Blind vs Blind spot vs Greg Merson

[The Squid]

Very last  hand of first level of Day 3. Merson started day with big stack and lost quite a lot of chips over last two hours. No reason to think he knows anything about me. Only relevant had is last time it folded to him in small blind he limped. I iso'd to 3x he check folded J45 two tone.

Blinds 800/1600/200
I have approx 68k. He has probably 110k or something in that region.

Merson limps sb. I check A7o pretty quickly. Flop A64cc. Ace is a club we have no club.

Merson bets 3k, I call.

Turn . He checks I bet 6.3k he makes it 16.8k. If we call we have 45k back.

Thoughts on all streets? If we call turn what rivers are we calling?

[Honeybadger]

First thoughts are to call and then fold the river unimproved, barring some soul read. You are close to the bottom of your range on a blank river. Your range is protected since you'd be flatting many (all?) of your nutted hands too. So villain cannot just recklessly jam the river with all his air. Thus villain will likely check the river a decent percentage of the time.

[Honeybadger]

Noone else gonna give their thoughts about this hand? It seems like a pretty interesting spot.

[outragous76]

Call then c/r river , you gotta keep a rep up dude! 

[outragous76]

Call now then probably c/f

[Tal]

May I just say it's lovely to know that this spot is difficult for someone of your stature, Mr Squid, cos I'm pretty much vomiting all over the table when he check-raises that turn.

What hands do we think he makes this play with? The chap is capable of anything, but it's a strange line for no hand. He knows you have something, so the c/r looks necessarily stronger.

Would he be doing this with  for example? Is that the bottom of his range?

As played, I think I fold because I expect him to fire a lot of rivers and I've already made an embarrassing mess on the table, so haven't been able to disguise the strength of my hand.

[Pinchop73]

I like pre. Our hand is neither weak enough to r/f nor strong enough to r/c or to raise 4b/c.

I like the flop call.

Turn is such an awful card for us. So many hands he bets the flop with have got there. I really much prefer to check behind on the turn. Value betting here seems too thin as he has hardly anything worse in his range that he bets flop and checks turn with. Betting to get value from 6 combos of 64o seems thin.

I'd prefer to loose a little value here and make him wiff a c/r because if it does come (> 50% of a c/r probably with line taken on this specific turn card) it's a super horrible spot he can put us in with lots of his air, semi bluffs and nutted hands. I mean if we 3b the turn I doubt he folds a set.
When we check behind I think we can legit bet for value if he also checks river. I think calling a river bet from him on non club rivers is marginal but probs flick it.

As played I just don't know how we continue. It would be really fucking difficult to fold

[dwayne110]

Check-check on turn, call the river if bet into, & if he checks again I'm betting small and calling if he raises similar to his turn raise. When all's said & done he's made up the small blind with a view to outplaying you, as he thinks he can. He's going to make things difficult so often when we bet into him. If we get to the river we're going to be good so often with 2 pair.

[The Squid]

People seem to be saying the only hand strong enough to bet turn with is a flush.

[TL900]

I cant think of a better line than honeybadgers, people saying check turn just being results orientated on the fact that we got raised when he is going to c/call an absolute ton imo. Pretty grim spot though, call and fold river seems the best line I can think of.

[Tal]

I cant think of a better line than honeybadgers, people saying check turn just being results orientated on the fact that we got raised when he is going to c/call an absolute ton imo. Pretty grim spot though, call and fold river seems the best line I can think of.

Humour me, if you would be so patiently delicious...

- Calling is because we think we often have the best hand, but we don't get any value from a 3bet. Fine.
- if we are ahead, Merson knows that he is behind because A7 is very low in our range. This means he is betting, what, 80% of rivers? More? Less? He can't win the pot and I seem to recall he isn't shy in having a go at winning pots he shouldn't be in. He wouldn't check AQ if a blank river came, would he? He can't imagine he's good and he's repping huge if he bets.
- if we are behind, Merson is betting 90% of rivers, too.
- so, calling but intending to fold to a bet on the river just gives away money most of the time, doesn't it?
- this is unless we call with the intention of calling some rivers, effectively as a bluff-catcher. I would worry then that we've put a lot of money in when we are only beating a bluff or a misplayed hand.

Again, this is precisely why we Recs steer clear of thinking.

[TL900]

I cant think of a better line than honeybadgers, people saying check turn just being results orientated on the fact that we got raised when he is going to c/call an absolute ton imo. Pretty grim spot though, call and fold river seems the best line I can think of.

Humour me, if you would be so patiently delicious...

- Calling is because we think we often have the best hand, but we don't get any value from a 3bet. Fine.
- if we are ahead, Merson knows that he is behind because A7 is very low in our range. This means he is betting, what, 80% of rivers? More? Less? He can't win the pot and I seem to recall he isn't shy in having a go at winning pots he shouldn't be in. He wouldn't check AQ if a blank river came, would he? He can't imagine he's good and he's repping huge if he bets.
- if we are behind, Merson is betting 90% of rivers, too.
- so, calling but intending to fold to a bet on the river just gives away money most of the time, doesn't it?
- this is unless we call with the intention of calling some rivers, effectively as a bluff-catcher. I would worry then that we've put a lot of money in when we are only beating a bluff or a misplayed hand.

Again, this is precisely why we Recs steer clear of thinking.

Its a good spot for Merson to c/r bluff because it puts us in a coffin with nearly our whole range which I think he expects us to fold such a high % of it. However when we call, we still have the nuts in our range so as Stuart said he can't just recklessly jam 100% of the time.

He wouldn't be c/r a hand like AQ ott here imo even with a club he would be much more likely to bet or c/call (he also limped pre which means the chances of him having AQ are slim albeit not out of the question at all)

We can also potentially turn our hand into a bluff otr if another club rolls off or we can boat up/the board can pair.

I would imagine Greg would think Sam will flick in the 3k otf with a ton of floats with some backdoor equity/gutshots etc that will stab the turn a bunch so I would think Greg would c/call almost all his marginal/showdownable type hands and then c/r the best (flushes) and the worst parts of his range to punish Sam's floats etc.

But who am I to say all this really, I have absolutely no idea how a player like Greg Merson thinks or plays so my thinking might be totally off but I'd like to think it makes a little sense atleast.

[Tal]

Thanks, Tom.

So, we don't think he bets a lot of rivers, either because he has showdown value with a hand or because he doesn't think we can fold to a bluff? That's interesting.

This idea of turning your hand into a bluff is also interesting. If a club lands on the river, we can get sets to fold (although I would expect small and mid pairs to form less of a player's limp range than AK/AQ - sound reasonable?) and we can get a straight to fold sometimes. Can you see my difficulty with this idea, though?

We bet the turn because we think we are winning.

Then we call the c/r because we are often winning but can't raise.

Now we're considering turning our hand into a bluff.



Whenever I start thinking about a hand on PHA it becomes a derail. Sorry!

[TL900]

He definitely CAN bet the river a decent % of the time but just imo not as much as people think he will, I think he has a fair few bluffs ott personally but he just can't follow through on the river with 100% of his bluffs because to call the turn c/r shows we have a pretty strong hand range which includes flushes and the nut flush.

I would say the opposite actually and that small pairs make up a bigger portion of his limping range than AK/AQ however I do know that Greg likes to limp alot from the small blind so his hand range is kind of difficult to define compared to some players (which makes the turn c/r even tougher spot etc)

We bet the turn because we think there are enough hands that Greg is potcontrolling/has weaker showdown value than us that we can get called by as I said in the previous post when he check raises his range changes dramatically to super strong hands (flushes, sets, straights) and hands with very little/no equity so by 3betting the turn we sorta just valuetown ourselves alot.

If the river bought a club for example it would generally be a better card for our range than his imo and as he has some small flushes, sets, straights that he pretty much just has to c/f to us now otr so we can potentially get better hands to fold and if he has a worse hand then he folds anyway.

Don't apologise, not a derail at all. As Stu said it is actually a pretty interesting/difficult spot I'm surprised more people haven't posted but questions like yours are always good and I'm sure most people will be happy to try and help as I am doing.

FWIW I am definitely open/can be convinced different lines are better it feels like a spot that just isn't gona be clear cut on any decision.

[Honeybadger]

This means he is betting, what, 80% of rivers? More? Less? He can't win the pot and I seem to recall he isn't shy in having a go at winning pots he shouldn't be in. He wouldn't check AQ if a blank river came, would he? He can't imagine he's good and he's repping huge if he bets.
- if we are behind, Merson is betting 90% of rivers, too.

So, we don't think he bets a lot of rivers, either because he has showdown value with a hand or because he doesn't think we can fold to a bluff? That's interesting.

Tal, I think about these situations in a different way to you (and most people perhaps). I am going to try to explain in as simple a way as possible, but without being patronising and dumbing it down - because I know you are clever as fuck, and also that you just pretend to be an ice-cream at poker.

First, I know nothing at all about how villain plays. I just googled Greg Merson and it turns out he won the ME last year - it sort of rang a bell when I saw that and I felt a bit stupid (I don't follow tournament poker much). But that still didn't help me know how he is going to play. So I don't make guesses like "he is betting, what, 80% of rivers" with his air, or "So, we don't think he bets a lot of rivers, either because he has showdown value with a hand or because he doesn't think we can fold to a bluff?". I have simply no idea what he is going to do. He is presumably a good player so he is not likely to be ridiculously unbalanced either way - i.e. he is not going to be purely nutted on the river, but neither is he likely to be way too bluff heavy. If he is a little unbalanced either way (he bluffs a bit too much or not quite enough), well I don't know which way he leans. So I am just making my decision by 'reading my own hand', rather than trying to read his. i.e. I am thinking about things in GTO terms rather than exploitative terms. Given the fact we have called a turn check-raise, our range is really pretty strong on a blank river. And A7 is close to the bottom of this range. If villain jams the river we should be folding just under 50% of our range, since he will have risked 45k to win around 48k. By calling with around half our range, and folding the other half, villain is indifferent to jamming with his bluffs, which is what we should aim for. A7 is definitely in the bottom 50% of our range on a blank river, so we should fold it.

I realise it seems a bit uncomfortable to you to call the turn, knowing you are going to fold to a river jam. But there is nothing wrong with this. In fact it is just good poker. Villain should not jam all his air on the river, since he has to remain balanced. A river jam is roughly pot-sized and gives us ~2/1 on the call, and thus villain needs approximately 1 air combo for every 2 nutted combos he jams in order to make us indifferent with our bluff catchers. So he has to just give up with a chunk of his air. And that is the point. The river will go check-check a decent amount of the time, and that is when we make money (also, when we boat up).

Now granted, if villain (unbeknownst to us) is going to jam 100% of his range on the river then we would be making a 'mistake' to call the turn and fold the river, and we should in fact call turn and call river. But even if we don't do this (because we don't know his tendencies), it is still fine to take the GTO line - it is a 'mistake'... not a mistake. We are just unlucky to have the folding part of our range this time - but we still make money overall, because the times we ARE nutted, villain gives us too much value by jamming with an unbalanced frequency.

Maybe villain never jams a blank river with anything less than a flush (i.e. he is unbalanced the other way... not enough bluffs). In this case we 'lose out' the times we have a really strong hand because we don't get the value from his bluffs (or thin value jams). But we gain the times we have a hand like A7 because he lets us get to showdown too often. It is reciprocal, and balances out.

The point is that if we play as balanced a strategy as possible then we automatically win money with our overall range if villain is unbalanced either way, even if don't know to which side he is leaning. Of course if we do know which side he is leaning then we depart from GT and take exploitative lines instead. e.g. If we know he is never jamming anything less than a flush on the river then we can exploitatively fold sets, straights and baby flushes, but can call a little wider on the turn since we are going to be able to get to showdown more often. Or if we know villain is going to jam 100% of the time on a river blank then we make an exploitative adjustment and call with A7.

But since we don't know anything much about villain's tendencies (all we have is guesses) then we should start off by just letting GT dictate our play, content in the knowledge that as long as we are fairly close to 'correct play' then we automatically make some money with our range if villain is less balanced.

This idea of turning your hand into a bluff is also interesting. If a club lands on the river, we can get sets to fold (although I would expect small and mid pairs to form less of a player's limp range than AK/AQ - sound reasonable?) and we can get a straight to fold sometimes. Can you see my difficulty with this idea, though?

Yeah I can see how this one is difficult to get. But think about it in a different way. When a 4th club hits the river and opponent checks, we are going to want to value bet (at the very least) the nut flush - whether we have just made it on the river, or whether we were slowplaying it on the turn. And so we need some bluff combos to balance out our nutted combos (around a 1:2 air/nuts ratio since it is a roughly pot sized jam laying opponent 2/1) in order to make our opponent indifferent to calling with his bluff catchers - and his whole range is likely a bluff catcher once he checks. But the problem is that we don't actually have any complete air on the river once a 4th club arrives. So we are going to have to choose some of our weakest made hands to turn into bluffs in order not to be far too value-heavy (i.e. not enough bluffs) on the river. Whether A7 is the right hand to do this with I don't know (we don't need many bluff combos and we do have some weaker hands than A7 that could be used instead), but it seems a reasonable candidate at the very least.