Here’s another one that I found interesting. What would you do?
You are playing $2.5/$5 cash game with 4 other players. You have ~$600 and you are 2nd to act with 86 of clubs after the under the gun player folds. You open limp for $5 (not a good play), and immediately get raised to $20 by the button, who has $1200 behind. Everyone else folds, and you call.
The flop comes 2 of spades, 7 of clubs, ten of clubs, (2s7cTc) giving you a flush draw and a gutshot straight draw. The pot is now $47.50, and you lead out for $35.50. The button raises you to $115.75, and you call the extra $80. The turn comes the ace of spades (2s7cTcAs). You check and the button bets $184.25. What do you do? Your choices are fold, call, or raise all-in ($475 total, ~300 more to your opponent, about the size of the pot). I said I would fold, and Snowie said it would go all-in as a bluff. I will give my reasoning below.
I said fold because you have no showdown value and I don’t see you ever getting enough folds. The site says that your opponent has a very strong hand or a bluff because they would not bet this way with hands like JJ-KK or KT. But I just don’t see how your opponent would continue bluffing here. They can represent the ace effectively because it seems like they can have so many aces in their range: they could have been bluffing with any Ax of clubs on the flop and then improved on the turn. They could also have 22, 77, TT, or AA, which are the hands they are representing, while hero doesn’t have TT or AA in their range because of the open limp preflop. The opponent’s most probable bluff hands are clubs, which you block, or possibly 89, so it just doesn’t seem like you will be able to get enough folds for this high variance play. Of course, you have some equity against your opponent’s value range (unless of course they hold AK, AQ, or AJ, etc. of clubs), but if they do have a set, at least 2 of your flush outs are no good (2 and A of clubs). I guess the shove can get folds from bigger flush draws, but is that really the goal, since your opponent never has a medium strength hand?
As unranked always says, we should be considering our hand within our entire range, and I suppose 86 of clubs is a good hand to bluff with because it has some equity without any showdown value, but I think we would just have too many bluffs in our range if we did this with all the suited club KJ, J9, Q9, 56, etc that we also have in our range (although I have no idea what range we open limp). Would we be folding Q9 of clubs here? How about 45 of clubs? We would want to bet for value with our sets of 2s and 7s, but there just isn’t a lot of value in our range on this board because we probably have a lot of suited connectors that need to improve to straights and flushes to have value, and there are none on this board. So, I don’t really see the need to turn this into a bluff.
Just an interesting one to think about.
