30/60 Stud Hi Flush

[blumpkin]

"Yeah but he can also have aces up, kings up, or trips. He doesn't have to be putting you on anything more than queens up.

I think the flush point is pretty obvious. If he does have a flush there is a very good chance it is AK high."

100% agree.

[SteveL91]

If you 3bet would the presence of your open pair of queens make him just call if he did river the AK flush? If so, I'd 3bet.

From a hypothetical standpoint, if your doorcard were the A[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] instead of the 5[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img], how does that change your river play, if at all? I would guess it might make calling the raise a better play, but I'm still in the beginning stages of learning stud.

[iamastud]

4th looks like a raise. as for river, i think it is close, esoecailly with your strong looking board, but what possible hand could he be raising with? Flush looks most likely,a nd your flush is likely higher. His raise on 3rd could mean anthing in this short aggresive game. While he still could have the higher flush or even a boat, betting for value works best for me. If you are rearised, then you call; folding is not an option.

[jon_1van]

I 3-bet.

Villian is putting you on Qs up. He probably made a flush. And its not likely to be the Ace high. And even if he has an Ace high flush, he probably won't cap.

[electrical]

[ QUOTE ]
...He probably made a flush. And its not likely to be the Ace high....

[/ QUOTE ]Some people are saying this, but given the raise on Third I think any flush villain makes is going to have the A[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] in it. I do think there are enough other hands he could have to make a three-bet worthwhile.

[Joe Tall]

I'm really surprised you didn't raise 4th. Given that, and your board, he has you on some double paired hand and makes your 3-bet even easier.

[PokrLikeItsProse]

[ QUOTE ]

Yeah but he can also have aces up, kings up, or trips. He doesn't have to be putting you on anything more than queens up.

I think the flush point is pretty obvious. If he does have a flush there is a very good chance it is AK high.

[/ QUOTE ]

Is aces up even a good value raise on the river here? (And if aces up aren't, can trips ever be?) Given that your most likely hands are a pair on third or a flush draw, it seems like a bad raise against a player who can bet-fold queens with a busted flush draw or queens up. I'm willing to believe that it is a good idea against some opponents, but not against all opponents. Are there players who will raise and fold with aces up if you three-bet?

[Micturition Man]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

Yeah but he can also have aces up, kings up, or trips. He doesn't have to be putting you on anything more than queens up.

I think the flush point is pretty obvious. If he does have a flush there is a very good chance it is AK high.

[/ QUOTE ]

Is aces up even a good value raise on the river here? (And if aces up aren't, can trips ever be?) Given that your most likely hands are a pair on third or a flush draw, it seems like a bad raise against a player who can bet-fold queens with a busted flush draw or queens up. I'm willing to believe that it is a good idea against some opponents, but not against all opponents. Are there players who will raise and fold with aces up if you three-bet?

[/ QUOTE ]


A question like this can be answered on a practical or a theoretical level.

On a theoretical level, hero could definitely have nothing but QQ on 7th and bet it as a bluff.

The fact that hero could be bluffing forces villain to call with a large % of his hands that beat QQ but not queens up.

At the same time villain should, in theory, bluff raise some of these hands that beat QQ but not queens up, so that hero cannot automatically fold queens up to a raise.

The upshot is that in theory it probably should be profitable to value raise with aces or kings up here, UNLESS hero's distribution is heavily weighted to four flushes.

Based on the 3rd street action I would say it's very likely hero started with a 3 straight or 3 flush here. You would have to consider the exposed cards and crunch specific numbers, but I think the possiblity of a 3 straight down is probably big enough that villain should, in theory, raise kings or aces up.

Now in practice it's a completely different story... if hero is in fact going to fold queens up here a high % of the time, then value raising aces or kings up or even trips is a mistake, but bluff-raising becomes highly profitable.

[PokrLikeItsProse]

The theory is the easy part. The practical is the hard part.

If hero can't automatically fold queens up, I don't think that hero can automatically call with queens up without being exploitable, either. I also suspect that the villain can't automatically raise aces up here without being exploitable, too, although it may require a tough hero to recognize and figure out how to exploit the villain's play. Am I wrong?

It seems like your assumption for the villain is that hero will always bet the river with that board? Is that a safe assumption? Is that automatic play right for the hero, regardless of his actual hole cards? If the villain thinks that hero won't always bet the river, is that enough to make value raising aces up/kings up/trips a mistake?

I don't think that the times that the hero is starting with a three-straight down really makes the villain raising with aces up that much better. If hero started with a three straight, he has one pair, drawing to two pair and possibly a gutshot on the river. Keep in mind that if hero started with three straight cards, he has a small straight draw that wasn't completely live and he called after bricking fourth street against a player with two suited cards who showed some strength on third street. Which possible straight draws do you have hero playing that way? If that gives the hero enough callable hands to shift a raise into the +EV column, then it sounds like a pretty thin value raise.

One thing that I am thinking about is the possibility of going for a check-raise on the river here. Am I the only one who even contemplated the idea, even if it was immediately dismissed? I can think of at least one betting profile where going for a check-raise seems at least close enough that I should really do the rigorous math.

To give you an idea of where I am coming from, I am used to playing (at lower stakes than this) against passive but not always clueless players, some of whom won't raise me on the river unless they can beat a queen-high flush because I have a tight image that allows me to steal a decent number of medium-sized pots. Three-betting a flush when I have a paired board ends up being wrong against some of these players. Because of this, I think that a leak in my game is not going for a check-raise or a bluff-raise on the end against aggressive players, so I've taught myself to think about all of my possible options unless I've done some rigorous math for that particular situation. While I've soaked up many books and the conventional wisdom, I'm still inclined to deconstruct particular plays and examine the assumptions that people are making.

[Micturition Man]

Hero absolutely has to peel a bricked straight draw on 4th street given the pot size, especially after catching a live overcard to his opponent.

As for check-raise versus lead out, certainly that's a viable option. Nobody really knows what the optimal play here is.

My post was just arguing that, in theory, opponent should be able value raise hands that beat queens up, and therefore it makes sense to include those hands in his distribution when hero is considering a value 3-bet.

To answer another of your questions hero should definitely not be betting the river every time with his board. He should be bluffing QQ a small % of the time and, imo, value betting queens up and value betting a flush at least sometimes, but also probably check-raising it sometimes.