The Ol' Value Bet Dilemma on the River

[kgu1]

No stats on villain. I'm trying to work on thin value betting on the river. In this situation, what would you guys do?

Cake Poker No-Limit Hold'em, $0.20 BB (6 handed) - Cake-Poker Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

UTG ($25.35)
MP ($20.30)
CO ($33.35)
Button ($33.65)
Hero (SB) ($53.45)
BB ($19.20)

Preflop: Hero is SB with K, Q
UTG calls $0.20, 3 folds, Hero calls $0.10, BB checks

Flop: ($0.60) 6, 10, K (3 players)
Hero bets $0.45, BB calls $0.45, 1 fold

Turn: ($1.50) J (2 players)
Hero bets $0.90, BB calls $0.90

River: ($3.30) J (2 players)
Hero?

[Chi-mac79]

This should be a decent spot for a thin value bet since you can get called by a worse K or at times even a T. If he was slow playing a KT the river card gives you the lead with a better 2 pair and he may still call. Depending on how loose/tight this player is also plays a role but most times I think you beat enough hands here to throw out a value bet. Obviously you have to fold to a raise tho.

[urbansprawler]

Eh, close spot; checking is good IP but OOP you're better off betting.

[given1982]

Bet/fold is good against an unknown. You're never going to have stats on villains on Cake, so you need to develop reads.

[uofi2012]

Bet/fold is fine against most here. c/f vs a big bet would be ok if someone was was super passive, but would be rare.

Originally Posted by urbansprawler

Eh, close spot; checking is good IP but OOP you're better off betting.

Can you explain?

[chinz]

Only hand that beats you (and makes any sense) is JQ. Why wouldn't you bet this river?

There isn't many worse hands that he should be calling with, but with the board being JJxxx you don't really need too many of those. Also, you don't want to check/fold and by check/calling you'd valuetown yourself.

[nawhead]

Every draw pretty much got there. If he thinks you were semibluffing and holding strong with K9s or just a Ten or whatnot and vice versa. I'd expect KQ to make a crying call and most hands you beat tank pretty hard and fold. He basically has to put you on stone bluff to make a thin call here.

I don't think this is a good spot for a thin value bet myself.

89 might throw out a last ditch effort on the river. You're not getting thin value so I think check/call is best next alternative.


My critera for a thin value bet spot is when villain either puts me on Nuts or air. Value betting thin is to merge my range (is this the right term?) so I can get value from ace high and middle pair or whatnot w/o the nuts. Since this board is Nuts or Nuts, how can villain call thin? A thin value bet on this board is unnecessary at best and greedy/spewy at worst.

And all this presupposes villain makes thin calls at all. That he's the type of player who says to himself "this guy has it or nothing a good amount and I'm getting 2 to 1, so I need to call with any pair here." But unless you've seen villain make these kind of calls before, there's really no reason to start vb'ing him thin when he's likely to just fold weak holdings and and only call you strong. So I think history is important when making thin bets, otherwise you're just turning your hand into a bluff.

[chinz]

Answering two posts at once, kind of...

Originally Posted by uofi2012

Can you explain? [betting OOP, checking IP]

I'll try:

Originally Posted by nawhead

89 might throw out a last ditch effort on the river. You're not getting thin value so I think check/call is best next alternative.

Virtually zero draws have missed there, check/calling is just valuetowning yourself. Just because we are OOP, we should rather bet/fold than check/call... He is never betting anything for value that he doesn't call a bet with and there's no missed draws that would bluff, but he will call a bet with some hands he doesn't bet for value, so his calling range should be weaker than betting range.

We also lose less money by bet/folding than check/calling if we are beat. We can easily bet like $1.90 on the river and fold to a raise, because there's no draws that could raise as a bluff (because both JQ and FDs beat us now).

So, we are not expecting the bet to have too much value but we don't really have a better choice, unless we want to check/fold top pair with 2nd kicker. So it kind of serves as a blocker, we still beat some hands and will get value sometimes, but also lose the minimum against hands that have us beat.

[nawhead]

Originally Posted by chinz

He is never betting anything for value that he doesn't call a bet with and there's no missed draws that would bluff, but he will call a bet with some hands he doesn't bet for value, so his calling range should be weaker than betting range.

We also lose less money by bet/folding than check/calling if we are beat. We can easily bet like $1.90 on the river and fold to a raise, because there's no draws that could raise as a bluff (because both JQ and FDs beat us now).

So, we are not expecting the bet to have too much value but we don't really have a better choice, unless we want to check/fold top pair with 2nd kicker. So it kind of serves as a blocker, we still beat some hands and will get value sometimes, but also lose the minimum against hands that have us beat.

So we're minimizing our loss with the bet/fold? On this board? I disagree so much.

Let's get our (super optimstic candy land) equity in the pot and proceed from there.

Assume villain is a weaker player, he's likely limping UTG with Axs, KQ, QJ, AJ,ATs. And we can even start throwing in random Kxs hands that can only split with another King.

And let's say he doesn't play tricky postflop and raises any 2 pair+ hands on turn, so throw all those out of his range.

So given all that, I get a villain range of AsJs,AsTs,As9s,As8s,As7s,As6s,As5s,As4s,As3s,As2s, KQs,K9s-K2s,QJs,AJo,KQo,QJo

Well villain is kind of a donk, but anyway, we have about 44% equity in the pot on the river. And we're trying to get paid from all those splitting kings. So betting 2/3 the pot seems too much. I'd rather bet 1/2 or 1/3 pot to make sure those Kx hands pay me off, and we don't lose more than we have to when beat. And we can bet smaller since we're unlikely to get bluffed off our hand.

Still, this is assuming villain is a real DONKEY stupid retard. I like to take a more conservative approach and expect villain to fold most of those Kx hands when he realizes he's paying off flushes/trips/straights/boats with a split King, and I think our called equity is really around 30% or less, and now the 1/2 or 1/3 blocker is standard.

We start throwing in curve balls like villain slowplaying sometimes or a wierd play with AA, and now our equity's like 20%.

And overall, I think betting when our equity is this low, epecially when villain has to put us on a crazy 3 barrel bluff, when he's having to make a real thin crying call just to be good/split, really sucks. When I make a thin bet, I want villain to feel at least mildly confident in his hand.

So that's my rationale for why any bet on this board is pretty spewy.

Maybe I'm completely not in sync with how people play this game anymore. Maybe the problem is I never really call myself in this type of spot unless maybe I'm on stone cold tilt.

Or maybe the value bet rationale is just a red herring and you're more interesting in not getting bluffed? That you have to put in a bet if there's any chance at all your hand might be good so you don't have to bet,bet,c/f.

[kgu1]

So after reading all your posts, I believe that the best play here is to bet/fold. The one thing I forgot when I played this hand was that it was limped to the BB, who then checked. That means that all Kx hands are in his range, as well as all Tx hands. Because of all the Kx and Tx hands that I could be getting value from, I should definitely bet the river here for value. If villain has me beat, then I'll know from a raise. A check/call is not the best play here because by checking, all weaker Kings check back most likely and if villain bets a decent amount on the river, he is almost never bluffing, but then again, could they??? Which just means I'm put in a tough spot to call or not.