You catched a two outs and your opponent is raising you…what else do you want? Re-raise!

I can’t wait to see someone justify a call.

This is a nice one.. 2 diamonds maybe hes drawing.. re-raise to get maximum if he draws and miss.. then he would probbably fold on river if no diamond come. I would slowplay this one call on turn, no diamond on river i bet 2/3 of the pot. Diamond on river i would check-call

wheres the fold button, he must be fast playing kings

Ill oblige Richard. Im calling.

We’re in the BB and our image is a little loose. We flat call the preflop bet, check call the flop, then lead the turn. He raises, continuing to show strength. Now if we reraise his raise here after he’s represented strength the whole way, I cant imagine him putting us on less than two pair. If I was him, Id be thinking k/10 or 10/8. Maybe something like k/8 slow playing the flop.

Now lets think about his range. Honestly I could see him having anything from air with suited connectors or high broadway cards that missed, to any pocket pair, to top pair with a good kicker.

Given his range, and the action, and how likely it is to put us on a hand that beats him, I think he folds most of the time to a reraise here.

So….. to get maximum value out of his range: If we reraise, he puts us on 2 pair and probably folds, but if we call and continue to look weak, or like we’re drawing and tried a blocking bet, we can continue to get chips on the river. id call here, and lead again for a little over half pot on the river. it will be hard for him to get away if he has anything but air, and who knows, maybe he makes a mistake and sees it as a block bet with a weak hand again and comes over the top if he makes a high two pair or he has a lower set. If he has air he wouldve folded to the turn reraise anyway. If he has a lower set we are going to get the money in on the river almost as easily as we were on the turn (unless a broadway diamond comes or something like that,making a lot of draws)

The difference here is by calling we dont fold out most of his range, and we can value bet the river which a good part of his range will now call. We also give him a chance to catch a draw, but if he’s drawing, its to something like 4 or 9 outs and Im not too worried. Lets say hes holding A/Q….we’re fading 4 outs. he folds if we reraise now, but might call a value bet on the river if an ace or queen comes. Not too likely, but maintaining our weak line here gives us a shot at extra chips. Same thing with any other broadway combo, he cold make a second pair or a big pair and make a mistake.

He’s a solid regular, on the turn he’s probably not going to re-re-raise or even call the re-raise with one pair against a loose opponent who could easily have hit a two pair hand. But if we maintain our weak image and his hand is reasonably strong, or improves on the river it will be hard to get away from a river value bet.

“We also give him a chance to catch a draw”

Thank you for obliging.

Richard, only a weak tight player wouldnt understand that when you play for value, theres always risk involved. The goal in a cash game is to make +EV plays. If youre fading only a few outs, but the play that is likely to make you more money overall is to check, or call, or play it soft, then that is the +EV play. Sure, sometimes you get burned, but overall you make more money playing for that value. It’s the difference between being profitable and not in the long run. I see scared weaker players jump through the roof with big raises to protect hands all the time. The minute I see it, I know thats a player I can target because theyre going to give it away when they have a hand. Easy to get away when you see the obvious danger signs.

The better players are crafting images and storylines throughout hands…and its much harder to figure out if you should make the call with top pair on the river…should you raise them off bottom pair with air, or are you beat with top two. Good players are good because they work to induce mistakes. My play here is designed to make the villain make a mistake, and it has a much bigger chance of doing that than yours….yes, at the risk of letting him catch what is likely a 4 or 9 outter if he is drawing. In the long run, and even over the course of the session, playing in an unreadable way, and focusing on value plays will make me more successfull than someone who doesnt understand this basic cash game tenet.

@ Cityborn

Nice post and I agree with what you are saying but we are OOP here and opp is showing strength. I would just call if IP but here we should bet before the cooler.

Ship it, Im all-in here hoping that my image and his cards will cause him to call. If you call the pot is over 600 and there are a lot of cards that could come where you are oop and will make your decisions harder.
The 400 now out there is a significant pot and my hand is too big and also too vulnerable we going to have a hard time if another paint or
A come. Better to take it now or get it all in when we are nearly always ahead. Make him have a hard time getting away from his hand.

I voted call, for the reasons that CityBorn has already pointed out. However, there is something that bothers me about this situation and makes me want to raise.. Villain is telling us he has a real hand - which of course 1) might be true or not and 2) might mean anything between top set, mid/bottom set, top pair w. good kicker or a good draw. Set vs. set is probably the most straightforward situation - if we raise here then one of us will stack off, if we call here then one of us will stack off at river unless a diamond falls and kills the action.

If we’re up against AA/AK, call is clearly a superior play. Against AQ/AJ we would want to raise as we won’t get much value from them at river.

And this leaves us with drawing hands. Given the action, suited broadway combos look very likely candidates and these are the hands that I really wouldn’t like to play a big pot against OOP here. The turn card that made our hand also substantially improved a bunch of draws in the Villain’s distribution and this would be consistent with the reraise. River can now bring too many scare cards.. Any diamond, A, Q, J or 9 is potentially dangerous, and once they fall value betting the river is a very tricky business out of position with 600 in the middle.

That is almost half the deck that I’d rather not see at river.. and this would really make me want to push right here.

neither is a bad choice, this decision really depends on your opponent

i’d call as this would represent a flush draw (as he thinks we are loose) more often than not, the flush will not come, so when we check the river, he’ll bet and we can raise

the raise can we interpreted as a bluff on a busted draw, or he might have 2 pair/lower set (or bigger set)and get his chips in

if he is on a flush draw, he only has 7 outs, as the Td and Kd mean he gets to feed us chips

if one of his supposed outs does come, i check-call the river

If opponent’s hand is strong enough to bet the river after we called his turn raise then it’s good enough to get it all in on the turn.

anyone who says call is sick, move it all in baby

Raise or call, both are fine.

Generally in this spot I think if you’re putting your opponent on a drawing hand here you want to raise, but if you’re putting them on a made hand we should be calling here in order to not scare them off.

When we bet the turn our line as it stands looks like either two-pair or a drawing hand that threw out a blocking bet, whilst the chance we have trips is still low. Now if we call the opponents re-raise I think that makes our range look on the weaker side - a loose call drawing or possibly a cautious two pair whilst raising makes it look like two pair or trips.

Our opponent’s line does not look like one that represents a draw to me from a solid player. If they were drawing I think they’d be happy to call our turn bet. This is not a certainty of course, plenty of people will play their draw aggressively here in position.

But I’m leaning more towards a made hand, and hence calling to disguise my holdings and trying to extract more value with another lead on the river.

Raise is still solid play here however, it extracts value from drawing hands and our loose image means that our opponent might not give us credit for trips setting us up for a big pay day.

More often than not I reckon a re-raise here makes our opponent dump too many made hands we could get more value out of though.

Opponent’s line would make perfect sense if it’s a combo draw. Besides, a solid opponent would play both their strong draws and made hands the same way in a spot like this.

With only one card to come there are no strong draws.

Open-ended flush draw (QJd 9Jd) - 30% chance to win

Flush draw holding both your outs (KTd) %25 chance to win

Gut-shot flush draw ( AJd AQd 67d 7Jd) - 23% chance to win.

Flush draw holding one of your outs ( XKd/XTd ) - 18%

Open-ended straight draw - 18%

Flush draw - 16%

Gutshot - 9%

So with the strongest possible combo draws the opponent has the correct odds to call our turn bet but by raising our turn bet they are making a semi-bluff which relies on some fold equity to be a +EV move.

I don’t know how much fold equity you think there is against an opponent who’s line is check/call flop lead turn.

But it isn’t a lot.

Re-raising our turn bet here with at best a 30% chance to win and without a lot of fold equity is an aggressive move, not a solid move.

Like I said, they might be doing this with a draw, but it makes a lot more sense for them do be doing it with a made hand.

Sorry those odds are calculated vs our hand and the villian would obviously not be putting us on trips.

Our bet was for either a blocking bet or for value. The opponent’s raise makes a lot of sense if they think we were making a blocking bet. It makes a bit of sense if they have no idea what our bet was and are trying to find out. It doesn’t make much sense at all if they think we were betting for value.

That’s precisely the point - the opponent has no reason to put us on so strong a hand.

This is a tough choice; at first I am thinking call, because he most likely has top pair with kicker or aces, and a reraise here will scare him off the hand, whereas if you call here, you can value bet the river and get him to pay off. Of course, the other alternative that perfectly fits his play, is that he know has a set of eights, and if he does, and you reraise here, you can get him to shove all in. But of course you should just call here, because if he has kings, you can get a value bet of him on the river, and if he has 3 eights you can get him for all in on the river.

The only variable is the flush draw, if he has 3 eights and the flush hits, you won’t be able to stack him on the river, because he will prolly be a bit scared, so you might need to do a little number crunching to figure out the percentage of the time he will have 3 eights and a diamond will come on the river and you wont get to stack him, versus the percentage of the time he will pay off for value on the river with his top pair top kicker/ aces. But, since his stack is not that big in relation to the pot already, and if he has something like a good pair 4-5th of the time, the odds are prolly much better to call with the intention of value betting, then risk missing stacking him when he has a set of eights and a diamond hits.