A Hand From the Card Player Poker Tour

For my first article for Card Player, I wanted to discuss a hand from the final table of the recent $5,000 buy-in Card Player Poker Tour event at the Venetian in Las Vegas. I made it to the final table with 1 million in chips, putting me squarely in third place behind two young, aggressive players. While I was totally card dead for the first hour, the rest of the table was gambling. When we were six handed, the stacks were:

Seat 1: 1.8 million Loose, aggressive kid
Seat 2: 400,000 Loose, aggressive guy who took many unconventional lines
Seat 3: 2 million Loose, aggressive kid who proved he was willing to get pretty far out of line
Seat 4: 1 million Card Player’s own Allyn Jaffrey Shulman, who was playing a good, tight, aggressive game
Seat 5: 800,000 Me, I was playing a tight game mostly due to being card dead
Seat 6: 500,000 Dan O’Brien, who was playing a tight game, also probably due to having no cards

The blinds were 6,000-12,000 (2,000 ante). I raised to 25,000 from the hijack holding Q-10 offsuit, and seat 3 called from the big blind (BB). So far, throughout the entire tournament, he had been constantly out of line, trying to outplay his opponents whenever possible. I fully expected him to call my small preflop raise with a wide range, which is not a bad thing for me, because I am in position with a hand that flops decently well. It is important to realize that you want your opponents to stay in the hand whenever you are in position with a reasonable hand. Your plan should not be to raise huge, hoping to force dominated hands to fold.

The flop came 9 8 2 and my opponent checked. I thought he would check with his entire range, looking to check-raise from time to time when the flop was good for his range and bad for my range. It is well known that when someone raises preflop, they tend to have big cards or pairs. When players call from the big blind, they tend to have big cards, pairs, or speculative drawing hands. Since his range contains way more speculative drawing hands than mine, this flop tends to be better for him because it contains two connected middle cards.

Despite this, I elected to make a small continuation bet of 25,000 into the 68,000 pot. My goal with this bet was to win the pot immediately, get called and see a turn with a decent amount of equity, or get raised small enough such that I can continue in the hand. Even though I only have a gutshot and overcards, my hand has a lot of value. My opponent check raised to 67,000, which I imagine he will do fairly often, and I called, mostly because I am in position with a hand that has a decent amount of equity against my opponent’s check-raising range containing mostly one pair, two pair, draws, and bluffs. I also think I will be able to steal the pot occasionally on the turn. Since I have been fairly tight, I thought my opponent would think I have a decently strong range made of one pair, two pair, sets, and good draws.

The turn was the 4. My opponent bet 85,000. Seeing how I thought he would bet again with his entire range and I cannot beat most of this range, calling with the intention of playing straightforward on the river would be an awful line. My reasonable options are to either fold or raise. Since I did not call my opponent’s flop raise with the intention of giving up on the turn, raising is the only line that makes sense because I think my opponent’s range is fairly weak and the turn did not complete any of his possible draws. I elected to raise to 210,000, leaving 500,000 in my stack. While I think this raise certainly looks strong, it is not actually representing many hands besides sets, overpairs, and, 9-8. Whenever you are playing against a thinking opponent, you must always figure out if he will view your aggressive lines as value bets or bluffs. Since it is fairly difficult for me to actually have a value hand in this scenario simply because there are not many possible value hands to have, this bluff may be a bit optimistic. The cool thing about this bluff is it still may force my opponent off marginal one pair hands while getting him to call with some of his draws. Seeing how Q-10 beats all the draws at the moment, I can expect this bet to get some better made hands to fold and some worse draws to call.

My opponent elected to call. At this point, I put him on mostly top pair/top kicker or better and draws. My plan going to the river was to give up unless I hit a jack, because I do not expect my opponent to fold any of his made hands and I can beat all of his draws if they do not improve. If a queen or ten comes on the river, I would check behind, because those cards may scare him off worse made hands, and might also improve his draws, meaning I am unlikely to get called by many worse hands. Even though a queen or ten would probably give me the best hand, betting would be a disaster. Likely having the best hand is not a good reason to bet. You have to expect to get called by many worse hands in order to make a value bet profitable.

Luckily for me, the river was a jack. My opponent checked and I decided to bet 325,000 instead of going all-in. While I do not think the bet sizing matters too much in this situation, it would be an absolute disaster for my opponent to fold a hand like 10-10 or A-9 to an all-in if he would call a slightly smaller bet. Even though I think my opponent would call any bet size with a hand that beats A-A, I think it’s worth giving up a bit of value in hopes of getting my opponent to call with most of the made hands in his turn calling range instead of only his best hands. My opponent called fairly quickly with 9-8 and I scooped a nice pot.

It should be made perfectly clear that when I made my turn bluff, I already knew what I was going to do on every river card. When you get way out of line, you must be sure you are thinking ahead with a clear mind. Since I knew I beat most draws and could force most of his value range to fold, I decided to run a risky bluff. If he called on the turn and I missed, I would have happily checked behind, often losing the pot. As long as you are constantly thinking ahead, good things will come. ♠

Jonathan Little, 2-time World Poker Tour champion has won more than $6 million in tournaments since 2006. He is sponsored by UltimatePoker.com, 3bet.com, Instapoker and BlueSharkOptics and teaches poker at FloatTheTurn.com and www.JonathanLittleSecrets.com. Follow him on Twitter @ JonathanLittle.