See the hand here at Deucescracked.com.
I’m still thinking over my river play, but I think my flop and turn play don’t really leave a lot to be discussed. Basically, what I’m trying to do is maximize any profit I can get vs flush draws and bluffs, and in the very rare event that I’m behind, not lose a ton of bets. In addition — and this is the reason I played the river as I did — I’m trying to avoid losing money to a chopping hand by increasing the rake. At Full Tilt, where I played this hand, the $1/2 6m game rakes $.25 out of every $5 in the pot up to $20 (a 10BB pot). As you’ll notice, even by playing the hand passively, the rake has inreased to $.75 by the time we reach the river. If I were able to say, for certain, that my opponent were donkish in one way or another (too aggressive, too showdown-happy, etc.) then I’d definitely put in more bets on the river — but on this particular board, I feel like his hand range is somewhat polarized.
Here’s what I guess I mean. He could have a pocket pair, but that’s fairly rare. He’d 3bet me, IMO, with 88+ and in these games, I see more and more players 3betting any pair in blind battles vs a SB opener. So on the flop, his handrange is mostly air, some pocket pairs (but not many), and Ax and 6x hands waiting to pop the turn. I think air is believable as many aggressive opponents call flops very lightly intending to either fold or raise the turn as a bluff. I could sometimes see him having King high or Queen high here as well, but below that I tend to categorize as “air.”
Back to the potsize and the small, but still somewhat important, question of rake. If I checkraise and he 3bets, I have to call even though I’m chopping a large % of the time (duh). Once the pot reaches 10BB, then another $.25 (1/8BB) is taken from the pot. The impact of this wouldn’t be large if it weren’t likely that my opponent were doing one of the following things:
1) 3betting a chopping hand.
2) Folding a bluff.
3) 3betting a winning hand.
I’m not particularly concerned about being behind on this board, but at the same time, the board is A6668. There aren’t a huge range of hands that, without villain having stood out yet, he could have here that are going to bet-call the river that I beat. That isn’t to say that 55 won’t occasionally play this way, as it certainly will, but it’s mitigated by the large % of the time that I lose 1/16 of a BB to a chop + am up against a bluff + have to call vs a 3bet.
I’m still not completely sold that check-calling the river here is better than checkraising. Having no rake would lead me to checkraise, and the impact of the rake on this isolated hand is not huge, but I felt at the time that it was big enough to not give my opponent the ability to put in more bets on the river.
Once all of that is said, I think that given the dynamic above, and the fact that I don’t have a great read yet (and I always want a strong read on the players immediately to my right and left) gives me an additional reason to play my hand passively: seeing a showdown here allows me to gauge my opponent’s tendencies in blind battles, and in spots where I’m not going to flop this well nearly this often, it’s nice to be able to play a little better vs. them in the future. So since there isn’t a ton of upside to raising, as I’ve spelled out, and there is a lot of upside to calling, I elected to call here.
My opponent showed T4o, and I dragged the pot my way. Later in the session, I tried to incorporate that read into how he would play vs me, especially given how passively I had played the hand. Having a read was nice, for sure — but who knows, maybe he would have bluff-3bet my river checkraise and I would have missed a lot of bets. 