2 min read

Bluff shoving and out of position aggressiveness

Bluff shoving and out of position aggressiveness

This poker video was recorded for the Betfair.com Greek Blog and I play 2 6max 50NL tables. During the 50 minutes that the poker video lasts, I attack out of position, I check raise a straight draw, I push all my chips in as a bluff and my queens lose to aces. You may also hear me commenting on my moves, but I need to elaborate a little more.

First of all, you’ll see me raise out of position preflop when a lot of limpers have limped. This is because they will rarely confront you while you can make more money when they will easily fold to your continuation bet. Only once did I run into AQ, but the opponent won the minimum and he risked losing the hand on river. Generally 50NL poker players push all-in only with premium hands and most of the time they will just call with the rest.

In this poker video a villain used a blocking bet on me. A blocking bet is useful when you hold a mediocre hand and believe there is some showdown value but you don’t want to call a big bet out of position. So he leads small the river holding a middle pair. Although I would usually raise that blocking bet holding TPTK, I wanted to show you that he indeed had a medium hand. I carry on playing while discussing why my continuation bet on the flop was right mathematically.

There is another interesting hand in this poker video when I hold AT against button’s QQ. I flopped an OESD and I took for granted that the Ace was also an out for me. That was the case in the end but no ace and no straight for me. During the video I say that I had 8 outs for the straight and 3 outs for a pair of aces. That’s a total of 11 outs, which means 44% (=11*4) to win the hand if he is holding KK. However, QQ needs one 10 out of 3 10’s in the deck to hit a straight and canceling all my outs. So, 44% is wrong actually and the true probability of me winning the hand is 32%. When I check raise the flop I expect AK to fold and maybe AQ. Those were the hands the villain might have 3bet me preflop, while against KK I wasn’t in such a bad shape. What I certainly didn’t want to see was AA and a set (JJ).

Regarding the hand with QQ vs AA, I guess there was no way out with that kind of flop. Finally, in regards of my 5bet with 64s from the blinds trying to fold out probable holdings like Aj, AQ, TT, JJ, I was unfortunate to run into queens which never fold from late position. 64s is a hand that won’t be dominated like AQ. Additionally, the same suit adds up some more outs. Such moves are usually done in higher stakes, however I don’t think they will have that success in 50NL, since if we will face a 4bet, we would almost always be against AK, QQ+.