Todayโs poker hand comes from Everson, and Everson prefaces the hand by saying, โHello there! Great opportunity, thanks! Here goes my question: River Bluff catching in Micro Stakes. Definitely the most important street, itโs actually where big pots live. I want to share one โbread and butter handโ Iโve played, every time I see this hand I get a somewhat different idea. So here it goes…โ
Okay, so in this hand hero opens with 99 from under the gun, itโs a six-handed table, but theyโre playing five-handed. Size wise is fine, but I would ask you why youโre starting with this stack size. Why did you decide to play this hand with 75 big blinds? Itโs a little bit awkward. If you have the opportunity, I would definitely reload up to a 100 or 200 big blinds if youโre playing deep, rather than playing with this awkward 75 big blind stack size. Itโs a really, really weird midstacking size to use. But in this hand we do decide to open and end up getting a call by the small blind, go heads up to it. The small blind in this situation is a 57/19 over 40 hands with a 0% 3 bet. In over 40 hands, weโre not really going to be able to use any other HUD stats and even using 3 bet is pretty liberal, to be honest.
We end up flopping second pair here, small blind checks, hero decides to bet. I like the fact that weโre betting, theyโre certainly hands that are second best that can and will call. Weโll never going to fold out any better hands like Ax or two pair. But by the same token, I think from a player like this, we can definitely get looked up by draws, we can get looked up by 7x, 6x, all those kind of things. If he folds out his equity with a KQ, nothing that wrong with that anyway.
So in this situation, a half pot C-bet should certainly get the job done and weโre just kind of play poker from here if we get called. The SB calls and we get a Ten on the turn. He checks and Everson decides to check behind. I would check behind here as a default as well. The T is kind of a bad card, it fills up draws, it fills up the gut shot with like a T9 type hand. Obviously we have two nines in our hand and that serves to block some of those combos, but stillโฆand if we do decide to bet this, because the T is now an over card, to say the 7x or the 6x type hands, Iโm thinking that I might not get called by those as much any more. I mean, thereโs no guarantee one way or the other, but Iโm still never folding out an ace, Iโm never folding out a hand that beats me and Iโm not really sure that Iโm getting value from enough second best. So in a situation like this, Iโd probably just take the pot control line and check back just like hero did.
King on the river, end up facing the half pot bet. So at this point weโre getting exactly 3:1 on a call, which means we need to be good a quarter of the time and in this situation, hero does decide to call. Then he asks this: โWas this a very bad call? I thought, would he bet a Kx or Tx and wouldnโt he have already bet or raised a strong Ax? So it felt like more of a missed draw to me.โ
Okay. In a situation like this, weโre getting 3:1, letโs just go back one tick, and you said that you thought youโre not sure if you would be Kx or Tx and you thought that he wouldโve already bet or raised a strong Ax. Letโs just go with the Ax thing first. If he had Ax, thereโs no guarantee that he would have three bet a preflop, even something like ace/queen or ace/jack, because well, he does have a pretty big gap in his VPIP PFR, he does seem to be kind of passive fishy, definitely something to keep in mind. Then in this situation, would he necessarily, say he wasnโt jut going to call preflop with ace/jack. Not much reason to think that heโs always going to checker it either. Then the turn going check/check is pretty typical and then he leads out on the river.
I donโt think we can take out ace X by any stretch of the imagination. Now him betting Kx or Tx is up for debate, but heโs not a good player, so itโs very reasonable to assume that he could bet that, not fully understanding show down value or what the heck bets are supposed to accomplish, bad players make bad bets all the time. It wouldnโt shock me to see him occasionally even turn up with like a Tx that heโs not really sure why the heck heโs betting it, but we end up paying him off.
Then you mentioned the missed draws thing. So the missed draws thing is kind of tough because pretty much all the missed draws got there, you know. 98 got there, T9 got there, Kx with clubs got there, queen/jack with clubs got there, pretty much the only draw that we beat at this point would be like 96, which we block out, 54 or some sort of like baby clubs type hand, like 43 of clubs. So there just arenโt a tremendous amount of combos that, and getting 3:1 pot odds here, I donโt really think Iโm going to be good, even a quarter of the time. Itโs not even just that we have fourth pair, it really isnโt, itโs just more about the range that you would bet on the river and I donโt think thereโs enough reason to think that weโre not going to be value-towning ourselves a large chunk of the time here.
In this situation, hero does end up calling and he does end up winning against exactly 45, but I just donโt think 45 is going to make up a large enough chunk of his range, I donโt know if thereโs going to be enough withdrawals in this situation to justify that call. Sure, it worked out this time, but I donโt expect that to work out every time in the future by any stretch of the imagination.
So Everson, thanks for the great hand and hopefully this gets you started the next time you find yourself in a difficult river situation. If you or anyone else has another poker hand that youโd like me to discuss, feel free to leave it in the Ask SplitSuit a Question thread, Iโll leave a link for that in the description box, and please make sure to like and subscribe if youโre enjoying these kinds of videos.
