Friday, November 07, 2008

HOTD: Leatherass tries a flop bluff

Leatherass is on the Button.

Full Tilt Poker, $5/$10 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 4 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

BB: $684.50

Hero (UTG): $1,015

BTN: $1,419

SB: $491

Pre-Flop: K 8 dealt to Hero (UTG)
Hero raises to $30, BTN calls $30, 2 folds

Flop: ($75) 4 K 3 (2 Players)
Hero bets $50, BTN raises to $160, Hero calls $110

He's pretty much representing either a set or air. I looked at his flop aggression in Holdem Manager and found that his aggression frequency on the flop is 40 percent, compared to his turn and river aggression in the 20 percent range. His raise size also seems a little bit odd: why would he raise to $160 instead of a regular 3X raise to $150? Does he think that extra $10 is going to push me off my hand, or is that what he would raise if he really did have a set?

Turn: ($395) Q (2 Players)

Hero checks, BTN checks

I would have considered check-raising if he had bet this turn.

River: ($395) 9 (2 Players)

Hero checks, BTN checks

Maybe I could have gotten some value by betting out, but I figured Leatherass was more likely to bluff the river than call a value bet.

Results: $395 Pot ($2 Rake)
Hero showed K 8 (a pair of Kings) and WON $393 (+$203 NET)
BTN showed Q A (a pair of Queens) and LOST (-$190 NET)

I was surprised to see him show up with AQ, but it makes sense. His plan was probably to bet the turn if he missed, but then he thought his Queen might be good enough to see a showdown.

On one hand, his flop raise on such a dry board will work a lot of the time. On the other hand, he wouldn't have lost the pot if he had simply 3-bet preflop.

2 comments:

James P McAteer said...

I'm surprised he didn't bet the turn when his Q hit. Same on river when you check - I would expect him to bet.

Iv'e watched him play a lot as well as his stoxpoker vids and this play seems more cautious than normal - but as you called his flop raise on this board I guess he knew you had some kind of a hand.

Wes said...

Saying that just because if he 3bets he wins the hand is really a simplistic approach to poker. If he 3bets preflop, you also fold A2-AT, JT-QJ here likely too. Also there are a lot of board textures that if he is planning on bluff raising with his call preflop that there are a lot of turn cards for him to keep firing on and you really cannot do much about.

Obviously this is not a great one to bluff raise on given that there are so few hands he can represent.