Should I check the river?

watto84

He had a huge stack in the 4k BH and was bullying alot of people. I think I made the right fold on river but would like peoples thoughts on how played the hand.


PlayerActionCardsAmountPotBalanceAllyD90Small blind 30.0030.007990.00watto84Big blind 60.0090.004867.50 Your hole cardsJJ   goodylad21Fold    Fat_UncleRaise 180.00270.0018282.50pazzer59Fold    salmonishFold    AllyD90Fold    watto84Raise 300.00570.004567.50Fat_UncleCall 180.00750.0018102.50Flop  Q58   watto84Bet 300.001050.004267.50Fat_UncleCall 300.001350.0017802.50Turn  4   watto84Bet 425.001775.003842.50Fat_UncleCall 425.002200.0017377.50River  A   watto84Bet 800.003000.003042.50Fat_UncleAll-in 17377.5020377.500.00watto84Fold    Fat_UncleMuck    Fat_UncleWin 3800.00 3800.00Fat_UncleReturn 16577.500.0020377.50

hhyftrftdr

Need to raise much more pre. All 3 streets of betting looks pretty weak, less than half pot each time. Would just check fold river probably, beating nothing by then.

Lambert180

3bet bigger pre.

Cbet bigger

Bet turn bigger

Think I'm c/f river unless I have a note he's some kinda maniac. You can end up levelling yourself in these spots if you think too much about it because your bet sizing throughout makes it pretty obvious you don't have a big hand which means villian doesn't necessarily need to have any hand at all to just shove a scary river card but just fold imo

DoubleAAA

Raise pf to ~500, cbet is fine (just under 1/2 pot), bet 1/2 pot turn, c/f river.

BorinLoner

Definitely agree with 3-betting bigger pre-flop. We're out of position against someone who's been very aggressive. We don't want to give him an easy opportunity to flat and outplay us post-flop. We also want to give him the chance to call a bigger raise, paying us more for a hand we're confident is ahead of his range.

On the flop, I don't mind the size of your c-bet. If we're making a much bigger bet than this we have to ask what we're going to be called by. The most likely candidate is the Queen, then lower pairs and then draws. We may still be called by Ax or KJ type hands that are floating us. The bigger we make our c-bet the tougher it is for the villain to call us with the weaker hands in his range and the more likely it is that we're being called by better hands and hands with good equity.

Since draws are a fairly small part of the villain's range, I don't think we need to make this c-bet much bigger at all. We could perhaps squeeze a little more out of it but it's fine.

On the turn, though, we definitely bet way too small. Having been called on the flop, we should think it's likely that the villain has something. If he has a Queen, he's probably not folding to us but if he has a draw, we don't want to give him such a good price to make the call. (We do want him to call but we want him to be making a mistake by doing so) Being in position on us is going to make it easy for him to call our weak bet here and put pressure on us on the river, whether he gets there or not.


The logic behind your river bet really needs looking at. It looks suspiciously like a blocker bet but what did you think that would achieve?

If you were betting small because you thought this small amount was the only amount that could be called by weaker hands, that's good. It means you were thinking about getting value from your hand. As it happens, I don't think it would have been the best line of thinking because it's tough to see how the villain can have worse than us at this stage and still call any amount. Every draw got there and we were already beaten by a Queen.

The worst thing about your sizing is that it invited your opponent to bluff you, having displayed so much weakness. If you genuinely are weak, you don't want to look like it. Checking here would look less weak than betting small.

If your bet was just trying to prevent him from betting bigger than this, you have to ask if that's really a good solution. If he flat calls with a Queen, is that better than checking the river to him? If we check the river we can fold and save ourselves those 800 chips. If we bet and can only be called when we're beat, then we're really just bluffing with our hand... but we're bluffing an amount that will never get our opponent to fold.

If we do check, I think we have to hope that the villain checks behind. Most competent villains are going to bet here, though. We just have to accept that the board has run out really badly for us and if the villain is bluffing us, he's played well. We can't overcome the advantage his position gives him.


So raise bigger pre-flop. The flop bet's fine, although you could go a little bigger. The turn bet needs to be bigger. Check-fold the river.