POTD #222 Bluffing My Stacks off in a $500/$1k/$2k Game

Back in the olden times when GG ran high stakes cash games.

Sometimes we have theme weeks on POTD, and sometimes I pick hands without a plan, and then, as I am writing them up, I realize the hands I chose share a lot of similarities. This week is one of those weeks. The hand I chose for yesterday POTD #221 was a three-bet pot where Lewis Spencer went bet-check-bet and I decided to look him up with a bluff-catcher. In today’s hand, I am playing the role of the three-bettor who goes bet-check-bet, except unlike Lewis, I unfortunately do not have a value-bet. That’s especially unfortunate, because today’s hand comes from a nosebleed cash game, a $500/$1000/$2000 game with a $200 ante, where the businessman in the game, Bill Perkins, had just sat out, and us sharks were stuck battling amongst each other while we waited to see if Bill would return.

Bet-check-bet lines on boards that do not change are often unconvincing, but they are a necessary part of any poker player’s arsenal. If you always bet your good hands OOP on the turn, your opponent can float your flop c-bet and steal the pot on the turn or the river very liberally. Once you realize you need to check some strong hands out of position on the turn, it stands to reason that you can also have some value bets on the river when the turn checks through. Checking the turn strong protects your turn range, but it has an added benefit of letting you bluff the river with total air. When you are OOP it’s rare to bluff total air: no pair, no draw, no blockers type air. It’s hard to play out of position with a good hand; it’s near impossible to play out of position with a terrible hand, so you often give up with bottom-of-range hands. However, when you’re bluffing on the river, you don’t care that you had no pair, no draw, no blockers on the turn. You can bluff anything, so by occasionally trapping the turn OOP, you make IP floats less profitable and open up the door to bluff more rivers. Today’s hand features me giving up with total air out of position, only for my opponent to check back the turn and give me the opportunity to bluff the river. I wish he did not give me that opportunity and saved me $53k.

HH: GGPoker

GG Cash Game ($500/$1000/$2000) ($200) (SB/BB/STR) (ANTE)

Katya18 opens the CO to $4,444, it folds to me in the BB with 9♦️8♦️ and I make it $16,388, he calls.

Flop ($36,276) K♥️5♠️4♦️: I bet $9,069, he calls.
Turn ($54,414) 4♥️: I check, he checks.
River ($54,414) T♠️: I shove for $53,135.50, he calls with K♣️Q♦️.

What I Was Thinking

I don’t really know how to play straddle NL, but three-betting a suited connector from the BB is always a reasonable play, so I went for it. My general rule of thumb is, on dry king-high boards when the three-bettor has AK and the flatter does not, the three-bettor pure bets. I wasn’t sure if I played multiple sizes here, but block seemed appropriate. On the turn, I’d already put $25k in the pot and had total air; I figured I’d at least want to barrel hands that had a draw, one heart, or a Q/J/T in them to maximize the chance I was blocking top pair, so I gave up.

Bluffing in bet-check-bet lines is tricky, because it often looks like the only value bet you can have is a turn trap. If that’s the case, why wouldn’t you keep trapping yourself? The ten river is a notable river, because it means a lot of my unpaired hands have paired, and Tx or QQ-JJ are hands I could value bet. I was not sure what size I wanted to pick, but I felt that Katya would have 66-99 a lot, and maybe I could even value shove a T for pot myself, since he’d usually bet the turn with top pair, so I shoved and got snap called.

What I Got Wrong

Preflop, I three-bet around 1/4 of the time and every suited connector bigger than 76s gets in there a little, so this seems fine from me. On the flop, I do not have a pure c-bet with range, only 89% of it. My hand without a backdoor flush draw is the type of hand that would just check-fold every time. However, since I had a backdoor flush draw, I always c-bet and my size is fine.

On the turn my hand gives up pure; my polar turn barrels are QJ/QT with a heart, or unpaired ace-high hands who are happy barreling with three outs to top pair, as opposed to hands like mine, which have zero outs to top pair.

On the river I can value bet as thin as 77, but the preferred size with 77 is a block. I can shove as wide as AT, but any ten whose kicker doesn’t play only gets to shove as a merge, where it can occasionally fold out chops while getting called by worse. Since I can block 99/88 for value, it makes sense that I block with 98s, which shares cards with 99 and 88, and I stick to bluff-shoving unpaired hands that have a Q, J, or A, since my most common value bets are QQ, JJ, AT, AK, and AA. Shoving loses around $600 compared to blocking, so it’s not a huge mistake— it only costs me three antes— but it’s a clear one. Especially vs. someone who set me up by checking a pure bet on the turn.

Types of Error

Range error: had the incorrect flop strategy
Sizing error: I should have bet smaller on the river.

Grade

I was lucky I did not have 9c8c in this hand, because if I did I’d probably have c-bet it, but since I did have a backdoor flush draw, my c-bet was good. My turn check is correct and I identified the situation correctly. I have a bad hand with limited ways to improve. It’s time to wave the white flag. My river play is the product of a couple errors: I did not realize how thin I could value bet; I didn’t consider that I could block a hand like 99 or 88. Had I realized that, I might have blocked the river instead of shoving and saved myself $40,000. I also did not give my opponent credit for checking back such a strong hand on the turn. In that way, this hand parallels yesterday’s hand. Yesterday, I was shocked that Lewis checked top pair out of position and I made an incorrect call on the river. Today, I was shocked that Katya checked top pair in position and I made a failed bluff. In hindsight, I felt that yesterday I could have sussed out that Lewis was more likely to trap on the turn than the solver and maybe I could have folded the river. Today, I don’t feel the same way. There was no reason for me to believe he’d check such a strong hand on the turn, and I was shocked that he showed up with KQ. So while I’ll dock myself for picking the wrong river size, I think my preflop, flop, and turn play are all solid, which warrants giving myself a better grade than yesterday.

B-