SH 0,25/0,5 A9o v calling station

It depends on a really important read you're supposed to pic about the callingstation. The question whether betting for free showdown is better than checking back depends on how bluffy he is on the river. station does not always mean, they do not bluff. Some stations, they do play their madehands passively but relatively bluff a lot with hopeless hands so the question is:

- if checked back, you wanna call the River or not?

If you have figured out correctly, this guy could certainly have Kx Jx type of hands and these hands outweigh the combinations of Gutshots like JT T9 and he could have Pocketpairs as well so it's clear that you are behind.

If you don't have a read about his river tendencies and thus you are tempted to call the river anyhow, i would play bet/fold but against some fish who does play really honest, checking back and just giving up is higher in EV.

And how do you get that read that he is bluffing nuff to make me call his river bet ?

I mean I have 300 hands on him which seems somewhat decent but regarding this situation which does not really happen a lot of times may be insufficient. For example I mentioned I saw him rasing with 22 from MP3 and capping with T7s, how do I know exactly how frequently he makes such moves, or at least near the real value. If he bets on the river in such spots and lets say he shows a made hand 10/10 times how do I know if he is not running hot like lava or if I see him bluffing a few times how can I assume that this is a part of his play and he isnt drunk or on tilt or whatever.

Yeah there are typical bluffer donks who donk and autobet a lot with trash, and obv I would try to induce them with a turn xb and then call, because they do autobet the river a hell of a lot of times, but what should I do with someone who does this occasionally ? On the river I would get 4,2:1, how can I know if my A high is good in about 20% of his range ?

Hi guys

So if we wanted to develop a read on whether he's bluffing enough vs our check back to justify a call theres a few things to look for first.
- what does he do with top pair and 2nd pair? if he often takes the initiative on earlier streets then he has fewer combos of made hands.
- what does he do with marginal draws or strong draws? if he often plays them passively then hes more likely to have a hand to bluff with on blank rivers. if he normally takes the initiative on early streets then he's less likely to have improved on scary river cards.
- how often does he bet when checked to? is he betting a lot when his opponent misses a bet OR is he checking with any made hands vs a check? If he's checking made hands again then he has fewer value bets in his range.

Many times, picking up on one of these things leaves our opponents so off balance that we can decide to call.

This is probably enough to justify a river call, but we need to recognize that we're aiming to make two decisions.

To justify a turn check back we probably need him to also have folded his 6 outer trash hands vs our bet. If he calls again with those trash hands, then betting for value and free show down is quite often a superior line, especially against a station.

Hey Dats,

thanks for your comment. Even if I discount his range to top pair good kicker minus and leave all the trash in Im behind on the turn

Board: K♥J♥6♠ 3♦
       Equity   Win  Tie
CO         46.36%  45.27%     1.09% { Ah9c }
BB         53.64%  52.55%     1.09% { 77, 55-44, 22, A9s-A2s, K9s-K7s, K5s-K2s, Q9s+, Q6s, Q3s, J7s+, J5s-J2s, T9s, T6s, T3s, 96s, 93s, 86s, 83s, 73s+, 62s+, 52s+, 42s+, 32s, Qh8h, Th8h, 9h8h, Qh7h, Th7h, 9h7h, 8h7h, Qh5h, Th5h, 9h5h, 8h5h, Qh4h, Th4h, 9h4h, 8h4h, Qh2h, Th2h, 9h2h, 8h2h, 7h2h, ATo-A2o, K9o-K7o, K5o-K2o, Q2o+, J7o+, J5o-J2o, T2o+, 92o+, 82o+, 72o+, 62o+, 52o+, 42o+, 32o }

but these guys are like "hey he can pick up a flush on the river so I just call my set until I dont see that the river is stone dry ". So I would say that he can hold a strong hand as well on the river if he autobets.

But the question is really how much of his range he turns into bluff, because he will be ahead 50-70% of the time on the river and even that 30% of his range is freakin wide. I mean this is a nearly 70-80% wide range and if I assume I can call him profitably it means that he needs to bluff with a 17-20% range. Thats about 200-250 combos, so I think I should have seen him bluffing on the river quite a few times, but I didnt. Could be variance tho IDK.

Also if I start to fold a lot on the river, IDK if he - or someone else who is a type of guy like this one but a bit smarter - would notice it, would start to bluff and even exploit me. Maybe thats the reason why I see some LPA-s doing weird bluffs cause they think "hey he folded again when I had the nuts, so next time Im gonna rep the nuts with my 32-o" and they cap 32o pre like they had aces.

Maybe we could cover this or bluff catching in general on some of the coachings.

Good Post dats. Especially the fact how many pairs he's checkraising on the flop is important to know. If he's just check/calling even KT, his madehands become much more frequent. Your Odds are 1:7 to catch his bluff (~14,5% you need to be ahead) and a simple method by figuring whether to call is to get a quick picture about the relation of his made- and missed drawing hands.

Normally such a passive guy, he could certainly be betting with Jx Kx and A6 on the River but some of his 6x combos, especially if River is likely to be an overcard, he'll check with 6x hands and the missing draws you can already count are T9 Q9 and QT. 40 Combos and to add up the flushdraws that have missed. Lets say 20 Combos. so roughly 60 Combos of missed Draws. We didnt consider that he might have been peeling with some bd hand like 87 We just assumed he does have reasonable hands to continue with.

We do pessimistically assume that he does have all Kx and Jx hands in his range. Some of them got 2pair and AJ AK he could have 3bet preflop with but to keep it simple we count for Kx 12x13 + 12x13 for Jx and lets say he could bet Q6 and A6 on the River. Makes 12+9 combos.

So overall we have an amount of 333 Combos of Madehands.

Key question is now. Does he bet over than 7 times (according to your odds on the River to catch a bluff) a madehand than he does it with a busted draw.

If we divide now 333 / 60 , we got 5,5. So it would be a call. You can argue now, that this scenario would assume, that he would bet his busted draws 100% the time. Thats too optimistic but it's also optimistic that he's always betting 6x and that he is never checkraising Kx type of hands so these 2 facts are balancing itself. And we didnt consider that he could have peeled with hands like T8 89 87 etc.

Lets say he'd bet 70% of the Time with his busted draws. Would be 42 Combos. Then we do the simple math:

333/42 = 7,9

So in this case, with just 42 missing draw combos, you should not call but consider what i wrote above. If you use hold'em manager, there is a stat called: Bet River when missed Turn contibet or some similiarly described. You could use this stat for your orientation but it's best you pick up reads by watching

Excellent thread, good questions, good answers. I think that handling these issues correctly is a major key to winning. I have nothing to add except perhaps this:

The reads required can be difficult to spot, especially if multitabling. I use PT4, and it has NoteTracker built in. NoteTracker can be tamed to provide pretty exact information on players that do have a certain pattern. It can be used, for instance, to tell if a player likes to donk middle pair, or checkraise with flushdraws or straightdraws (or whatever).

Against more than one opponent, I have found this information amazingly accurate, in spite of the fact that it ought to take forever for these stats to converge. "So, you check-raised on the flop. Aha. You have done that 7 times, and all of those times you had a good draw. You wait until turn with TP or better, and donk middle and bottom pair." This is a bit exaggerated of course, but some player have patterns of this sort.

I don't know if the same functionality exists in HM2, but it probably does. It's a pain in the arse to configure it in PT4, but it is worth the trouble.