Sunday Special #20 An Englishman Runs a Bluff in Belgium

A hand from the Pokerstars Open in Namur

My (Sam’s) thoughts are included in the footnotes. If you are reading this via e-mail, it might be an easier read on Substack where the footnotes require less scrolling back and forth. Click here. On to the Sunday Special where we have a first time submitter

The submission has been lightly edited for content and clarity

About me: I am a recreational player from the UK who has been playing for about 10 years now. Most of my poker is online cash games, but I do enjoy a live tournament now and then. I would say that my fundamentals are decent enough but more comfortable in 100BB cash game ranges than shorter stack tournament ranges.

The hand comes from the Pokerstars Open Namur €1,100 Main Event - my first ever tournament abroad! I was fortunate enough to satellite in, and I had a mental note to get some content for POTD (winning the €220k up top would be a nice bonus as well).

Pokerstars Open Namur €1,100 NLH - Main Event
(1k/1.5k/1.5k) (SB/BB/BBA) 450 Left. 223 Cash. Average is 140k. Starting Stack is 30k.

I (90k) open UTG7 to 3k with A♠️J♠️, UTG+1 (~300k) raises to 9k, folds to me and I call.

Flop (22k): J♥️T♠️8♠️. I check, villain checks.

Turn (22k): K♦️. I check, villain bets 8k, I raise to 30k, villain folds.

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My thoughts: I’m at a fairly tough table (at least relative to the field I’ve seen), with aggressive players on my left who are likely pros.¹ I get 3b by my immediate left to a somewhat larger size. I think this is a pure call but the bottom of the calling range more or less (at least, the worst suited ace).²

I get the dream flop for my hand and possibly my range³ - my first thought is that JJ, TT and 88 are well represented in our range pre, along with KQs and AQs which are at the least 8 out straight draws. I might be falling into the subscriber special trap of putting too much importance into who is flopping sets however!⁴ I decided not to lead though since our hand is so strong and people probably c-bet too much if indeed we are supposed to have leads, with the plan of x/r or x/c depending on sizing.

On the turn, it superficially looks like it is very good for IP, however AK is pretty far from the nuts here.⁵ I decided that at this point we should try to check and use the showdown value of our J, but that goes out the window when villain bets.⁶ I note the smaller sizing and essentially decided that I didn’t want AK to check back the river on a brick and win, and that it would make up a good part of his range.⁷ I also thought that most likely he would fold AK, and that AQ would be more inclined to bet flop (or flat pre) or might size bigger on the turn.⁸

I was also quite focused on how tight our preflop range is and how few natural bluffs we have - I don’t have many flush draws given the cards on the board - AQs, KQs and AJs mainly, of which AJs is the weakest.⁹ However we are in a world of pain if villain jams over us, so maybe we just need to bluff 99 and 77 that can easily fold to a jam.¹⁰

I chose this hand since I thought there were many decisions to be made, and I know this is a spicy flop where in 100BB deep cash ranges, in certain 3bp configurations, there are open jams on the flop.¹¹ Perhaps that could be something to consider - ripping turn either as a check /raise or just open rip, to really put AK, KQ, QQ and AA in horrible spots. Interested to know your thoughts!¹²

As an aside, I really enjoyed the structure of the tournament, however I was a bit surprised that they allowed players to muck rather than showing down. I thought that wasn’t allowed in most tournaments, and it is something I really hate in live cash games.¹³

I ended up cashing for just over the min cash (which was ok given I was fairly short nearing the bubble)¹⁴, but at least my brother is still going with 50 left as I write this. I at least made one good decision, which was to swap action with him!¹⁵ Big fan of POTD and happy to write in again if you will have it.

All the best,

Adam

If you made it to the end of the post and are interested in being the subject of a future Sunday Special, let me know. Do not be shy if you lack poker skill or accomplishments. No solver analysis is required from you and I’d much rather have hobbyist poker players, who are good writers that can produce clean copies and clearly articulate their thought process than editing the writing of 99% of accomplished poker players.

1. I think a lot of pros three bet too often in soft main event fields. A good way to counteract this is to just open tighter. You will make more money with your good hands and won’t need to play tricky spots OOP versus players who might be better than you postflop.

2. From a cEV perspective this is too tight. A9s, ATs, A5s and A4s all continue. However the only hand that is making a lot of EV where I’d think folding would be a clear mistake is ATs (which can also four-bet as AJo should be a frequent three-bet bluff from your opponent). With half the field cashing I’d call AJs pure, mix call and four-bet with ATs/A5s/A4s and fold A9s, unless I really wanted to go war vs my opponent.

3. It’s hard for the dream flop for you range to be a flop that’s pretty good for QQ+ and AK. It’s an okay flop for your range, but even though KQ and AQ have strong draws, they aren’t great hands yet and you should still have hands like pocket sixes and A5s. The best flops for your range are boards like 876 rainbow where you flop three sets your opponent rarely has and one or two straights they rarely have.

4. That tends to be more of a trap in single raised pots. The issue here is the solver often four bets JJ and TT pre as UTG7 here and occasionally three bets JJ/TT/88 themselves at UTG+1. So you don’t have a huge set advantage here. It’s about 6% to 4%. 876 is around 9% to 3%. We are also ignoring blockers here, if your opponent has KTs and blocks TT, your set advantage decreases.

5. The three-bettor is not supposed to c-bet 100% of the time on the flop, they frequently check with range. However, this is a pretty normal spot a lot of players get themselves into if they build too much of their check back range around AK. Then they don’t have good hands often enough on blank turns and have good hands too often on AKQ turns. It’s still a pretty good turn for IP because they can also have KJs, KTs, AQ, in addition to having AK.

6. I would check for a couple of simpler reasons, I don’t think we fold out better and our hand isn’t quite strong enough to value bet. When you check, I’d expect your opponent to regularly bet the turn themselves and there is no reason to put money in the pot for your opponent when they will do it anyways (imagine someone betting out of turn, you’d always check to them). I also would not read too much into his small size, this looks like a card that is great for his range, I could see him stabbing with anything and don’t think a small turn bet here is all that more likely to be AQ compared to AK.

7. The flip side here is he bet a small amount and it’s always appealing to see a cheap river with a big draw.

8. FWIW The solver bets AK on the flop a little more often than AQ, this is in part because AK can comfortably bet/fold where AQ needs to stack off. I agree with your turn logic, this play only makes sense if you can get AK to fold. What gets tricky about this hand and lots of hands where both players have a ton of pair + straight draw hands is making sure you are not overbluffing and making sure you pick your bluffs correctly. You could be bluffing here with QQ, any suited queen, any suited 9, any flush draw and of course your actual hand and if you really wanted to get frisky a hand like AcTc. Generally these spots are tricky, but a good rule of thumb is you need to either be able to fold out better or get called by worse. Fast playing 77 on 654 vs the BB is great because you’re getting money in good vs 86. Fast playing 43 is not. In today’s hand you could maybe get called by some worse hands like QJ that checked back the flop, but for the most part, you identified this check-raise bluff correctly, if you never get AK to fold. This bluff is not good.

9. I think you are too tight preflop here, but let’s even say you fold QTs and 98s here, but you also fold AQo pre. Well you still only have AQs, JJ, TT,88 for value, which is only 13 combos. So you still need to be careful you aren’t over bluffing QJs, some AJs without a NFD, some As5s or As4s, some 99 and all of a sudden you’re actually bluffing ~half the time. That number could rise if you ever do things like lead the flop or bet the turn with AQ or sets.

10. I would generally lean towards check-raising more polar because I would not want to check-raise fold a hand this strong. However, the solver does check-raise fold your hand with some frequency, so it’s an acceptable play. My concern would be that if humans ever shove hands like KTs or AK, checkraise folding AsJs can be costly. So I’d like to insulate myself against not knowing what my opponent’s turn three bet shoving range looks like and check raise a little more polar.

There are lots of outs that improve your hand, but might not improve it to a winner for the whole pot (A,J,Q), which makes me even more inclined to check raise a little more polar and I’d probably lean towards a hand like QTs or T9s and non paired nut flush draws as my ideal turn check raise bluffs here.

11. Open jams on the flop occur here generally when the three bettor is OOP and more often on boards where a flopped straight and flopped one card straight draws are not possible. Boards like JT5 flush draw get a lot more shoves than JT8 flush draw where you might just get snapped off by J9 or QT.

12. Before I looked at the sim, I had no strong preference between check-raising small vs check-raising all-in. With a weaker hand like 99 or QT check shoving would be a disaster, but you might have the exact hand that might want to check-shove. In game, with your hand, there is an element of sizing your opponent UP and asking what play will get AK to fold most often. If I thought my opponent would fold AK to a check-shove, I would never shove QT, but I might shove your hand. If I thought they’d never fold AK, I’d just check-call.

13. I thought this rule was enforced in PokerStars tournaments, but I could be wrong and I have no idea what the local rules are in Namur. I mostly like this rule because I hate the dumb games people play at showdown. Just muck or table your hand. Please stop pump faking or even worse the Kassouf game of stating “I have two pair, can you beat that?”. However the stated reason for this rule is for game integrity purposes and that is kind of silly, there are almost no documented cases in serious tournaments of players chip dumping to each other and it getting caught by forcing showdown in a non all-in pot.

14. It’s more than okay, you will not cash most tournaments you play and this was the biggest tournament of your life. Congrats!

15. Unfortunately he finished in 35th. Nice run!