This is a tricky spot. Our hand is strong, but we’re chopping the pot or beat by the vast majority of villain’s value range. I’d expect unknown villains to frequently bet 77 on flop and turn, but these bets are bigger than I expect for thin value/protection, so I’m not confident that every villain has 77 in their range, not to mention worse pocket pairs. Villain could be value/protection betting AK or AQ, but many players will try to showdown their strong ace highs after the flop bet is called.

These flops are often targeted for bluffing, but the turn makes a significant portion of our range into boats. Most villains wont try to bluff against a boat. We’ll probably float the flop with plenty of aces and two overcard type hands, so villain can still target those hands with a second barrel. Even with 4k hands against a villain, I’m not sure how much importance to give the 100% river cbet stat. River c-betting is one of the slowest stats to converge, it wouldn’t surprise me if your sample size is under 10. Even with a high tendency to barrel river, most villains will seriously consider giving up when we call twice with trips on board. Ace and King rivers probably get bluffed frequently but otherwise, I tend to expect most 3barrels on this board will be for value.

For that reason, my ‘standard’ approach with our hand is to call turn planning to mostly fold if I face another bet. That being said, I can see some merits to folding turn. The flop was contested 3 ways, which tends to reduce bluffing frequencies. Our 7 doesn’t block any overpairs and it doesn’t draw to a better full house. I don’t like that we block 77 and we don’t block 7h6h, so this is arguably the worst 8 we could have. It’s an extremely exploitable play, but I don’t hate folding on the turn. I don’t think I would be doing it very often, but I’ve always been a bit of a payoff wizard.

River cbets came up in a study session tonight, and I checked my database to see how often they happen. I’m sharing it here so that you don’t need to take my word on how slowly this stat converges.

In 218,073 hands at normal speed MTTs, I have had 606 opportunities to cbet the River. That’s roughly 1 out of every 360 hands. If you include turbo tournaments it drops below 1 out of 390 hands. My river cbet frequency also varies by position, ~58% from UTG-MP1 up to 72% on the BTN. Most players cbet frequencies will vary by position.

It’s not irrelevant that villain cbets River 100% of the time over 4000 hands, but overvaluing stats that converge so slowly can lead to playing worse than if you just ignore them completely.

I’m not really sure what to recommend. I learned to play without a HUD so, although I use one now, I’m not basing my decisions on the stats as much as many players. Personally, I like to have access to any stat that might be relevant so, whether its fold to 4bet or cbet river, I’m going to have it somewhere in my popup if it happened once. However, I tend to take a more holistic view of stats. Aside from flop betting/folding frequencies, I’m mostly paying attention to comprehensive stats like WWSF, WTSD and Agg% by street, rather than more specific things like check-raise turn or cbet river. Not to say the more specific stats aren’t useful, but I’m definitely not the guy to ask for precise thresholds of when they become relevant.

Sometimes, I think it’s relevant that someone has (for example) cbet river 1/3 times, but only when there are other factors contributing to that thought. I’m getting into ‘feel’ based strategy stuff which I’m really hesitant to bring up, but I find gameflow and divergence from established patterns to be more important than most stats. Against very strong players that becomes less true, but very strong players aren’t going to have many exploitable stats over any sample size. 

Fold to 4bet is a stat that I can learn from with relatively small samples. Some players will never fold to 4bets, they just always have it when they 3bet. If someone folds once, I know that they are capable of 3bet bluffing. Not a groundbreaking read, but still useful knowledge. That being said, fold to 4bet as an actual frequency is not very useful without considering 3bet frequency. If someone 3bets from the SB 18% vs steals and folds to 50% of 4bets, that’s a lot different than someone who 3bets 12% and folds to 50% of 4bets. It’s also worth noting that fold to 4bet is not very useful unless it’s position dependent. If someone 3bets vs UTG from MP and folds to a 4bet, that’s a much different scenario than 3betting SB vs BTN and folding to a 4bet.

Stack depth also affects 3bet ranges. Some players are always trying to GII when they 3bet with <30bb, but will still fold to 4bets very often with a deeper stack. As you can probably guess, I think it’s incorrect to say that 5 or 10 samples are always useful, but assuming that 1 sample is never relevant is probably not right either.

Like everything in poker, simple explanations of complex things will always be tempting, but we need to be wary of them. Synthesizing all of the unique situations that can arise at a poker table down to a simple % frequency can be useful, but it is inherently a drastic oversimplification. At least for me, attaching too much importance to stats can numb the creative/detective side of my brain, and make poker feel robotic. I prefer approaching every hand like a puzzle, mostly using stats to question or reinforce the deductions I make about ranges and my best course of action.