EPT Madrid River Bluff-Call

There’s a full trip report in the works, but for now, here’s my favorite hand that I played in the EPT Madrid main event:

Blinds are 150/300/25. The UTG is a very aggressive young Scandinavian with a huge stack. He opens to 750, and I call in the CO with 66 and 45K in my stack. Action folds to the BB, who calls. This is no surprise, as his VP$IP is about 50%.

The flop comes 732r. UTG bets about half the pot, I call, and the BB overcalls. Fish though he is, I don’t think he has many 2’s or 3’s in his range. I did once see him peel the flop with AQ unimproved, so he could just have overs, but I thought there was a good chance he had a 7.

The turn was a 9, and my opponents checked to me. There was nothing for me to do but check behind. The BB wasn’t the sort of guy you try to bluff off of a decent pair, so I had pretty much given up after his flop call. As this hand will demonstrate, though, you should always be paying attention and considering your options, even when you think the result is a foregone conclusion.

The river brought an A and completed a potential backdoor flush draw. The BB checked, UTG bet about half the pot, and suddenly I saw an exciting opportunity. I thought that UTG would bluff all of his air on this river, and that while he would also value bet his Aces, he was a lot more likely to have random suited connectors and broadway cards than to have random Ax.

The catch, of course, was that I thought there was a good chance BB had me beat. Station that he was, though, I still didn’t think he would overcall an Ace river with just a pair of 7’s. That would be bad even for him. So I called without too much thought, wanting to project confidence to the BB, who did in fact fold.

UTG showed QT, and I won the pot. I watched BB closely for a reaction that might indicate he’d folded the winner, but I got nothing one way or the other. I like to think that he did, though. Ever since reading Doyle Brunson’s famous story about calling the river with J-high in a 3-way pot to scare out the best hand and beat the third player’s busted straight draw, I’ve wanted to pull off a play like that. This wasn’t nearly as cool, but I was pretty excited about it nonetheless.