Missed AK on river with options, NL cash

Game type: 3/6 No Limit cash game, full ring
Your image: You have been very active with your raises
Misc notes: You have forced your opponent, a solid TAG player, to lay down several hands
Your hand: A♣K♣

The setup: You’ve been playing a very aggressive brand of poker, winning several pots on the flop and turn, and going to very few showdowns. You have forced this particular opponent to lay down several hands in the last few orbits.

When you pick up AK preflop with a limper in front, you continue the pattern and raise to a little more than 3x the BB. The table folds to the BB, who calls, and the limper calls. You completely whiff the flop:

7♣2♥4♦

… and when both players check, you decide to slow down and take off a free card. It’s a decent one – 2♣. Both players check again, and you decide to bet. You make a bit of a mistake and bet fairly weak at $30, roughly half pot. The TAG player in the blind check raises you to $103, and the limper folds. With the nut flush draw and two overs, you call the $73.

The river is a Q♠. The blind leads out for $108 into $269, making a pot of about $375. You have ace high. What’s your play?

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13 COMMENTS (Jump to comment form)

Nelson

This is a clear fold for me. A high facing a river bet…hmmm. Not feeling the hero call here against this particular type of opponent. I can almost guarantee he has a queen or at least something like pocket 8′s or 9′s. I hate it when I feel like one of those players that just can’t lay down AK no matter what. Cut the bleeding, fold, next hand please.

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Fold. To me our line reeks of exactly what we have two big clubs. River bet seems like a bit of a blocking bet with either a seven or 88-TT, could also be a value bet with QTc or QJc. We are behind here almost all of the time. We could raise to represent AQc (which to me is the only hand that fits with our line that beats his blocking bet range) we would need to raise big to have much fold equity and given our history of taking him off hands I don’t think the villain is in much of a folding mood

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Waste_Of_Paint Reply:
February 4th, 2011 at 3:11 pm

Interesting question to come from that… would you actually raise here with AQc?

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Aj Reply:
February 4th, 2011 at 4:24 pm

Given our history with the villian I think he would look us up with enough of his blocKing bet range to make a raise with tptk profitable. If we rAise to 300 to 350 he’s getting better than 3:1. If we were deeper I might worry about him reshoving but the stack sizes are awkward for that. I think overall it would be a great spot to extract more value from an opponents that is tired of being bluffed

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blue Reply:
February 4th, 2011 at 10:26 pm

Yes raising AQc is fine here.

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Groundhog day

Seriously? How can this not be a snap fold.

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general johnson jameson

Really surprised to see so many people folding so quickly… and with no real good reason why. Yes it is a river bet, but its puny, and his line makes no sense.

If I try to put him on any hand here that could reasonably take this path, it doesn’t make sense. What could he have that would flat out of the blinds, check, risk a check/then raise, and then puny lead the river? It is unreasonable to think he called anything with a 2, and then happened to land 3 of them. 88 or 99 wouldn’t check the turn after it checked around. That is a perfect board on the turn for 88 99 and no one would ever check it after a check-around. Plus, he has no reason to think we are going to bet the turn after we checked the flop. So his check looks genuine, and the raise looks improvised. His raise was intended to get us to fold a stab, but he doesn’t realize we had a big draw. Then on the river, he knows he can only win with a bluff, and goes the value bet bluff route in case we actually do have a hand. This makes the most sense, and is probably the simplest explanation. The only other possible route is that he has 44 or 77. A set would check flop to raiser, but we don’t bite. On the turn he fills it, and checks again. He gets a bite, goes for some more, we come along. The Q hits our range, he makes a cheese bet. This makes perfect sense to me, although I still feel if he had a real hand on the turn he’d bet it there in fear of it checking around again and losing a lot of value. Also, what could he possibly have, that could be so strong as to bet so little on the river and expect a call from anything, vs. having a pair and betting so little in order to get a call from what possible hand? What is his value bet expecting here? Again no real answer, cuz we’ve shown zero interest.

So, the only real plausible things he could have here to me are a terrible line bluff, or a full house. I’m getting 3.7:1 on my dough, and I find it hard to believe that at least 1 time in 4 this isn’t the simplest explanation in that he’s full of shit and its a bluff. If he has a full house the other 3 times so be it.

There is a chance he rivered a Q on us, but unless it is a very good one I don’t think he can bet it as often, because our preflop range, including the check/raise call, easily includes AQc, KQc, QJc on that turn board. It probably works better as a bluff card for him, even though it still hit our range.

I call. This can’t be a full house or lucky strong queen all 4 times. Simplest and most common explanation is that he’s full of shit, and usually Occam’s razor is right on. I’ve seen a million stories that don’t make sense, and this is just another one of them, and the majority of the time the guy is full of it, unless he is a complete moron and doesn’t know how to play a hand optimally.

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blue

I think cbeting the flop is good. If we’ve been running over the table previously – keep going until you meet resistance.

Bet turn bigger, now when we bet small we dont know if BB is picking on our small bet, or actually has a hand.

On the river, his range consists of full houses and air. getting ridiculous odds im calling. obviously previous history of villain would be nice to be more accurate in this decision.

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_CityBorn_

i fold faster than my laundry lady folds my underwear.

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Fold He has AA. Flatted raise pre, checked turn with raising your aggro image in mind, improved with turn so same play, maybe put u on AXc, hoped u riv the queen or look him up with big A. Doing it with the limper makes this an awesome play.

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Waste_of_Paint Reply:
February 6th, 2011 at 5:25 am

Nothing like putting an opponent on a range of hands!

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blue Reply:
February 6th, 2011 at 9:12 am

lol wp

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Pirate21

Bluffing the river (especially in the face of a lead bet from your opponent) doesn’t usually work if you decide to do it once you get there. You have to have set it up properly on the flop and/or the turn.
If you don’t create a viable story on earlier streets, the bluff looks like a desperate last-ditch effort to steal the pot. That’s exactly how a raise would look here in my opinion.

Remember- we don’t have to win every pot…even if we had the best hand p/f.

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