Advanced Hand Reading Excercise

[ChrisV]

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Chris,
Here’s a little thought experiment to prove you wrong. If Villain can never call a minraise without a straight+ a good Hero will be minraise bluffing the river here a large % of the time.

Now let's say that as the Villian if we think the Hero is capable of even bluffing 20% of the time (which i admit is highly unlikely) we should always be calling due to the excellent odds he is giving us.

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And if Hero is minbluffing a lot, villain should bet/call the river with any pair to take advantage of this. Cmon you can play this game forever. The fact is that 95% of people don't minraise bluff on a board like this ever.

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Lastly, I do not try to fully balance my range according to game theory or do I try to play unexpliotatly. After this minraise by this hero I was 100% certain we have an eight from what I’ve learned empirically through millions of hands of NL hold’em.... and it seems perfectly reasonable for me to put him on an 8, in fact I think it accounts for over 95% of his range.

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I get all this and I agree that a lot of players are likely to have an 8 here. I just think it's a bad play, and the player was cast as a "probably a solid winner" and also the designation "Hero" led me to believe this was a 2+2er who would play well, but I deduce from your comments that actually you were Villain in this hand, yes? and probably bluffed him off an 8 - thinly veiled brag? So the play goes against type for me - if the description had been "some TAGish guy, I dunno" and his designation had been Villain I would have put him on an 8 with no trouble. But apparently I'm wrong about "good TAGs" not raising 8s here, since the whole of MSNL just can't wait to pointlessly minraise their 8s and then get bluffed off their hand by good2cu. Ship it holla!

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The hero in this hand doesn’t have the benefit of being able to go through this long analysis as he is likely 8 Tabling

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I'm an 8 tabling TAG and I guarantee you I flat call that bet with an 8 with just about zero hesitation.

[ChrisV]

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my early opinion of this thread was that in hand one there doesn't exist a single hand combination aside from maybe KcQx that Hero could've played well.

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I pretty much agree with this also.

[good2cu]

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[ QUOTE ]
Chris,
Here’s a little thought experiment to prove you wrong. If Villain can never call a minraise without a straight+ a good Hero will be minraise bluffing the river here a large % of the time.

Now let's say that as the Villian if we think the Hero is capable of even bluffing 20% of the time (which i admit is highly unlikely) we should always be calling due to the excellent odds he is giving us.

[/ QUOTE ]

And if Hero is minbluffing a lot, villain should bet/call the river with any pair to take advantage of this. Cmon you can play this game forever. The fact is that 95% of people don't minraise bluff on a board like this ever.

[ QUOTE ]
Lastly, I do not try to fully balance my range according to game theory or do I try to play unexpliotatly. After this minraise by this hero I was 100% certain we have an eight from what I’ve learned empirically through millions of hands of NL hold’em.... and it seems perfectly reasonable for me to put him on an 8, in fact I think it accounts for over 95% of his range.

[/ QUOTE ]

I get all this and I agree that a lot of players are likely to have an 8 here. I just think it's a bad play, and the player was cast as a "probably a solid winner" and also the designation "Hero" led me to believe this was a 2+2er who would play well, but I deduce from your comments that actually you were Villain in this hand, yes? and probably bluffed him off an 8 - thinly veiled brag? So the play goes against type for me - if the description had been "some TAGish guy, I dunno" and his designation had been Villain I would have put him on an 8 with no trouble. But apparently I'm wrong about "good TAGs" not raising 8s here, since the whole of MSNL just can't wait to pointlessly minraise their 8s and then get bluffed off their hand by good2cu. Ship it holla!

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The hero in this hand doesn’t have the benefit of being able to go through this long analysis as he is likely 8 Tabling

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I'm an 8 tabling TAG and I guarantee you I flat call that bet with an 8 with just about zero hesitation.

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Chris,
Just to be clear I wasn't advocating raising with an eight on the river vs. the villain described (I think he will probaly never call with wrose and bluff shove on us sometimes like you are saying) but I believe it’s basically the only hand multitabling tags can have.

[good2cu]

Results for anyone who cares:

Hand One: Hero tanked down to 1 second and called with 88. I don't hate how the Hero played this hand beside his intail river raise. Unless he though villian would bluff shove over his minraise too high a % of the time (doubtful he had this much infomation at this point so I hate the minraise).
Villian showed: AdJd (suits could be wrong but no clubs).

Hand 2:
Hero quickly folded.
Villian Showed 55.

I firgue that the Hero was bluffing here and don't really like his line.

As the Villian I think I perfer a flop 3 bet (do this as a bluff sometimes too) but I think its close.

[cowpig]

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FWIW I consider min-raising the river against any Villain who I consider atleast semi-decent absolutely horrible and my early opinion of this thread was that in hand one there doesn't exist a single hand combination aside from maybe KcQx that Hero could've played well.

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Why? If hero has an 8 or better, he's best 90% of the time or something. Probably more. It will be tough for villain to call a shove with his range

[BIG NIGE]

Here is my analysis (before I read any responses):

Hand 1: Heroo most likely had KQ, possibly with a club. It doesn't make sense for the hero to check twice with a made hand, with the third club hitting on the turn and no improvement for any pair/overcard hands the villain might have. Even a king-high flush it would make little sense for hero to check, because he can win more money by betting if villain has anything at all, be it a made hand or a draw like the nut flush draw, maybe even eliciting a check-raise all-in. I can't think of any hands that include an eight that hero could check twice; with a hand like 88 for example, he should bet on the flop or the turn to either make villain pay to draw or find out where he's at to avoid making a crying call on the river.

Having said that I would 100% fold on the river because villain can't have anything worse than a flush here, and likely the nut flush, as that would give him more incentive to check both flop and turn. With a lower flush he's calling the river raise; I just don't see a good player, LAG or not, 3-betting the river all-in for 1500 more into a 2100 pot without a pretty damn good hand. He can't expect to get called by anhting except a lower flush, which is definitely a possibility if Hero is trying to play deceptively and trap him, and it would not be an easy laydown, especially a king-high flush.

Hand #2: When I see Hero checkraising the flop but not with a huge bet, I want to put him on a big pair like aces or kings or even a set of fives. The line he takes is very strong and he clearly wants action. I would expect a larger checkraise with a hand like AcKc, trying to get a fold out of pocket pairs, straight draws, and fives. The villain's raise all-in on the turn following a flop call throws me a little bit because he has to see that the hero is representing a strong hand, and it would be foolish to move in with a straight/flush draw here when he is likely getting called. This actually leads me to believe that the villain has trip treys or a full house here, anticipating hero's turn bet which would largely commit the rest of his stack.

My general thouhht process here is that in order to move in in these spots, villain has to have a very strong hand because of the odds he is laying to hero, and also because of his willingness to let the hero bet into him multiple times. It's much, much harder to do this kind of analysis at the table when you only have a few seconds to think, and it's harder still to laydown the kind of hands that I put hero on, but that's the conclusion I came to after thoroughly reviewing these hands.

[NLMan]

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[ 7d, Tc, Jc ][ 2c ][ 9h ]
Villian bets [$400 USD]
Hero raises [$800 USD]

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You pretty much say "here are 2 generic players you'll expect to see at any medium/high stakes game", what do they have?

Do they slowplay? Do they slowplay when they are not supposed to? Can TAG check into LAG with a hand expecting his c-bet? Is it common for LAG to not c-bet here? How do they size their bets, time their bets and generally play? Hoe careful is either of them? How aggressive are they on different streets (total AF doesn't say anything about that).

At least for me it is hard to make any read in such vacuum, so my action would be pretty nitty on the river.

As for hand ranges:

Villian: flush - 20%/nut flush - 20%/Ac only - 30%/other - 30%
Hero: nut flush - 20%/KQ - 30%/set - 10%/other - 40%