At the Wynn on Tuesday...

Villain has only been at the table a short time. Looks like a pretty normal white guy. Immediately straddled, raised his straddle, doubled up when he flopped straight flush draw on the flop and stacks went in. Has been pretty active, straddling and raising pots. Lost a few hands in row. Stack size down to 300.

I'm Asian and look fairly young. I have 600 in front of me with a couple of black chips. We have no history together.

Folds to the villain who raises to 12 on the button.

I re-raise to 40 with red 99 in the small blind.

Folds. He thinks for a moment then calls.

Flop: A-10-8 all hearts (80)

I think for a moment and bet out 75. He thinks for 2 seconds then calls.

Turn: Black 2 (220)

I think, look at his stack (185 left) and then shove.

Thoughts?

I probably just call preflop. Guy doesn't seem like the type to fold to a 3bet preflop, and he might give us trouble postflop (especially since we're going to see a lotta sucky boards). I'd rather keep the pot small, especially since I might have to give up a lot postflop.

Not sure why we are betting the flop? No Ace is folding. No big pair with a heart is folding. Are we bluffing and attempting to get bigger pairs + no heart off their hand? That might work, but we don't really know.

Interesting that by the turn we've setup < PSB shove that we think is a bluff (according to thread title) when we have a showdownable hand that doesn't require the hand to be played this way, imo. I think our hand is strong enough to withstand a bet or two (if we simply called preflop) without having to turn it into a bluff (plus 1/8 of the time we'll flop a monster and can go to town then).

GcluelessNLnoobG

Thanks for talking through this with me. I'm definitely an amateur.

Do you think I'm ahead of any hand that calls my bet on the flop?

A few thoughts:

1. I'm almost always just flatting pre-flop. We're getting good set-mining odds and V sounds pretty splashy so would expect that we have good IO if we hit a 9. I'd be more inclined to 3-bet if the initial raise had been a bit bigger and there were a couple callers beforehand, since that would give us a pot worth stealing.
2. As played, flop is terrible for our hand. I probably just check and get prepared to give up. The number of bad flops for us are part of the reason why I don't 3-bet. If you're going to c-bet, I'd go smaller.
3. Turn shove just seems like spew. Turn changes nothing.

I think the biggest problem is that you are targeting a guy that is losing and most likely tilting a little. This leads to less fold equity, which is what you want when you 3bet a hand like 99. The only way you want calls is if this guy plays super fit or fold and will call your bet with broadways and give up on all flops where he doesn't hit.

After the flop, your cbet isn't that bad since it will fold out any JJ-KK that doesn't have a heart, plus it charges over cards like KQ KJ or QJ from making the best hand at showdown.

Overall, I don't mind the way you played the hand, but its pretty high variance. I would have played it the way gobbledygeek recommended, just call and look to win a small pot at showdown with a good board run out or spike a set and potentially stack your agro V.

(Grunch, 'cause all the math and stuff took so long the thread is probably solved and dead by the time I have something to say )

It's hard for V to call the flop without either an A or the Kh or Qh. He would likely raise his sets and probably 2P or made small flushes so his range is somewhat capped.

Turn is a complete blank. It scares his heart draws. His ace is roughly indifferent since he doesn't know whether he's ahead or behind.

Shoving the turn puts him to a difficult decision. If he has an A, he's dead behind a made flush or set, behind 2P, and ahead of any combo draw (but still losing equity to those hands). My first thought is that I like the move. Mostly because any time you put V to a difficult decision he has the opportunity to make an expensive mistake.

Then I turned to Flopzilla. I assumed a button raise with any broadway, any pair, any ace, 98o+, 54s+, 75s+ K9+. That's a pretty loose raising range (about 31%), but he sounds somewhat loose and he's OTB.

Assuming he continues past the turn only with TP+ or either the Kh or Qh, we have about 24% equity against his range on the turn. I was surprised it was that high, but I checked it several times. Note this leaves his turn range uncapped.

If he folds as little as 16% in this case, the bluff is breakeven. That really surprised me.

To back it up:

He folds 1/6 the time. We win 220 / 6 = 37.
Our equity if called is roughly 25% * (185 + 220) - 75% * 185
Or 100 - 140 = -40.
He calls 5/6 the time.
5/6 * (-40) = about -35.

QED.

About 60% of his hands OTT are TP. If he'll fold those even one-third the time, we're in great shape.

My initial impression was wrong. I don't like the move. I love it.

(I did a quick check of how much our equity varies if his opening range is tighter. It's remarkably inelastic, since the flop action dominates the preflop action. Basically, regardless of his pre range, assuming he's continuing only with A or Kh/Qh is what really matters.)

Can definitely be ahead of some hands as this is a pretty drawy board, although some hands that we are ahead of we are just barely ahead of (we're almost flipping with an overcard + bigger heart).

For a learning player, there is fairly useful saying that ain't a bad default way to approach many poker hands: "big hand, big pot; small hand, small pot". We have a fairly small hand preflop (just a middling pair), and an extremely small hand postflop (3rd pair with a middling one card flush draw). And yet we got ourselves into a situation where we are playing for 100bb stacks with it on the turn.

Gjustmytwocents,othersmightdisagreeG