Why does he bet river? I understand it's a bluff but isn't it the kind of hand you want to give up on? I mean sure you can get Qx to fold sometime but low A would play this way alot and never folding. I might be wrong but it seems like he his getting called a lot.

I assume his reasons for betting are;
1) he has 0EV if he checks back, i.e. he wins 0% of the time checking back, and
2) chooses this hand because it has a diamond blocker, which reduces some combos of flushes... That being said, he is actually blocking very few flushes since most of the flush draws with a 6 in them would prefer to bet turn than check call as they mostly have no showdown value. I suspect Kd6x would bet more frequently in this spot as IP if it did bet turn since K high flush draws are very reasonable check calls for SB on the turn and therefore the Kd would actually be a more reasonable and valuable blocker.

I simmed this hand the other day anyway. With the preflop ranges I have, IP should just be checking down turn and river as King high has enough showdown value when turns and rivers check through. Preflop ranges in play are likely even wider than in the pack I have as this hand is played at 1k whereas the pack I have is based on 100z rake. Also the open raise sizing used here is only 2.5x, whereas in the pack I have it's 3x only. This actually means K6 high should have even more showdown value in reality than it does in my solution, making it even more of a turn and river check down.

Great reasoning, I agree about the main point that he has very little showdown value after he bet turn and get called. Does he has almost 0EV tho? Probably super low either way. Really tho I enjoy the 2nd part of your reasoning, which makes me like his river bet more. Bad spot either way on river after stroggos calls but I wonder if checking or betting river is better after you do make that bet on turn?

On July 09 2020 17:48 Oddeye wrote: Great reasoning, I agree about the main point that he has very little showdown value after he bet turn and get called. Does he has almost 0EV tho? Probably super low either way. Really tho I enjoy the 2nd part of your reasoning, which makes me like his river bet more. Bad spot either way on river after stroggos calls but I wonder if checking or betting river is better after you do make that bet on turn?

I thought I had saved the sim, but apparently not, so I cannot verify the exact EV of showing down K6 on river after bluffing turn. But my recollection of SB's turn strategy was to basically check call with nothing worse than K6 (Occasional worse hand with a flush draw like JTdd, but those got there now too) so showdown value is =0 or VERY close to it.

I am probably not good enough or do not know enough to say whether betting or checking river is better in theory. Whether it is vs a human will be largely down to how much they deviate from optimal on both turn and river, and in which way. If people overfold turn then they will be too strong on river to get a bluff through often enough, or if they decide to bet rather than check call with a lot of the hands that make sense to fold river (KJ/KT type hands, random pocket pairs). Conversely, if either or both of these things are happening then this would presumably make turn bluff good, or at least better than it is in the solution I ran.

I would say, however, that I don't anticipate the Kx blocker to make a great river bluff because it isn't blocking enough of SB's range that isn't folding, and is actually blocking some of SB's weakest hands that will fold, such as KJ/KT. This is probably a fairly big deal also, since those hands are in SB's range at fairly high frequencies given they are both in there with offsuit combos and will typically prefer this line to betting turn, at least they did in my solution.

Turns out I did actually have the solution on my computer.

Here is a screenshot of SB's range that cbets flop and then check calls turn vs a 3/4ths size. Hand with lowest equity on river for oop is KJo and KTo



Here is the same, but when villain uses 25% pot on turn, which is closer to what happened in the actual hand. There is some strange trace amounts of complete random Js6s and similar here, which almost looks like a rounding error since they are so low frequency, although the sim is telling me that Js6s is a 0EV call that is calling 8.63% on turn and folding the rest.



Here is IP on the river after call flop then 25% turn. You can actually see that K6o did bet turn at some very small frequency. It has 2.06% equity on river after this action. 0% if it were to bet turn for 75% pot. The K6o that get here are all bluffing river but you can see in top right the absolute frequency of the hand, and it's extremely low. Kd6s gets here 16.85% of the time and always bluffs, the other K6 combinations are getting here extremely rarely.

bluffing with K6o may be a reasonable exploit, i think overall regs don't check turn strong enough.

Yup, thanks again midian. Top notch info