Sorry for the delay on this week’s podcast. We do still have an episode in the works. In the meanwhile, here’s a hand submitted by listener favorite Carlos Welch in which he bluffs frequent commenter Pie Farmer. My comments at the end:
Q: This is a hand from our regular 1-2 game. Villain is Pie Farmer.
A few hands earlier, I stacked a guy’s boat with quads, which prompted the table to go into their weekly chorus about how “Carlos always has the nuts” which roughly translates to “Please bluff us.” Unfortunately when I found a good spot for it, my friend Pie Farmer was in the hand. I kinda felt bad because he was already getting unlucky during the game, but the spot was too sweet not to take. He took it in stride and I think we will both learn a lot from it.
Effective stacks are $200 and he covers. He opens for $10 from EP with KK. MP calls and I call on the button with Ad2d.
Pot $30. The flop is Tc8c8d and it checks around.
Pot $30. The turn is the Td. Pie Farmer bets $20 and MP calls.
When he checked the flop, I though there was a chance he had air or a marginal hand like 99, JJ, or QQ. The only monsters he could have were 88, TT, or maybe some suited broadway hand that contained a T. The turn discounted his monsters and made the board scary for his marginal hands.
When villain just calls the turn, I don’t think he ever has a T, but he could have an 8.
I decided to make it $60 and shove most rivers because I had more Tx hands in my range than either of them given their actions up to this point (I guess having hands drop out of your range due to your actions is one of the worst problems of playing OOP). I figured this would get Pie Farmer off all his marginal one pair hands except maybe AA or KK. I also thought it could possibly get MP off of an 8 given my image and the table talk.
Also, if either player called with one pair, I had 12 outs. They both folded.
Afterwards, Pie Farmer said he would have called had the other guy not been behind him. I agreed and told him I would have folded KK in his spot as well, but neither of us are very sure about how we should play the hand in his spot.
My question is, if it’s ok to fold KK there vs. a perceived nit like me even though it is towards the top of our range on a draw heavy board?
I think it is because I’m rarely doing that without a boat, but I’m guessing that the GTO line is to call the turn and fold to a shove on rivers where draws come in, but I am not sure. This feels like a tough spot for an over pair.
A: First off, nice hand. My how our little nit has grown!
And don’t feel bad about bluffing a friend, even when he is having a bad night. A good friend wouldn’t want you to softplay him (as I’m sure you remember, I had no qualms about bluffing you when we played together!), and in any event it wouldn’t be ethical to do so.
This is a good spot, probably good enough that your choice of hands doesn’t matter terribly much. That said, your hand is arguably not ideal, as it contains significant blockers to hands in the second Villain’s folding range (in other words, flush draws are a big part of his non-boat range for calling the turn), and in the event that Villain does not fold your flush draw won’t be live anyway. So this is nowhere near the nut bluffing hand even though it may seem that way as it is a strong draw, but nevertheless I think this is a good spot and I certainly applaud the cojones.
As for Mr. Farmer’s optimal line with KK, it’s best to avoid capping one’s range in the first place. That may require things like raising a few more Ts and 8s in early position and/or betting the flop. The problem with trying to have a checking and a betting range on this flop is that you don’t have that many monster hands to begin with, which means that either your betting or checking range or both will be weak if you try to have a range for both. That’s a big problem against opponents good enough to deduce that and act on it, as Carlos did here.
It’s quite difficult to talk about GTO play in multiway pots. I’m sure I would have folded KK in PF’s shoes with the third player in the pot. In theory you ought to have some sort of call-folding range so that you can call-call with your Tx. A lot hinges on how much Tx you have in your range, how much air you have, etc. I guess KK is a decent bluff-catcher in the sense that it definitively beats all bluffs and is also resilient to hands that were bluffing but that bink enough showdown value to check behind and win on the river. In other words, it’s a somewhat better candidate for this than JJ because JJ has less equity against hands like KQ or AQ that Carlos might turn into bluffs. However, JJ has blockers to JT, so it could be a better candidate for that reason.
That’s all theoretical speculation, though. It’s OK to get bluffed sometimes when you’re out of position in multiway pots, but you should do what you can to avoid making your hand strength transparent and/or capped.
I don’t recall giving permission for this. Where do I go to get my image back?
You are all dead to me.
Unless this was merely step one in a multiyear plan…
Ps-gotta run, but thanks, and as much as I can, i’ll had some useful commentary later.
Good point about me having a flush draw here blocks MP’s folding range. I would never do this with no equity in this spot, but maybe I should with a hand like 66 or better yet, JJ for it’s JT blocker value.
Andrew, given your comments, would it be a good strategy for the EP raiser to check their entire range in this spot?
I think he’d be better off betting his whole range, or at least his whole continuing range (meaning he’d also have a check-and-give-up range). Although he might be at a bit of a disadvantage with regard to how often he’ll have the most nutted hands, his range should on-balance be stronger than those of either of the two callers, which means that both bluffs and value bets with hands like KK should be profitable on the flop.
Yep, I wish I’d have bet the flop. I’m overly passive. It’s an acknowledged leak. In a prior hand with the third player, I had passively played a set and gotten value from his two pair by check raising then getting called on the river. Totally different spot, but I never shifted gears.
I was in the enviable position of knowing more about Carlos’s game than any other player in the game, so I did recognize he could be bluffing when the other players would never suspect that. However, I didn’t think I could continue with the other villain still to act.
Well done Los.