Bet Folding with Second Nuts

This is a good line, bet big for value on the River, you can get called by all worse flushes, but when your opponent raises in this spot, what bluffs are they ever going to have here against such as strong bet, the answer is zero, so our Hero makes a great insta fold when faced with a raise here and I really like this line.

Checking Back the Turn and Inducing Action

Here our opponent called the flop C-Bet, Hero checks back the Turn and now we are faced with a large bet on the River.

The reality of this spot is there are many hands that beat us, but there are many misses that we beat too and our opponent could be value betting worse at this point too. If ever you beat possible value bets, the best line is just to call in these spots.

Hero calls here and we see A8s in clubs. This is pretty decent hand to call one bet with on the flop against the button, however on this run out I don’t like this bet on the River, Hero just has too many easy calls here especially when the Turn gets checked back, this is almost always a line that wants to realise equity as bluffs would just continue to apply pressure.

Mucking Two Pair

It’s never easy clicking fold when you hold two pair, beginner players would say things like, I beat AK and AQ here! But the reality of getting check-raised and facing two more bets on this wet board is that our two pair is likely never good… can you think of any bluffs here?

The straight got there, flush draw got there, there are better two pairs and sets in our opponents range too, it’s hard to think of a hand that our opponent could flip over that we beat.

4 Bet Going With It

Poker is a game of fine margins, but to be a beast at it we can’t shy away from the closer spots, here sometimes we are going to get all the money in as an underdog to hands like JJ+, however, there are plenty of hands that we have good equity against when our opponent 3-Bets from the Blinds.

The hero is using a randomizer here, so whilst we don’t always have to 4-Bet with a hand like TT on the Button, it does make sense at least some of the time because otherwise we are only 4-Betting our nutted hands… As it turns out the Villian here 5-Bet Jams All-in with just 77 and the Hero bags up a huge pot that would have likely been lost post-flop without the betting lead if we flat call this raise.

Overbetting Draws

Why does it make sense to overbet in spots like this, well we picked up a huge chunk of equity in the shape of a flush draw here with a spade hitting so betting large when you have good equity can never be too terrible.

We can win a really big pot if our opponent calls us here and we hit the River or bluff them out and we apply huge pressure to hands like Tx 5x  and 3x that might call if we bet a small sizing on this Turn card.

Getting Dry 4-Bet

This can be a pretty scary thing, we show huge strength by 3-Betting from the Small Blind and then the Big Blind wakes up with a 4-Bet against us, so how should we react with a hand as strong as Queens here?

Well, this is 2020 and whilst in the good old days of poker our opponents might only ever have hands like KK or AA here, our opponent could easily have TT+ AQs and AKo here, so folding is completely out of the question due to their range that is wider than ours, so what’s the next step?

Well, we pretty much never want to play pots like this out of position, we could get bluffed out post-flop or let our opponent realise too much of their equity with hands like Ace-King for free, so the only option to just fire up the 5-Bet and cross our fingers and hope this isn’t the time we run into it.

That’s the problem that many poker players have, they remember the times they jammed all the money in with QQ and got snapped by Aces and Kings, but we just can’t assume that every time we have a close spot, here the Villian had AKo, our Hero Steffen Sontheimer ran it once and hit a Queen on the flop to seal the deal!