JMarr said
Hello everybody, this is my first forum post. I’m looking forward to hearing what you guys think of this spot I was in tonight and my decision to check the river.

 

I was playing a live 2/4 game and I was sitting in the SB with $700 in my stack. There were 4 limpers behind me, including the BB, I opened to $25 with A Q (spades) and was flat called by UTG with a little over $400 in his stack and LMP with a little over $900 in his stack. The table was 8 handed. The pot is now $93.

The flop was A K Q rainbow with K spades.

I bet $50 and LMP made it $150. UTG folds and I flat call. Should I have re-raised? Pot is now $393. 

The turn came 5 diamonds. UTG made a sarcastic comment about hitting a draw with that card. I made it $140 and LMP flat calls.

The river comes a J clubs. I decide to check. LMP checks back and shows he has air. Since he had air, I figured my only way of getting value was to let him attempt to bluff me off the pot. Should I have shoved since he was so willing to build the pot? Would a smaller value bet here be a better play?   

Seems like there’s a lot of confusing things happening here once we get to the turn, and a bit of fuzzy logic.

Everything is fine up to the turn, but why lead the turn? On the flop, villain is either raising with a hand roughly equal to or stronger than yours (you block KQ, AQ and AK, and villain is unlikely to flat AA-QQ preflop, so the most likely one is JT), or he’s bluffing with a hand that has very little equity against yours. When you lead, you give him the chance to just fold his bluff hands and call with his value, and since JT is a hand you have to be worried about, that’s not a great situation.

There should be very, very few spots in Holdem where you bet-call a raise OOP and then lead the next street. When you bet-call, your range is mostly a bluff-catcher, and the raiser either has a very strong or somewhat weak hand. That means unless the board changes significantly on the next card, there’s very little value to leading out with any hands.

On the river, I think you’re being extremely results-oriented. It doesn’t matter what villain actually had – you need to be thinking about his range. I think checking is by far the best way to go, and whether you call a bet or not depends more or less entirely on how likely it is that you think villain can get to that spot with a hand that doesn’t contain a T.

Given the action on the turn, once he calls it’s very unlikely for him to have any kind of bluff hand, so most likely his river range contains mostly other two pair hands, and JT. If we assume he would not bet with the two pair hands once you check, then his betting range is exactly JT or a bluff, and if there aren’t many bluffs…he has JT a lot. I don’t think there’s huge merit to a river bet unless you expect villain to call with KQ, since there are very few other weaker two pairs he can have.

Having said that, there are other scenarios that could change the hand. If villain is bad enough to raise AT for value on the flop then maybe he can have that on the turn and river, or maybe if he would turn QT or KT into a bluff on the flop and then decide that when you lead turn maybe he thinks you’re bluffing so he calls with 2nd or 3rd pair…it’s a real stretch, though.

Essentially your turn lead doesn’t make sense, and that’s why the river is a weird spot. But don’t focus on what villain actually had, that’s a recipe for ignoring the rest of his range.