Bluffing whilst deep

PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $0.10 BB (6 handed) - PokerStars Converter Tool from Play Online Poker, Site Reviews & Poker Forum | FlopTurnRiver.com

UTG ($10.88)
MP ($9.60)
Hero (CO) ($23.85)
Button ($9.51)
SB ($25.75)
BB ($10.78)

Preflop: Hero is CO with 10, A
2 folds, Hero bets $0.30, 1 fold, SB raises to $1.10, 1 fold, Hero calls $0.80

Flop: ($2.30) J, 6, J (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $1.10, SB calls $1.10

Turn: ($4.50) 9 (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $2.90, SB calls $2.90

River: ($10.30) 6 (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $18.75 (All-In), 1 fold

Total pot: $10.30 | Rake: $0.46

Results below:

Spoiler: Show

Hero didn't show 10, A (nothing).

Spoiler tags came on automatically i dunno why.

No stats, there was a bit of a dynamic going on between me and villain, he was 3betting a bluffing range vs me.

Is this a good bluff?

Someone probably added the spoiler tags because you're a dumbass for giving results. You know better than that.

Why is $18 better than $8? $10? $12?

Oh no he was 3-bet bluffing sometimes, I guess we should spew 2 buy-ins on the river to swing our dick around.

The spoiler tags came up then i clicked out copy and pasted the HH again and they still came up when the box wasn't ticked, i didn't click anything i don't usually, show results wasn't ticked either so i dunno why it came out like that.

I think he was sick of me winning pots vs him and would look me up with a weaker range so i shoved because i knew he was the type of player that would never call 180bb's here without a Jack. So he's folding nearly all the time.

I think some of his range was chopping here and if i made him fold a better hand like TT or QQ i think i gained a lot according to slansky's fundamental theory of poker. I've never really tried to develop my game like this before, i'm just playing around with different things also i was trying to implement this theory and was thinking about it alot when i was playing that session.

I think he may even call if i bet like $10 here with QQ sometimes due to the dynamic, i invite you to tear my logic/thought process to pieces if i'm being a dumbass.

You have the heart of a lion, mo chara.

honestly i think your river play is terrible. this seems an awful spot to overbet.

Why?

Originally Posted by seven-deuce

Why?

Just out of curiosity. Do you not think villain could play Jx this way? Board is pretty dry ( if he was holding a J ) so with two c/c I would be a little suspicious.

I don't think the bet on river has to be so big either.

tell me what you think his range is when he checks the river. count the number of hand combinations in it. then tell me what parts of that range you think he will call with against:
- 1/2P bet
- 3/4P bet
- PSB
- 1.5P bet
- shove

i honestly think you chose the worst of the above betsizes. but i'm open to rebuttal if you can explain with non-results-oriented logic why your bet was optimal.

edit: if you don't know how to do the above look up spoons post on counting combinations.

google a picture of money being lit on fire.

instill that image in your brain.

At least try to pick bluff spots where you have a little bit of equity. You keep shoveling money in that pot without any outs (OK count maybe 2-3 effective outs for the cases where a T or A is going to be good).

Then if you think he is 3b bluffing pre, there is a good chance that your hand is best OTF. What better hands do you think he will fold to a 1/2 pot bet?

4-bet or fold pre, this is a horrible hand to defend with these stack sizes.

If you do start betting here you defo need to fire a few times, you must have some idea what his c/c range is on the flop. For example is he a fishy type to be like "omg trips in 3 bet pot - SLOWPLAY or is he a reg who's like "shit deep 3 bet pot with AA on board where I might be beat, c/c station down! Or is he the type to not c bet much and give up lots postflop.

I'd assume he's not the latter without good reads to the contrary given he's aggro with 3 bets pre. I hate firing three vs anyone with Jx in their range here, I hate it vs guys who are stationing down good pairs so yeah I pretty much hate it vs anyone. Your river sizing is really bad unless you have a very specific read that A: He has very little Jx when he takes this line and B: a lot of his range is stuff like AA KK and you can make these fold with huge sizing but not otherwise.

Yeah, this is so needlessly spewy. You wanna be careful you don't become one of those regs that gets stuck at like 25NL because they wave their dick around all the time because ego.

Originally Posted by Carroters

4-bet or fold pre, this is a horrible hand to defend with these stack sizes.

If you do start betting here you defo need to fire a few times, you must have some idea what his c/c range is on the flop. For example is he a fishy type to be like "omg trips in 3 bet pot - SLOWPLAY or is he a reg who's like "shit deep 3 bet pot with AA on board where I might be beat, c/c station down! Or is he the type to not c bet much and give up lots postflop.

I'd assume he's not the latter without good reads to the contrary given he's aggro with 3 bets pre. I hate firing three vs anyone with Jx in their range here, I hate it vs guys who are stationing down good pairs so yeah I pretty much hate it vs anyone. Your river sizing is really bad unless you have a very specific read that A: He has very little Jx when he takes this line and B: a lot of his range is stuff like AA KK and you can make these fold with huge sizing but not otherwise.

Yeah, this is so needlessly spewy. You wanna be careful you don't become one of those regs that gets stuck at like 25NL because they wave their dick around all the time because ego.

I thought that his river range broke down like;

Quads

Jacks full

Possibly 6's full

Overpairs

Underpairs

A highs

He was definitely aware of how deep we were.

I definitely think he would c/c the flop and turn with a Jack most of the time but would he check the river? Why would he give me a chance to check behind when the pot is so large if he was holding the effective nuts?

I thought this guy was definitely capable of folding overpairs but i'd have to threaten his entire stack because he was desperate to see what i had. Also he time banked for like 20 secs after i shoved so i think if i bet any less i was getting snapped.

If villain could see my cards he would have called, so he played differently from the way he would have played if he could see my cards so i gained according to slansky's fundamental theory of poker.

Should i be thinking about this at all when i'm playing? I mean i'm sitting at the river with Ace high i can only win the pot by making my opponent fold and i think i can make him make a mistake by shoving that was basically the thought process.

You need to be careful here because you're verging on being pretty results orientated. I'll try to put this briefly and simply. In terms of Sklansky's theorem you made him play his hand different from the way he should play it if he can see your cards, however that's far from the full story. You've put this guy on a range of Jx 6x overpairs and underpairs - for the purposes of making this point I won't argue with that range (although I'm not convinced by your reasons for discounting Jx on the river). What really matters here is whether he makes one of these Sklansky type mistakes often enough for your bet to be profitable, given the range you can put him on. In this situation the only thing that's a mistake with this range is folding so the question can be reduced to "how often does he fold vs how often he needs to fold?"

When you shove 18.75 to win 10.30 your bet needs to work bet/bet+pot amount of the time or 64% of the time.If you think he folds his whole range this often then okay it's not -EV. However, if he folds a similar amount to a bet of say $14.50 then you've just saved 42.5 big blinds which is like 2100 BB/100 - not that this spot comes up very often, but yeah just to put it into scare factor perspective!

Now go make what you think is his range on the river and work out what % of it folds to this bet size by counting combos and stop caring about the fact he folded and made a Sklansky mistake with this one small segment of his range otherwise known as a hand.

As you've demonstrated, if you take an optimistic perspective, you can create a scenario / range in which your river bluff doesn't look so bad doesn't cost you or even wins a pot you'd have lost by checking behind. But does that make it a +EV play vs his entire range?

Originally Posted by Carroters

You need to be careful here because you're verging on being pretty results orientated. I'll try to put this briefly and simply. In terms of Sklansky's theorem you made him play his hand different from the way he should play it if he can see your cards, however that's far from the full story. You've put this guy on a range of Jx 6x overpairs and underpairs - for the purposes of making this point I won't argue with that range (although I'm not convinced by your reasons for discounting Jx on the river). What really matters here is whether he makes one of these Sklansky type mistakes often enough for your bet to be profitable, given the range you can put him on. In this situation the only thing that's a mistake with this range is folding so the question can be reduced to "how often does he fold vs how often he needs to fold?"

When you shove 18.75 to win 10.30 your bet needs to work bet/bet+pot amount of the time or 64% of the time.If you think he folds his whole range this often then okay it's not -EV. However, if he folds a similar amount to a bet of say $14.50 then you've just saved 42.5 big blinds which is like 2100 BB/100 - not that this spot comes up very often, but yeah just to put it into scare factor perspective!

Now go make what you think is his range on the river and work out what % of it folds to this bet size by counting combos and stop caring about the fact he folded and made a Sklansky mistake with this one small segment of his range otherwise known as a hand.

Thanks for the detailed response.

Ok so i think his river range was;

AJ (6)
KJ (8)
QQ-AA (15)
55-TT (25)
AQ-AK (24)

For a total of 78 combinations.

Calling range to a shove {AJ KJ 66 99} 18 combinations. So based on my range he will be calling 23% of the time and folding the remaining 77% which is above the required 64% for my bet sizing to be +EV in a vacuum.


I'll try it now with a river sizing of $14.50 bet/(bet+pot) comes out at 58% so if villain is folding exactly 58% our bet has an EV of 0 (i think) and if he folds more than 58% our bet is +EV in a vacuum. It's interesting that say villain was folding exactly 58% then checking would be the superior option as we would split the pot sometimes which has a higher EV than 0.

Edit - even if a bluff is +EV in a vacuum checking may still be more +EV. If we are last to act on the river our EV from checking is just our equity % of the pot, which may be higher than the value gained in bluffing. Also just realized in the $14.50 example villain has the option of raising his Jx and 66 and most certainly would but i think my analysis is much better than the first one.

Calling range a bet of $14.50 {KK+ AJ KJ 66 99} = 27 combos.

With this range villain would be calling 34.6 we'll say 35% and folding 65%. So our bet would still be +EV in a vacuum and we'd be saving ourselves 42.5bbs the times we run into the top of his range. So we can conclude my river sizing was absolute spew.

Okay good effort, however I strongly disagree with parts of your ranging. I think it's a bit ludicrous to suppose he's c/c AK/AQ on the flop and turn unless he's extremely stationy and doesn't like c-betting, think you need to drastically reduce the combos of those hands. I also think you have too many random PPs, his 3 bet bluffing range is probably more likely to contain stuff like J9s A4s etc than stuff like 66-99/hands people like to flat here. The upshot is you don't get half as many folds as you think you do. Bascially you're giving him far far too many very weak SD valuey hands here. As a result your range is definitely quite a bit off from being a solid estimate, but that will come with doing this kind of thing more.

You should also think about weighting ranges rather than just taking all combos of all the hands you include. for instance if you think he's more likely to play AA this way than Jx then you need to remove some Jx to show this. How you weight his river range in a spot like this depends on how likely you think he is to play the different parts of it this way. This is pretty read dependant.

Yeah i was going to include in the post that my ranging/hand reading sucks. Thanks for the advice anyway, very helpful.

This hand looks like you've either tilted him into chasing you with bad odds, or he had an overpair and the double paired board scared him off.

Was this the only light river shove he's seen in the last few sessions against you? If not, then he might start looking you up light. And in this case, any pair would have you beaten. Given the stack sizes, he can also start playing lower cards IP against you for the great implied odds you're offering him.

Also, I'm not really certain about the turn bet. OTF, when he called, you had a possible flush draw against you, plus possible trips. And your odds of improving to a pair are worse than his of improving to a flush, let alone you beating the potential trip J's.

If he's been floating you too much, then you can shut him down by check raising the turn with a decent non-monster hand later, but your turn bet here made the river a difficult, lose a lot or hope he doesn't call if I shove, type of decision.