Spazzy Bluff

This isn’t my proudest hand ever, but I do think it’s interesting. I never had much of a plan beyond the current street, which is why I say it isn’t my proudest moment, but I do think that each street has the potential to be profitable in a vacuum. FWIW I’d never seen Villain before, so no reads except that he probably isn’t a regular.

PokerStars – $2 NL (6 max) ZOOM – Holdem – 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4: http://www.pokertracker.com

BTN: $345.74
SB: $314.91
Hero (BB): $258.40
UTG: $269.90
MP: $136.94
CO: $94.00

SB posts SB $1.00, Hero posts BB $2.00

Pre Flop: (pot: $3.00) Hero has Qs Ad

fold, fold, fold, BTN raises to $5.56, fold, Hero raises to $18.00, BTN calls $12.44

Flop: ($37.00, 2 players) 3h 5d 7h
Hero bets $18.00, BTN calls $18.00

Turn: ($73.00, 2 players) 9d
Hero checks, BTN bets $23.86, Hero raises to $88.00, BTN calls $64.14

River: ($249.00, 2 players) Kh
Hero bets $134.40 and is all-in, fold

Hero wins $246.20

I was planning to check-raise the turn even if he’d made a larger bet, though the small bet was encouraging. My plan was to run him off of weak made hands and also extract some value from draws. If he just calls the turn, then I think my hand is actually good enough to check-call a blank river. That’s not to say that I think he’s always on a draw, just that he’d usually check behind a made hand that isn’t good enough to shove over my turn check-raise.

This river, though completing some of his draws, also gives me something to represent. My hand is no longer good enough to check-call, so checking gives him a green light to shove any busted draws he does have. In other words, there’s actually value in shoving into those hands. I also think I can get him off of a lot of one-pair hands, so really I lose only to his rivered flushes. He probably has plenty in his range, but given that I’m shoving barely half-pot, I don’t have to succeed all that often. It’s a spot where the all-in bet probably generated an amount of fold equity disproportionate to its size.