of the time.
 
BelgoSuisse

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I like the line. I do expect you to be behind on river but not often enough to make this a fold ever. And besides, i want to know what hands he does this with.
 
F Paulsson

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Eh, as an isolated hand it's close between folding and calling. I expect to find 99 or a QT type hand most of the time, but it could be two diamonds or A4 often enough. But add the value of knowing if he bluffs small in these spots and I think it definitely pushes it to a call. Not by much, but by enough.
 
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feitr

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I don't think this is close at all, given that many players won't be able to value a hand like 88/99 on the river and there aren't many Ts in villain's range (AT, Tdxd) unless he is peeling real wide and if he is peeling real wide he is going to have tons of garbage on the river. That, and we we only need to be good 18% of the time.
 
ChuckTs

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I almost always see them bet 88/99 on the river unless they're extremely passive...

Don't we have to be good %21? (24/(24+89))? Not that it makes much difference, I'm just curious how you got that.
 
F Paulsson

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I don't think this is close at all, given that many players won't be able to value a hand like 88/99 on the river and there aren't many Ts in villain's range (AT, Tdxd) unless he is peeling real wide and if he is peeling real wide he is going to have tons of garbage on the river. That, and we we only need to be good 18% of the time.

If this had been the turn and not the river, I'd agree with you. But he didn't just peel the flop, he called the turn also - and that means that it can't just be trash anymore (I doubt he calls flop and turn with 98, for instance) so his range is stronger after the turn even if he peels very light. It's going to be a missed diamond draw some of the time, sure, but even those will often check back if they have an ace (hoping to win with ace-high). I just don't see how it we could beat anything BUT a missed diamond draw because I don't think there's any other hand that he makes it to the river with that we beat. And I think between flushdraws and JT/T9/QT/KT/AT type hands that peeled (and 77-99), I don't think he bets his missed flushdraws all the time, but I think he bets his tens and mid pairs all of the time. So I think it's close, and quite possibly not even +EV.
 
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feitr

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But i don't think it is a fair assumption to say that villain will peel wide on flop but then all of a sudden tighten up his turn peeling range. Why should we assume that villain will make a super wide flop peel w/ a hand like 9To, then only stick around on the turn w/ a good hand, when peeling flop w/ 9To is probably consistent with the sort of player who would peel two streets w/ overcards or A high or a gutshot or open ender, etc.

I don't see any reason to believe or any consistency in the idea that villain w/ peel this flop super wide but have a tight peeling range on the turn. I also don't see any reason to believe that villain would bet a hand like 88/99 here, as what worse can he expect hero to have that would bet 2 streets and then call river.
 
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feitr

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I almost always see them bet 88/99 on the river unless they're extremely passive...

Don't we have to be good %21? (24/(24+89))? Not that it makes much difference, I'm just curious how you got that.

Maybe they'll bet 88/99 but you said this is a fish that is neither aggressive nor passive and i don't tend to see players like this bet hands like 88/99 once you bet an overcard on the turn. Don't get me wrong, I think 88/99 is absolutely a bet on the river here, but i don't give fish enough credit for hand reading to bet it. And if fish do bet 88/99 here it is probably coz they don't know what they are doing and they'll probably bet 44/55 for the same reason (just bet, they don't know why). That said, if bet sizing is any indication, this looks more like a thin value type hand, but fish certainly bluff this size as well.

As per the other part - we are getting 1:4.7 on the call. So we have to be good 1/5.7 = 18% of the time. When you do 24/(24 + 89) you just get the number of times that you have to "miss" in order to break even for one time you "hit". But you still have to factor in the additional value of 1 for the time that you call and are right (ie. make up the difference and hit the breakeven point). To get 21% you are calculating that we are getting 1:3.7 on the call (1/4.7) which should seem intuitively wrong to you, since if you roughly look at the odds on the call, 24 goes into 113 >4 times to give you better than 4:1. And if you are getting better than 4:1, you obviously have to be right <1/5 of the time. It always helps to do the crude math in your head to get an approx. number so that you can check your exact calculations.

A simple example may make it clear. Most ppl know that you have to be right 1/3 of the time to snap off a psb bluff on the river. But if you do the calculation the 21% way, you get (x/x+x) = 0.5x, which would be 50% (ie. 1:1) the way you calculated it (if x was $10 it would be $10 to call for a $20 pot, or $10/$20 and 0.5). But if you add the additional value of 1 to factor in the time you call and are right (to hit breakeven point), you get 2:1 and 33%.

The way i think is easiest is to figure out the $$ required when you call and win the pot. In this case it is $113. Then take $$ lose everytime you are wrong and divide it by this number (24/113 = 0.21). Divide 1 by 0.21 to get the "calling and lost side of the odds", so 4.76. The "calling and won side" gets a value of 1. So it is 1:4.76 and to figure out the times we have to be right it is 1/(1 + 4.76) = 17.4% (which i had just rounded to 18).
 
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F Paulsson

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But i don't think it is a fair assumption to say that villain will peel wide on flop but then all of a sudden tighten up his turn peeling range. Why should we assume that villain will make a super wide flop peel w/ a hand like 9To, then only stick around on the turn w/ a good hand, when peeling flop w/ 9To is probably consistent with the sort of player who would peel two streets w/ overcards or A high or a gutshot or open ender, etc.

I don't see any reason to believe or any consistency in the idea that villain w/ peel this flop super wide but have a tight peeling range on the turn. I also don't see any reason to believe that villain would bet a hand like 88/99 here, as what worse can he expect hero to have that would bet 2 streets and then call river.

People float the flop left and right. But it's pretty rare for someone to float the flop and then float the turn unimproved. Surely you must have noticed that? I have hundreds (probably thousands, but erring on the low side) of players in my database who will peel almost any flop but fold most turns. I don't think I have any players in my database who will peel almost any flop and then have a "call turn c-bet frequency" of 100%, or even close to it, which is what you're suggesting is reasonable to expect from this guy.

So no, it's not consistent for almost any player to peel the turn with 98o just because he peeled the flop with it. There's a bigger chance that he'll peel with two overs, but I wouldn't say it's a great chance and it requires quite a bit of parlaying in him both peeling twice with overs (something that fairly few people do) and then bluff the river when checked to (which is common, but still cuts the likelyhood of him bluffing in half).

Would he bet the river with 88/99? Maybe, maybe not. It's pretty common to see a small river bet from such hands from confused players, though. I have no idea what they expect to get calls from, but they do it. Had it been a bigger bet, I would have agreed that his range would have been considerably more narrow. But in the vast majority of cases where I call a small bet like this on the river from a weak player, he's betting the strength of his hand - "I have a mediocre hand, so I bet small." Why? Who knows.

I'm not saying that this is NEVER a bluff. I'm saying that I don't think it's a bluff more than 1 in 5. To invent some range and probability:

****** Skip this stuff if you're not morbidly curious **********

If he flats AT, KT, QT, JT, T9 and T8 on the button (somewhat reasonable for a 26% VPIP, although T8 might have to be suited) and he peels a rag flop 40% of the time with those hands (on average; probably 100% with AT, and maybe maybe just 20% of the time with T9) or so. I think this is reasonable; you may disagree.

... then he will have a pair of tens on the turn with 33 combos.

And all of his flushdraws, which, for the sake of arguing, we can say is AdXd, KdXd, Qd7d+, Jd8d+ and Td8d (but skipping AdKd, and he can't have 2d or 3d):

10 + 9 + 5 + 3 +2 = 29, but 6 of these beat us by the river, so removing them, we get 23 combos.

... and also assume that he calls the flop and the turn with A4o:

16 combos.

And let's throw in the possibility that he peels the flop AND the turn with QJ 50% of the time (I think this is high, but let's let the higher number here adjust for all the other hands in his range that he might peel twice):

8 combos.

... which, gives 47 combos on the river that we beat and 39 (33 + the six diamond draws that outdrew us) that beat us. Then we can of course add in 22,33,TT,77, toss in 88-JJ in the mix, and we have another 28 combos that beat us, bringing the total tally to:

67 vs 47. So far, it's a far cry better than 1 in five that we beat. But assuming he bets 80% of his real hands for value (I assume he will bet any ten, obv the full houses, and only some of the time 88/99), that means that he must bluff with his worse hands at a frequency of about 25%.

****** Welcome back! **********

If we think he checks back his ace-high hands, he needs to bluff the river when checked to with the rest of his (missed) range more than half the time.

Impossible? Not at all. Likely? I don't think so. I think bluffy players raise flushdraws on the flop, which puts a serious dent in the likelyhood of him having a worse hand. It's also rare for bluffs to be that small, which further reduces the likelyhood of it being air. So basically, I just don't think he does this with a worse hand often enough - but it's probably close.
 
F Paulsson

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Eh, long post is long. My point is really much shorter: People float flops widely, but generally not turns, and it's impossible for them to float the turns as widely as the flops. And with some hocus pocus with the ranges, I guesstimate that he needs to bluff about half the time on the river when checked to with air in order for us to be profitable, and it's a fairly small portion of the total playerbase who do that. However, knowing whether he is one of them or not is highly useful, which is why I think a call is in order - even if I don't expect to show a profit from it in this particular hand.
 
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feitr

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Yea i don't disagree with most of what you said, but that wasn't what i was saying. Ofc the flop peeling range is going to be wider for every player than the turn peeling range. But what you are doing, is putting alot of Tx hands into villain's range that he would float the flop with. Ok, fine. But that means that he floats the flop with a FAR FAR FAR wider range than those hands. If you think Tx is a decent portion of his range, then we can presume he is folding very little on this flop other than 8 or 9 high sort of hands. If we accept this, then it is likely that villain will be peeling turn quite wide as well. So gutshots, A high , bigger overcards (QJ, KJ etc), all flush draws, straight draws, etc. etc.

I do not think that it is an accurate assumption to say that villain peels flop super wide so that we can include alot of Tx hands in his range (this is ofc the only reason we should ever be thinking villain has Tx as part of his range) but then folds everything that misses. If you follow what i am saying, and we ignore draws for a minute (since draws are a standard peel on the flop) this would mean villain would have something like <30% fold to cbet on this flop but then fold like 90% to turn barrel since the only part of his range that can continue as made hands are overs that hit and pps. Sure there is the odd player like this but i'd argue that most ppl who peel flop extraordinarily wide also have an extraordinarily wide turn peeling range as well. ie. a super wide flop peeling range that is wide enough that we can put some random over that hit on the turn into his range increases the likelihood that villain will continue to call light on the turn, as it is a characteristic of villain that he calls light (unless you have a specific read that he peels flop super light and folds turn unimproved).

I'm not sure if i am making this clear, but maybe this will help. A tight flop peeling range will have very few Txs in it. AT and Tdxd are about it. Therefore, if we want to put Tx hands into villain's range on the turn, we MUST assign him a very very wide flop peeling range, as if he is peeling TQ, he is also peeling K9, K8, J9, QJ, and many many other overs + probably any sort of draw. So why should we be assuming that he is just going to automatically fold a HUGE portion of his range on the turn, when our first postulate is that he peels the flop very wide.

At no stage did i say i expect villain to peel a hand like J9 twice trying to hit, but if he peeled 9T on the flop, there is a good change he is peeling A high or whatever junk on the turn as well.

So then the only thing to consider is how villain's range has changed once he bet the river. I am taking it from the point of view that a bad villain is unlikely to be able to vbet light here w/ 88 or 99 once a T hit on the turn and we bet it. Reasons being taht i don't think that fish hand read well at all and they'll probably just check hoping that you don't have a T. They have to have your hand pegged pretty well to find a range against which they can value bet against and expect to get called by worse. And honestly, as i said before if a fish bets 88 here i wouldnt' be suprised to see them bet 55 as well, since some players just bet without knowing why. Maybe they wouldn't turn A high into a bluff, but it shoudl be clear to some1 who can read hands that a weak A high is never good here (tho i don't think they can read hands) and non-solid players just do some weird things. If villain did have A4 here they SHOULD absolutely bet it as it is almost never ever good.

So to sum up this incredibly long and probably poorly worded post - i think that villain's range is still fairly wide on the turn and i don't think that the river improves any of his hands. I think villain is repping a somewhat smaller vbetting range as i wouldnt' give credit to a bad player to bet 88 for value here. And i also think that this bet sizing can often be a bluff.

That said, if villain bet out 3/4 pot here i would snap fold as i would be less inclined to think it was a bluff and we are getting terrible odds. But i definitely think we are good more than 1/5 here.

Basically, i do not like assigning villain a very wide flop peeling range and then thinking he only continues with Tx/pair/draw type hands and then thinking he can vbet a pair lightly when hero has had the action the previous 2 streets and he will check behind his missed draw hands to the point that we aren't good even 17.5% of the time.
 
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F Paulsson

F Paulsson

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Feitr,

I don't mind the long posts; I'm guilty of it too. :) And I think you make your case well, but there's one thing we either don't agree on, or you haven't considered: A ten is smack in the middle of his range. Try it in PokerStove: Give him a range of 25% or so (is that reasonable for his button coldcalling range?), remove JJ-AA and AK (I guess we don't know that he'd 3-bet those, but it's a somewhat reasonable assumption) and then remove the smaller pocket pairs as well (they're not really interesting for this experiment) and then you'll get something like this:

TT,AQs-A2s,K6s+,Q8s+,J8s+,T8s+,AQo-A7o,K9o+,QTo+,JTo.

To check how many of these hands have a ten in them, throw in something like Td2s2h2c3h (remove A2 from his range to make this work), give the second player 99 and hit evaluate. 25% of his range preflop has a ten in it. If we assume somewhat standard numbers for peeling the flop and the turn, then he'll peel about 50% on the flop, and then 50% on the turn. From that original range, that first 50% is going to be somewhat evenly distributed compared to the first one (by which I mean that the frequency of tens in the range he'll peel with is unlikely to be significantly lower than his original range OTB), which means he'll have a ten about one time in four that he sees the turn. But once he peels the turn, and then cuts away half his range again, a ten is now going to make up half his range.

What he's doing on the river is really anyone's guess; as you say he "should" bet A4o if checked to, but then again, he shouldn't have gotten to the river with A4o in the first place if he knew what he was doing.

Anyway, good discussion.
 
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feitr

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Btw, it isn't like a HH like this can be answered with any sort of certainty at all, as far too much info is missing. All you can do is put forth an "answer" along with justification and a set of conditions that must be met in order for such an analysis to be valid.

You need information fold to cbet%, fold to turn cbet%, c/ring%, what types of boards that villain likes to c/r, how does villain play draws and how does this change on different board textures, villains river bluffing frequency, how light can villain vbet, bet sizing tells, etc. etc.

Without this info it is just a somewhat educated guess as to how wide his flop peeling range is, how wide is his turn peeling range, can he vbet a hand like 88 here, can he bluff a missed draw or total junk, can he even get to river with junk.

Neither of our explanations are incorrect - i just don't believe that villain will necessarily peel flop wide and yet have a very tight turn peeling range nor do i think that villain can necessarily vbet as light as you think and i think he may be able to bluff more of his range (since i think he has more of a range that are now only bluffs).

For instance, if you put in A high hands to peel the turn as well and these hands decided to turn into a bluff on the river, the whole frequency thing you came up with would be drastically reduced. There is just no way we can be assigning individual hands to a range of villain when we have all the missing info that i said at the start, as otherwise it is nothing more than guesswork built around a framework of assumptions that may or may not be correct.

@ your last post - actually i did realise this - if he peels with random overs then a T will make up more of that range than say a K for sure but i think you overestimate how much of his range on the flop are pure overs and not stuff like flush draws, A high hands, gutshots, etc. That calculation doesn't take into account that villain is MUCH more likely to peel that flop with A4 or xdxd than with JT.
 
F Paulsson

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He doesn't have to have a very tight turn peeling range, though, is the thing. Even if he peels with 70% of the stuff he peels the flop with - and I think that's on the wide side - that will still make his range consist of mostly pocket pairs on the river, of which there are twice as many as there are possible flushdraws in his range to begin with, which in turn should be a bigger range than his random overcard stuff, which after the turn has transformed into about half of it being tens.

My point in a lot of it being tens - half of it, after the turn - was just to show that while he can peel wide on both the flop and the turn, at least half of his "air" hands are still going to beat us on the river. And that doesn't take into account what I suspect is the majority of his range (the PPs).

Anyway, this is, as you say, mostly a feeble exercise in range approximation without actually knowing what we're trying to approximate, since we don't have the requisite numbers. I'll leave it at that.
 
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feitr

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Just one last comment, as i think we have just about beaten this to death. But i fail to see how most of his range will consist of pps by the time we get to the river or even how pps have more combos than flush draw combos. I think we can totally discount 33/TT given the way it was played. If he will 3B JJ+ which one would have to presume is the case, then we are left with 44-55 and 77-99. So 12 combos that we beat and only 15 that beat us. There are 10 suited Ad combos alone, not to mention the multitude of other flush draw hands he could have (broadways, suited connectors, gapped connectors, etc.). There could certainly be a good 20 flush draw combos in villain's flop and turn peeling range. So, it seems to me villain is actually likely to have as many or more flush draw combos in his range by the river than any pp that beats us. Add to this other hands that might peel a turn like Ax and straight draws, and pps that beat us make up a much smaller part of villain's range on the river (although we can't know either way). And while i see what you are saying with the T argument, i don't think we can presume that villain will call with a hand like 9T or JT or T8s anywhere near as much as Ax or bigger overs like JK. You can't be randomly taking out x% of hands when villain presumably isn't randomly deciding what hands to peel and when some overs are much more likely to be peeled than others (namely lower card Ts). Said in another way, i don't feel that your assumption that the overs that villain peels will follow the distribution of his preflop range is likely to be correct, as i think K and A high hands would get peeled more than things like T8-TQ. Not to mention the already stated fact that "random overs" are going to be a much smaller part of villain's flop peeling range than pps, straight draws, flush draws and Ax hands, although i realised you allowed for that when you gave it less weight to these hands in your last post. But you also said that most of his river range will be pps and i just don't see how this is the case for the aforementioned reasons.
 
F Paulsson

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You can absolutely not take out TT and 33. This is slowplaying heaven board. And not everyone 3-bets JJ IP, definitely not every weak player, and decidely not even every reg. If he 3-bets JJ half the time, then he has:

22,33,44,55,66,77,88,99,TT,JJ

1 + 3 + 6 + 6 + 1 + 3 + 6 + 6 + 3 + 3 (half of the jacks) = 38, which is more than the number of flushdraws that I expect him to have.
 
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When i said as played, it was as much referring to river bet sizing than slowplaying. Perhaps ppl only bet 1/4th pot with the nuts, but i don't see it very often. And of those 38, 1 chops and we beat 12, so even given that wide range there are only 25 and only 19 if he 3Bs TT+. If we actually knew something about bet sizing tells/river betting tendencies then it would be easier to nail it down to something more useful since alot of the pps could be discounted.

In any case, i'm certainly not trying to argue that we are good here most of the time. My only point is that i would be amazed if we weren't good more than 1/5th of the time to make this definitely +EV so i'll leave it at that since i've posted enough in this thread ;).
 
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