In this post we are going to look at a pot where Minieri takes a strange line with a value hand and turns it into a bluff on the flop, bloating the pot with a very mediocre hand.
Let’s look at the Pre-flop action
The action begins with blinds at $400/$800
Meltzer opens up the action to $3,000 with K♦ Q♠
Baxter calls with T♥ T♣
Elezra makes the call with K♥ 6♥
Minieri comes along with K♠ 8♠
And Peat calls from the Small blind with 5♥ 5♣
Looking at this pre-flop action, Meltzer has a fine open raise with his holding of KQo, Baxter has an easy call with his pocket tens, as for Elezra and Minieri they both have decent holdings with suited King high hands but against this UTG raise and UTG+1 call I’d like to see some folds from these holdings at least some of the time, they are going to be dominated and get in trouble against much better holdings a lot of the time. Then action to Peat in the small blind, he has an easy just call to try and hit a set with his pocket fives and plenty of immediate and implied odds.
Let’s Take a Flop
An action board is in play with three players with a King in their hand and the board coming down King high there is going to be some betting going down here…
With $25,600 in the middle Meltzer kicks things off with a fairly modest bet of $8,200
I like this sizing from Meltzer, it keeps ranges wide and this is a fairly dry board where he will either be way ahead most of the time or sometimes losing to hands like 33 or 99. So betting small on boards like this is fine as we are not looking to protect from hands like straight or flush draws, we want worse top pair hands to be able to continue.
This is where things heat up a little, it begins with Elezra deciding to raise to $17,100.
Which there is little point to, he is doing what live players like to refer to as a feeler raise, however he has decent equity in this pot, top pair with a backdoor flush draw. Raising is only going to get action from hands that beat him.
This is where things get even more out of hand… Minieri then decides he will raise with his K♠ 8♠… which I hate for all the same reasons as Elezra’s raise, he is turning his top pair into a bluff and representing a two pair plus hand by making it $50,000.
Meltzer calls the $50,000 with his better top pair and it’s off to the turn card…
Turn Action
Things cool off from here on out in the pot with Meltzer and Minieri both deciding they will try and get there top pair to showdown now… The turn card T♦ improves Meltzer hand giving him a gutshot straight draw, but I like his line of just checking over to Minieri as he picked up the aggression on the flop, King Queen isn’t going to be ahead of many hands in the long run that will raise the flop.
Let’s take a river card…
River Action
The T♠ hits the river which would have given Baxter quad Tens.
The action goes check-check on the river too… with both players not wanting to bloat the pot anymore and both happy with their showdown value, although in Minieri’s eyes he is not often going to win the pot with his weak top pair on this board, but for the same reasons I didn’t like a raise on the flop against the calling station Meltzer I would hate to see him try and bluff his opponent on the river, so I like the check back from the Italian on the end even though he ends up losing at showdown.
What can we learn from this hand?
There are a few pointers we can take from this hand which are pretty easy concepts:
- Don’t turn borderline weak hands into raises.
These types of one pair holdings work better as bluff catchers, when we start raising any top pair hand on boards like this, we will simply be raising too many of our hands. - Limit the amount of weak King high hands we play pre-flop, whilst hands like K6s and K8s looks like a decent holdings, it is very hard to make a good hand with these types of hands without hitting a flush. So against early position raises look to play a tighter range than what we see in this hand and save playing hands like K8s and K6s for late position un-raised pots instead where they are easier to play
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