In this post, we are going to look at another hand from Live At the Bike, in this one, Garrett Adelstein and Billionaire Bill Klein face off in a fun hand, let’s pick up the action…
Preflop Action
Bill opens up the action making it $600 from the Cut-Off with J♠ 8♠
Garrett 3-Bets from the Small Blind, making it $2,600 with K♥ Q♦
There’s a great deal of action in this pot pre-flop with straddles and re-straddles making the game play at around $50-$100, Bill’s initial open although possibly on the loose side is decent with deep stacks.
For Garrett to come into this pot it should always be with a 3-Bet, the reason for this is when we are out of position in a pot that could easily go multi-way we want to be looking to 3-Bet to have more equity with our hand as we force out other players from the pot.
Once he has been 3-Bet I would lean towards a fold with Bill’s hand… we will have much better hands that we could open from the Cut-Off position and the 3-Bet size from Garrett is putting us in a tough spot as we have to call a large bet to continue.
Whilst I think continuing here sometimes is OK, we shouldn’t be playing bloated pots with the bottom of our range against aggressive opponents too often as it’s just going to be losing us money… Bill does make the call this time though and let’s take a flop…
Flop Action
The flop comes down Q♣ T♠ T♣
Which is a good flop for Garrett’s hand… I’d like to see a small bet here on this board, the idea of Poker is we want to make our opponents make mistakes. Betting large on this board will allow Bill to play perfectly in that he will only continue with hands with huge equity like straight or flush draws or any Ten. By betting small, however, we put all his backdoor draws and small pairs in a tough spot where they will want to call at least once…
Alternatively checking here can balance and protect our range in the long term, if we would check here with hands like 99, AJs etc then mixing in some strong checks with KQo here is a good idea because we can potentially look to get much worse hands to bluff, Garrett slips the action over to Bill and let’s see things from Bill’s point of view here…
Bill has some good equity with a gutshot straight draw and backdoor flush draw, this hand makes for a perfect bet because we don’t mind if we get raised off the pot but we have a hand that can improve and win us a large pot for the times we hit or alternatively winning the pot with a bluff is good for us too.
These hands make the best bluffs! So will Bill pull the trigger…
He opts to check behind in this spot and see the turn for free
Turn Action
The turn comes 5♠
Bringing in a spade for Bill’s backdoor flush draw…
Garrett now decides to lead out for $3,000 I like this bet, it’s a clear value bet against all of Bill’s range we are only really losing to pocket fives that turned a full house as most.
Bill decides to continue with his Straight and Flush draw on the turn here which is a good idea, there are not many hands he can have to raise with so raising here should be rare to match up with that fact, let’s see the River card…
River Bet
The River is K♦
Making Garrett a better two pair and he goes for a down bet from the turn, now betting $2,500 allowing him to get calls from any Queen or King, this is going to be good against hands like this in the long run because if Bill had a King or Queen and Garrett checked the River it’s likely Bill would just take his showdown.
Checking here would have some merit too as and flush draws would want to bluff this river if they have no showdown value, like Bill’s exact hand here. So it’s a close call to which line we would want to go for on this street, if we think our opponent is in there with a draw checking it to them is a good option but if we think he has a lot of hands with showdown betting small to get called is a really good play too.
Poker is about imperfect information so we can’t always make the right play, we have to just do what we think will be the best option given our opponent’s perceived range.
River Bluff
Bill decides to go for this one with a raise to $9,000 maybe picking up on a little weakness from the bet sizing of Garrett here, he takes his Jack high and piles in some more money.
Now, this isn’t the worst bluff ever because at least Bill blocks hands like J9 and AJ however we do have one of the worst hands we will get to this river with, so folding here is not a bad option.
There are many hands like ours that have bricked this board, so Garrett is going to have somewhat of an easy time putting us on a missed draw when we make this move.
You can’t argue with results though, as Garrett makes the fold and Bill gets to table his bluff to show he can hang with the big dogs.
This is another thing to consider when we are playing live, there is added incentive for players to make bluffs to show you that they have owned you, if you are against players with too much money in these games look to make less hero folds in spots where they might want to apply pressure to you.
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