Turn red aces into a bluff?

I think this needs to be a bluff, yes. It’s one of the worst hands you’ll arrive at the River with. Granted, V has a couple of hands you can beat by checking back (TT/JJ no spade), but it’s a very small part of his range (compare to all the sets and straights and flushes).

In a spot where you’re gonna have the nuts or air, your bluff needs to be on the large side , which is a little scary, but it should help to know that you’re gonna have way more but flushes here than your opponent. Really, the only nut flush he could have is one that he turned (ie, AsQs), and then checked the River to induce a bluff….which would be a smart, solver-approved play, but one that you so rarely see at LLSNL (since your hand looks so much like an overpair that most players would gladly check back to get to showdown).

So yeah, I think you should bluff, and bluff about 80% pot.

Of course, this is just my opinion. 😀

Heeeey, some villain reads I trust!

Mostly betting flop, but obviously fine to check back some.

As played, I’d bet. It’s a little close in theory, but between us probably flatting some lower overpairs, and the fact that described villain won’t bet turn with his own much, we’re probably a little closer to the bottom of our range and have less SDV than theory.

PRE - if V is still too loose-passive, I'd raise bigger, especially when he's opening UTG, which is supposed to be strong. At least make it $60, if not $65.

FLOP - V shouldn't really smash this board in a 3B pot when he opened UTG. Think I'd be c-betting here, for at least $40, if not $50.

TURN - MUTHAFARKA! The only worse card we could see would be the 9s. I think I'd be checking back if we c-bet flop and got called. Here, AP, betting $45 into $100 probably buys us a free showdown on the river.

RIVER - Dude, the whole point of betting turn was so we wouldn't face a huge river bet. For the love of sweet baby Jesus, do not bet now. We beat every 1P hand, and nothing else. Like, literally, we beat nothing that will call a bet here. Just check it back. It's a FREE SHOWDOWN.

Well played, now check

When a player unnecessarily shows you big folds they are either a total fish or are trying to induce bluffs. His line is designed to induce bluffs.

I disagree. We 3bet preflop, so we can easily have AsKx or AsQx or AxKs. We would check all those hands back on this flop, and we would also just call turn with all those hands.

We don't have to pull the trigger on a river bluff, but it's pure silliness to say that we can't have have a big spade in our hand for the one card nut or 2nd nut flush. Our line would actually make a lot of sense if we bet river to rep AsKx, AsQ, or AxKs.

We should be value betting this River with any big spade, not just the Ace. But even if we just limit our River value bets to the Ace/King/Queen of spades are the hands with big Spades that 3-bet preflop, check back the flop, call turn, and then value bet the River:

AsAc, AsAh, AsAc, AsKc, AsKd, AsKc, AsQc, AsQh, AsQd, AhKs, AdKs, AcKs, KsKd, KsKc, KsKh, QsQd, QsQc, QsQh, AhQs, AdQs, AcQs.

I would also add to this that—if we are balanced—we will on occasion have turned the nut flush and trapped. So if you count those, at some percentage of the time you can add AsKs, AsQs, and AsJs. (And As4s, As3s, As2s, and AsTs at some frequency preflop too.)

So those are our value hands.

Now here’s a fun game for you: try to find anywhere close to an equal number of bluffs we can possibly have once this river hits.

(For an impossible challenge: try to find these bluffs if you don’t include two Aces without a spade in your list—since you don’t think we should be bluffing with that hand!)

We don't ALWAYS need to bluff.

Our hand actually has some showdown value here. There's not much chance of V folding a better hand frequently enough if we turn our hand into a bluff. Not only are there four flush cards on board, there's also four to a straight.

Do we really want to torch $200-ish trying to get V to lay down a flush or a straight, after we checked back flop and just flat called turn? Like, what better hands are we trying to fold out here? Sets? 2P? What are the odds V was betting turn with 2P or a set?

It really doesn’t. There are just six hands we are beating here (the TT and JJ combos without a spade.) That’s all. We lose to every other pocket pair over 22, and every T9s, every 98s, every 87s, every 76s, every 65s, every 54s.

What better hands do you think are going to fold if we bet now, and how large a bet do you think we need to make?

V is either trapping with a flush or he's giving up and we'll win at showdown. There's no need to torch half our stack trying to fold out hands that would have been unlikely to bet turn.

Yes! Most of V’s range on this board with this turn bet and river check will be sets, two-pair, straights, and low flushes. That’s what we want to fold out. Most of our range once we arrive at this river will be Ace- or King-high flushes. We are very rarely going to call the Turn without a big spade in our hand.

You really need to ask why the V would bet the turn with 2-pair or a set after we checked the flop? He’d bet to get value from our AA/KK/QQ/JJ or AK/AQ/AJ hands that have a spade in them! He’d bet his straights for the same reason!

What’s really funny about your argument is that you think it’s crazy to assume the V would bet the Turn with 2-pair or a set, but then you want us to check the River because we have “showdown value”. Showdown value against what—JJ/TT without a spade, yeah? So it’s crazy to believe the V would bet the Turn with a set, but you also believe he’s betting it with just a naked pair of Jacks and no draw?? What is he, Schrödinger’s Villain?

I don't think 2P or sets are checking flop, betting turn, and check-folding river anywhere near often enough to try to get a bluff through, when all our flushes and over-pairs are betting the flop, not checking it back. I'm not in the business of trying to get low stakes players to fold straights and flushes with kamikaze river bluffs.

Like, what are we really repping if we bet here? AA / KK with one spade that checked back the flop? AXo with the As? Every hand we'd be repping is betting the flop, at least some of the time, if not most of the time.

99+ with a spade should be checking back flop a lot, flushes should slowplay turn some and I'm not even sure what street you think we're playing differently w AQo+ w a spade.

Results:

To be clear, when you 3-bet an UTG open with AsKh and catch an 8s7c6s flop, you’re thinking “Oh yeah, great flop, time to start betting!”? But River bluffs, that’s the reckless play? Fascinating.

Booooo. PULL THE TRIGGER!!!

We can range check this flop and our line looks exactly like a big spade. We are near bottom of range and villain is described as making big folds. Just bet 125 like we would with our plethora of big flushes.

docvail,

You are really wrong with your posts here.

davo is actually laying out a lot of the correct details about why bluffing makes quite a bit of sense

Most LLSNL players are scared to bluff, and thus will only consider it in spots when they arrive at the river with absolutely nothing. They’ll twist themselves in knots to come up with wild scenarios where “well my Queen-high actually does have some SHOWDOWN VALUE so I don’t really need to bluff this hand” and therefore miss an opportunity to win a pot. The fact that on certain runouts we should sometimes bluff with medium-strength hands never crosses their minds—“but bluffing is the thing we do when there’s no other way we can win a pot!”

And this thread has shown exactly how widespread that mindset is at these stakes.

I'm pretty sure I would have played every street differently. I almost certainly would have bet the flop.

If I hadn't, I would have just folded the turn. This board is terrible, you're usually going to face a bit river bet, and I'm not going to put my stack at risk for a $100 pot when I'm usually behind and drawing dead. You're either barely ahead or way behind.

But now on the river as played, it's a $200 pot, V has shown weakness but he still is almost always ahead. Plus with the history of him making big laydowns, this seems like a mandatory bluff.

There are a lot of assumptions here. People are assuming V is going to fold a bunch of better hands if we bet, simply because OP tells us V has shown some big folds.

But how far up into V's range do we need him to fold to make bluffing here profitable, how likely is it that V is betting turn with one of the hands he might fold, and how much do we need to bet to get him to fold, when we block nothing, and our line looks FOS?

I think you're asking rhetorically, but I'm not here to argue. I genuinely hope answering your questions is informative, even if not convincing to you:

1) WHAT DOES HE NEED TO FOLD:
He either needs to fold a little more than half of his straights (which is largely, but not entirely, made up of bare 4s) or he needs to have sets- overrepresented in his range for betting here to be as profitable as checking back for showdown value. (He doesn't need to fold that much for it to be profitable, but that's not the important question here.)

2) HOW LIKELY IS V BETTING WITH THOSE HANDS:
He's passive, which weighs us away from thinking he'd bet turn more than equilibrium, but it's a very heavy board and players are generally overly aggressive the heavier a board is. So maybe he's someone only bets hands when he has an overpair, which makes them weak passive in general, but they will actually be overly aggressive with marginal holdings on a board with as many OPs, 2ps, sets, straights and flushes as this. (Especially since this is a x/x flop where players will sense weakness in a "big" 3bp). His turn sizing of <1/2p (and less than "same bet" from our PFR, which is an important tell against recs) on such a wet board makes these marginal holdings extra plausible.

3) HOW MUCH DO WE NEED TO BET:
For the above I assumed 1/2p. That's really what we should bet in theory, and in practice I think people see that as an amount that's trying to get a call. Any higher starts to look like there's no way you're doing it for thin value with anything lower than the K of spades.

4) WE DON'T HAVE BLOCKERS:
There are no bluffing candidates that block villain's continuing range. The only way to block a flush is to have a flush ourselves. As such, we're better off completely unblocking all relevant hands so that we don't block his x/f range.

5) WE REP NOTHING:
I think we've covered the "what do we rep" thing to death, and at this point it's just a matter of whether you want to die on that hill. All we're repping is a spade. There is no way to argue we don't show up to frankly any spot of the tree without a single card of a given suit. I think it's extra difficult to argue here given that Hero in fact xb'ed flop with the nut overpair. Seems hard to argue that Hero shows up here with red aces but not with black queens, or any other number of hands.

If we are worried about running into Villain having a big spade bluff catcher like AxKs or AxQs or AxJs, it is very nice to have red AA to block a lot of those combos. Those are the most likely shrug "I guess I have no choice" calls from Villain.if we bomb it for a large sized river bluff.