three river call/fold decisions

[cero_z]

Hi Sam,

In hand 1, your reasoning for calling the all-in is sound, if your opponent is fairly bad. Good players will know that players who play your style are much more likely to make "big calls" of the sort you made in this hand, since they (LAGs) are used to poor players vastly overplaying their medium hands and trying big bluffs against them. So unless you can really rule out being behind, you are going to be in a spot where you are a 2:1 favorite sometimes, and drawing to 5 outs most of the time. Against a frustrated, mediocre or worse player (who's not a nit), you can pretty much rule out being behind.

Your reasoning for betting the turn is sound, IMO, but given that reasoning, a much smaller bet makes sense. After all, with missed overcards etc., they basically need to feel you're bluffing or worried to raise you. That "almost full pot" bet sends that exact message. You put them in a tougher spot by betting half pot, IMO; it makes an all-in awkwardly large, and plants more fear that their overcards may be no good if they hit.

Also, if the turn goes check-check, and a scary card (to you) hits, this type of opponent's bet size on the river is pretty easy to read, right?

[samoleus]

cero, this is an outstanding point. Although I wanted to protect my hand and thus got myself into a tough decision, it is true that against this opponent, the correct play would have been relatively easy to decipher by his river action. For that reason alone (the difficulty of the turn decision as opposed to the relative ease of a river decision if I had checked back) might mean that it might have been worth giving up the equity in protecting my hand by just checking back on the turn. That is a really good point.