Jonathan Little Attempts a River Bluff-Raise in a $10/$20 Cash Game
Today I have something a little different for you — a hand from a $10/$20 no-limit hold'em cash game.
The game was playing very deep, and in fact a tight-aggressive player in middle position who opened to $60 had about $10,000 in his stack. It folded to me on the button with J♦10♣ where I had even more behind.
As I explain in the video below, this is a spot where you probably want to fold or three-bet only — unless, that is, there are weak players in the blinds you want to keep in the hand. That wasn't the case in this situation, and I reraised to $200. The blinds folded and the original raiser called.
The flop came A♠7♦6♣, my opponent checked, and I continuation bet $160 into the $430 pot. The middle position player called, and the turn brought the J♥ to give me second pair. My opponent checked once more, and I chose to check behind.
The river brought the K♠ and a bet of $340 from my opponent into the $750 pot. After running through the possible hands in my opponent's range, I chose to make what amounted to a bluff-raise here.
Listen to my discussion of the action and how I determine that I should have more nut combinations than my opponent in this spot, and see what happens:
It did appear a nice spot to raise, but that doesn't matter when against a set! When you run into spots like this — when it turns out your opponent has one of the very few hands in his range that beat you — realize it's okay and not the end of the world.
Jonathan Little is a professional poker player and author with over $6,500,000 in live tournament earnings. He writes a weekly educational blog and hosts a podcast at JonathanLittlePoker.com. You can follow him on Twitter @JonathanLittle.
