Well I didn’t actually end up playing any tournaments today becomes I somehow managed to sleep in till 5:30PM and plain miss them all! In the end it was probably a good thing though because I managed to have a +$5000 day in the cash games which was definitely nice and a much-needed bankroll boost.
I thought that for my next few blogs I might go through some of the more interesting hands that I’ve played in recent times. I’m going to particularly focus on hands that involve interesting turn and/or river spots because these are the spots that I have really been trying to improve my play in recently. Just about every decent player from 50NL upwards knows how to play preflop and on the flop to a decent standard, but it’s playing the turn and river well that really sets the midstakes winners apart from the small stakes winners/midstakes wannabes.
Naturally, there will be a selection bias in these hands as they will probably involve me making some sick play and winning a pot, but hey, we don’t want a boring blog entry do we now!?
The hand that I’d like to share for today is in my opinion pretty damn cool and as soon as it happened I thought “wow, here’s one for the blog!” Here’s the hand in full.
Party Poker, $3/$6 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter
BTN: $1,164
SB: $725.05
BB: $600
UTG: $1,100.50
MP: $624
Hero (CO): $689
Pre-Flop: Q
2 folds, Hero raises to $21, BTN folds, SB calls $18, BB folds
Flop: ($48) Q
SB checks, Hero bets $37, SB calls $37
Turn: ($122) 6
SB checks, Hero checks
River: ($122) A
SB checks, Hero bets $150, SB raises to $667.05 and is All-In, Hero calls $481 and is All-In
Results: $1,384 Pot
SB showed T
Hero showed Q
The hand is pretty standard up till the river so I’ll begin my analysis there. Just briefly in regards to the turn though, it’s a spot where I rarely pot control but with a hand that was definitely only worth two streets of value I decided to check back and look to bet the river.
When we got to the river and my opponent (a regular) checked I decided to try to bluff my opponent off a split. There was a small chance he held AQ or Ax of hearts in which case my bluff would horribly fail but I decided that he would most likely check-raise that sort of hand on the flop anyway. Since I beat the other part of his range (weak one pair hands like 78s or 88-JJ), I thought that an overbet bluff was worth my while and was essentially a freeroll at winning the pot. I definitely would do this with any AK type hand which, importantly, was completely consistent with the line that I’d taken so far so I thought that there was a good chance that this ‘bluff’ would work.
I then got the shock of my life when he check-raised all-in and indeed I typed into the chat a disbelieving ‘what lol’. I immediately ruled out Ax of hearts since that hand would merely check-call this river. My opponent was essentially representing a set or trip sixes and there’s one really nifty rule of thumb that I’ve learnt for these situations.
When your opponent check-raises the river after the turn checks through, it doesn’t make much sense since he can’t rely on you betting the river. With a hand worthy of check-raising the river he would thus probably lead in an attempt to get paid off.
So I decided to call and luckily for me my opponent had turned his tens into a bluff. The irony is that I think he played his hand almost perfectly, and I probably would have played it the same way. Let’s consider the hand from his perspective.
Preflop he decided to flat his tens which is definitely fine by me and something I’ve been doing more of. You can’t really 3-bet/fold tens but the fact is that if you get in tens preflop against a regular you’re rarely in good shape and most regular’s aren’t going to be 4-bet bluffing enough in my spot to make your 5-bet shoves with tens super profitable. Thus, for any competent postflop player, seeing a flop with tens is often a more profitable line than auto-getting it in preflop and it certainly can reduce your variance.
When the flop comes down you actually have a few options with tens. The first option is to lead out and simply hope your opponent folds. This is a pretty poor option for obvious reasons. You never win another cent from the pot since all you’re doing is taking down what’s there and if called or raised you’re shutting down which is not too cool and rather exploitable. The other option which I’ve been using a lot is to check-raise. Although you’re rarely going to be called by worse, it does make the hand easier to play on later streets since you can happily shutdown if called and it stops something like AK hitting their 6 outer on later streets. It’s also particularly good on a drawy flop like this since you can also turn your hand into a bluff if the flush completes on the turn, giving you some more options to win the pot. The most standard play however is definitely to check-call the flop probably with the intention of check-folding the turn or river and this is what my opponent did here.
The turn is pretty much a blank and nothing much needs to be said of the turn check. The river though is an interesting spot and this is where the mind games begin. I know that my opponent probably doesn’t like the ace. My opponent knows this and knows that I’ll therefore be bluffing the ace with a decent frequency. The problem for my opponent though is that he doesn’t know my exact frequencies and he is reduced to playing a guessing game. If he guesses wrong, he’ll be losing money in the long run. So what’s the solution to this problem for my opponent? Why, raise!
To see why this is so, let’s say I’m bluffing in this spot 1/3 of the time and value-betting it with an ace 2/3’s of the time. If I had bet the pot, my opponent would have a break-even call. Since I bet even more than the pot, I need to be bluffing even more than 1/3 of the third time for my opponent to make a break-even call. But who said anything about calling? Regardless of my frequencies, a raise from my opponent can/should/often will win the pot regardless of whether I’m bluffing or value-betting. If I’m bluffing, I obviously have to fold to the raise. More importantly, even if I’m value-betting, I still ‘need’ to fold to the raise since once I get check-raised I can’t beat anything but an unlikely bluff. My opponent is essentially saying ‘yeah I know you just hit that ace but I don’t care I’m still all-in!’
And that is the really powerful play that I’ve been using a lot recently. Oftentimes I’ll peel the flop with top or second pair and then face a double barrel from a thinking regular on a turned ace. Rather than calling down and hoping that my opponent’s bluffing frequencies are too high, or always folding and hoping that my opponent’s bluffing frequencies are too low, I simply save myself the decision and raise. Think about it from their perspective. If you have AK and just double barreled a J63A board, what on earth do you beat once you get raised on the turn?
Now of course I don’t know that this is the thought process that went through my opponent’s head, but I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt and give him credit for a well-planned move. It was just unfortunate for him that he ran into the mother of all calling stations!
Anyway, I hope that entry proved insightful and I’ll see if I can find any more interesting hands to discuss in the future. Ciao.
1 comment:
An excellent post.
Very thought provoking.
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