POTD #249 Calling Linearly in a Barcelona 100k
I Have Top Pair. I Call.
In POTD #177 I wrote about the concept of bluffing linearly, the idea that you pick your river bluffs from the hands that have the lowest value, because jack high folding out queen high can secure you the entire pot, whereas queen high bluffing out jack high doesn’t necessarily win you anything. Today, we’re going to discuss linear calling, the idea that your best hands to call river bets are your strongest hands absolute value-wise. This holds in many circumstances— if your hand beats your opponent’s value bets and they’re capable of bluffing, you should probably call. There are other spots where you might not beat value, but your hand blocks so many of your opponent’s value bets you probably need to call. If top pair is your opponent’s most common value bet, it is hard for you to fold top pair yourself; you block almost all of their value bets. Compared to bluffing, you always call linearly to some extent— there are spots where you give up with nut low, but there are never spots where you fold the nuts to a shove. So in a given hand, it’s important to recognize when the framework of calling linearly breaks down, and when you need to start calling with hands that best either block value or unblock bluffs, regardless of their absolute hand strength, so long as they don’t lose to bluffs.
If you have KT on on QJT34, you might want to call down vs. someone representing sets, straights and two pair. I wouldn’t recommend calling the river with K8 “because it blocks so many straights,” because you might lose to A2. Today’s hand is a hand where I got to the river and thought to myself “I have okay blockers and I’m too high up in my range to fold,” when all I should have been thinking about was how my hand interacted with my opponent’s value betting and bluffing range.
EPT Barcelona Event #22 €100,000 Super High Roller
(2k/5k/5k) (SB/BB/BBA) Registration is Still Open
It folds to me on the button with A♣️7♦️ and I make it 12k, David Coleman calls in the BB.
Flop (31k) A♠️4♥️3♥️: David checks, I check.
Turn (31k) 2♣️: David bets 31k, I call.
River (93k) K♣️: David bets 93k, I call. I lose to a straight (I forget which one, but not 65).
