Villain is 59/20/1.88 - I have 100 hands on him, not sure how many I had when this hand went down, but if I recall correctly it was enough to where these numbers were about right and I knew about them.

FullTiltPoker (6 max) - $1/$2 - Limit Hold'em (6-handed)

Pre-flop: Hero is CO with A 8
1 fold, MP calls, Hero Raises, 3 folds, MP calls

Flop: (5.5 SB) 8 3 K
MP checks, Hero bets, MP raises, Hero calls

Turn: (4.75 BB) 2
MP bets, Hero calls

River: (6.5 BB) 5
MP bets, Hero calls

Your thoughts on all streets would be appreciated.

These hands are always pretty read dependent, but I like parts of it. Do you see him open-liming with a king? If not, you should 3-bet the flop, or check-raise the turn.

Makes the hand easier to play.

Calling down's not bad, though. I think I end up, in this case, waiting for a safeish turn (they pretty much all are?) and popping it there.

Let me guess: He's got like 85s.

Wang

I like how you played it.. if he is super aggro I call down.. if he is super tight I can probably get away from it.

I don't like calling down because our 8s are so vulnerable.
If Villain is making a play at us, he can very easily get lucky and spike his 9,T,J,Q,K on the turn or the river.
Too many things can go wrong with the passive call-down.

Having said that, I don't mean to imply that I am giving up on the hand.
With position, I actually 3bet this flop for info and protection.

Then, against an unknown...

If a safe turn card falls (under my 8), I bet the turn and probably take the free showdown.
If a scary turn hits, I probably check the turn and call down the river to pick up a bluff.

After my flop 3bet, I fold to any further aggression.


--CM

I can't exactly explain why, probably based somewhat on his stats, but I really didn't see him open-limping with a K. I think I'm with those that say that 3-betting the flop or raising a safe-ish turn are better options though.

I don't know why, but I really like raising most turns

Wang

Looks fine. If you think he's fairly likely to hold a king here, then calling down is correct whereas if you think you're ahead most of the time and he might check the river with middle pair, then you should three-bet. I certainly wouldn't say you "went too far with middle pair" though calling down against a 59/20.

Classic free showdown hand.

Raise the turn, check behind UI on river.

Why is this better than call turn/call river?

Do you think we ever fold a better hand? We make/lose the same. Are we trying to protect out vulnerable pair?

Curious.

I'm not sure I get it either. I think if I raise the turn, I'm betting most rivers if checked to, I then of course have to fold to a check/raise which sucks, but still. Dunno. I think these are tough hands to play.

FWIW, in this particular hand the villain showed 53s for the rivered two pair. I felt like maybe I could have done more to protect my hand, but I'm not sure he's folding here and honestly, I want him drawing to 5 outs here b/c it's +EV for me, so if a flop 3-bet or a turn raise get him to fold his hand, I'm not sure we've really accomplished anything.

The real question I have about the raise is what does it accomplish? Are we trying to fold out better hands, fold draws, get more money in the pot while we're ahead?

The concession with a free showdown hand is that we don't know where we are at and it is reasonable for us to call down.

The cost to us is nil as we are willing to pay for 2 bets regardless.

As to what we accomplish, we sometimes (albeit rarely) fold better/equal hands, we charge draws more to miss and we have the opportunity to get more money in if we do improve.

Generally speaking the results and costs will remain the same on most hands, however there are a lot of small +EV results in 'borderline' hands.

Have a read of DN's cardplayer article called The Turn or search for a quiz question here (I think it was number 10). I also think JH discusses it in SS2.

Better hands won't fold.
Neither will draws.

But the raise puts more money into the pot while I think we are ahead.
And it usually gives us the control in the hand to decide how to proceed on later streets.

And it gives us info in case we are way behind.
This is why I prefer the raise on the cheaper street.

--CM

My initial thought is to agree with Coran- 3-bet the flop. (although, if the flop gets capped, I'm going to take a card off getting 12-1 (I think at least the A outs will usually be good), and fold the turn UI).

Most likely, either our opponent is drawing to 3-6 outs, or we're drawing to 3-5 outs. If we call the flop, the pot will be about 4.5 BBs. That means that whoever's behind is losing somewhere around 0.8 BBs for each BB he puts in the pot from here on out.

If we call down, and our opponent has 4 outs and continues to bet every street whether he improves or not, we'll win a total of about 6.5 BBs 80% of the time, and lose 2.5 BBs about 20% of the time (this is as opposed to folding to the flop check/raise, which of course is not an option, but it gives an EV baseline) for a net gain of 4.7 BBs.

Now say we 3-bet, our opponent calls, and he has 4 outs. We will give him a free turn card half the time, and we will never put more than one additional BB into the pot. Say our opponent will fold the turn UI, and will put in one R bet if he does not improve and we check bethind the turn. He will never cap the flop or check-raise the turn with a worse hand than ours. Then we win 5 BBs 45% of the time (villain misses on T and c/f's), we win 6 BBs 40% of the time, and we lose 2 BBs 15% of the time. So the net gain there is 4.35 BBs.

So, when villain does have a worse hand than us, we may actually do better by simply calling down! Again, this assumes that villain is capable of releasing a worse hand on the turn if we raise the flop, and that villain will put in one bet UI on every street if we don't. If villain will pay off with an UI second or third pair after we 3-bet, or if he will read a flop call as strength and c/f the turn anyway, then we might as well 3-bet. But, if villain will occassionally bluff after we 3-bet, causing us to fold the best hand, then clearly calling down is a better option.
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Now, suppose we are behind and have 4 outs (and since we're not sure how clean our outs are, let's say our implied odds are zero). Say villain caps the flop half the time, and c/r's the turn (or v-bets the R if we check behind, which we will let's say 50% of the time, as before) the other half. Now if we just call down the flop c/r, we lose 2.5 BBs 80% of the time, and we gain 6.5 BBs 20% of the time, for a net loss of -0.7 BBs.

But if we proceed to 3-bet the flop, we lose 1 BB 45% of the time (when villian caps), we lose 1.5 BB 22.5% of the time (when we bet T UI and fold to villain's c/r), we lose 1.5 BB 20% of the time (when we check behind T and call R UI), and we win 7BBs 12.5% of the time (when we improve and win). This gives a net loss of -0.2125 BBs.
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Obviously my quick math is an oversimplification of the situation, but I think the results show clearly that:

The best line is not so clear cut; it depends very much on how we think the villain will play from here on out. If the villain is a betmonkey who doesn't slow down if called but will fold marginal hands if raised and won't bluff when he thinks he's behind, then we should probably call down if we think we're ahead more than about half the time, and raise if we think we're behind.

Against a good player who probably bluffs a bit too much, we should probably just call down regardless. If he doesn't bluff enough, we should probably 3-bet and look to fold to further aggression.

Against a LAG who doesn't fold marginal hands, we should probably either 3-bet the flop, or even call the flop and raise the turn. We may need to consider paying off against continued aggression if he has a tendency to overplay marginal hands.

And against a fish who will c/r marginal hands on the flop and then call down against further aggression, we should always 3-bet the flop, and look to fold UI if he stays aggressive. I think, given his stats, this probably is the line to take against this opponent.

Finally, against a fish who likely wouldn't c/r the flop without top pair, we should of course just call the flop raise and fold the turn UI.