[mcc235]

Should I have played this hand differently (nuts before the river):

Atlantic City $1/2 No Limit table. Everyone is mostly tight/passive. I have approximately $200 and most players have between $125 and $250. It is a casual Friday night, most people are more interested in the beer than aggressive poker.

There is a small raise to $6 from early position, I call in middle position with



the button calls (stack of $200 as well), everyone else folds. Pot: $21

Flop:



EP checks, I check (being tricky noob that I am), button bets $10. EP folds, I take a while and using my best eighth grade acting skills ask the Button "you gotta king?". I finally call. Pot: $41

Turn:



I check, button checks

River:



Using my old way of thinking before reading NLHETAP, I thought "I don't want to scare him off" so I bet $25. He thinks for a long while, says something aloud like "do you just have an ace?" and finally calls with pocket fours.

Now that I have read this section, I have been rethinking this hand. What hands could I have put him on? What P(call) could I assign to a bet of $25 vs $75 vs $150? What if the button were a much looser player, how does that change the answers?

< edit >fix pot sizes < /edit >

[yeltzen]

Originally Posted by mcc235

Using my old way of thinking before reading NLHETAP, I thought "I don't want to scare him off" so I bet $25. He thinks for a long while, says something aloud like "do you just have an ace?" and finally calls with pocket fours.

Now that I have read this section, I have been rethinking this hand. What hands could I have put him on? What P(call) could I assign to a bet of $25 vs $75 vs $150? What if the button were a much looser player, how does that change the answers?

Well, first of all, I'm not sure how much looser a player can get when they're calling a pretty good-sized bet with 44 on that kind of board! I think you made a good bet on the river, but probably could have pulled a pot-sized bet out of him.

I don't think there was much you could do on the turn. This is why you want to be in late position, but if you check/call on that flop, then suddenly bet when a third king comes out, you're going to raise some eyebrows.

I think that you can probably put him on something like AJ, AT, JT (semi-bluff, free card play), or a pocket pair 99 or lower. It's unlikely he has a Q, since he surely would have bet again on the turn after making his full house. He also probably doesn't have JJ since he'd reraise preflop, maybe with TT, too (in position, smallish raise).

I would guess the Pcall values as something like:

$25 x 60% = 15

$40 x 50% = 20

$75 x 20% = 15

I don't think you're going to get too many people to call an overbet of the pot without a Q, and I really couldn't put him on a Q in this spot. I think a stray 99 or 88 here would make the call, but nothing else.

I think A high might call for $25, and most PPs would, too. If the PPs would call for $25, I'd imagine they'd call for $40. It's not an exact science, but I think you could have bet a tad more on the river. With the only hands that could/should call you, an overbet would scare them out, but a pot-sized bet probably wouldn't.

[mcc235]

Originally Posted by yeltzen

I don't think you're going to get too many people to call an overbet of the pot without a Q, and I really couldn't put him on a Q in this spot. I think a stray 99 or 88 here would make the call, but nothing else.

I agree. I guess I was just wondering if he could have put me on a Ace and if that changes the percentages. Part of what Sklansky mentions is how some people have the mentality that if it is a small bet on the river on a scary board it represents strength, a big bet represents a bluff.

Would the bigger $75 bet perhaps jump Pcall to 30% or 40% if my opponent thought I was trying to steal the pot?

[yeltzen]

Originally Posted by mcc235

I agree. I guess I was just wondering if he could have put me on a Ace and if that changes the percentages. Part of what Sklansky mentions is how some people have the mentality that if it is a small bet on the river on a scary board it represents strength, a big bet represents a bluff.

Would the bigger $75 bet perhaps jump Pcall to 30% or 40% if my opponent thought I was trying to steal the pot?

Well there's no real rhyme or reason to the Pcall value... it's just an estimation you come up with based on how often you think you'll get called by a weaker hand. Well, since you have the nuts in this situation, it's just how often you'll get called.

If you have a read on your opponent for being a bit of a calling station who constantly thinks people are trying to bluff him, then you would be better off overbetting the pot, as he'll just see it as another stealing attempt. If this bumps up the Pcall to 40%, then it's clearly the best play of the three. This is why I like the pot bet the best, though... I don't have to play head games trying to figure out what my opponent will interperet the bet as... it's not small or large. It looks like it could be anything on a board like that. I don't like to assume my opponents in a B&M $1/2 NL game are thinking enough to play games with what an overbet means to them.


Where do you play in AC and are you there a lot? My bi-annual AC trip is coming up in a couple of weeks.

[mcc235]

Originally Posted by yeltzen

Where do you play in AC and are you there a lot? My bi-annual AC trip is coming up in a couple of weeks.

Just recently moved to New York City. I have only been to AC once to check things out and played at Ballys and the Trop (just cause is was cheap to stay there) and last week I went to Foxwoods for the first time. I am looking for an excuse to go back to AC so let me know when you are there. I would love to get one of them autographed pink fuzzy hats.

[yeltzen]

Originally Posted by mcc235

Just recently moved to New York City. I have only been to AC once to check things out and played at Ballys and the Trop (just cause is was cheap to stay there) and last week I went to Foxwoods for the first time. I am looking for an excuse to go back to AC so let me know when you are there. I would love to get one of them autographed pink fuzzy hats.

Hahahahaha. I'll be there on the 4th and 5th of August, then probably again on the 8th. I play at Borgata and Harrah's, so I'd be on the other side of town. Doubtful that I'd play in a NL game since I'm better at limit, but I might have to give it a shot this time.

[mcc235]

Originally Posted by yeltzen

Hahahahaha. I'll be there on the 4th and 5th of August, then probably again on the 8th. I play at Borgata and Harrah's, so I'd be on the other side of town.

Sounds good, perhaps we can have a mini-CT meetup since I will be away for the Chicago one. How far is Harrahs from the Borgata?

[yeltzen]

Originally Posted by mcc235

Sounds good, perhaps we can have a mini-CT meetup since I will be away for the Chicago one. How far is Harrahs from the Borgata?

Harrah's is literally 2 minutes from Borgata. You leave the valet, make a left (I think), and drive about half a mile and run smack into Harrah's. Have you ever played at Borgata? We usually only go over there for a few hours to play and eat (their rooms are too much to stay there when we get free rooms at Harrah's) so I never bother playing poker since the wait is pretty huge. I plan on it this time, though. I have to play there at some point. It's a pretty big poker room so I could definitely throw some sweet bad-beat tantrums.

[bolgenmod]

To get back to the discussion, the hand you post mcc is a pretty good example of what S&M discuss in "Thinking In Terms of Expectation -- Playing the Nuts on the River" (21-24).

Now as Boris said, it's hard to assign a call frequency to a player who would call ANY bet w 44 on that board, but I think you have to try some percentages. Boris's guesses seem right to me, but a quick run of the calculator shows this: if the player will call the $75 (overbet) bet about 27%, the expectation of that call is almost equal to the $40 (pot sized) bet at 50%. Surely a player who would call any bet with 44 on that board might be closer to 27% than to 20% to call the overbet.

This is where knowing the player and your present table-image are key: will he think an overbet is a bluff? Have you been making big bets only with nut hands? I think you should have tried a bigger bet, but it is easy to run a calculator and not so easy to figure out a good +ev bet while at the table!

[yeltzen]

Originally Posted by bolgenmod

This is where knowing the player and your present table-image are key: will he think an overbet is a bluff? Have you been making big bets only with nut hands? I think you should have tried a bigger bet, but it is easy to run a calculator and not so easy to figure out a good +ev bet while at the table!

I would have bet $25 in practice. It's easy for me to say the pot was the best bet when I'm not there.