Bad Play - Easy fold on the river?

LARSON7

Hand from 2p 4p cash, no reads on oppo, tho has been playing passive first few hands ive seen. Easy fold on the river i think, and i go and call! Opinions welcome

craigcu12	Small blind		£0.02	£0.02	£2.85
Flqk	Big blind		£0.04	£0.06	£7.50
	Your hole cards	9 9
jayrob93	Raise		£0.16	£0.22	£2.87
shabaz1969	Fold
LARSON7	Call		£0.16	£0.38	£5.14
craigcu12	Fold
Flqk	Fold
Flop
		4 8 2
jayrob93	Bet		£0.19	£0.57	£2.68
LARSON7	Call		£0.19	£0.76	£4.95
Turn
		3
jayrob93	Bet		£0.38	£1.14	£2.30
LARSON7	Call		£0.38	£1.52	£4.57
River
		J
jayrob93	Bet		£1.14	£2.66	£1.16
LARSON7	Call		£1.14	£3.80	£3.43
jayrob93	Show	K K
LARSON7	Muck	9 9
jayrob93	Win	Pair of Kings

BorinLoner

What range did you give him when he open-raised pre-flop?
Which hands had you seen him play before? You say he'd played passively, so which hands had he showndown and how did he play those?

When passive players start betting we have to think that they're probably pretty strong. I like calling pre-flop to set-mine because we can be giving him a pretty narrow range of big hands which we can stack if we hit.

I also don't mind calling the bet on the flop because this bet can just be a c-bet with something like AK/AQ and we can see what he does on the turn. Most weaker players give up after firing one barrell if they have no hand.

The turn is where I think we can find a fold. We have a passive player raising pre-flop and betting multiple streets. Alright, he's not betting big but since he's a generally passive player we can assume that he simply doesn't understand bet-sizing very well, so we shouldn't read too much into that.

Of course, if some of those hands we've seen him play passively include hands like AK or AQ, then we can even find a fold on the flop. Against players like this we probably don't need to be taking on marginal value situations because we can win lots of small pots against them with good, aggressive play in position.

craigcu12

the best thing you should have did was raise on the turn if not the flop because with you holding a overpair he could quite easily be c betting with nothing so had you did a raise then he made a shove you would know for sure you were beat.

BorinLoner

In Response to Re: Bad Play - Easy fold on the river?:

the best thing you should have did was raise on the turn if not the flop because with you holding a overpair he could quite easily be c betting with nothing so had you did a raise then he made a shove you would know for sure you were beat.
Posted by craigcu12

I really don't like raising the turn because it's really hard for him to continue with a hand we beat, so we wouldn't raising for value. It's also really unlikely that he'd fold a better hand to a raise on the turn, so we're not raising as a bluff.

Raising for information is almost always a bad reason to raise. If the information we get is that our opponent folds, then we know we've forced him to fold a weaker hand than ours, which he might have bet again: So we've lost value. If he raises us, then the only information we get is that we have the worst hand and we've paid him more than we needed to for that information.

Really good players will often find ways to give us bad information, recognising that our intention is to fold to another raise. So if we can't even always get reliable information, then raising for information is a flawed premise.

The two reasons we should bet or raise should be either:

1) Betting for value - To get more money from hands we beat. (The idea of "Protecting your hand" usually falls into this category)

2) Betting as a bluff - To force our opponent to fold a better hand.

Any other reason for betting is usually a bad reason for betting.

LARSON7

Cheers Borin and Craig, it was a misstep. It;s an easy fold.