[monkiesystem]

The solver says my flop and turn decisions were unexploitable. But on the river it says the unexploitable play was to probe with a bet of 25% pot.

I was concerned about finding myself in a gross hero-calling spot if I bet and then V raised big. So I played it as a ck-call.

Interestingly enough, the solver’s unexploitable plays would’ve put me in the gross spot and then folding 90% of the time to a big, polarized raise.

Question: How do we know the difference between good but not amazing hands where we bet-fold and those where we check-call?

[tvstensby]

How often does the solver raise when you bet on the river? Folding 90% of the time is not a problem if it happens rarely.

On a flush completing river with a possible straight your opponent is likely to call behind with a lot of their range. When you make a small bet they are forced to defend with a wide range, including a lot of hands that you beat.

What does the solvers check-back range on the turn look like for your opponent? If the solver bets a lot of flush draws on the river, then these are no longer in our opponents range. Reducing the number of combos of made flushes your opponent can have on the river and correspondingly the number of bluffs that go into a polarized raising range.

Regarding your question: perhaps bet-folding instead of check-calling with a good hand is a good idea when a significant portion of your opponents value range would take a different line on one of the earlier streets.

Disclaimer: I have not studied this spot in any tool so the ideas above are only based on my “gut feeling”.

[fivebyfive]

I have to say, this one surprised me too. I ran in in Range Trainer post flop and got the same results. We’re supposed to lead small with all of our Ax except our best Ax (AJ/AQ). We’re also finding quite a few combos as bluffs too. Leading out with our non-flush suited combos of Kx, Qx, and Jx and some of our off-suit Kx, Qx, Jx too. But this seems super, super thin. I don’t think we’re ever folding out a better hand. In fact, side note, Range Trainer thinks that V should raise our small bet with AJo, especially AxJh. I guess we’re mostly just targeting V’s pocket pairs KK-66 with this range and easily folding to any further aggression? We get value from those small pocket pairs but lose less against the hands that beat us when the call and when we get raised?

The suggested bluffs make even less sense to me. I might find a few with some of these holdings, but the sheer amount of them is really weird to me. If the solver expects V to call/raise with 66+, what on earth are we targeting with this massive amount of bluffs? I guess V can have some of those similar types of hands, but not as many (they opened UTG1). So I’m baffled by the preferred bluffs and can’t figure it out. I guess these broadway cards block a decent number of V’s possible Ax holdings, but I can’t see how this can be EV to basically bluff with any combo that holds broadway cards.

In game, I’m playing this hand like you did. But I am thinking about this solve and wondering if there is a nice middle ground on polarized rivers like this. Our value doesn’t beat much, so let’s try to get some value from the value we do beat while also allowing ourselves to get away cheaply. This is also a tough board for V to bluff at because we can be quite strong. So we likely can’t be all that exploited by river bluffs that beat our Ax holding.