POTD #214 Limp-Check Blind vs Blind. We Both Have Nothing.

An A3 on Monday and an LX on Thursday

This week and last, I’ve mostly focused on c-betting and barreling in position. It’s a hard thing to do, and it requires playing several different bet sizes and finding many unconventional turn barrels. Playing OOP is generally harder, but when finding unusual turn barrels, it can actually be easier. On Monday, I wrote about two-barreling total air like 8d7d on AhTh2sKc— that’s the type of play that, depending on the exact preflop positions and stack sizes, can get the BB to fold hands as strong as top pair or a flush draw. If that hand were, say, under-the-gun vs. the button, getting top pair or a flush draw to fold becomes much harder, because the button can realize more equity— by, say, missing a flush draw, getting checked to on the river, and bluffing themselves.

In certain situations, an out-of-position player gets to play a rather polar strategy and bluff some total-air hands. I wrote about one of those spots last week— three-bet pots— but even then, part of the lesson of last week’s hands was that a hand like QJcc is just too bad to put any money in the pot on 8s6s4d. Another situation where the OOP can make some polar barrels is from the small blind in blind-versus-blind pots. Limp-check blind-vs.-blind is one of the trickiest and most misplayed spots in all of poker. Usually, the errors stem from a simple misconception: The SB thinks they have a range advantage, because the BB will raise almost all of their good preflop hands versus a limp and the BB will have some bottom-of-range hands like 32o and 72o that the SB folds the first time around.

There are several reasons why that is not correct. First, ranges are simply too wide for one player to have a significant range advantage. Sure, the SB might have AK and TT-QQ on QJT, but they still only have hands of that caliber ~3% of the time, whereas when they raise UTG they might have hands like that 15-20% of the time. The second factor is, the BB raises a polar bluffing range, so they can dump combos of garbage hands into their bluffing range. So while the BB has more 72o than the SB, they have a lot less J2o. Finally, the BB has position, and even if the SB does have a small range advantage, a small range advantage is not justification for blindly putting money in the pot OOP with a lot of money behind. Even today’s hand, which occurred 17bbs deep, has a stack-to-pot ratio of almost 5.5x on the flop. In today’s hand, I tried to use the lessons I had learned from single raised pots vs. the BB and tried to find some unconventional turn barrels, but did not consider all the characteristics of my hand and made the wrong play.

EPT Cyprus 2023 Event #13 25k NLHE
(3k/6k/6k) (SB/BB/BBA) 100k Starting Stack. Registration just closed.

Preflop: It folds to me in the SB (100k) and I complete with T♥️5♠️, the BB checks.
Flop (18k) 6♠️4♠️4♥️: I bet 6k, he calls.
Turn (30k) 9♣️: I bet 24k, he folds.