Played a pretty sick hand earlier... sitting 30/169. 153 get paid 5800$ for first in the $33 $20k on ACR. I was in mid position with AQ off. I raise 2x MP. Cut off who is like top 5 in chips and has double my stack calls. Button and blinds fold. Flop AJ of clubs 8 of hearts. I bet a little less than half pot. Villain calls. Turn 8 spades. I bet a little less than half again he calls. River is the k of spades. I check, he shoves. Thoughts? No real reads on opponent have 30 hands on him. Sharkscope shows his average buyin $30 and he is up about $8k in profit. My thoughts is we beat a lot of his range. All the missed flush draws, all the broad ways except AJ (I feel AK 3 bets pre) we lose to 89 suited and AJ. My main question is it worth a call? I feel like he has enough bluffs but given how deep we are... idk...btw when I checked the river I thought to myself he shoves this everytime...

Originally Posted by DGOOD

Played a pretty sick hand earlier... sitting 30/169. 153 get paid 5800$ for first in the $33 $20k on ACR. I was in mid position with AQ off. I raise 2x MP. Cut off who is like top 5 in chips and has double my stack calls. Button and blinds fold. Flop AJ of clubs 8 of hearts. I bet a little less than half pot. Villain calls. Turn 8 spades. I bet a little less than half again he calls. River is the k of spades. I check, he shoves. Thoughts? No real reads on opponent have 30 hands on him. Sharkscope shows his average buyin $30 and he is up about $8k in profit. My thoughts is we beat a lot of his range. All the missed flush draws, all the broad ways except AJ (I feel AK 3 bets pre) we lose to 89 suited and AJ. My main question is it worth a call? I feel like he has enough bluffs but given how deep we are... idk...btw when I checked the river I thought to myself he shoves this everytime...

Thank U 4 Posting

If you think he has enough bluffs than it is a call?
So you need to take this hand and range this villain and really break down this villains most likely range and see if the villain does have enough bluffs.

One of the weird things about this hand is that the villain shoves. Often you would shove the nuts if you expect weak hands to fold everything and therefore second best hands will call a bluffy looking shove just as likely as a small value bet.
In this spot if the player is good they should know you can check full houses here. So why shove trip 8's? Why shove Q10? For that sizing.
You bet like you had an ace, you would bet AK on the river. Why would the villain call AJ on the turn when they have AK and AQ trapped for more bets when the bottom card pairs?
Why shove and put you to the test near the bubble when folds are more likely?
Why not get value from all your aces and a crying call from QQ?
If the villain has JJ and you check river why shove? If they are skilled? Unless they know you will call with AK for a huge over bet? Is that likely? What I mean is does your player pool make those kind of calls? That would skew the villains thinking to shoving more often than is normally +ev.

Just some thoughts

Hope this helps

Big blinds would help in this hand. How many big blinds do you have behind. There are a lot of hands he could have that have you beat. The hands that you beat aren’t shoving here. In general, I would fold.

Originally Posted by QA77

Big blinds would help in this hand. How many big blinds do you have behind. There are a lot of hands he could have that have you beat. The hands that you beat aren’t shoving here. In general, I would fold.

He had about 100bb to start the hand I had about 50. Here’s a possible range for Villian. I had the impression he was a decent player and I believe he thought I was too. It’s pretty clear what I have or atleast what it looks like I have and I think he knows that I know that. That’s why I think he has plenty of bluffs there may be even more suited cards that missed the flush draw that would bluff the river. Esp.16 from the money. Pretty polarizing spot lots of made hands and lots of missed flush draws too.

Originally Posted by eetenor

Thank U 4 Posting

If you think he has enough bluffs than it is a call?
So you need to take this hand and range this villain and really break down this villains most likely range and see if the villain does have enough bluffs.

One of the weird things about this hand is that the villain shoves. Often you would shove the nuts if you expect weak hands to fold everything and therefore second best hands will call a bluffy looking shove just as likely as a small value bet.
In this spot if the player is good they should know you can check full houses here. So why shove trip 8's? Why shove Q10? For that sizing.
You bet like you had an ace, you would bet AK on the river. Why would the villain call AJ on the turn when they have AK and AQ trapped for more bets when the bottom card pairs?
Why shove and put you to the test near the bubble when folds are more likely?
Why not get value from all your aces and a crying call from QQ?
If the villain has JJ and you check river why shove? If they are skilled? Unless they know you will call with AK for a huge over bet? Is that likely? What I mean is does your player pool make those kind of calls? That would skew the villains thinking to shoving more often than is normally +ev.

Just some thoughts

Hope this helps

Thanks for your reply. Aj is a pretty bad shove on the river imo. Obviously it worked in this particular spot. Maybe I gave him too much credit as a good player. Not sure. I have went back and forth that it was a good call to no it wasn’t a call over and over. Still pretty unsure :/ just a tough spot. Seems to be a lot of people clicking buttons on acr... that’s why I think there is plenty of pure bluffs he shoves on the river. Was pretty confused when he flipped over AJ.. I would have expected a raise from that hand at some point. Also posted a possible range above.

Originally Posted by DGOOD

Thanks for your reply. Aj is a pretty bad shove on the river imo. Obviously it worked in this particular spot. Maybe I gave him too much credit as a good player. Not sure. I have went back and forth that it was a good call to no it wasn’t a call over and over. Still pretty unsure :/ just a tough spot. Seems to be a lot of people clicking buttons on acr... that’s why I think there is plenty of pure bluffs he shoves on the river. Was pretty confused when he flipped over AJ.. I would have expected a raise from that hand at some point. Also posted a possible range above.

Thank U 4 Responding

Is the villain good or not. No Villain is either great or not good. So great that villain can put you on AQ and know you will call because you gave villain enough bluffs or has no clue what you hold and shoved hoping you think villain only has bluffs.

Losing this hand matters little if your range is correct. So refining that range with more data is the key. Often times we may see some plays from a player and assume we know the thinking behind those plays. We then think good player so x range. This may be a case of this player appearing to be good because they were correctly aggressive by accident.

Data Collection -Data Analysis -Action based on Data-More Data from results of Action-Refinement of Data Analysis. REPEAT

As long as you are doing this losing any hand does not matter.

Hope this helps

we have a pure bluff catcher here as he never bets a worse hand for value, and given the action this is actually one of the worst hands we will show up at the river with.

The hands I tend to open for a 2.0-2.2x raise from MP are: 55+, ATo+, A2s+, KJo+, K9s+, Q9s+, J9s+, T9s, 98s, 87s (roughly 18%) being that we are nearing the money if I feel players behind me are going to put a lot of pressure on me either by 3betting off big stacks or 3bet jamming off 18-28bb stacks I might fold the bottom rung such as 55, 87s, ATo, A6s, A2s bringing my opening % down to about 15% and opening a touch bigger (like 2.3-2.5x) to compensate for opening a stronger range (otherwise known as ICM tax, hands that are profitable with chip EV become slightly negative dollar EV once you are nearing the bubble if the players on your left don't roll over....in other situations I will expand my range facing weak/tight/scared player types and raise 2.0 exclusively).

hands that you have probably folded before the river:
its pretty safe to assume that you don't reach a river holding 55-77 or 99-TT
I doubt you fire twice with QQ, KK, QTs, Q9s, K9s, KTs, KQs, KJs (unless these are clubs)

Strong hands left in your range by this river:
88 (1)
JJ (3)
A8s (1)
89s (2)
87s (2)
AK (8)
AJ (8)
25 "strong" combos

Bluff catchers you have left in your range by the river:
all aces A2s-AQo actually just chop with any ace villain holds(roughly 45 combos) (excluding AJ, A8, AK which can do better than a chop facing A2)

so....even though AQ appears on the surface stronger than A2s it is actually just the same as far as strength in your range of bluff catchers. if you call with all bluff catchers here you are overcalling.

you will need some other system to help you decide. You cannot simply always fold or always call. I would use bluff blockers to help me decide. If I hold any clubs in my bluff catcher hand I always fold. Even then we would be calling too much so we need to thin down our bluff catching even farther. We think some of the hands he would bluff us with are the straight draws? so 9T and broadways. So those are the first bluff catchers I would drop. I would drop AT, A9 and AQ because they block some of his bluffs (granted its a small factor but again...these are some of what you want him to have, so holding a Q or a T is bad for you)

Given the ICM considerations, we do not want to over call here, and over folding becomes more acceptable given that the pot has roughly 21-23bb in it and we have roughly 40bb behind, and there is an ICM tax.

to call with a pure bluff catcher (what we have) we have to believe he is bluffing 40% of the time. maybe he is....IDK but I would generally guess my villains are not. I would probably call with my entire range that can beat A2 and call it good (the 25 combos I listed above which works out to be 36% of the range you reach the river with). if you want to add in a few bluff catchers for your tourney life then make sure you unblock his bluffs and choose hands such as A7s (3 extra combos) which brings you up to calling about 28/70 combos or 40% of the time.

whew! that was a lot of typing. hope it makes sense!