Jonathan Little's Weekly Poker Hand: A Wild River Bluff
Poker pro and coach Jonathan Little has been producing a wide variety of strategy content for poker players for some time, including authoring multiple books and sharing videos and articles on his website and elsewhere, much of which is free to players of all levels seeking to improve their games.
Little started his popular "Weekly Poker Hand" series on YouTube several years ago, and recently he decided to switch up the format to begin featuring footage from live small- and medium-stakes cash games and tournaments.
In the episode shown below, Little returns once more to the $5/$5/$10 no-limit hold'em cash game with a $20 straddle at Stones Gambling Hall.
This one gets started with Cathy first to act and picking up A♥Q♣. She raises to $65 — a reasonable raise size, says Little, although he adds sometimes you might want to raise larger in loose games such as this one.
A player going by 7 Loan 4 Cards (Loan, for short), calls from the cutoff with A♠10♠ and Dave O calls as well from the small blind with J♦9♥.
While Little doesn't recommend Dave O's call, he nonetheless flops well as the first three cards come 9♣8♦J♠ to give him two pair. Dave O leads out for $125 into the $230 pot, prompting Little to weigh the pros and cons of leading out here or going for a check-raise.
Cathy has two overcards and a gutshot, but she folds (as Little suggests she should). Meanwhile Loan has an open-ended straight draw and calls, then the turn brings the K♥.
Dave O chooses to check this time, although Little suggests he might have bet to protect against draws. Should Loan here bet his draw? Little thinks he should, and for several reasons, but he checks once more, then the 9♠ comes on the river to make the final board 9♣8♦J♠K♥9♠.
With a full house, Dave O bets $275 into the $480 pot for value, then something interesting happens — Loan chooses to raise to $775 as a bluff.
We can see the hole cards and thus know the raise is ill-timed. But could it nonetheless still be a decent bluff-raise spot? Little explains why he doesn't think so, concluding a hand analysis that covers several topics including:
- starting hand selection (and preflop strategy)
- donk betting and check-raising
- semi-bluffing
- value betting
- bluffing
Take a look:
Jonathan Little is a professional poker player and author with over $6,900,000 in live tournament earnings. He writes a weekly educational blog and hosts a podcast at JonathanLittlePoker.com. Sign up to learn poker from Jonathan for free at PokerCoaching.com. You can follow him on Twitter @JonathanLittle.
