Was this a good bluff?

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lukyl

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Playing 2/5, sitting with 500, vil ~750

I'm behind button Ad Kc
vil Button
2 limpers
I raise to 25
vil calls
limpers call
pot ~100

flop 2d, 6d, 3c
limpers both check
i check (intention to check raise or see free turn, thinking that betting this bored looks too c-bet ish, and check raise would be much stronger repping a slow playing trap)

vil bets 75
limpers fold
i raise to 175 (expecting to take it here perceived his bet to be a pure steal)
vil tanks and calls

turn 10d
now i have little over 300 behind, and originally had thought if unlikely called on flop, i give up on turn unless improved. Which i was.. to ~30%

I shove all in, highly expecting a fold since i figured he cant have much more then a small over pair to the flop, hence the tank/flat call, and that the small over cant be calling often.

he calls and had 77, i brick the river.

Now this whole play could have been avoided by giving up on flop, but since this is the situation i got into, was it played OK?

the way i see it is that i had ~30% to win IF he calls, im paying 300 to win ~1050 (including his call) so 3-1, and the odds were ~2.5-1. You then factor in the huge amount of times you expect him to fold under the pressure with such a marginal hand, and i feel that this is worth the risk..

Am i deluded or was i correct?

Also just an FYI i was playing extremely tight the whole time, barely a hand played within an hour. He was fairly active in hands, but often not for a full board, just to flop etc.
 
Marcwantstowin

Marcwantstowin

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Sorry Lukyl. I gotta say that this was a bad bluff.

You say he had been quite active so I would assume his range was wider than normal? I understand that you expected to check-raise to take down the pot on the flop, but you need to ask yourself what was he c-betting with? A higher pair, QQ - 99, or a small pair on the flop A6 or A3? Either way he had you beat. I should have given up on the flop. No doubt others may say you was unlucky, but as you said yourself you on had a 30% chance and AK is a nice hand pre-flop, but can be a pain in the proverable if you don't. Hope you run better in the future....................:D:D:D
 
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Geldi

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You can bluff only when you think that you can get your opponent to fold.
 
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gipetto541

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be consistant

If you wanted to bluff, you needed to set it up with a bet on the flop, that check behind screams weakness and high broadway cards. you lost it on the flop.
 
starting_at_the_bottom

starting_at_the_bottom

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If you wanted to bluff, you needed to set it up with a bet on the flop, that check behind screams weakness and high broadway cards. you lost it on the flop.

Exactly

If you had big PPs you would have bet the flop and bet the turn, you would have probably got the 77 to fold with this line.

Poor bluff.
 
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hffjd2000

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Good bluff for me.

On the river, you can still win the hand if a diamond appears.
 
kolecgoclaw

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simple - when you know you have a weaker hand
************** and beat your opponent;)
 
mvpnight

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in my opinion your whole story doesnt make sense , the vill is most likely to call, you first problem is being out of posistion you raised to 25$ which means you most likely dont have any card associated 234 or 5 when you check raise i beileve it is fine if you want to take it down there , but he calls . now the turn is a brick for you even if your repping 10 10 and up Ex: AA or KK you would once again check raise you would never shove on the turn with AA on that board. im not to sure if my explanation is making sense to you but your story doesnt make sense for you to have a strong hand so when shoved on the turn he can smell a bluff from a mile away ..... you should have given up after the failed flop reraise
 
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GersonTavare

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In my opinion have a good bluff, you need to bet in flop, turn and river. So you don't play for value, but for bluff.
A shoved all in seems like a bad hand with a desperate play to win the pot. If I had just one pair, I'll pay the shoved.
 
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erlanditas

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I think not, cause turn gives him maybe a flush, cause he played like flush draw (betting like to take more value when comes flush) or two pairs. He attacked you with big bet on flop. And I think turn is bad card to bluff. Cause your bluff looks like you hit something from flop. But his call is really bad here. Why he just called flop with 77 and not reraised all in. And turn gives him one overcard, I think he played his pair really bad on flop.
 
MediaBLITZ

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After a check raise on the flop your shove on the turn baffles your villain. If you hit the turn that hard you probably would not shove. If you had the hand you tried to rep preflop you are probably not going to shove the turn either - this means villain should assign a higher than usual probability to you either bluffing or chasing as he was probably expecting another check/raise.
As has been said - you should have bet the flop and managed the pot size better. HERE'S THE BIG ISSUE - Your check raise put $350 in the pot and the villain only needed another $100 to continue - or 3.5 to 1 with an over pair. Not terrible for him. Your shove on the turn SCREAMS "go away, leave me alone". You don't say what his stack size is but maybe you having $300 behind was a plus for him? I mean it was just not enough left for a threatening/scary overbet. It may have been just right there for him to make a scary hero call. Face it - only one over on the board to his pair and that over/turn should not have changed things for your hand. So if he had any thoughts of being ahead after the flop - he's thinking he's still there.
As much as you might want to talk about your action on the turn, I agree with others who said this hand was lost on the flop.

in my opinion your whole story doesnt make sense , the vill is most likely to call, you first problem is being out of posistion you raised to 25$ which means you most likely dont have any card associated 234 or 5 when you check raise i beileve it is fine if you want to take it down there , but he calls . now the turn is a brick for you even if your repping 10 10 and up Ex: AA or KK you would once again check raise you would never shove on the turn with AA on that board. im not to sure if my explanation is making sense to you but your story doesnt make sense for you to have a strong hand so when shoved on the turn he can smell a bluff from a mile away ..... you should have given up after the failed flop reraise
 
suby_rafael

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A bluff is considered good only if it's gets through your opponent and not when we get called. Trying to bluff in a multi way pot is not a very good idea in my mind. You'll lose more often in such instances. :p
 
Figaroo2

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was this a good bluff....not for me

Personally for me the board is not suitable or scary enough for a bluff here.
But there are several areas of suggested improvement, let me explain my thoughts.

Firstly and most importantly for me.....I don't really have enough information about his hand to know if the bluff is going to work at the point when you chose to shove on the turn.
Mainly because you lacked the information that his actions on the turn would have given you.
So what is his range here?
If he is playing quite loose his range will include small pairs and suited connectors you could easily be shoving into a set or 45 here and be totally crushed!!
It is also possible that the limpers are playing these hands and waiting to check raise themselves.
We can't play thinking there is always a set out there but this is a 4 way hand and there is a much greater chance of it...
I actually think that leading out yourself here into three other players is too optimistic. If you have been playing tight your cbet should get some respect, you could try leading out here and you might take it down...however personally for me there is too much chance that one of three other players will have hit this flop. If it was heads up I'd be leading out all day.

So you check and the vill leads out on the flop into 4 players not something usually done with complete junk....so what are you putting him on now? " either a complete steal or i figured he can't have much more then a small over pair to the flop, hence the tank/flat call".... So good players aren't tank calling with sets to lure you in then?.....

OK Ignoring the fact that it may be a bad bluff because we may be shoving into a monster...we then come onto the check raise.

As was commented on, your check raise looks too small and gave him good odds to continue.
For a check raise bluff I prefer to call his raise and then raise the size of the pot.
So here he raises 75 and the pot is 175. I would call his 75 which makes the pot 250 and then raise 250 so I actually prefer to stick in 325 as the raise , this is nearly double what you bet (175). The pot would then be 500, it now costs him 250 to continue, this is only 2:1 and you take away all drawing odds. Only a decent made hand will continue and if he does you now know you are beat and need not put in another cent.
The big problem here is that this pot is already bloated because it was a 3bet pot with 3 callers and is already substantial.
Almost any decent check raises pot commitment issue for you here, and if that is the case you may as well just shove all in on the flop! The problem with that of course is we may already be crushed, so that looks like spew.

So if we are not raising should we call or fold? Its debatable.

If we call on the flop here out of position with poor pot odds to improve our hand we need to be planning on setting up a bluff on the river, but is this the board to do it on? Not for me, the cards don't fit with your perceived range as the preflop raiser..if bricks come the only thing you can rep is a flush here.
If we did call the flop I think it unlikely that with 77 he is going to bet the turn once you call on the flop, he has to be concerned he is behind your range as a tight preflop raiser.
If he then bets the turn I have to give it up...if the turn is checked and the river is a scare card then I pot it first on the river to put maximum pressure on him.
Folding is yuk and feels like rolling over too easily but with the low board here and being OPP we just lose our initial 25c and its probably correct.....i suppose it depends on how good and confidently you can bluff on the end.

hope this helps
 
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rytciaq

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Not really in my opinion, I wouldn't go all in bluff on that board, especially when there are three diamonds after the turn and he called your raise on the flop
 
the_wonk

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OP,
So a few thoughts:

1) Don't post results initially. You'll get better feedback that way. It's hard for even good players to not be somewhat results-oriented.

2) Kudos on thinking generally in terms of ranges and odds.

As for the hand, you've taken a weird, nonsense line. And I don't actually think your intention was to check-raise the flop initially. I think you checked AK because you missed a flop you saw 4-handed. This is a reasonable position. It's not an especially dangerous board, but I would continue on the flop ~50% here I think, so I'm checking this back a lot too. When I do bet, I want my flop bet to exert a lot of pressure on small pairs so I'm going to be betting 65-80% of the pot here (where on other boards/situations I may bet as little as 40%).

But you checked, the button bet, AND (and this is important) the other 2 players folded. If either of them had called or raised you would have folded, right? (I hope so.) But with them gone, you now only had to consider button's betting range and decided it was quite wide. (A reasonable take.)

This is where you made a potential mistake imo. You raised solely because he was weak (and you were right about this.) But what exactly were you repping? You have an overpair and you check this flop thru? Really? Or you checked, planning to checkraise, with just 1 guy to act behind you? And your sizing is clearly not enough to price out any draw. Even if you had a set you still wouldn't want to be laying those odds for your opponent to draw out, no? Your line makes no sense.

Once you reach the turn and it opens up a bunch of outs, I agree with your odds analysis. You've got to pile. If your overs are live you have ~32% equity. If they're not you have ~18%. If we split the difference and assume you have 25% equity you're getting back $262.50 of your $300 bet in expectation on average (when called.) That means your break-even on the play only requires getting a fold ~10%, and if villain is as wide as you think, you should easily have this much fold equity. Not piling at this point would be really bad imo.
 
the_wonk

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So in summary, good job in ranging an opponent and attacking what you perceive to be vulnerable ranges, based on an odds analysis.

But bad job doing so credibly. :D You're putting him on a hand, but you need to think about what you're representing too.
 
TheGodson

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Button's range is wide, but he also knows this. When he sees your check raise he may suspect you know this. He may figure you'd just flat with 66, 33, or 22 preflop. He may be afraid of an overpair but decides since his range is so wide he can call with 77 and hope you're making a move. The flop bluff isn't too bad IMO. I think it is actually pretty good. Once he calls though I think that is the time to give up.
 
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greedisgood

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I think it was a great way to trap him with a made hand but as a bluff it didn't really stick.. give up on turn. still like the wonk has said if you only need a fold 10% of the time you get the right price so I think it still was a bad bluff but the mathematics behind it work out.

I also think it's good for your table image to get caught with a bluff like this, it looks bad but it doesn't cost in the long run?
 
atlantafalcons0

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I think the shove was a good move - just everything before that was a mess.

I really don't understand the raise on the flop, why would he be stealing in a 4 person hand?

intention to check raise or see free turn, thinking that betting this bored looks too c-bet ish, and check raise would be much stronger repping a slow playing trap

I think this is what other posters mean when they say nonsense line, what type of holdings would make this move with one player left to act. Obviously you were checking because you missed the flop - and that's what your opponent keyed in on IMO. To me that's why your raise didn't do much to scare him off, any hand that is crushing his is probably betting that flop after two people check. I'd like to say that the shove is barely a "bluff" considering how many outs you have here.
he calls and had 77, i brick the river.
Also, posting the outcome is a mistake to get solid HA.
 
MediaBLITZ

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I think the shove was a good move - just everything before that was a mess.

When everything before a bluff attempt is a mess - then the bluff attempt is not going to be a good move. Any good bluff needs to be set up on the streets before. Checking the flop made the shove much less credible and made a shove on the turn look like "please go away, I'm scared".
 
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I really don't like the flop check although I don't know if I'm calling your check raise. I am assuming this hand occurred live. This is very indicative of a strong hand. In a live setting you do not normally see this kind of aggression without a big hand. If I held 77 and you were an unknown, I would assume you had a set or over pair.
 
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