[NL2] Set mining vs scary river

I think i call, we beat lots of Ax villain bets for value. I would consider raising before folding, not sure we get called by worse enough though. No reason to be afraid of the river - do you think this guy bets backdoor 6x multiway for two streets?

I have a predictive model that can predict what players ranges are and our EV of our hand, so I ran your hand through it to see what it thinks.

When villain bets 58bb on the river and you call with a set of 4's, the model predicts that you have ~59% equity against their range.

So overall, the EV of calling is roughly +41bb assuming a 5% rake. So folding here would be a massive mistake.

Funny enough, you are probably scared of villain having straights, but really you should be more afraid of the villain having a higher set!

When you call the river bet, villain will have a straight 13% of the time and they will have a higher set 27% of the time!

This might seem counter-intuitive, but think about it. Villain raised 4bb preflop and then triple barrelled multiway. What 6x is he likely to have?

The top hand combos in villains range are:

AK: 17.8%
AA: 14%
AQ: 6.7%
77: 6.3%
A8: 6%
A5: 4.6%
65: 4.4%

Villain will only have a 'bluff' 10% of the time with underpair or worse. So it may feel like a spot where villain is 'never bluffing', which is kind of true. But they are overvaluing hands like top pair and two pair so much that we can very profitably call.

You could consider raising, but because we only have 59% equity with a call, then our equity with a raise is probably going to be less than 50% since he will fold out his bluffs. So it's not really a good spot to value raise IMO.

These are all predictions, but they have shown to be very accurate so hopefully you find that insightful 😀

Raise on the flop. You have a strong hand and you need to build a big pot.

As played - I'd call. NL2 players tend to overplay their hands and there are not many 6x hands in his range.

Thanks all. Agreed I should have raised flop and maybe turn especially against this kind of player - wanted to play passively to avoid forcing early folds after hitting the flop but this line is likely not profitable at NL2 anyway

Good question! I think this line of thinking is dangerous.

It's common that people will think things like "big bets = big hands, and small bets = small hands" which may have some truth to it, but we can't take that too far. You can't just assume that villain had 0% sets because they bet "small" on the turn.

For example, I re-ran your hand through my predictive model and I used a 36bb bet on the turn from villain instead of 12bb, and then used a jam on the river.

In that case, the probability of villain having a higher set increases to 35%.

So it was 27% before, and with a bigger turn bet then it becomes 35% on the river.

So you were right, a bigger bet on the turn & river would have a higher chance of a set. Your equity with a set of 4's actually decreased from 59% to 56% on the river in that case.

However, funny enough, the EV of calling the river jam actually increases! Because the pot is bigger and you are getting even better pots odds facing a jam on the river, so your EV of calling actually goes up even though your equity went down.

TL;DR: A small bet on the turn does decrease their chances of having a set, but not by that much. Only a 7% difference, and not enough to change much.

EDIT: One last point that is interesting. If villain bets big on the turn, then they will have AA 16%, 77 15%, and 88 0.8%. But if villain bets small on the turn, then they have AA 14%, 77 6%, and 88 4.2%.

Essentially the model is saying that AA will bet big or small roughly the same amount, probably because villain is blocking top pair so they are scared of folds.

However with 77, then villain is 2.5x more likely to bet big on the turn, probably because they hope someone has AK.

And finally, with 88 on the turn, villain is going to bet smaller more often and then hit a set on the river by luck.

So given all that info, I think the predictions make a lot of sense to me. Villains will tend to bet bigger with 77, but they will bet small with 88 and hit a set so that counters then having lower set on the river if that makes sense.