Could I Get Away

[Acesfull72]

A little background. I’m normally a $1/$2 player when I play cash games with an occasional $2/$5 mixed in. I’m currently up slightly on the year after a very brutal 2017 in which I ended up taking a very long break.

So this happened last night. After playing a 5 hr session of $1/2 winning a nice profit of $513, I fired 2 bullets in the nightly tournament with no success. Then I decided to get back in the cash games. I decided to get into a $2/$5 table because it looked pretty good. The buy in for the $2/$5 at this casino is $200/$500. I decided to buy in a bit short at $300. After dropping down to around $200 I turned things around and ran my stack to about $1200 in 2hrs. I was feeling good and it was getting late so I was planning on calling it a night. Then this hand happened…

MP player who was playing pretty solid and didn’t seem to be getting out of hand, just lost a big pot an orbit or so ago with an over pair to a higher pocket pair. Now he opens for $20 about $700 stack. SB calls and I call with 88. Flop comes J52 rainbow. SB check, I check and raiser checks. Turn is the 8 of diamonds! Giving me middle set. The Jack was also a diamond. The SB leads out for $30. I make it $100. Now the original raiser 3bets to $300 and the SB folds. Alarm bells ar going off in my head. It really felt like he had JJ. He hasn’t gotten out of hand that I know of, but I have middle set. I decided to just call because I wasn’t feeling too confident. He had a little under $400 left and I had just under $900. River was an offsuit 10 and I decided to check and was hoping he would just check behind but hat didn’t happen. He moved all in. I decided to call, very reluctantly. He had JJ for top set and almost all my work for the session was wiped out.

The more I think about it, the more I think I could have found a fold there. What else could he have? 22 or 55 are hands I beat that might check a dry board and 3bet the turn when the diamond and straight card comes but I’m not sure this player would raise with those hands and then check the flop. 910 of diamonds is a hand that could raise preflop, and check the flop (although on such a dry board and missing, I would assume a raiser would c-bet that), then semi bluff the turn with a big reraise. Ugh…felt like I got kicked in he gut.

What do you all think?

[John S]

I suppose you can get away from this, but it’s not that easy to.

Looking at his flop action, what hands here is he checking? This is a really dry flop, so it’s conceivable he’s checking an overpair for deception, hoping to get some value from a hand like JT, QJ, or the like. Obviously with a hand like JJ he has the board completely locked down so not a bad idea to let people catch up a bit. AJ, KJ, QJ probably bets most of the time to charge people looking for an overcard. 99 and TT probably check as well due to the over. 55 and 22 are a possibility, but I think he bets those more often than not. AK, AQ, or KQ probably bets as well just to try and take it down, suited or not.

On the turn, that 3-bet is super strong. Pretty ballsy to turn an underpair into a bluff here, so that’s out. Highly doubt AK or AQ of diamonds does this, most likely a call to draw to the nuts. An overpair? Maybe I see few people do this, but that’s a pretty wild line to do with AA after you show so much strength.

So that points pretty heavily to JJ and not much else. 55 and 22 are outside possibilities, but I still think he bets most of those hoping someone has a J.

So, is it possible to find a fold? Looking at it off the table, yes, it is. On the table, a much harder fold. Hard fold, but people just rarely get out of line and 3-bet bluff, especially at this level. Unless he’s a maniac, this fold hurts but is probably profitable in the long-run.

[David Wibel]

So a part of the answer to your question is do we think our opponent is capable of a big bluff or not and a personal play style question.

I differ a bit with John’s analysis. The board is dry but there are almost no turns where we improve. Think a small bet, like 40% of pot is good. It allows us to double barrel on an over easily and can take the pot down fairly frequently. Plus we may bet with something like QJo+, 99, TT. We aren’t ever bluffing on this board, nothing to bluff except like AK or KQs which hasve 2 overs. Our opponent will check with a wide range, any 2 overs, any set and a lot of his over pairs. From a TAG I expect to see bets from top pairs, and any pairs bellow JJ that aren’t sets. A passive player will check any non top pair and I would expect TT+ and two overs to be that persons main holdings.

The turn we think brings gold and in reality brings nothing but pain. We make our set and the board gets a lot wetter. Now 9T has open ended and diamonds have a flush draw. SB bets, fair enough, almost any top pair and even weaker holdings will bet and even a lot of draws like QTd or A3d or any 9T. We raise, which I think is good. We are raising for value, charging our opponent to draw to their outs. I’m not sure what we would bluff with though save 9Td or Axd but we want to make sure we have something like that in our range. Maybe you have J8 in your Preflop call range which would lao raise this turn along with any other set. The cold 3 bet is scary as hell. However let’s think about what our opponent is going to 3 bet with having bet preflop and checked the turn. I don’t see any 2 pair hands if he is a TAG or just a solid tight player so his value hands are just sets since AJ would likely just call or even fold. Maybe an over pair like QQ, KK, or AA will check the flop but I’m not sure about a cold 3 bet on the turn against the blinds. I don’t see many bluffs, A3d, A4d, 9Td but that’s it, just monster draws, I agree with John that it’s unlikely that an underpair turns into a bluff here. Either way, unless we are sure he only 3 bets with JJ we should call, even if he is only 3 betting with sets there are 6 combos that we beat (55 and 22) and 3 combos that we are crushed by (JJ).

From here nothing else needs to be said, the T changes nothing, either you were crushed or crushing. If it was exactly the Td maybe we can find a fold but I don’t think Q9s or 97s is a likely holding for a middle position raiser. If we fold 88 what do we call an all in with here? exactly TT or JJ only? Our opponent accidently set the best trap since we fold to that 3 bet with literally almost every other hand.

For a way to get away, do you have any rule on when to walk away from a table when you are up? You bought in for $300 and managed to get to 4x your buy in. If swings like this bother you maybe walking away when you get up 2.5x or 3x you initial buyin not counting any reloads or add ons. I know it’s hard to walk away when winning but for peace of mind that may be the best thing to do.

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