Pocket Kings vs. a River Bet on a Double-Paired Board
DECISION POINT: In a no-limit hold'em cash game, you raise from UTG+1 with K?K?. The player in the hijack seat calls and everyone else folds. You continuation bet the J?J?Q? flop and your opponent calls. The turn brings the the 2?. You bet again and the player in the hijack calls once more.
On the Q? river you check and your opponent bets about 75 percent of the pot. The action is on you...
PRO ANSWER: In order to call $1,150 on the river to win what will be a total pot of $3,875, we must believe that our hand is good at least 1,150 / 3,875 or approximately 30 percent of the time.
Since Villain is unlikely to value bet any worse hands than ours, we must believe that Villain's range consists of at least 30 percent bluffs to justify a call.
Our opponent could potentially bluff with hands like T-9s, K-Ts, and counterfeited lower pairs like 9-9 or 8-8.
However, most of the pairs lower than J-J fold to a turn bet and we block 2 combos of K-Ts. So that leaves T-9s as the only common bluffing hand for Villain. Those two hands total 6 combinations of bluffs.
Meanwhile Villain could be betting any Q-x or J-x hand for value, of which there are around 50 combos that are likely in their range. All of these combos beat us and will often be played this way by our opponent.
Overall, our opponent's hand range is comprised of bluffs far less often than 30 percent of the time. There simply aren't enough bluffs in Villain's range to justify calling.
Folding on the river is the best play.
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