The Hand that Broke Up My Table (1 Viewer)

Honestly I’d probably just check it back now. You have to think he could have either a :5d:or :ad: given the river call, and is looking to check raise. Even if he doesn’t and goes for the check raise you are going to have to cry fold.

Also, is he really going to call a decent sized bet with a :td: or :jd:
 
Betting $110. I think I can get value from smaller flushes that shouldn't bluff raise us (not too many though cause we also have the Qd). If Villain raises I'm likely folding. I think in spots like that villain has us beat too often to warrant a call. What would he be bluffing with? Really can't see many bluff combos here... Is he calling the turn with 79? Maybe 86 he decides to flat the turn with, hope from a check back on the river for showdown and then decided to run a bluff? Yeah, I think I fold to a raise.

Checking back is totally acceptable as well.

* Not gonna delete the above but I think I'm leaning more towards the check back now. How many Jd does Villain have? JTd? J9d? T9d? Vilain has lots of Ad and some 5d as well. Favoring the check back now I think...
 
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I’m checking back for sure. What is he calling flop and turn with that will call a bet on the river that we are beating? All of his weaker hands, straights, 2 pairs, middling flushes are folding now. If we are ahead the money in the pot is all we are winning the vast majority of the time. We have great showdown value, lets take it.
 
OK it not the nuts but my plan on the flop was to bet any diamond or card over a 10 on the turn so yatzee! I like a larger size here to charge any :ad: that got here and hopefully a bunch of made hands that would call this bet. So I bet $50. SB calls.

To recap the action, hero has :kd::qd:
Board is :8d::6d::2c::4d:
Pot is ~$175, hero and villain both have ~$520

River is :7d:

SB checks.

Hero?

Insta check. I expect you will still win a decent amount of the time, buy you do lose to the :ad: now, not to mention the :5d:, though realistically I only see villian with that if he has pocket :5d::5x:, which would require a lot of stickiness on villian's part. (though maybe Villian figures 8 hi flops doesn't hit hero enough and he wants to station with some pocket pairs here.)

:td::9d: is also a credible villian holding as played. (Though I think there may have been a bet or check-raising on the turn.)

If you bet here you are basically hoping the :jd: can call somehow, and I don't see many :jd: in villian's range here except an underplayed :jx::jd: or an extrodinarily sticky :ax::jd:, and maybe :jd:-Xd for a slow played lower flush?

This is the reason to bet the turn, diamond rivers shut down all of villian's weak holdings, and hurt you when you are behind.

I would normally think villian is betting anything that has you beat here, but the hands that can call you are so thin it's not worth the risk villian may be trying to trap with a nutty hand. (Particulary the straight flush combos.)

But given the title, I am guessing "check, check, "flush is good" is not how the hand went down.
 
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Also just to throw in. From villains perspective you are repping a pretty strong hand here. Raise preflop from early position followed by a bet on the flop and turn. Hero has virtually no bluffs betting this river.
 
Also just to throw in. From villains perspective you are repping a pretty strong hand here. Raise preflop from early position followed by a bet on the flop and turn. Hero has virtually no bluffs betting this river.

Exactly! Your hand looks like KdKx or QdQx or even AdAx if he happens to have the straight flush instead of the ace of diamonds in his hand if you bet here. Betting preflop and all 3 streets means you are at the very top of your range with all value bets. There is very little value to be gained by betting and opening yourself up to the check raise.
 
Can villain show up here with this line with any of the following hands? Is there any size bet he calls on the river?

* Set that improved to a flush (2d2x)
* Overpair that improved to a flush (JdJx, TdTx, 9d9x)
* Sets
* Straights
 
Can villain show up here with this line with any of the following hands? Is there any size bet he calls on the river?

* Set that improved to a flush (2d2x)
* Overpair that improved to a flush (JdJx, TdTx, 9d9x)
* Sets
* Straights

At this point all of those hands are essentially bluff catchers and I don’t think you show up here with any bluffs. You may be able to get a call from the overpairs with a 1/3 psb, but if you compare the value you get from that to the amount you lose when folding to a raise/possibly calling a raise, I think the check is the most ev play.

Disclaimer: I did not actually do any of the math here so I could be wrong
 
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Can villain show up here with this line with any of the following hands? Is there any size bet he calls on the river?

* Set that improved to a flush (2d2x)
* Overpair that improved to a flush (JdJx, TdTx, 9d9x)
* Sets
* Straights

I think yes, he can show up with any of these,. The only one I would question is the overpair preflop whether villian would flat or 3 bet. Everything else clearly fits villian's line fine to me.

To the second question, I think the answer is no, I don't think he can credibly pay off a river bet with any of these. Maybe the one card flushes to a blocker-size bet. But if you make that bet you could put yourself in position to fold the best hand.

That is just so thin to target against the risk he might be trapping, imo.
 
At this point all of those hands are essentially bluff catchers and I don’t think you show up here with any bluffs. You may be able to get a call from the overpairs with a 1/3 psb, but if you compare the value you get from that to the amount you lose when folding to a raise/possibly calling a raise, I think the check is the most ev play.

Disclaimer: I did not actually do any of the math here so I could be wrong


If you had taken a more passive line during the hand then yes you could make a bet that could be called by a weaker hand. But as played I just can’t see it.
 
Agree with the others, if you bet and get raised you'll want to puke. Check and showdown, it's hard to get value from hands you beat here and if they got there and checkraise you it really sucks laying down the King-high flush in this spot
 
Well this thread has made me feel a lot better about my play, thanks everyone! :)

I'm pretty sure the river was the worst card in the deck for me. Though I couldn't totally discount that I was already beaten on the turn by a made flush, I wasn't super worried about that possibility. But now whatever hands with the Ad that somehow got here are beating me, :td::9d: seems like it would have played this way up to the river, some random diamonds ( :5d:::5x:? :7x::5d:?). The river check might make these less likely but there are now a lot of combos that beat me, including the nut flushes that came in on the turn.

I briefly consider a small bet that might be called by worse flushes ( :jd::jx:,:td::ax:,:jd::td:,:jd::9d:) and possibly straights and sets that can't help being sticky (hey it's 1/2). Maybe $45-$60? But at the time I felt like there were so few combos of value that can call here. And I also felt like a small bet could be perceived as even weaker than I am. I don't think I'll be raised as a bluff since I think people bluff-raise the river so infrequently, but I felt a small bet could induce weaker value to raise me. If I was confident only better would raise, maybe a bet-fold line would be marginally better. But with stacks so deep, I was worried I'd put myself in a terrible situation where a raise could be crushing me, but that some of the hands I was targeting could still be in there.

For all these reasons, as most of you are saying, I checked back pretty quickly.

This all felt pretty standard to me as I tapped the felt (and sounds like all of you think the entire hand played pretty straightforward). Where I second-guessed myself and what led to the dramatic thread title happened next.

I checked and tabled my hand, and there was an audible gasp from most of the other players -- they can't believe I checked such a strong hand. Then SB says, "I made a pretty loose call pre-flop" and tables :8h::6c:.

The Russian 2/5 pro says, "how do you check that back? That's terrible, you're burning money!!"

I say, "if I bet, what am I getting action from that I beat?"

Standard 1/2 guy says "any diamond" dripping with disdain.

Asian guy says "hey we all get to play our hands how we think are best, I don't think it was that bad." i.e. guys, don't tap the glass.

Russian says "that was terrible, this table is terrible."

Now I'm getting a little tilted and say, "whatever man, keep folding your boats"

Anyway I rake in the pot and the Russian guy calls for a table change. "This table is so nitty, I can't get any action here," and racks up his chips. Everyone else starts racking up to call it a night or go to another table. College guy hasn't said a word, but just shrugs with a smirk on his face.

All the way back to my hotel I'm thinking about whether I'm a total fish -- this seemed pretty standard to me but the table reaction was clearly that I got it REALLY wrong. I feel like I'm maybe over-nitty in river situations and have been trying to be more open to thin value spots on the river, so I've been playing this one over in my head. Obviously villain was not putting any more in this pot with his specific cards, but running some calculations afterward I came up with the hands below.

VALUE THAT BEATS ME
Straight-flush - 5 combos ( :ad::5d:, :td::9d:, :5d::5x:)
Nut flush - 5 combos ( :ad::jd:, :ad::td:, :ad::9d:, :ad::3d:,:ad::2d:)

VALUE THAT WILL CALL
Worse flush - 11 combos ( :jd::jx:,:jd::td:,:jd::9d:,:td::tx:,:9d::9x:)

If the hands that I don't beat won't raise, then this would be marginal but would be a bet-fold, not a check back.

The one interesting thing was I was really worried about single aces that made the nut flush on the river, but when I went through ranges I actually found that there were no single :ad: left on the river under my assumptions. Of course this guy called with 86o so my ranging was off, but even if I had been able to read him that wide it only adds :ad::8x: into the range above. There are also more SF combos and worse flush combos, so the ratio of hands that beat me vs. hands I beat is actually about the same.

But given the imprecise nature of a lot of the assumptions here, I guess I land on feeling good about the check-back, especially after you all pretty much universally agreed. But man did these clowns make me second-guess myself. I don't think I've ever had someone yell at me for being too nitty and winning! :)
 
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Lol, I generally don't take advice from idiots at the table. They're either really stupid to try and educate others on how to play better, or they're encouraging you to play worse by giving you "free advice".
 
So take this exact hand. Bet the river and what is the SB going to do? Freaking fold. So you got pretty much max value with no risk of getting into a sticky situation had you bet.

To continue the discussion, lets say Hero bet and SB then shoves. Is Hero calling?????
 
So take this exact hand. Bet the river and what is the SB going to do? Freaking fold. So you got pretty much max value with no risk of getting into a sticky situation had you bet.

To continue the discussion, lets say Hero bet and SB then shoves. Is Hero calling?????

We're in agreement. In your hypothetical, I think there's almost no situation that a 1/2 villain (or really any villain) is making this play - it's super above the rim and would rely on needing to have a very solid read that I don't have the nuts, and am capable of laying down very big hands. Or he's a psycho which wasn't my observation of him. But if he did shove with this hand, I'll be laying it down for sure. I just cannot picture villain raising with anything worse in this situation if I had made a bigger bet, and if he was shoving into a small bet then that's >1.5x pot and even if I can see some situations where I could be ahead, I almost always give credit to big river bets at 1/2 without knowing the player very well.

This was exactly my rationale on checking though -- if I make a bigger bet, I'm only getting played back at by better. And a smaller bet isn't worth maybe getting a little extra value from worse because it might induce them to raise too, and then I'd be folding the best hand.
 
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This all felt pretty standard to me as I tapped the felt (and sounds like all of you think the entire hand played pretty straightforward). Where I second-guessed myself and what led to the dramatic thread title happened next.

Well played, I totally got fished in to expecting a cooler story.

VALUE THAT WILL CALL
Worse flush - 11 combos ( :jd::jx:,:jd::td:,:jd::9d:,:td::tx:,:9d::9x:)

I think the worse that call list is an overestimate. I think JJ is usually 3-bet pf, and I think you can give villian cred for dumping the single :td:, :9d: as well. If you consider those assumption, it's actually pretty close, and if you think there is any risk of folding after you bet, it's a bad bet.

Now I think there are players against whom you could bet the river. The guy that said this for example.

Standard 1/2 guy says "any diamond" dripping with disdain.

It is opponent dependent which is why it's important to know your opponents and describe them well.
 
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It was really enlightening to walk through this thread and read everybody's replies and logic. The ending was a twist I didn't expect, either. Thanks. :)
 

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