I also posted this at 2+2 so if you’re looking for how I played it, you can read on, but if you want to playalong and not really know how I handled it on a street-by-street basis, or my thoughts on each street, then you should probably stop reading here.
6-handed Full Tilt $.5/1. It’s a great game and I’m playing A+ poker at this point. Most hands involving me haven’t featured a showdown.
Reads: MP is loose and fairly aggressive. The BB is overaggressive and seems to be overapplying some basic 6-max concepts; he plays a lot like I did when I didn’t really understand basic poker concepts but was trying to play shorthanded anyway. From what I’ve seen his raising range isn’t horrible (he has raised T8s after a limper and has 3bet JTs vs a somewhat tight raiser in the SB, and bet out on a 234 flop). In the T8s hand he checked it down but bet when he hit a pair of 8’s on a JKxx8 board, and his hand was good (the action went limp-call; check-check; check-check; check-bet-call). The limper he isolated was loose and passive and bad (he was the same player he 3bet with JTs later). I’ve seen him (BB in this hand) put in 3-4 bets preflop a number of times and either fold before showdown or win without a showdown on a fair variety of boards, but I wouldn’t call him maniacal. Just somewhat loose and definitely aggressive.
So yeah. Back to the hand. MP limps. I complete in the SB with 4h4c. BB raises. MP calls. I call.
The flop is Js9d2d. I check, BB bets, as he would with 100% of his hands here (he might be the sort of lag to slowplay JJ or 99 when he raised them preflop but I think that’s more likely HU than it is 3-ways), and MP quickly folds. I pause for a few seconds and call. I’m generally check-folding the turn though I’d probably call if the board paired, depending on how quickly he bet.
Here’s the reasoning behind my call:
BB is betting with 100% of his hands here. If MP calls, the parlay of MP and BB both having draws that miss will be way too tough for my hand here and I’d muck instantly. Just classic reverse implied odds. However, at this point I’m getting 7:1 with what will be the best hand often vs. a very aggressive player. The board isn’t such that my hand has a whole lot of value — even the weakest hands he’ll hold usually have around 6.5-7 outs and will put me to some sort of test so I don’t want to be building a big pot yet. This is what I consider a defensive check-and-call, and it leaves me option to lots of options on the turn. Depending on the turn, I may bet, I may check-call, I may check-raise, and obviously I may check-fold (I do this more than anything else). Basically, I’m check-calling this flop because I don’t feel that my opponent is going to bet the turn nearly 100% of the time, so often I’ll see a river for 1SB and will get paid off by his Ace and sometimes King-high hands when he misses. Additionally, a good portion of the time I’ll check-call the turn intending to check-fold the river (more about this later), to snap off his Ace high hands.
While I’m not a favorite vs his full range of hands (generally I think I’ve got about 45% equity here head’s up), I’ve got enough equity to see a turn card as long as a) I’m not fully committed to showing down 100% of the time, and b) I feel like he’ll give up often enough on the turn that a showdown will only cost betwen 1 and 3SB rather than 5SB.
So anyway, I check-called the flop. The turn was a Ten and I decided to checkfold. He checked behind. Hmm. At this point I seriously doubt any monsters are in his range, and he’ll often have Ace high intending to snap off a river bluff (this is a bad plan given that board, but I’ll post more about that concept in a while as well). So here I am, ready to bet the river and watch him call with Ace high, when the river comes the 7d…
Making the final board 7d9dTsJc2d. Now there’s very few Ace high hands he can call with and, at the same time, not a whole lot of hands I can put him on. On the turn, I thought AK and AQ were likely since he picked up a gutshot; A8 is possible as well but I’m positive he bets any pair and most diamond draws on the turn, so while the diamond isn’t a scarecard for me he might think it is.
After pausing for a while, I figured he just wouldn’t pay off with AK or AQ often enough for me to bet. So I checked. He paused an equally long time and bet. I paused, thought for a while, and decided that he might have decided to bet Ace high as a bluff on the river…and eventually called. He showed Ad6x and I dragged.