2/5 double straddled hand... rate this bluff
This is a 2/5 game that often runs with either a permanent $10 straddle or half or more of the players voluntarily straddling. The max buy-in is $1000. There are a couple of shorter stacks ($800 to $1000), a few $2k stacks, and a 5k+ stack directly on my right. I play here a lot and this looks like a good table. This hand there is a UTG straddle, and UTG+2 has double straddled to $20. So we are effectively 2/5/10/20. This is my very first hand at the table. I'm a reg and some people probably recognize me and some don't. I have prosopagnosia (facial blindness) so aside from a few people I've played with a lot, I usually don't recognize anyone. Villain seems like an out of towner based on age (22-ish) and dress - this is in south Florida, though not the Miami area. I may or may not have shown a crazy bluff or call to one or more of these players in the last couple of months or years. Most players in this game are either pros or somewhat decent, fairly experienced players. It's not super common to have a complete fish at the table although it's not something that you run into every night either. There are a lot of regs this time of year (tourist off-season).
Sorry for the long intro. Hero is the first straddle so I have $10 in. UTG - relative to the double straddle ($800), button($2k), and SB(5$k+) all limp $20. Hero($1k) has Ac-3c. I am limping most of the time but sometimes I think it's OK to raise this and I decide to do it here. I know I'm a little shallow for this but I think if I go big enough and start to look committed I can generate a lot of folds, or even bluff/semi-bluff some flops. There are a lot of flops or action where I would just give up. I raise to $150. DS folds, but UTG, button and SB call. So that part of the plan didn't go as planned.
Flop ($600): Flop Kh7s8s
I check, UTG bets $125 ($525 behind), and the button and small blind both snap fold.
Obviously there's nothing wrong with folding and calling is terrible. But if we continue with our story, I'm the only one that can have AK, AA, and KK here. The UTG player should never have these hands. Aside from flopping a set, what strong hands can he have here? If he does have a set or two pair, isn't he betting a lot more than $125 into $600? I think his range is mostly top pair with a medium K or worse betting to "see where he's at". I know he is shallow and the SPR is not ideal for this play... but does shoving here ever make sense? My line looks so strong and villain can basically never have a strong hand. Do we generate enough fold equity to make this profitable or is this a terrible play given villain has put in $275 of his stack in already?
14 Replies
Hate pre flop raise this shallow.
As played fold. He bet into 3 people, he almost certainly has something, and perhaps you can get him to fold KQ, but he likely has a strong made hand or big combo draw with more equity than you.
Rate this bluff? 1/10
Unless you think he's scared money and playing like it's 2/5 instead of 10/20 I think its a pretty bad bluff.
Rarely ever seeing them fold here. Even if they have like KT/KJ they are gonna sigh call most of the time.
Don't like the raise OOP 100bb deep. Not enough wiggle room post-flop.
Flop: If we jam, V gets over 2-1 to call (the pot is now 725 with 525 behind). What's he folding here at this price? Certainly not sets (88/77) or 87s (9 combos only). We target all the other NFDs he can have, as he will call the two SFDs he can have.
So I guess he has 11 combos to call with plus some combo draws KsXs that he can call with (maybe 4), so 15 hands against 7 or 8 fold-able NFDs and suited spade broadways he might have after our preflop raise.
Bottom line: I don't think he has enough foldable hands left at this point to make this bluff profitable.
I don't think it's a bad idea. Especially with double straddles and stuff, people usually don't adjust because their BR and the $ in pocket for that session don't magically go up. So I think you can get away with some stuff.
A big problem here is that there is a ton of draws he can put you on and call off with a pair of kings or possibly worse. I wouldn't mind a light float on such a board when V has a ton of weak hands. But I think one over is too light.
I wouldn't mind a bluff on a dry board where we have equity. K25r. If v has a bad king 66 or something he could find a fold.
preflop bluff bad, flop bluff worse
every one of these rate my bluff threads ive ever read is like 1000 word essay while torching with a 0% combo for reasons
its like always i folded for an hour and got bored and exploded
i think if you put him on a king and your game plan is to xjam and get him to fold with ~10% equity at spr 1 you are making a large (2-300$?) mistake
Maybe outta left pocket, but what’s it like having facial blindness and playing poker? Seems like it’d make it real hard to build profiles on players.
Grunch: if this "looks like a good table", then you shouldn't be trying to run a big bluff. Preflop I agree that opening sometimes is fine, but you should do it when you've been at the table, playing tight for awhile. Once you get called by three people, you should probably be pretty done with the hand. It doesn't matter that you're the only one who can have AK+ here, because you're in a $600 pot and you only have $850 in your stack, the SPR is so low that nut advantage means very little. I think if opponent has KTo here or whatever, they are shrug calling. And you have ace high with no backdoor or frontdoor draws.
I rate this bluff a 2/10
I don't like near-zero equity bluffs on the flop against unknown opponents.
Preflop, you are getting a good price to call with this hand. You want to see a flop with this hand, and hope to make a big hand or draw. Don't build the pot with calling stations without a good hand.
If they are calling preflop like this, it would be a very profitable situation if you really did have AA/KK/AK.
I'm actually fully on-board with preflop: the play, hand selection (given a clean image), and sizing are all good. I personally prefer to get my feet wet at a table for an hour before bluffing my mixes--mostly so I get to know which players to avoid and partly so I don't torch a stack before my brain has fully booted. Maybe this is something you want to try out for the exact reasons I do it... 👀
That's the end of the nice things I have to say about this hand. Postflop is a bad line, bad board, indefensible hand selection.
Possible more for RaiseAnnounced than OP...
This is a 2/5 game
The max buy-in is $1000.
We are effectively 2/5/10/20.
This is my very first hand at the table.
Most players in this game are either pros or somewhat decent, fairly experienced players.
These are all reasons this is bad, IMO:
People aren't limp/folding often when it's a 50bb cash game. At least the 2-5 ones I've played are very showdown heavy.
People are more suspicious of the first hand being good.
Good players aren't limping absolute garbage anyway.
Hero is the first straddle so I have $10 in. UTG - relative to the double straddle ($800), button($2k), and SB(5$k+) all limp $20. Hero($1k) has Ac-3c. I am limping most of the time but sometimes I think it's OK to raise this and I decide to do it here. ... I raise to $150.
Three people limped, and the double straddle is in ... so pot is 97(?) When it gets to you, and you make it 150.
I don't like the size either, if I was raising AA here I think 350 is better than 150, although I'd probably go 250ish. They already put in 20, so calling 130 is close to set value.
As a minor thing A3s doesn't bluff 3bet as much as A5s/A4s, so if it was close I'd prefer those ... but I don't think it's close preflop.
Possible more for RaiseAnnounced than OP...
This is a 2/5 gameThe max buy-in is $1000.We are effectively 2/5/10/20.This is my very first hand at the table.Most players in this game are either pros or somewhat decent, fairly experienced players.
These are all reasons this is bad, IMO:People aren't limp/folding often when it's a 50bb cash game. At least the 2-5 ones I've played are
I think the reads are a bit of a Rorschach test. It looks like a good table, and also everyone is good or a pro, and also this is our first hand and we have no reads. It's offseason for tourists, and also villain is a tourist.
Where I agree with you most is on the fact that it's hero's first hand, and as I alluded to, I would not bluff my mixes when it can be interpreted as a cheeky "Welcome to the table" type play.
Where I disagree the most is that good players don't limp just to fold. I mean, good players don't limp just to call big raises with marginal hands anyway and good players don't limp hands that are happy to pay $150 with. Obviously good players just don't open limp full stop, but IME competent players aren't the ones you have to worry about ruining your party in these spots. Maybe they're the ones you'll have to "tell twice" by following through postflop, but so long as your frequency's are fine and your image is clean, you keep credibly repping the hands you rep, they are not the ones who make me feel post-bluff clarity.
Sufficed to say, assuming this is a favorable spot to bluff then this play is good, and I kinda leave it to OP's discretion from there because they were actually at the table. Maybe some OPs can't be trusted with that discretion 👀, but I don't personally find debating what OP's half-remembered and often ambiguously worded table reads at the time that the dealer cut the deck for this particular hand to be the most interesting or fruitful parts of these discussions.
Three people limped, and the double straddle is in ... so pot is 97(?) When it gets to you, and you make it 150.I don't like the size either, if I was raising AA here I think 350 is better than 150, although I'd probably go 250ish. They already put in 20, so calling 130 is close to set value.As a minor thing A3s doesn't bluff 3bet as much as A5s/A4s, so if it was close I'd pref
My size from the non-biggest blinds (ie: SB, BB, single straddle) is R150, so that would be $170 here. I use R200 from the biggest blind (in this case, the double straddle) where I can go fully polar with a raise or check strat.
Since my biggest blind strat is more polarized, A3s would actually fall between the poles of my raising range. But in this seat, I use a proprietary, semi-linear mix of hands where A3s would be a "bluffy" raise (for lack of a better term) for when the dynamics and table conditions are favorable.
Is all this talk of range composition actually how OP arrived at the decision to raise to almost 150% pot? Probably not. I think he was just being a cheeky little boy to let everyone know a good player has arrived and now we can start playing some REAL poker. But we did at least arrive at the same play, so we've got that going for us.
I can be a little contrarian in these "how was my bluff" threads because usually the execution's off, but they've got the right idea and so I like the cut of their jib. In this case, postflop is so bad that you can miss me with the jib entirely. But at the very least, preflop has its merits. As you and I agree on, you just shouldn't do it while you're still pulling chips out of your rack and getting your card swiped.
