My buddy was playing with me at the local casino the other day, and an interesting hand came up. At first I was very very against his river play, and then I thought about it a bit, and wanted to see what you guys thought of it.

This is your typical B and M table, loose and terrible.

3/6 Hold 'Em - Thunder Bay Charity Fishtank.

Hero has KK in BB.

Preflop:

6ish limpers, Hero raises, 6 calls.

Flop: (7 handed | 14 SB) 75J rainbow

Hero bets, 3 calls.

Turn: (4 handed | 8.5 BB) 6

Hero bets, Villain raises, folds to hero, who calls.

River: (Heads up | 12.5 BB) K (completes a backdoor flush draw)

Hero bets, Villain raises, Hero 3-bets...
--------------------------------

Basically, the question here is his river line. Immediately, I was thinking check/call was the best play, but then I thought about it. Is this two pair enough to justify his line, or even just a bet/call line?

Thanks.

Zach

happy new yr.

done

Bet/call would be my line. Villian has come out raising TWICE now. We know only a 4 outer beats us, and its comes down to how loose is the raiser. I don't think the flush should worry us here, unless it was flat call on the turn.

I think more times then not, you will be up against 2pair, so 3betting isnt bad.

Im guessing he got guttered, as whoever chased it had decent odds (if I calculated correctly.)

Pretty straight forward 3-bet.

Only hand we fear is 89s im0. I still checkraise the river as i'd rather put in the 2nd bet instead of the third.

Pretty straight forward 3-bet.


If he never made it 4 iit might be.

good luck.

I'd 3-bet But I'm an idiot. People pay off idiots.

I wouldn't have raised preflop after you had 6 limpers. You're just giving them all pot odds to call you down with hands that will eventually crack your KK.

As far as the river goes...bet and call the raise. I don't see a reason to cap it when he's represented a better hand twice. He could have raised the turn with a number of hands that a set of Kings can beat. It could have been a set, two pair, pair and a draw etc. To me, that is why you bet out on the river and when you get raised then you just call since he has shown strength twice. If you check the river you're giving up two bets in most cases.

That's why I don't even raise KK 3-handed.

That's why I don't even raise KK 3-handed.

that's a bad idea. you should raise KK three handed. atleast in almost every case I can think of.

Really? What about 4 handed?

are you saying like opening with KK?

Or the original scenario where you're in the big blind and there are a bunch of limpers.


My comment was directed towards to original post. If you're in the BB with KK and 6 people limp into the pot in a game that is described as typical/loose/bad/casino 3/6, then I wouldn't raise from the big blind.

4 handed its close, but i'd probably just call

... any more than 6 and you should probably just fold it.

I can sense the sarcasm.

Never did I say to limp in with KK or ever fold it.

Read the post. You're missing the point.

Yeah, that's probably a good call. I mean, there's gonna be an ace out there, and if you don't make a set, you're probably toast anyway.

No. You are. And THAT my friend, is the real point.

ok.

Why do you raise from the BB with KK in a loose 3/6 game after 6 players have limped in front of you?

Because your hand figures to win a significant portion of the time more than the rest of the players'. We have a huge equity edge, and not putting money in the pot when we can punish weak hands (j7, 95, etc) is a colossal mistake.

Wang

And if you raise you know that everyone is going to call after already limping in and seeing that the pot is growing quickly.

When you raise you're going to make the pot about 12 small bets instead of 6 which gives everyone at the table who flops any pair or any draw the correct odds to call the whole way through, not to mention their psychological tendency to call when the pot is larger.

If you don't raise preflop you leave the pot with 6 small bets, making it incorrect for many players to call you on the flop and definitely on the turn. You're never short on action at this point so your goal is to win the pot. Your goal is to make it incorrect for your opponent to call you with a worse hand. That's how you win.

E-Q-U-I-T-Y

normally, yes.

Not in this game

Why do you raise from the BB with KK in a loose 3/6 game after 6 players have limped in front of you?


Because when you lead the flop about half of them will fold. When you win the hand you will cllect an extra 3BB from the people who folded. The pot's allready large enough for gutshots ro wahtever to call, so you're not making inccorect odds by not raising. You're just leaving money on the table.

For no reason at all. Oh wait. To save yourself 1BB at the cost of 6.

My mistake.

good luck.

how do you know half of them will fold?

its not to save yourself money, it's so the rest of the table doesn't become committed to the hand.

I will patiently explain equity.

Equity is your % chance at any given time to have the best hand by the river. If you flop an open-ended straight flush draw with overcards to pocket 2's, then you have an equity advantage over 22. Now, if you brick the turn, that equity changes, and you'd no longer have an equity advantage heads up.

If you have a nut flush draw (35% chance to hit the nuts), and you have two players playing with you on the flop, you have an equity advantage. You're getting a 35% chance to hit the nuts, and you're putting in 33% of the money (or less, if more than 2 other people are with you). Therefore, any raise has immediate value, since your equity is greater than the % of the money you're putting into the pot.

With AA, KK, and QQ, something fascinating happens in big pots. KK's equity advantage over a field of 8 random hands is even greater (relatively) than it's equity advantage against a field of 4 random hands. AA, KK, and QQ are so strong, it hurts other people's chances to enter the pot.

Equity (and variance, regrettably) go up as more people enter the pot preflop when you have AA, KK, QQ, and to a lesser extent JJ and TT. Therefore, value (at the end of the year) goes up astronomically if you always raise AA and KK. The cost of not raising every time is extremely bad.

well written TJ.

Am I correct to say that AK doesn't have enough equity edge to justify raising in this situation?

AKo and AKs both need to be raised here in the SB with 6 limpers as well.

The equity advantage matters more than positional disadvantages.

Once the hand strengths get weaker than QQ and AK... our (PREFLOP) equity slips into the ether of mediocrity. Then raising matters less for equity reasons, but still serves to build a bigger pot (which is when our naturally superior aggressive postflop skills come into play).

Therefore, raising has less clear-cut value with AJo on the button than with AA-QQ + AKo in the small blind.

All this is outlined very clearly and with specific examples in Small Stakes Hold'em, by Sklansky, Malmuth, and Miller.

You absolutely need to read SSHE immediately if you want to continue playing poker, or at least playing poker well. If you don't raise with KK from the BB, even if EVERYONE limped, you suck.

Zach

I'd call the river raise. To my virgin eyes, the probability of an underset or two pair hand are almost exactly the same as the probability of 98 or 43 (assuming that these opponents are bad enough to limp OOP with unsuited connectors and 1-gappers), based on card frequency. I can't figure out from the villian's play if he's overvaluing two-pair, juiced up about a set, literally creaming himself over hitting the straight.