A♦A♥ on the River, what do you do here?

AA on the River - updated


DECISION POINT:
In a Tournament where blinds are 250/500, you are dealt A♦A♥ in early position and you. It folds around to the Big Blind who calls. The flop comes Q♣Q♥5♠. The Big Blind checks, you bet, and the Big Blind calls. The turn is the T♦. The Big Blind checks and you check behind. The river is the Q♠. The Big Blind checks, you bet, and the Big Blind raises all-in. What do you do here?


PRO ANSWER:
When our opponent check-raises the river all-in, they would not do so for value with any worse hands than ours. For example, if they have a T, they are not likely to jam. If they have something like JJ, they are not likely to jam.

That means their range consists of quads or bluffs. We are getting about 1.5-1 pot odds so we need to win more than 40% of the time to show a profit. The question comes down to whether our opponent is bluffing more than 40% of the time.

What hands could they do this with as a bluff?

They check-called on the QQ5 rainbow flop, so there are no possible missed draws in their range. They could have flopped a full house with 55 and are now turning it into a bluff on the river, but that is rare and most opponents wouldn't do it.

Continued below...


Essentially, we would need our opponent to check-call the flop with hands like 77, then realize that their hand is no good on the river, while at the same time believing that we might not have many Qx hands in our range and that they can get us to fold AA or KK if they jam. This is a stretch.

Finding opponents capable of turning made hands into river check-raise bluffs for their tournament life while deep stacked is very difficult.

As a default we should assume these actions indicate our opponent has quads north of 80% of the time. We should fold without some sort of compelling historical info or read on this player.

Folding is the best play.

How would you play it?
Share your answer in the comments below!


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