Views from the Rail

Recently I played a HULA match against boc4life to determine which team would move into the playoffs. Unfortunately I lost, but During this match, many interesting hands arose. Here is one that, I thought, illustrated a couple of great concepts when it comes to bluffing on drawy board textures. First I’ll post then hand, then I’ll analyze it:

Full Tilt Poker $100/$200 Limit Hold’em – 2 players
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

Pre Flop: (0.03 SB) Hero is with 3 4
Hero raises, boc4life 3-bets, Hero calls

Flop: (0.12 SB) 6 Q 7 (2 players)
boc4life bets, Hero calls

Turn: (0.08 BB) 8 (2 players)
boc4life bets, Hero raises, boc4life calls

River: (0.16 BB) K (2 players)
boc4life checks, Hero bets

Final Pot: 0.16 BB

To begin, boc has been flatting his whole range preflop, and, although it doesn’t effect my play in this particular hand, I need to make some very specific adjustments to that particular strategy. Basically, all of these adjustments hinge upon boc’s postflop c/r and c/c range being stronger than normal. With that being said, these adjustments need to be made on the margins of your range. In this case I have a very clear semibluff for a couple of important reasons.

At first glance, this may not seem to be so. After all, our equity isn’t very good against boc’s continuing range. Our pair outs are rarely good and our straight-draw may be tainted by a club in our opponents hand.

With that said, let me make an argument for the play I made. First of all, and perhaps most importantly, I have the bottom of my flop peeling range. This may seem like a small factor. After all, the 8 smacks boc’s semi-bluffing range. But boc is not your run of the mill opponent. He should have a rather big chunk of his flop c/r range that actually consists only of bd draws so when a card like the 8h rolls off on the turn he still has bluffs with enough equity to profitably bet.

Not only that, but, as a corollary, on this kind of turn card, I also need to have some draws that don’t complete when what I call “killer” cards come off on the river. When, for example, the 9h comes on the river, your average opponent has zero draws in his range. His range is much too strong. This allows good tags to make exploitable folds against him.

What we really need to do is balance our range, not only in the present moment of the hand, but also in the future. There are two parts to this concept. First of all you need to bluff with “non-standard” types of bluffing hands on both the flop and the turn. Secondly, you need to call with some of the stronger hands which you would normally semibluff on the turn. Here, I might not raise the turn with a hand like JTo for a few reasons, one of which is to still have some range viability on certain river cards.

I hope this hand illustrated some cool concepts for you guys. Again, if you have any questions or comments, leave em below.