Non hud site. No specific reads.



Villain limped from Button. I checked on BB. Villain made small bet on BTN, I reraised 3x (trying to represent Q pair). Villain called. Another Q on the Turn, I make 2/3 bet as a bluff, trying to represent sets. On the Turn scare card, flush and straight draw. I made again big bet, 2/3 as a pure bluff, opponent called and shower two pair.

What went wrong? Looking for more GTO strategy, because no information of opponent's tendencies.

Here you can see replay of this hand: http://mysmp.me/h_ps8

This is a bad spot to bluff once you get called. The hand is a limped pot so your opponents range because they were on the button and limped could be a lot of cards. Their range is capped for sure since they didnt raise but it could be anywhere from 30-85% strength of hands. Since you are going against a wide range you do not know when the flop hits your opponent and when it doesnt. Here you make a bluff on the flop which I think is fine. You will get some folds here from non pair hands that are ahead of you and that is what we want.

Once villain calls though you should be done unless you gain equity. With the turn card pairing the board it is now less likely you have a queen and villain should know this. Considering they probably only called the flop with either ace high or a pair, they will not be folding when the board pairs. It is a bad card for you to rep anything and therefore a bad card for your bluff attempt. The turn should be a check fold from you. There is nothing wrong with taking a shot as you did and then giving up after that.

The river card is interesting because it brings the flush in. I still dont think your opponent (depending on how they play and we dont know how they play) will be folding a 1 pair hand here that of course with the board is two pair (in fact the hand they have is not as strong as they think it is because the 7 doesnt mean sh*t with the 2 queens on the board). Since we can lean heavily on by this point our opponent probably has a pair and is not folding a pair we are better check folding if we got to this point in the hand.

People in $1 tournaments aren't known for their folding ability... they call. Maybe more so in rebuy tournaments.

Seriously... using advanced thinking/plays against someone just sitting there playing their hand only will not work out too well, best to identify those who play based on their hand alone and aren't taking anything else into account, and you have to then adjust accordingly by value betting them relentlessly when you do have the queen (in this case).

Good luck!

I think as you say, you x3 as a bluff on the flop.
They called = your bluff failed.
Fold turn.

Queen comes on the turn, perhaps shove, if your confident they would only call with less than a Q themselves and your also putting yourself at risk to better hands calling too.

Maybe, call flop, shove turn.

Call flop, call turn, shove river.


Shove or fold I think.

To be honest this is just spew. The Villain limped in and let you see a free flop with a hand, which you would otherwise just have folded. You missed the flop completely, and he put out a bet. This is a very easy spot to just check-fold and move on. You basically have everything going against you here:

1) Your hand is complete garbage. You dont even have a backdoor flushdraw or anything else to remotely justify this bluff.
2) You are playing against a fish in a 1$ MTT.
3) The board is very connected and kind of smash a typical limping range.
4) He has you well covered, so you have no "scare factor".
5) He has position.

As for why he called you down, this is, what fish do. And this is why, we take them to valuetown, but we dont bluff then. And we especially dont bluff them, when we have absolutely nothing. At this level some players cant even read boards, so his decision to call you down on the river might have been influenzed by the fact, he paired his 7, because he did not understand, that his two pair was counterfeited.

Your bluff didn't work because the other player is very bad and is willing to call down with bottom pair.

Make a note, and don't try to bluff bad players any more. BUT...the next time you have a value hand, extract the most you can.

Originally Posted by fundiver199

To be honest this is just spew. The Villain limped in and let you see a free flop with a hand, which you would otherwise just have folded. You missed the flop completely, and he put out a bet. This is a very easy spot to just check-fold and move on. You basically have everything going against you here:

1) Your hand is complete garbage. You dont even have a backdoor flushdraw or anything else to remotely justify this bluff.
2) You are playing against a fish in a 1$ MTT.
3) The board is very connected and kind of smash a typical limping range.
4) He has you well covered, so you have no "scare factor".
5) He has position.

As for why he called you down, this is, what fish do. And this is why, we take them to valuetown, but we dont bluff then. And we especially dont bluff them, when we have absolutely nothing. At this level some players cant even read boards, so his decision to call you down on the river might have been influenzed by the fact, he paired his 7, because he did not understand, that his two pair was counterfeited.

This is a great explanation and pretty spot on. Our range here is extremely wide and when villan has a piece of this board its hard for us to have one as well - not to mention this board is fairly draw heavy and you could be x/r some of your gutshots here - which he holds a relative blocker to with the 7. When the top card pairs you have alot less Qx in your range and our villan is just good here alot - which is why he is just calling you and not raising - the river is essentially a brick and villan loses to some Qx you are lucky enough to have but more than not you either have the 9 or a busted draw here so i can see villans hero call on the river.

The problem here is that we got to see a free flop that does not coincide with alot of BB range hands - though we could literally have anything -- i would be more likely to lead/raise flops with 3 cards lower than a 7 as it smacks a ton of BB ranged junk we could easily have. This flop hits the limpers range muuuuuch more than it hits our range. If we are going for the bare no equity hammer down bluff - then i think after the flop call we just shut it down or HAVE to triple barrel lots of runouts and accept the consequences

Also just to add some other notes :: I would size up my turn bet to about 5k and look to overbet jam tons of rivers -- the 7 being one of them. If wd are trying to get an 8 or 9 to fold then a 60% pot bet on the river is simply not going to do it on this runout - so if you are going to triple barrel bluff here you are going to have to make it extremely difficult to call off on the river

If we are going to bluff, then first off all we need to pick some sort of reasonable hand. Game theory tell us to bluff with the bottom of our range, but this mean the bottom of our range, that we are going to continue with, not our entire range. And especially in a spot like this, where we got a freeplay, and our range is any two cards, we should be doing a whole lot of check-folding on the flop. On this board texture the best bluff candidates are hands like KJ and KT, because they flopped a gutshot and an overcard, and they also block the flopped straight.

The next thing to consider is, if we want to go for a check-raise or simply lead out. In a limped pot there is no initiative, and there is absolutely no obligation to "check to the limper". Leading out can be totally reasonable both for value and as a semi-bluff. And I kind of prefer that in general.

The issue is, that when the limper bet, he is already showing interest in his hand. And while bad players will often give up, if they have absolutely nothing, they often get very sticky, when they caught a peice of the board. This is why, "one and done" C-betting is often a great strategy against fish. And using the entirely same logic, we can just lead out in limped pots, and then simply give up, if they give us action, and we still have nothing on the turn.

This by the way would also create a sitaution, where its much more reasonable for us to continue on the turn. The issue, when we check-raise is, that its very polarizing, and we are actually not supposed to have top pair very often. Villain on the other hand is supposed to have top pair quite a lot, when he bet-call. So we are betting into a situation, where Villain often just improved to trips, and typically that is not going to end very well.

As for overbetting the river to get him off a big hand, that is something, we want to do against regulars, who are able to make a big fold. We dont want to do this against fish, because they see big bets as bluffs, and they love to play the table sherif. We also dont want to do it in a tournament, when Villain has 3 times as many chips as us. We want to do it in situations, where its his tournament life, that is in danger, if he calls, not ours.

First of all it wasn't consistent. How can you represent pocket queens if you didn't raise? Second of all he had a good hand. It's hard to lay down two pairs and you can't expect that in microstakes.

Originally Posted by Delfino

Second of all he had a good hand. It's hard to lay down two pairs and you can't expect that in microstakes.

Just for clarification Villain did not have a good hand. He had a counterfeited two pair, also sometimes known as the "3 pair hand". But bad players will often misread and overplay that kind of hand. Or they might even think, A8 is a great hand on Q98-Q-7, because "LOL I have two pair".

Everything the Villain did in this hand was pretty bad. Limping preflop was bad. Betting the flop with bottom pair was bad. Calling the check-raise was bad. Continuing to call on the turn and river was bad. But it should not come as a shock, that bad players do bad things, and especially not that they call to much