$109 NLHE MTT: Setting up for a bluff

[D_godfather]

Evening all,

I intended to bluff the river, however (lesson 1) I did not think in more detail about stack sizes relative to pot and river bets at that point.

When I got down the streets I became unsure how to play this out, I should have taken a note but I believe I was concerned that a small river bet would be called off by a top or middle pair, and that a larger bet would see me commit a lot of chips and see villain feeling that if he wants to call it off he may as well shove, or that he in turn may see the small bet as weak and try to bluff the bluffer.

So probably best to ignore my thinking and comment on how to follow through assertively, or maybe i should not be there at all.

As an aside, a player named hendurr was on my immediate left (not in this hand). His performance in the 90 minutes I saw him was remarkable, I think he trebled his stack without showing a single card, he bossed everyone off the table in a way I have not seen before. It was fantastic, if not expensive!

Note- I am UTG, I have been super tight for an hour with VPIP 12%.


PokerStars - 50/100 Ante 10 NL - Holdem - 9 players


MP+1: 9,338
MP+2: 13,592
CO: 12,884
BTN: 7,040
SB: 9,108
BB: 6,048
Hero (UTG): 12,854
UTG+1: 11,413
MP: 7,174

9 players post ante of 10, SB posts SB 50, BB posts BB 100

Pre Flop: (pot: 240) Hero has J♣ A♥

Hero calls 100, fold, fold, fold, fold, CO raises to 206, BTN calls 206, fold, fold, Hero calls 106

Flop: (858, 3 players) T♠ 8♦ 9♥
Hero checks, CO checks, BTN bets 858, Hero calls 858, fold

Turn: (2,574, 2 players) 2♥
Hero bets 900, BTN calls 900

River: (4,374, 2 players) 5♠
Hero checks, BTN checks

Hero shows J♣ A♥ (High Card, Ace)
(Pre 59%, Flop 35%, Turn 20%)
BTN shows Q♥ T♥ (One Pair, Tens)
(Pre 41%, Flop 65%, Turn 80%)
BTN wins 4,374

 

[ssbn743]

Evening all,

I intended to bluff the river, however (lesson 1) I did not think in more detail about stack sizes relative to pot and river bets at that point.

When I got down the streets I became unsure how to play this out, I should have taken a note but I believe I was concerned that a small river bet would be called off by a top or middle pair, and that a larger bet would see me commit a lot of chips and see villain feeling that if he wants to call it off he may as well shove, or that he in turn may see the small bet as weak and try to bluff the bluffer.

So probably best to ignore my thinking and comment on how to follow through assertively, or maybe i should not be there at all.

As an aside, a player named hendurr was on my immediate left (not in this hand). His performance in the 90 minutes I saw him was remarkable, I think he trebled his stack without showing a single card, he bossed everyone off the table in a way I have not seen before. It was fantastic, if not expensive!

Note- I am UTG, I have been super tight for an hour with VPIP 12%.


PokerStars - 50/100 Ante 10 NL - Holdem - 9 players


MP+1: 9,338
MP+2: 13,592
CO: 12,884
BTN: 7,040
SB: 9,108
BB: 6,048
Hero (UTG): 12,854
UTG+1: 11,413
MP: 7,174

9 players post ante of 10, SB posts SB 50, BB posts BB 100

Pre Flop: (pot: 240) Hero has J♣ A♥

Hero calls 100, fold, fold, fold, fold, CO raises to 206, BTN calls 206, fold, fold, Hero calls 106

Flop: (858, 3 players) T♠ 8♦ 9♥
Hero checks, CO checks, BTN bets 858, Hero calls 858, fold

Turn: (2,574, 2 players) 2♥
Hero bets 900, BTN calls 900

River: (4,374, 2 players) 5♠
Hero checks, BTN checks

Hero shows J♣ A♥ (High Card, Ace)
(Pre 59%, Flop 35%, Turn 20%)
BTN shows Q♥ T♥ (One Pair, Tens)
(Pre 41%, Flop 65%, Turn 80%)
BTN wins 4,374

First, the open limp UTG.

Now, I am aware that there has been some recent solver work regarding different stack sizes and positions that even advocate limping certain hands in certain situations. However, I for one, am not fully up to speed, or sure I agree with some of that, and this is most definitely not one of those spots, with 120BB's.

The biggest reason we do not open limp is because it removes the possibility of us winning the pot pre-flop. Additionally, if it is raised and we call (which is very typical with weak-er players) we will be guessing the entire hand and have already broadcasted to observant opponents that we don't have it.

The parts of the solver stuff I can get behind, is open limping AA, KK, QQ from UTG with 20BB - the idea there being that we back-jam, but AJo is not on that list, nor is our stack size in this hand.

Ajo is a fold from UTG almost always, and with 120BB's, I think....always.

Pre-Flop

As played, I guess we can fold to a 106 raise, but that'd be kind of hard to do - so once here, I guess we call - or bluff 3bet, which would look super, super strong.

Flop

So, as I've stated, I really don't like how we've gotten here. However, once here, this is a clear category 3 hand, a semi-bluff hand with some of equity. We need to pair that range of hands with our range of category 1 hands, like TT or QJs and play them exactly the same.

Now, with our open limp/call, we really don't have any Cat 1 hands, except maybe QJ, or some wonky T9 - another reason we shouldn't open limp, but, whatever...

So, what would we do here if we somehow had a hand like TT? I think a check/raise is a great option and probably the only option actually - we most def do not want to donk-bet, almost ever, but especially on such a connected board because doing so caps our range to strong value hands (two-pair), but no nuts.

The check/call as played probably isn't horrible, but it tremendously unbalances us. Additionally, we are not getting the price to call - when our opponent bets pot, we have to be good 33% of the time. We have 8 outs to the straight, which is only 16% - even if we get a free river card (which we almost certainly will not) we only have 32% equity, making this a breakeven prop at best. If our Ace is good, that adds a few outs, but again....are we going to get a free river?

Turn
The donk-bet here is really bad and makes no sense whatsoever. I realize you're trying to look strong, but if I were villain here, I'd jam my entire range.

What hands would we take this line with? Pocket two's are the only one I can think of, and we should never have that UTG anyway, but if we did limp/call it, would we call a pot size flop bet? On that board?

River
On the upside, you apparently confused the hell out of the button and got him to check back river on consecutive bricks


If we had raised pre-flop, we could really entertain the idea of running some bluffs - because we have a lot of strong hands. We also have an equal mix of strong hands, and not so strong hands. In this case, we have 77 and TT. 77 would be an excellent bluff candidate since we're unlikely to be good, we have some blockers, and could have TT - but it all stems for accurately portraying our range.

This is a great example of understand ranges, and how they are observed by our opponents.