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I've only been playing with the player for about 80 hands. I don't have too many reads on him. He's not a reg. He had 68vpip from the sb. He was moderately aggro. I havent been getting much oop and he has been folding to so many of my opens preflop that I have no real postflop reads on him. I have taken the bet, bet less than pot on turn line before, from the button after he 3bet and checked the flop, he folded turn. I've 3bet 3 times so far and this is the first one he has defended. I'm unsure if I took a good line. I was gonna shove most rivers, but on the q river, I was planning on check-folding.

Party Poker $100.00 No Limit Hold'em - 2 players - View hand 164631
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BTN/SB: $100.00
Hero (BB): $145.00

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is BB with K A
BTN/SB raises to $3, Hero raises to $11, BTN/SB calls $8

Flop: ($22.00) 9 8 K (2 players)
Hero bets $17.00, BTN/SB calls $17

Turn: ($56.00) 4 (2 players)
Hero bets $23.00, BTN/SB calls $23

River: ($102.00) Q (2 players)
Hero checks

Why are you so afraid of a queen? What part of his range has queens that beats you now? I think this is still a shove for value, and a check-fold here would be awful.

Basically, I wasn't sure what worse he was gonna call me with. Maybe it was weaktight thinking by me and a shove could possibly get a herocall out of j9 or something and kj kt since he would be getting 3-1. I think he could possibly have lots of qx like q9 for rando 2pair, jt or kq in his range. You're probabally right that a shove is best though I'm still unsure. But if I check and he shoves on me, I plan on folding because I feel most of his range is checking behind if he has any one pair hand. If he has air, he is gonna either fold or shove the turn I think. And I don't see very many missed draws unless he floated the flop with hearts or something. So if I check, and he shoves, I would think he has 2pair or better almost every time.

Why not check the river and call any bet then? There are way more air hands that would bet that you beat than those that you lose to. Just as a pure pot odds thing I feel like it'd be awful to fold here. Your turn bet sizing just sort of screams "I am weak please fold," so I think his range will have a LOT of bluffs here if he is a poor opponent. I think folding here would be criminal. Checking is certainly okay but check/folding seems heinous.

Also just because this is the first 3bet that is defended doesn't mean he has to have qq or aa or something. He could just decide to take a flop with position with a huge part of his range. I think assuming that his first call of a 3bet is a great hand is a mistake.

On a board with so many missed draws I feel like his range here is super wide and folding is a big mistake getting 3:1.

I just shove for value on the river, no one folds for half pot.

Why not check the river and call any bet then? There are way more air hands that would bet that you beat than those that you lose to. Just as a pure pot odds thing I feel like it'd be awful to fold here. Your turn bet sizing just sort of screams "I am weak please fold," so I think his range will have a LOT of bluffs here if he is a poor opponent. I think folding here would be criminal. Checking is certainly okay but check/folding seems heinous.

Also just because this is the first 3bet that is defended doesn't mean he has to have qq or aa or something. He could just decide to take a flop with position with a huge part of his range. I think assuming that his first call of a 3bet is a great hand is a mistake.

On a board with so many missed draws I feel like his range here is super wide and folding is a big mistake getting 3:1.

i really don't agree with this at all. what hands would bet this river that hero beats? i don't see any reason for him to turn a hand with showdown value into a bluff. he can't expect hero to fold a pair given 3:1 so if he does decide to bet i can see hero's reasoning for folding, solely because he can't expect you to fold you probably should fold (if he is a thinking player)

also to assume that a bad player is going to float you twice to shove the river for a half pot bet in a 3bet pot is just.. wrong imo
i do think he can have a lot of weakish hands like 9x/8x/TT/JJ but i don't see why he would bet the river with those one pair hands
i agree with you that he doesn't have a big hand here most of the time, but i don't see the huge amount of missed draws you mention? QJ QT JT 67 are the only realistic drawing hands he could have and one of those ginned the river and two of them are never going to bet at it.. so only 67 makes sense for the missed draws part, unless he floated with Ax hearts or whatever which is a long shot

this being said, i still shove river for value

Also just because this is the first 3bet that is defended doesn't mean he has to have qq or aa or something. He could just decide to take a flop with position with a huge part of his range. I think assuming that his first call of a 3bet is a great hand is a mistake.

I'm not even putting qq or aa in his range. I agree that he is going to be defending lots of speculative hands.

There are way more air hands that would bet that you beat than those that you lose to.

On a board with so many missed draws I feel like his range here is super wide and folding is a big mistake getting 3:1.

What air hands can he have? And what draws are on this board that missed?

I just shove for value on the river, no one folds for half pot.

This is probabally correct. I was thinking that there isn't any value since he should fold hands like 9x or 8x if I shove since I'm never gonna try to bluff him on the river. But in reality, you are correct, nobody ever folds even if they should, so I probabally missed some value against his range there.

The problem I have is that I'm not really sure how he would interpret your small turn bet. If he does see this as 'weak' c/c might be better but still hummm.

Although if you had bet a bit bigger and he had call the turn I think the river was either a shove to get value out of KJ,KT (only 16 combos) or c/folding as I don't think he would bet with worse.
If you think he would have raised the flop with 2pairs or a draw i definately shove otherwise I c/f.

PS: I don't play HU as much as most of you guys, and probably not as good either so my answer might be bad.

I agree with everything Onraad says.

I was thinking that there isn't any value since he should fold hands like 9x or 8x if I shove since I'm never gonna try to bluff him on the river

I don't think he even needs to call with 9x and 8x to make a shove profitable. QJ, QT, AQ, KJ, KT= 49 combos. Hands that beat you that call are: KQ, Q9, Q8s, JTs, QQ= 24combos.

Obvioulsy these ranges might be inaccurate-
if he has JTo for example you're beat quite a lot more, but you're still good more than 50%.

If you're never bluffing the river then for villain Qx is the same as 8x,if he calls with with AQ he should be calling with 86. But villain doesn't know you're never bluffing the river. And I think people are much more likely to hero call when their draw bings a pair on the river than if they have been calling down with a pair since the flop.

I agree with everything Onraad says.



I don't think he even needs to call with 9x and 8x to make a shove profitable. QJ, QT, AQ, KJ, KT= 49 combos. Hands that beat you that call are: KQ, Q9, Q8s, JTs, QQ= 24combos.

Obvioulsy these ranges might be inaccurate-
if he has JTo for example you're beat quite a lot more, but you're still good more than 50%.

If you're never bluffing the river then for villain Qx is the same as 8x,if he calls with with AQ he should be calling with 86. But villain doesn't know you're never bluffing the river. And I think people are much more likely to hero call when their draw bings a pair on the river than if they have been calling down with a pair since the flop.

I can't see him getting to the river with GS tho. Maybe the small turn bet induced it... not conviced!

I can't see him getting to the river with GS tho. Maybe the small turn bet induced it... not conviced!

Yeah, I agree. My problem with everyone's analysis so far is that no one is taking into account what appears to be a pretty nitty opponent. He could easily show up here w/ QQ+. I don't put 76s entirely into his range, maybe some % < 50. I only see two hands you are getting value from on the river and that is KJ and KTs. Maybe you can add QhJh and QhTh but I don't think villain is calling a river shove 100% of the time w/ those even getting 3/1. As far as hands that beat OP, I'd include 88, 99, 89s, TJs, KQ, QQ and KK/AA (discounted somewhat)which are all in his pf, flop and turn range.

I don't see QJ calling the turn w/ the exception of QhJh. So, I disagree w/ adding in all combos of QA,J, and T. I don't see villain calling pf that often w/ KTo. I also don't see many Q9 and Q8s in his pf range as well. But if you are gonna include those then you might as well include K9 and K8s in that range.

Seems to me you are gonna be beat more often when you bet and get called. same goes if you c/c. With all that said, what ever you do probably isn't that far from 0ev. For me, I'd really try to listen to my gut but in the end would just shove.

I don't see any reason he should have qt almost ever. I can see AQ being possible, but stil not a very big part of his range. I also don't think he should ever have AA since I have only 3bet 3 times in over 80 hands I don't see any reason he wouldn't just try to get it preflop when my range looks so strong.

I feel that if we are planning on check-calling,then we might as well since his calling range should be the same as his shoving range+at least a few combos of worse hands that would check behind. I don't think there is any way his shoving range is wider than his caling range.

I agree with JAXWY that every option is gonna be close to the same in EV, which is why I have no clue what the best play is.

I'm still not convinced that I have over 50% equity against his calling range.

Yeah I guess you guys are right about him not getting past the turn with a gutshot. And I think you're right that his river calling range is wider than his river betting range, so it's definitely either shove or checkfold.

What I don't get is when people provide a really good argument for why we are not ahead more than 50% when our bet is called, but say that they bet anyway!

So how's this for an approximate revised riverbet calling range?:

That we beat:

KJ- 8 combos
KT- 8 combos
AQ- 9 combos

total 16 combos

That we don't beat:

KQ- 6 combos
JTs- 4 combos
Q9s- 2 combos
Q8s- 2 combos
QQ-3 combos
88- combos
99- 3 combos

Total 23 combos.

This would indicate a checkfold.

It becomes pretty EV 0 if we exclude 88 and 99 and Q9s and Q8s.


Does anybody like shoving the river for meta-game reasons even if we agree that it as at best EV neutral and probably minus EV? I'd say this probably isn't one of those spots, since we're not giving away too much info if our hand showsdown.

Another reason to bet even if you think it's slightly minus EV is this: does anybody here ever decide that a checkfold is the correct play, then check, then villain bets, then you decide you don't want to fold and hit the call button like a monkey? So if you think you might not have enough discipline tho checkfold then you should bet, since I think in this hand bet checkcalling is probably a lot worse than betting.

Yea, I would think he raises an earlier street with 88/99 not all of the time but some of it. Your ranges look pretty good to me though. Since we don't know much about this player, we may want to think about the fact that there is a small chance could possibly make a bad herocall with A9 or something.

I' unsure about metagame. Maybe he'll interpret our check behind as us being unable to v-bet thinly, and bluffing/3barreling with air would be tougher to do. Or, if he checks behind, he may see it as us being tricky with our big hand and may be unlikely to try to bluff us on the river in the future knowing that we can be checking hands as strong as TPTK. He probably won't realize that we would be cramming most rivers everytime.

If we shove nothing really changes in the metagame since if he folds he doesn't see our hand and if he calls it looks like we played it very standardard.

If we check-fold he probably won't put us on AK and will think we were 2barreling with complete air.

So what I'm wondering now though is, do we need to have over 50% equity against villains calling range for the shove to be best though.

We have 3 options, check-call, check-fold, shove ourselves

Let's assume we have at least over 25% equity over his shoving range. Then we can automatically eliminate check-folding as an option since we have the pot odds to call. So now the options are between check-calling and shoving ourselves.

But, as I already argued, I believe his calling range is wider than his shoving range. Since we are never folding, if he has a better hand we are getting all-in regardless of if we shove or if villain shoves. So we might as well shove and get called by a few more worse hands. The range of hands that is calling our shove but not shoving themselves we have 100% equity over so we should shove.

This is interesting because with the assumption that he is calling range is wider than his shoving range, we can possibly have as low as 25% equity over his calling range, and still have a shove to be the best play. I always thought that you needed 50% equity for a bet to ever be better than a check, but this is not the case if my argument is correct.

OOP, If our equity over villians calling range is less than 50%, we should still shove if the (equity over villians calling range)>(equity over villians shoving range) and check/calling is at least break even.

Of course if we don't have enough equity over villains shoving range for check-calling to be break-even, none of this applies and a check-fold is the best play. This I am still unsure of. It is really close.