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1-2 Game at Local Cardroom
Hero’s Stack:245Preflop: I look down at AhJh on the button and see 4 limpers ahead of me and decide to bump it up to $16 ($8 standard open plus additional $8 for the limpers). It folds around to the villain, a solid reg who doesn’t get too out of line, in the lojack who makes the call and the cutoff calls as well. They both have me covered.
Pot Size: $55
Flop: The flop comes 2c5h6c and the villain leads out for $15. I’ve seen him make similar plays a few times with draws and it seems like he’s trying to set his own price to see the turn. The cutoff folds and I float on the button with my two overs and backdoor flush and straight draws with plans to bluff favorable turn cards (basically any non-club high cards.)
Pot Size: $85
Turn: The turn comes the Qd and the villain puts in another small bet of $20. At this point I’m convinced he’s on a draw and decide to get a bit out of line and try to bluff him off of his equity and deny him a cheap river so I put in a fairly large raise to $95 leaving myself $119 behind. He tanks for a bit then calls.
Pot Size: $275
River: The river comes the Jc giving me top pair but completing the flush draw. The villain checks and decide to give up and check back with the draw completing and hope my jack is good. He turns over 4c5c for the flush and scoops the pot.
I’d love to hear what you guys think of my play here and whether a fold or call with plans to blast safe rivers would have been the better play on the turn.
Thanks for reading!
I think this is a solid play in a live game if you don’t have a maniac table image – I’m baffled on the villain river play though, but we’ll get to that later.
To see if this could be played better, let’s narrow down the limp range from lo-jack for a reg: low suited connectors, AQK-rag suited, a few mid-suited gap connectors and low pockets. The most scary hand on this board is A-5c, but that’s a clear raise in my opinion, so we can chalk that off. AKQ-rag suited are easily dominated by your raise range, so they should be a limp-fold, which leaves us with low and mid suited connectors and pockets. Unfortunate enough, this flop is a gold mine for those hands: any low connector would make a pair and/or a gutshot straight draw, mid connectors would make open ended/gutshot straights, and any pocket makes a set or gutshot. Combined with the flush draw, there is a lot of EV here – and for villains specific hand, the raise was just not enough large to deny the EV – even if he did put you on AQ. Of course making a larger raise than that puts you into a vulnerable position for a shove if he flopped a set, so I’d go easy on that with air. 🙂
And now to the river play: villain hits the flush and checks the river – wut? The only hand you may have here that dominates him is AQc – but that would have been a re-raise on the flop to pick up some fold EV. I would have made a small value bet that would either get me payed off for the draw, or just mask the hand.
That donk lead is usually something like a draw or pair + draw. I wouldn’t look into the sizing too much – most 1/2 players don’t look at bet sizing relative to the pot, that’s probably a pretty common flop and turn bet sizing, so he went with that. When he does that on both streets, you’re almost always behind. Fold here.
The river check is pretty puzzling. Only thing I could think is he put you on a big pair and knew you would bet or he thought you were going to fire a bluff with AK. Very strange line.
Hey mrviceguy, thanks for the response! I was playing fairly tight and hadn’t shown down any bluffs in the few hours I had been at the table, so I was definitely trying to take advantage of that
image with this play. However, do you think a call on the turn with the intention of blasting the river if a blank peeled off would’ve been the better play?Also, as far as the villain’s check on the river, I assume he expected me to continue betting, but obviously I had no intention of barreling given how the board ran out. In his position I definitely would’ve put in a smallish value bet.
Thanks for the response John. I’d almost always just fold here on the turn, but my thinking at the time was that this was a player that was capable of laying down just a decent draw to a raise. Obviously given his specific hand of a pair plus a combo draw I wasn’t going to get a fold. I am definitely starting to realize that it’s usually not worth it to run big bluffs at the low stakes.
I’d say that just calling is not an option here, as there are only seven outs you can blast on this board safely – AKJ non-c, so you need the fold EV to make this play profitable.
You will not be able to rep AQ on the river, as on a draw heavy board like this, that’s a defend re-raise on turn.
If a T-9-8 comes, you cannot rep setting pocket mid pairs, since those would have been overpairs on flop, a reraise rather than flat calling. You could be re-raising preflop with A9s non-c ofc, but you would not walk yourself through two barrels with 4 outs.
Anything lower than that either pairs the board or completes a straight draw – the worst possible way for this hand to go.
As an addition to that, flat calling two streets and then making a play on a dry river is just begging for a hero call, should villain put you on a missed nutflush.
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