PokerStars’ inaugural EPT stop in Vilamoura features in Stuart’s latest hand analysis.
November 17th
WHERE: EPT Vilamoura, Portugal
BUY-IN: €5,000
STAGE: Day 1, Level 8
BLINDS: 400 / 800
STUART’S CARDS (HIJACK): Qs 10s
BOARD: Ah Kd 8s 6d Qc
SCENARIO:
Towards the end of a reasonable first day, a young Portugese player sat down at the table. He seemed a very competent and solid player, and he would be in the big blind for 800 with just a few minutes of the day left.
PRE-FLOP
I raise Qs 10s to 2,200 from the hijack, and my opponent defends his big blind. He has a stack of over 45,000.
FLOP
The flop comes down Ah Kd 8s, giving me just a gutshot. My opponent checks and I bet 3,200. He thinks for a while and makes the call.
TURN
The turn makes the board Ad Kh 8s 6d, changing nothing apart from putting a second diamond on board. My opponent checks, I bet 8,000, and he thinks for 30 seconds before calling.
RIVER
The river makes the board Ah Kd 8s 6d Qc, giving me the third pair. I consider a third-barrel bluff.
ANALYSIS: AN IRRELEVANT PAIR
A big group of poker players would be more likely to bluff here if the queen had not given them a pair. However, it’s so important to realise that the queen is irrelevant here; it hasn’t given me showdown value, as it’s practically impossible that I’m winning. Therefore, you must make sure that you do not let an irrelevant change to your hand unbalance your decision as to whether you are going to bluff or not.
A good spot to fire a third shell?
For so many players, the timing of their bluffs depends on a feeling that they need to make chips, or simply the temptation of the moment. However, it is crucial that you let nothing else come into your decision outside of, “is it a good spot to bluff?”
This board is a good example of a perfect spot. It is one of a category of boards where two crucial things are true:
1) You, the pre-flop raiser, can believably represent all of the available strong hands on the board.
2) Your opponent, the pre-flop defender, is very unlikely to have any of these strongest hands.
This pattern in this hand began to emerge as soon as the flop was headed by an ace and a king. It is a flop pattern you should be well aware of, and one on which you should actively consider a three-barrel bluff.
1) Why is our representation so strong on the river?
Let’s define all of the strong hands here as any two pair, set, or the (unlikely) rivered straight. All of these hands (apart from a turned or rivered set) can very believably be in your range, given your actions and bet sizes. Even something like a set of aces is credible, as you probably would have bet this hand on the flop because of the deep stacks.
Against a thinking player, a rivered queen is actually a good card for you, for quite a complex reason. If you were double barrelling before the river, it would very possibly be with two other broadway cards (here, that would mean Q-J, J-10, or Q-10). The river has made one of these “double barrels” into the nuts, and to the other two it has given a pair of queens at showdown.
Although we know that we shouldn’t, many opponents will expect you to check behind with this kind of pair, and only to be bluffing with a true “air” hand. If this is the case, it is incredibly useful to us that there are five different cards on the board, three of which are broadway cards(the most likely cards in a pre-flop raiser’s hand).
The rule of “five different cards”
Seeing that there are “five different cards” is the kind of observation you would expect a poker novice to make, but this is the one situation in which it can be very useful. If it is not likely that your opponent has two pair (as we will see later), it is a great red flag to tell you to triple barrel bluff.
2) Why is our opponent unlikely to be strong?
Just as we benefit as a pre-flop raiser, our opponent suffers as the big blind flat-caller. We can unstrip a great number of hands from his range, and can begin immediately with hands like A-A, K-K and A-K, from his failure to raise before the flop.
Indeed, it is almost impossible on the river for him to have any set as he would not have called sixes on the flop, nor queens on the turn, and would probably have raised a set of eights by the turn. Whereas we can have almost any conceivable two pair, there are few remaining after elimination for our opponent. He probably would not have defended K-8 or K-6, may not have called K-Q on the turn, and may even have 3-bet with A-Q before the flop.
Stripping away the range
Having stripped away so much of our opponent’s range, we see that it really is stacked with one-pair hands, like A-J and A-10. Of course, these are hands that he can catch a bluff with, but there is no real reason for him to believe that we do not have the range that we are so credibly representing.
My Decision
I felt absolutely committed to the triple barrel, and so had the decision of how much to bet into the 26,000 pot. This is the kind of key decision that many players seem to stumble over, as they do not understand the difference between betting:
1) 20-24k, which represents a very strong part of the range, and
2) 12-15k, which represents a very wide part of the range
Therefore many players try to represent great strength when they would be better representing a very wide part of the range. The decision will depend on what hands you need to bluff your opponent off with. With such a strong feeling that he had a one-pair hand like A-J, I knew I had to represent width rather than strength, and so bet just 13,500.
For a painful five minutes, my opponent thought and thought, but eventually let go of his hand. |
