blonde poker forum

From the DTD Saturday £50+5 :

Blinds 50\100 (so quite early).

Actions starts with middle position raiser to 400.  Folded to my big blind where I am looking down at  Ac  Ad .

I reraise another 500 and he calls.  I elect to check in the dark and the flop comes :

 Ks  8c    4h

Opponent bets out 500 from his 5000+ plus stack and I reraise my remaining 1750 all-in.....

I want to know your thoughts on the play.  It was early and I'd not seen the player in many hands so I am assuming he is on the tighter end of play... The 2 key points and logic behind them all :

1 - Small Reraise - I want to build the pot and I think he may pass pre-flop if it's too big

2 - Check in the Dark - good idea?  After just losing a fair pot with AK I have already decided to I am sticking all my chips in post-flop (unless of course it's a REALLY dodgy board)...

Anyway - thoughts please!

Its fine. You get him to put his money in pre getting less than 3-1 implied v your stack with AA!!!! All later action can largely be ignored as you made him make a pretty huge mistake preflop.

FWIW i hate your mini-re-raise pre. Id rather see a decent re-raise or a flat call. That mini-reraise often speaks volumes about hand strength.

also, checking in the dark should be left to Negreanu and 300BB stacks, not ur local freezeout. You deny yourself the opportunity to play perfectly, which aint a good idea.

I make it 1200 preflop and shove any flop. Im effectively shoving in the dark not that im letting my opponent know that.

The raise to 900 preflop is just strange and you are really signalling your hand to any thinking opponent. Would you do this with ak or jj?

I have some pretty strong views on checking in the dark, i just really don't get it. Basically you are (a) letting your opponent check behind for a free card and (b) denying yourself any options.

Why are you checking in the dark, what are you trying to achieve by doing it?

Longy, would you not consider check-raising all-in if you know he will fire behind you?  Or does the size of the pot already make it pointless?

Thanks for the input.

I personally like to check in the dark under 1 of 2 conditions

a) the more often - My hand isn't great and want to disguise it and also restore some kind of position
b) I have a monster hand and I am confident my opponent will bet whatever, thinkng a post flop check may be suspect after a raise.

Although I have gone right off it after this hand!

given that ur relatively short, i like the check in the dark, shows weakness imo (or certainly weaker than AA) and can induce the bet on the flop, either way you play it probably ends up the same result.

So your tryin to sell that you are 3 betting as bluff and its gone wrong. Would you ever really do that if you 3betted trash?

I must admit if someone used this line on me unless i had flopped a monster, i would check behind and take a free card. It just doesn't make any sense at all. To check in the dark after 3betting preflop is just bizarre.

did he 3 bet it?

I argee longy. I know this guy has AA/KK and ill peel one please,. not that i ever get in villains spot .

With regards to when you use check in the dark DLee, trust me you are giving more than you are getting on the info front. I dont believe you EVER do this min raise check in the dark line with anything other than a monster, thats not a criticism, just my hunch. Its something we all do... get into the habit of identifiable betting patterns.

Basically, id be very suprised if you balance ur range here well enough and play often enough to make checking in the dark effectively misrepresent your hand and increase ur EV. Just shove and hope 1010 doesnt get scared when he checks behind and a scare card hits the turn.

 

Yes - he 3 bet it

sorry my mistake.

5.4/1 imo. 500 to call 3 bet to poss win 2700 no?

i count entire action pre as his implied. i.e 900 total to win hero's starting stack of 2650.

in this universe yes, but in most of the other 1224 universes no

Lol.

Thanks for all the input folks.

I've definitely come to the conlcusion that this was a bad play by me and glad it turned out the way it did or I'd probably never looked at it again.

The result was :

Player calls showing Kh Qd

Turn  Qs River  Kc

So despite getting desperately unlucky, I think the only way this hand wasn't going all the way would have been a bigger pre-flop raise.

Oh and I am dropping the check in the dark - Maybe a first post flop bet may make them think AK....

 You seem to be a bit results oriented in your thinking. It was mighty fine play, in a vacuum against this particular opponent. Look how bad you got his money in pal!!!!

You played it optimally, you got all his money in drawing to 5 outs. Thats pretty much christmas in the poker world.

With these stacks and oop, my default is to flatcall the raise and CRAI on almost every flop. Though I wouldn't bet dark.

Stacks are awkward in that any 3 - bet you make essentially commits yourself to the pot and screams strength. Additionally, these days people continuation bet far too liberally so I like to take advantage of that. A checkraise all - in on the flop in this type of scenario seems to work very well in lowstakes tournaments because:

- it annoys people;
- one pair talks itself into a call a lot on the basis that "you're at it";

So yeah. That's what I would do. However, the original poster should realise that he got his money in very well and was unlucky to be outdrawn. Avoiding the dark check is always good.

completely 1000000% correct