Catching a river bluff and a thin value bet are two poker hands of my yesterday’s session that helped me win 3 buy-ins at $50NL PokerStars tables. Once again I’m talking about the EV adjusted winnings and not the actual ones, since I’d be bragging about a 7-buyin day!
I also noticed that the poker graph shows somewhat different results. I suppose that comes down to the EUR/USD conversion rate and whether it is applied only in poker stats and not when drawing the lines, or the other way around. As long as the orange EV line is going up, I’m happy.
It’s been 2 days since I started posting about my poker plan, and I am already breaking one rule: play 4 hours daily. For two days in a row I managed to play for almost 6 hours each day, but I think I won’t keep up. It’s nice when you have extra free time and want to make the best out of it, but eventually fatigue will have an impact on your performance – and health. On the other hand, I’m expecting some days to be less productive, like today for example that is my birthday! Yeap, I’m turning 33. I wonder if Pokerstars’ dealers will be nice to me today!
First poker hand I want to talk about is catching a river bluff coming from a passive fish. The action went like this as the image is… well, stationary! Fish opens from UTG+1, I (SB) and the big blind call. Flop was checked by all players and I fired the turn (80% pot) with mid-pair, flush and straight draw. Two villains call and river completes my flush. Since the flush was close to the lowest possible, I decide to check-call, not willing to bet-fold into 2 players, in case anyone had a higher flush, which was certainly in their range. So, fish bets 60% pot and obviously I’m calling, going with my initial plan. Big blind folded and I took down the $37 pot. If I went on and bet that river, both villains would have folded, losing that $11 the fish decided to risk on his bluff. Aggression is paramount in online poker, but don’t overdo it missing some chances to win extra bucks.
On to the next poker hand, I call UTG’s raise out of position from the Big Blind. The villain is another passive fish who opened A8o from early position. A sure way to the poor house. I donk bet the flop wanting to get some value from his floating hands (I don’t expect him to fold his AK-AT/KQ type of hands or flush/straight draws) and if called, I do have some outs. Turn is apparently a great card, although I might be against a higher straight. Against a fish, I’m willing to go all the way to showdown though. I bet the turn (70% pot) and villain just calls. There are a lot of poker hands in his range that he can do that with, like two-pair, a set (88 perhaps?), AT for a straight draw, still chasing his flush draw, etc. I consider my action a value bet, which gets called. River is a blank and now I pause for one second.
That river didn’t change anything and betting into the villain for the third time is certainly justified. However we’ll fold all his missed draws and his floating hands. We can let him instead try a bluff like in the poker hand above, or maybe he thinks he can extract some value with his set now that we’ve shown weakness. There are two stats pointed out in the poker HUD, which made me decide to check the river. The first is known as river aggression and villain’s was 50%! He is definitely super aggressive at the last street, meaning he is betting more bluffs and thin value rather than big hands. Another important statistic was his W$SD%, which had been 29%! A good W$SD% is between 51 to 59%, so the fish obviously goes to showdown with air, low pairs, missed draws and bad hands in general. I have no reason to raise his bet and I take his extra $11.5 he was willing to put down into the pot. As if he wanted to give me his birthday present earlier!
