Villain joined the game around 5PM and immediately ordered a beer and a double shot of Petron, which made me happy to have him on my immediate right. He was a typical splashy recreational player, limping into a lot of pots, sometimes folding to raises, sometimes calling and check-folding flops but not getting involved in a lot of big pots.
He open limped the CO for $10, I made it $40 with Ah 5h on the Button, the blinds folded, and he called.
The flop came Kh Qh Ts. He checked, I bet $75 (was experimenting with multiple bet sizes last night), and he called.
The turn was the Jh, he checked, and I bet $75 again because I was mostly targeting two-pair or a low-straight. I didn’t think he’d play much Ax this way, and I blocked a lot of flushes.
He tanked for a while, then raised $200. I was planning to 3-bet to $600, but I took my time, and he started giving off some really blatant weak-means-strong tells. He told I didn’t have anything, that I should just let him win a small pot, etc. At some point he asked if I had an Ace or a 9.
All of that made me aim a little higher, so I popped it to $700. He pushed out a stack worth about $1800, I shoved for his last $600 or so, he quickly called, and I tabled my hand even before the river came down because I thought I had the nuts. The river blanked off, and then he tabled the Th 9h. Even after I saw it, it took me a minute to realized I’d lost.
Despite the blatant tells, I don’t regret my play. I think he could behave the same with a lot of flushes, thinking that I just have an Ace.
I agree you should have no regrets (for what my opinion is worth). Even knowing he’s strong here, I agree it’s very easy to imagine his acting this way with some ten or 9 high flushes, thinking you probably just have the ace. This just goes to show the limits of a lot of behavioral stuff; even knowing there’s a very high chance he thinks he’s strong, it’s hard to know what exactly he thinks is strong. And this is especially true for non-serious players who may have a much broader range of what they think is “strong” than what a serious player would think is strong.
It sounds like he said quite a few things to you. I think probably the most pertinent verbal behavior is when he implies that you don’t have a hand. I talk about this a good amount in my book; it’s basically weakening his own hand range indirectly by implying “I don’t think you have much so I could be making this bet without much.” So these “weak-hand statements” will usually indicate a strong hand, just because bluffers or players with vulnerable hands don’t like to make such statements. Mainly, though, it’s most pertinent because it is kind of goading behavior (similar to “You don’t have anything; you’re not going to call this bet” kind of stuff) and goading behavior is very likely to be from players with strong hands.
But again, all that said, hard to know how strong a specific player (esp a recreational player) has to be to say these kinds of things.
good tell analysis zach, but yeah, so many worse flushes have to think they’re monsters against your likely straight.
i size my raise smaller fwiw (~$550) since i think i’ll still be able to get all the money in against other flushes regardless, and that way it’s harder for villain to fold a straight and easier for him to enter some sort of levelling war with his worse hands.
Was there a bad beat jackpot won?
No, I would have mentioned that!