1/2, $1200 deep: Whale goes blind, I go brain-dead
$1200 eff. I move to a new table because I hear the 🐳 is raising/playing blind every hand.
UTG opens $15. Whale (UTG1) decides life is meaningless and blasts it to $70 blind. I wake up in SB with A♥️J♦️ and think I’m Phil Ivey, so I 3-bet to $150 (sizing error obv). Only the whale calls… blind.
Flop ($315): Q♠️9♠️9♣️
I check out of fear like a p*ssy. He actually looks at his cards for the first time all hand and checks back.
Turn ($315): 8♠️
I check. He snap bets $100 like he’s speedrunning poker. I tank and call because folding ace-high vs a whale clearly isn’t part of my religion.
River ($515): K♣️
I check, he snap checks back.
⸻
So yeah… did I butcher this one? Should I:
• Just c-bet flop and pick up the dead money vs his random garbage?
• Fold turn because I don’t block flushes and I’m OOP with no spade?
• Bomb river on the K since it smashes my range?
Instead I went for the check/call/check/cry line. 🍼 Curious what you guys think the best exploit line is vs a whale who goes blind pre but doesn’t bluff much postflop.
8 Replies
If I was going to go up against the whale, I wouldn't do it in a hand where UTG has raised.
Fold pre
Fold pre. As played bet flop for sure though. Whales gonna have a lot of garbage and just want to clean up outs and make things easier to play.
If your 100% sure he didn't look at his cards that does make things interesting though. Maybe going to like 180-200 is good
As played if he's fairly normal post flop check raising turn is interesting too. Although I'm a bit suspect how many whales pre play relatively normal post.
I don't think you have to fold preflop. Unless UTG is a really strong player (and also has no fear) he will respect a big raise. Yea I know it's not actually strong because you're just 4betting a blind range, but he won't think that, he'll just see the 230$ bet (well, what should be a 230$ bet) and muck his hand. (If UTG is such a player, then yeah don't raise, he could raise again and then you'll be very sad.)
After that idk, it really depends on more specific player-tendencies. But I think the prior on betting is pretty strong. he most likely has nothing and you could have super strong holdings here, so even a pretty crazy player is somewhat likely to give up here. Whales aren't that stupid; they're doing crazy preflop stuff because they want to appear manly, not because they're brain-dead. If he's a complete maniac who will raise you if you bet, then unless you're comfortable stacking off with Ace high, you should check and be prepared to give up. Against such a player you just have to wait until you hit it. (Although in that case, maybe you shouldn't raise preflop after all.)
If you’ve decided to play the hand this way (not recommended) you’ve gotta bet the flop. A range of any two is going to snap fold here a lot. And then it’s an easy c/f turn. Now you’ve basically turned your hand face up allowing villain to play perfectly against you. I honestly don’t hate a river bet if he’s the type of whale with a fold button, as your hand looks exactly like AK. But yeah, getting into spots where you’re trying to bluff a huge whale off a pair in a big bloated pot OOP is just something you want to avoid completely, which is why reraising AJo in the first place sucks.
PRE - sort of w/e. Think it would be fine to fold AJo. The 4B is okay, even for the smaller sizing.
FLOP - theory says we should range bet small as the 4B'er, but I don't mind a check.
TURN - the snap bet is kind of fishy.
Ordinarily / against most V's I'd make a read based action, mostly just fold or call, almost never raise. Here, I actually wonder what he'd be snap betting for value, for this small size. Smells like some weak 1P that may fold if we raise and barrel river.
RIVER - as played we wouldn't be repping much if we came out and donked big. And whales tend to over-call with marginal value, especially if we bet small, so I don't mind the check. It'll be somewhat embarrassing if he wins with 8x or worse, but I wouldn't worry too much about it. The times we win with AJ more than make up for the times we lose.
Overall, I don't like bloating pots OOP against splashy players. We could have played this as a flat call or fold pre, and risked less. Save the ammo for future hands when we can cooler him and get max value.
Raise bigger pre like you would with aces since he’s never folding. Push our equity!
We should probably cbet flop 1/3 and get some total garbage out. Calling turn and river seems reasonable here, he’ll have so many hands with no showdown value.
Preflop was not great because if UTG is competent, he'll have AJ crushed and 5-bet you with his uber-strong range and dare the whale to call.
It was also not great because you raised to an amount that the whale clearly does not care about. If I'm going to squeeze here I'm making it at least $250, probably even $300. ****, I might even just skip the formalities and ship it — assuming we're heads-up, of course.
