Unsure whether to c-bet?

[griffey24]

I appreciate you not wanting to be too villain specific, but this is SUCH a villain specific spot.

What are your assumptions here? What is his call 3b % vs 4b vs fold?

I find that players that fold most 3bets and that don't set hunt in 3b pots, are heavily Qx weighted (JQs/KQ/AQ and some stuff like 99-TT). Obviously vs these players betting and shutting down or c/c and c/f turn could be in order.

Some other players call all pairs, all suited hands etc. Vs. those players I'm happy firing twice here, because they are just generally cally to begin with and like putting us on AK.

[seven-deuce]

I appreciate you not wanting to be too villain specific, but this is SUCH a villain specific spot.

What are your assumptions here? What is his call 3b % vs 4b vs fold?

I find that players that fold most 3bets and that don't set hunt in 3b pots, are heavily Qx weighted (JQs/KQ/AQ and some stuff like 99-TT). Obviously vs these players betting and shutting down or c/c and c/f turn could be in order.

Some other players call all pairs, all suited hands etc. Vs. those players I'm happy firing twice here, because they are just generally cally to begin with and like putting us on AK.

In the OP i stated i didn't want to be too villain specific because i was interested in analysing this general scenario to see what is the best play according to poker theory/fundamental theorem of poker.

The scenario is:

We 3bet a semi-competent player pre-flop with a hand like JJ and flop an underpair to the board, now what do we do?

Against a sensible calling range we aren't value betting by definition. I.e we have less than 50% equity vs their calling range. We have a lot better hands in our range we can semi-bluff this flop with rather than sacrifice a hand with decent showdown value. But we also don't want to check and play a guessing game for 3 streets OOP.

So what do we do, how do we combat this tricky situation? That was the aim of this thread.



So i resorted to Slanksy's ToP last night and found this on Pg. 93

"Betting is particularly important when you're in first position, in which case you should apply the following rule: If your hand is worth a call or almost worth a call when someone else bets, it is better to bet yourself, especially when you have little fear of a raise and when there is some chance you will win right there by making your opponent fold".

He then gives an example from another form of poker and says this;

"If you know there is no chance that your opponent will fold a pair of queens, the semi-bluff becomes more debatable, for by definition a semi-bluff is a bet where there is some chance your opponent will fold a hand he should have played".

Since we can never expect anyone to fold a queen here for 1 bet is betting really the right play?

I mean if we were planning on double or triple barreling trying to make him fold a queen by representing AA KK or QQ there are plenty of hands with better semi-bluffing potential than JJ here, Axdd etc?

I really don't know what is right here.

[griffey24]

I think you're focusing too much on Qx. I think it's a hard thing to do, but trying to focus beyond the highest card on board and trying to look at all the cards that could be calling here is helpful.

Especially on a board with one high card and two very low cards, I don't think mid pockets are just rampant folding.

These are all possible hands that will call. Sure we can discount some mid pairs, but we can also prob discount some AQ (4b sometimes pre). Some ppl could also show up with a ton more FD's than what I included:

AQ - 12
KQ - 12
QJs - 1 QJcc

25 combos Qx

AJdd - 1
ATdd - 1
A9dd - 1
JTdd - 1
9Tdd - 1
TT - 6
99 - 6
88 - 6
77 - 6
66 - 6

35 combos worse than JJ

Some ppl even float ATss, KJss etc.

[Pelion]

"Betting is particularly important when you're in first position, in which case you should apply the following rule: If your hand is worth a call or almost worth a call when someone else bets, it is better to bet yourself, especially when you have little fear of a raise and when there is some chance you will win right there by making your opponent fold".

Again, this is very opponent and situation specific.

It is very common to find opponents who will call tightly, but will attack weakness with an autobet (bluff). Against these opponents, your hand is very often worth a call when it is not worth betting yourself.

Consider the very common c/c on the river when a draw misses.