Horseshoe Tunica $1-3
$215 effective
(Villain covers me - criticism of my buy-in cheerfully ignored)


General read: Villain pretty loose, has been opening a lot to $10. Pretty wide opening range.

Preflop
T T
V opens EP to $10, 1 call, Hero reraises to $35, V calls, cold-caller folds.

Flop ($78 net of rake, BBJ, and tip -- $180 behind)

Q J 9

V checks. H bets $50. V sighs a bit -- hard to tell if genuine or Hollywood -- and calls.

I figure it's hard for him to continue w/o a Q, straight, a flush, or reasonably big . If called I have equity against everything except a flush. But the sigh makes me think I could be behind a flush. Because he doesn't strike me as good, I can even imagine him slowplaying a small flush though that may be optimistic thinking once the turn comes out:

Turn ($178 -- $130 behind)

(Q J 9) - 4

V checks. H ????

Any merit to a bluff here? I'll post some assumed ranges for the Villain after I read others' thoughts.

This is pretty vomit inducing (the cards, not your play ). I'm not a fan of bluffing here. I think its a good spot, but with lack of reads and the stack size, I dont like it.

So u want to bluff-shove? Sounds pretty kamikaze'ish to me. Ur not sure what his 'sigh' meant on the flop so this sounds a lot like guessing. U need to get a fold >40% of the time to show an immediate profit and when ur called, ur dead (without question.)

Generally I wouldn't bluff here but I think it's ok to try it in a situation like this once in a while. If nothing else it's good for meta-game purposes.

Nah... too many of your perceived hand range bluffs are in the villains range too. Combine that with the standard live line for a nut/2nd flush with 4 on board in a 3bet pot would be to check behind here. Checking here keeps your bluffing options wide open for the river.

You have decent showdown value here, as I assume the villain's range is wide enough here that he does not always have a big flush here. If we get a CR here, we are puking and folding without additional information. Check behind.

My plan for the river will depend on how the villain reacts to our check, the river card, and their action on the river. I can see checking behind on the river, or shoving or folding to a shove/big bet from the villain.

I would be done with the pot when villian sighed. I don`t like betting the flop, I hate betting the turn, there just seems to be no reason to put money into this pot. You want to bluff conservative players, who you have reason to suspect are weak, not loose players, who have raised, called a reraise and called the flop.

His sigh was a hollywood and you fell for it. Weak means strong. I am so reluctant to continue, aww, i have to bet, that is so terrible = I have you beat sucker.

True most of the time, but not always. Our hero has a lot of seat time, and from his posts I am thinking fairly good at reading people. If he thinks the "sign" is real and not some act, I trust his read.

So OP, is it a real sign or not?

That is one of the reasons I say checking is good here. It is consistent, credible if you will, with the typical line from a live player... Betting his AX on the flop, but never bets his nut flush when it hits on the turn "because it is so obvious that I have the nuts and he will fold", to be followed up by a river bet "to get value out of my nut flush after I fooled him into thinking I don't have the flush".

The way I look at hands like this... We only have two options, give up and check down/fold or to bluff the villain trying to represent the nuts with a bluff catcher. It really depends on the villain, do they make hero calls here with J? Do they make a call with Q/K? <=T? If they fold there one card flush here more times than not, I am bluffing the river. If they are calling with too many one card flushes, I am check/folding the river. My image with the villain has to be scary enough that my representation of the "nuts" here has to be credible to the villain too.

Edit to add:

With the Q J and 9 on the board and it being very unlikely with the hero holding TT it is very unlikely the villain has the T we are in an ever better spot on the river to bluff. We only need to fade the A and K and depending on the villain he might fold the K to a river AI.

Well, actually my thinking at the table (dubious) was that it was a Hollywood, that he flopped a flush, that given his wide range it was probably a low flush despite the dangers of slowplaying.

But away from the table, I think

1. it's hard to know how much to discount various combos of SCs and suited semis from his range. Is he calling a 3bet with 8 5 ? Maybe, but I'm not sure where to discount that in his range.

2. He actually might not slowplay a small flush. Almost sure he'd slowplay the flopped nut flush. Not sure about a second-nut.

3. There's no guarantee that he can fold an 8-high one-card flush here.

So I'm really bluffing to clear out queens, jacks, two pair, and straights. Still some merit in that, maybe, but maybe not.


Ha! I think you're overrating me. (I just cut my session way short because I feel like I'm misreading people regularly today.) The next couple of AA hands I'm going to post should be enough to disabuse you of this notion.

More to the point, though, I'm playing live for the first time in 5 months and trying to make myself play closer to 100xBB stacks. I'm also trying to incorporate "turning made hands into bluffs" more in my game, although that skill may be overrated at these stakes.

He had A 8 , the turned nuts. So the sigh was (somewhat) genuine.

Obviously I'm less worried that I bluffed into the nuts than I am that my play might not make sense against his range. His raise/call range is, to say the least, pretty exploitable.

Great point.

To those advocating checking back the river: Are we folding on any non-straightening turn card? What about 8?

If the turn had been a 8 I am betting here like always. Every hand (reasonably in the villains range) has to have a T. Since you have 2 of them the likelihood that he has one or will see one on the river are soooooooooooooo small.

Yet the temptation of the temptation of drawing to a str8 with a lot of your range containing AX the villain will talk themselves into calling at lot (both amount and times) here on the turn.

Sorry, the above quote should say "checking back the flop", not the river.