This week I will be playing the APL Vietnam series. To make it more interesting I offered the winner of the hand analysis competition 5% of my action for my Main Event first bullet. If you missed it, you can see the hand below.
USD 2/5 cash game. Effective stack about USD 1500. Preflop hero on Utg1 makes it 15 with 88. Villain on HJ makes it 45, everyone folds and you complete.
Flop comes J54 rainbow. Villain cbets 75 you call. Turn comes a 6 still rainbow goes check check. River is another J. You check he bets 290. What would you do and why.
First of all thank you for all your submissions. It was really interesting to receive your answers and it was a learning experience for me too. Many of you asked me what did I do in the end, well sorry to disappoint you, this was not a real hand. I made it up because this hand is one of the few scenarios where folding, calling or raising can be acceptable moves, as long as your reasoning makes sense. It's like when you were in a math test at school, the answer at the end is important but so is the work. How you got to your answer is just as important if not more.
There was a few people that answered fold. I personally like this choice the least. It's a 300bb deep cash game. 3 betting range in HJ is going to be much wider compared to let's say a tournament or a 100bb cash game. Sure villain can have TT+ but in this scenario he can also have Ax, weak suited aces, suited connectors etc. 22-77 I think are generally flatting hands. Sure you still lose to value hands like Jx, TT, 99, QQ, KK and AA but folding feels too passive as you have a decent bluff catcher. Some commented about block betting the river, which I feel is also very passive. You take away villain's opportunity to bluff, or give him a bigger incentive to bluff over your blocking bet. Either way you are losing value by block betting.
Calling was the most common answer. I think over 65% of responses were to call. I like this choice because in this spot I think 88 is top of your range. Also for meta game purposes, the information you gain from calling, and his perception of you (even if you lose) might outweigh the money you have to commit. I purposely omitted any additional information about villain or hero's perceived image, style, tendencies etc hoping to get more multiple answers based on what these variants are. For example if villain is a fish.... blah blah... but if villain is an aggressive pro....blah blah.. I think if villain bet 1/2 to 3/4 pot on the river most would choose to call. But the over pot bet put some of you off. Villain is certainly capable of thin valuing TT, 99, QQ, etc. But if he is capable of doing so, he should be thin valuing A6, 67, or bluffing with all his misses.
Honestly I was leaning towards calling until I read some of you suggested check raising the river. You're beating a bluff with 88, maybe 6x thin value, but you're not beating any other values like 99, TT, Jx and overpairs. You called pre, check called the flop, J, 44, 55, 66 are pretty much in your range. One might ask, if you have Jx or a full house, why would you not lead out the river? I think one common mistake is for someone to think I always have to value my big hands on the river. If I check I will lose value. This is not true all the time. In this instance, if you lead river, you're only getting called by hands that would bet on the river themselves. (ie. full house, trips, two pairs) so it makes a lot of sense to check your monsters. Also you take away villain's opportunity to bluff on the river. So either a small bet to induce a raise, or check raise with your monsters seem like the best line. A couple of you suggested check raise all in. I think that seems too big for me. Check raising here is designed to fold out all bluffs and two pairs but any Jx will still call off. But I like the idea of check raising to 700 or so. This way you can fold out all his bluffs and most of his value bets. But of course now you're turning your 8s into a bluff, so if he rejams you're folding.
There was only one player that suggested this exact line with pretty close sizing. So the winner of this competition is......... VICTOR LAU! Congrats and good luck to us in the main. However there was another submission that was so impressive I have to count him in as well. KENDRICK LAU who had the offered a similar line but the reraise amount was amended after some discussions. So I feel that VICTOR deserves 3% and KENDRICK 2% of my main event first bullet. Congrats guys.
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| A screenshot of Kendrick's submission |
Like I said, this scenario is one of the rare times fold, call or raise are reasonable moves. If the sizing was any different I would probably just call. However the size and stack allowed a more complex move of check raising the river, which on paper seem like a very interesting line. I might not have the balls to pull it off on the table but for the competition's purposes it was the winner for me.
I will be posting my APL progress and post mortem either here or on my Instagram "happyriverpoker" so hopefully we can make some serious money for Victor and myself!
