blonde poker forum

I had been moved to a new table in the £280 comp at Big Bluff. The history prior to the hand in question is as follows; I have been sitting quiet having not played a hand for about 20 minutes before finally raising a hand from early, getting peeled by the bb and then raking the pot after a successful c-bet. Another 15 minutes or so of folding before choosing a nice spot to exploit:-

Blinds 800/1600/200
Everyones is pretty deep, a lot of 80bb+ stacks, I have about 140k. The BTN (seat 2) raises to 4100 on my BB, the SB (seat 3) who I deem to be taking his game seriously and a thinking player, having heard him break a hand down with another player earlier, 3bets to 11,600. I look down at  Jh 2c. I don't normally like playing any 2 cards when making a move, I prefer that my cards work together well so that when I get called I can sometimes hit flops that make my hand playable; but on this occasion I was very keen to take advantage of my image so far and so I make the cold 4bet to 26k and after a long tank by the SB it gets through.

I now up the frequency of my opens and build my stack to about 170k without showdown. This included 3betting the player in seat 3. He is relevant to the hand in question.
UTG (seat 9, a fellow blonde member and the only person who has played with me before) opens to 3800, seat 3 3bets to 9600 and I look down at  Ad Kc. I choose to min-click cold 4b in position to 15,400. I feel taking control of the hand this way normally helps when going to a flop, helps me define my opponents hand strength pre-flop, isolating the 3bettor and extracts value sometimes from weaker hands that decide to call. Folds back round to the original raiser who 5bets to 33k-ish. Seat 3 tank/folds and I fold fairly quickly trying to be too clever. I had already made my decision as he 5b and I probably would have still folded had I thought about it a bit longer but nonetheless I folded it face up as a friendly gesture/hoping he'd show me QQ+, he then proceeds to show me  8h 9h. Seat 3 claims he folded QQ.

A couple friends on the way back were adamant that my approach in this hand wasn't very good. They said I turned my hand into a bluff which I didn't agree with because I felt I was raising for value then folding because I believed my hand was now no good and difficult to play further with the new information of the 5b. One thought that when deciding to 4bet, I should be piling the rest in and the other preferred flatting the 3b. I felt quite happy with the way I played the hand even after I was shown the bluff but the conversation in the car prompted me to see what other people thought too.

When u play aggressively your decisions become a lot tougher.

This is a real feel spot when sat deep. I actually don't mind the fold but I think you could try and pick up a read before deciding what to do. I know people say 3 bet with a plan but live you can afford to take your time.

Finally do not show!! Nothing good can come of it.

Yeh showing is the only thing in the hand that is definitely a mistake. The rest could be ok with appropriate reads / justifications.

J2 move gets a lot of love from me :D

I'm not a fan of showing I almost never do. I think because I was recently active, I wanted to show the table it wasn't brainless aggression. I think players play more passively against players they think are so sure of themselves which is why I flipped it up without hesitation. I'm sure there's argument to saying it's better to let them think you're a maniac, it can probably be more profitable but I was more comfortable with this approach.

As for reads, I was watching the whole time he was counting out the 5b, I just flat out believed him. Well played...eso.

Assuming the cold-4 was ok, I want to know what people think about the min-click vs normal sizing and why. If my min-click served a lot more purpose other than looking cool.

Ha!

I would have bet good money that Eso was the villain here. The whole description, even how he counted out the 5 bet, smacked of the Blacklock Bluff.

Deffo 6 bet Eso to induce. He loves to show a good bluff esp if he feels someone is trying to run the table over

235 posts to go ;)

Too obvious?

been there kid

I never have anything interesting to say tho... Could just post nonsense like JB.. Just kidding John ;-)

You'll defo reach 10k before I reach 300!

Hi Simon.

Hi

:-)

Keys must be under it to give the best horse the boot :D

Has stato left?

you mean thigh?

Lol... Harsh

Damn your derailing Deadman!

;)
UL Yian and brutal exit hand mate!!

I think this is a really interesting spot which reminds me of a big discussion I had over several days with someone on another forum.

The argument about wasting a good hand and turning it into a bluff is valid.  Some advocate assigning a range to the initial raiser and then going from there when you find 99/AK, and villain’s subsequent actions should be irrelevant.  i.e. are you looking to get it all in against villain’s range preflop, or are you going to call and re-evaluate on the flop?  The argument being that raising the decent hand with intention to fold leaves you exploitable to the bluff (as is what happened).   

The downsides to this in my mind are

A) It doesn’t work if pushed to logical extremes.  EG – first level of the Main Event if I 3bet your open with 88 then using the above logic I should be happy to get it all in pre-flop which would be ludicrous.
B) It assumes that the subsequent raises provide no new information.  I.e. the guy 5 betting does not change his range, where in reality it should.

It comes down to stack size.  Whereas the 88 example above is ludicrous it would be similarly absurd to 4 bet fold AK when you have stuck half your stack in.

So the question in my mind becomes is your stack deep enough to 4 bet fold AK?  Is the information you glean from seeing whether he 5 bets outweigh the fact you have put in 15k of your stack with a strong hand before surrendering your hand without even seeing a flop?  I personally think you have a deep enough stack to do this, but some people (like the guy I was debating this with last year and who had a very strong online record) would hate this play.

I have not really posted my thought on this hand but did have a chat about it with Yian himself at DTD this weekend and explained that as one of 4 new players to the table they would not have been aware that Villain 2 in this hand and myself had quite a dynamic and had been battling all day in various spots and we were much deeper than Yian in this particular hand.

Since the start of the comp I had managed to cultivate a "batshit crazy" image (copyright Pleno) and managed to chip up as a result of this so with half the table new and unaware I decided that given the right spot I would maintain this image with 3levels of day1 left and the need to chip up in this particular comp so having an amount of "vagrancy vig" UTG I opened 89hh and from this point onwards all bets sizes as stated in the OP are correct.

My thought process in the hand having observed the earlier action from Yian were that he will be light vs Villain2 (ala J2o hand as reported) a good% of the time and as I am a good few years older than both villains I will get some credit due to this and being UTG and if Villain 2 6bet he would be making it circa 50-60k and still leave me room to 7b AI which would have been the plan vs villain2 and could only see him calling KK+ and vs Yian I was always folding vs his stack size as he could only ever 6bet All in.

Obv the whole hand can look spewy from me but stack sizes and villains meant it was one where you just "had to be there" and as I know villain2 and he told me he folded QQ then vs him my assumption of the 7b getting through are correct and it would have been an easy fold vs Yian still leaving me 100bbs after the 5b.

I only showed the bluff as Yian snap turned his hand over and to use it as my opportunity to maintain my image vs the other new players on the table as learnt along time ago not to show unless for a reason.

batshit is copyright john black no?