Mid/High Stakes Limit Hold'em Poker Forums

The villain here is a very good regular player who reads hands well. He is 27/20/1.86 with a WTSD of 38 which is on the tighter side for most of the regular players.

His image of me should be pretty good. My style is similar to his, only slightly looser and a bit more aggressive. For the current session I have been running good and showing down good hands.

Poker Stars $100.00/$200.00 Limit Hold'em - 5 players
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

Pre Flop: Hero is BTN with A 9
1 fold, CO raises, Hero 3-bets, 2 folds, CO calls

Flop: (3.75 BB) J 7 K (2 players)
CO checks, Hero bets, CO calls

Turn: (4.75 BB) 2 (2 players)
CO checks, Hero checks

River: (4.75 BB) T (2 players)
CO bets, Hero raises

Given my turn check, I thought this was a good river to bluff at to get him to fold a number of hands that have me beat. How's it look?

I don't play anywhere near this high, but what do you think he's folding here? You're representing AQ (or maybe TT) but with the odds you're giving him to call I don't think he'll be folding often enough for your bluff to be worth it.

I don't play anywhere near this high, but what do you think he's folding here? You're representing AQ (or maybe TT) but with the odds you're giving him to call I don't think he'll be folding often enough for your bluff to be worth it.

I don't think he'll fold 2pr hands here, but would fold AJ and QJ. It's kind of close because I don't expect him to have KJ or 77 here very frequently, but for your bluff to work basically 1 in 4 times you need him to be making very thin value bets with AT here that he'd fold.

Rob

I'd be interested if you think he can ever play a king this way, not that it matters all that much but he might feel he has to call because he under-repped his hand. To borrow from a NL concept KJ and QJ (two pair and second pair) are the same hand here because you are repping exactly AQ/TT, if he should fold both of these there are basically no hands left he can call with except for AQ himself which will obviously reraise. So I guess what I'm saying is he might call you with anything previously mentioned just because its all at the "top of his range" and if he folds everything up to KJ you have a very very profitable bluff.

I'll tell you one thing, if I was the CO here and playing well I'd fold everything except a slow played set or better so this would work well on me, at least the first time

Interesting hand, look forward to more high stakes hands. Also sometimes these things are extremely villain dependent but can't fault you for not naming names.

-DeathDonkey

Hi Zak,
I love this post. its way above my playing ability,
but I like seeing it. There is a lot to think about here.

it seems to me, our read of villains flop call is key.
because we need to be sure what hands we can fold out here.
A king will/might call, and most "curious jacks" too, I think.
so we need to rule out most of those hands.

please tell me (teach me) what makes this play work..
1) we need to have good understanding of villains flop play
2) we need to be able to rep hitting the river, after checking thru the turn.
this river card makes AQ/TT, solidly in our "easily readable range"..
3) we need a thinking villain who can make a reasonable laydown
and not look us up for the hell of it.

what am I missing?
also, would you mind looking at a recent post of mine in small stakes...
"Stealing big multiway pots on the turn"....thanks.

i think the bluff is better than it first appears when you sit back and think about the villain's range. namely, i dont think villain has much, he's basically just floating you on the flop and may have as little as a small pair or the Ah. to be more precise he would almost certainly c/r the flop if he had a J or K.

but for that same reason i think it's even better to just bet the turn. having made the error of checking that turn i think the river raise may be a little better than a fold, although way higher variance.

I'd be interested if you think he can ever play a king this way, not that it matters all that much but he might feel he has to call because he under-repped his hand. To borrow from a NL concept KJ and QJ (two pair and second pair) are the same hand here because you are repping exactly AQ/TT, if he should fold both of these there are basically no hands left he can call with except for AQ himself which will obviously reraise.

I don't agree that hero is repping AQ/TT here. True in NL when you can bet more but it is limit and you see river raises with two pair, such as JT.

I'd put villian on AJ or JT, maybe AT. If he has a T or J he calls here. 8-to-1 here which gets into the auto-payoff range heads up, even with 38% WTSD.