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
. 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
. 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
. 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.
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