20NL HU - Rivered Two Pair

Lambert180

Villian has been pretty loose and very passive preflop. Calls alot pre, doesn't 3bet often, only 3b hand I've seen showndown is 99. Hasn't 4bet once.

Postflop he's been raising alot of my c-bets and giving up on the turn where I've generally taken the pot down. Have called down 3 streets once to see him show up with air.

Can/should I raise this river for value? Obviously I'm confident I have the best hand but can we expect to get called by worse unless he's also rivered the K?

Player	Action	Cards	Amount	Pot	Balance
Lambert180	Small blind		£0.10	£0.10	£30.24
XOX	Big blind		£0.20	£0.30	£20.45
	Your hole cards	A K
Lambert180	Raise		£0.40	£0.70	£29.84
XOX	Call		£0.30	£1.00	£20.15
Flop
		6 3 3
XOX	Check
Lambert180	Bet		£0.60	£1.60	£29.24
XOX	Raise		£1.60	£3.20	£18.55
Lambert180	Call		£1.00	£4.20	£28.24
Turn
		7
XOX	Check
Lambert180	Check
River
		K
XOX	Bet		£2.20	£6.40	£16.35
Lambert180	Call		£2.20	£8.60	£26.04

BorinLoner

I think you can raise for value. It's heads-up so he doesn't, or shouldn't, need top-pair to call. Dynamics and all that.

"Postflop he's been raising alot of my c-bets and giving up on the turn where I've generally taken the pot down"

If this is the case, why no bet on the turn? Not sure if you're bluffing or value-betting, perhaps? I'm not sure if I prefer the check or betting to avoid giving free cards. I probably bet. Checking might give him the chance to bluff the river, I suppose. Thoughts on that?

Your thread title is misleading. Top two-pair would be K7.

Lambert180

Sorry, I've amended the thread title, obviously just me being a noob.

I'm very confident on the flop that I have the best hand the vast majority of the time.

It's a good point about the turn, and alot of pots had been going that way, he raises my c-bet, I flat and then he check/folds turn to a bet. Here though again I was fairly confident of having the best hand so I couldn't see much value in betting the turn, and I'm not bluffing. Although you may be right, it's probably better not to give him the free card.

Again though, I'm happy to let him bluff some rivers if I check the turn back, and will call the river with my A-high on safer looking rivers.

benc

I like the check back on the turn, i don't think you need to bet for value as you want to get a cheap showdown with A high and can call aload of rivers and be good. I also don't mind the flat on the river, although i guess we are losing aload of value from all pairs and K cards he could be holding. I think i would probably put a small raise in for value but with the plan to fold if he then got tricky as he could easily of planned to check raise the turn with 3 or hit the 45 straight and then there is all the backdoors he could of hit.

So yeah basically raise for value and hope he is holding a pair to the board or some kind of K hand.

BorinLoner

I think our AK is going to be best alot of the time. If we bet the turn I don't imagine we can get anything better to fold but I do think we can be called by draws or we might get folds from worse hands that have decent equity against us.

It depends what we think of his raising range on the flop, I think. If he does this with any old junk then I definitely like betting the turn, mainly because I don't think we can expect him to raise junk on the flop, check the turn and then bluff again on the river. I think he just gives up completely most of the time after checking the turn because otherwise his line would be very unconvincing (Obviously that depends on him being vaguely aware of how his line looks). So by checking we just give a free card to a random hand.

If his range for raising the flop is weighted towards pairs and draws, then you'd expect him to keep betting the turn, wouldn't you? Especially if you've been flatting his flop raises alot.

I'm not sure it's right but I definitely think I would bet the turn. Yes, our hand is probably best and better definitely calls us. I just don't think his line makes sense for draws or made hands very often. Clearly player dependent, of course.

Lambert180

Will post result later tonight btw, just to give anyone else a chance to post.

rancid

turn is fine, no need to turn AK into a bluff - nothing is folding



oppo raising c bets with bluffs/weak prs

raise river

BorinLoner

If we bet the turn we're not bluffing, we're betting for value.

rancid

In Response to Re: 20NL HU - Rivered Two Pair:

If we bet the turn we're not bluffing, we're betting for value.
Posted by BorinLoner

Debatable, value from Ax/draws

rarther encourage the river bluff

BorinLoner

That's the question, though: If he's going to bluff the river with worse than AK he has to think check-raise bluffing the flop, checking the turn, then bluffing the river is fine.

If he knows better, then he should never bluff the river. If he never bluffs the river there's no value for us in checking back the turn. We just give him the free card to hit.

I think the made hands that make sense to raise the flop then check the turn are a pretty narrow part of his range, since we've seen him check-raise the flop then check-fold the turn before. Does he check-raise with 22 or check-call? A 6x or 7x hand seems like the most likely holding that beats us, now. Even those probably keep betting.

So I think when we bet the turn we get value from any draws, which seem unlikely, but we protect against the free card. I actually think the most likely draw he can have is the diamond draw or something like 89, because if he raises the flop with spades he probably carries on bluffing the turn. Obviously if we think he might take the line of check-raise, check, bet with air, then it's a different story.

I'm not sure it's better to bet the turn anyway, but this is my thinking on it.

rancid

Would think oppo has bluffs in range more than draws if oppo check gives up on turns after raising flop

checking turn to keep bluffs in would be good

if we follow the logic that oppo has bluffs the most and also draws sometimes that miss the majority then oppo bluffs rivers a lot when given the chance to do so

the fact that we have now hit means we crush all oppo range apart from some silly backdoor diamond, weird str or random trips - don't beleive oppo is that good to hold these hands


raise river - get paid - do you raise fold though )

benc

I understand where your coming from Borin with the spade draw and now diamond draw out there plus all the possible 1 to straight hands that he is bound to call with, so i agree with your logic on gaining some extra value with the best hand and protecting our hand as well. However personally i still think i would of probably checked behind and hoped to gain the missed turn value from him firing aload of rivers as a bluff. Obviously by taking this route we let them get there sometimes, but in this case we have kept the pot small and he will turn up with a bluff enough to make it profitable it think.

FWIW as he has only half potted it on the river i would suspect him to turn up with something he is value betting rather than bluffing. So possibly a random 3x or K, in my experience normally if someone decided to bluff the river they don't want to look so weak so bet big to look strong, although i guess that depends on how competent they are.

Lambert180

Thanks everyone.

So here is the result... he had Q8ss.

So in this particular case it's swings and roundabouts, if I bet the turn, I probably get value from him there, but very unlikely that he bluffs river once I've called the flop raise and bet the turn. So in this spot I'm either getting value on the turn or letting him bluff missed rivers but I don't think ever both.

That's why I didn't show the result. Again obviously if I raise the river he snap folds but we don't know he has a busted FD.

Shocked he didn't barrel the turn tbh after c/r with 2 overs + FD, and still having that on the turn.

bbMike

If previous action is you continuing on the turn and taking it away, maybe he's preparing a c/r there?