In this post, we take a look at some of Steffen Sontheimer’s recent $2/$5 NL Zoom cash game adventures on PokerStars.
The young German Pro has proven to be one of the best players in the world and really has a great way of talking about his thought processes in pots, let’s take a look at some of his hands from one of his most recent session…
Block Betting with a Strong holding on a Bad River Card
In this pot, Steffan bet the flop with a large size, overbet the turn card with a sizing of around 130% which should force out most flush draws as they won’t be getting the correct odds to call.
The river card brings another club, completing the flush draw on the flop, so the question is now, what do we do?
Some players would look to check and decide here, but Steffan’s approach is different, he opts to block bet-fold on this bad run out, let’s look at why this is good.
We can still get calls from any two pair and any King that wants to hero call, so we can still get three streets of value from those types of hands and we don’t allow ourselves to get bluffed off the pot if our opponent senses weakness if we check.
As it turns out Steffan did get rivered with his opponent holding a pair and a flush draw on the turn they called the overbet but failed to get more value from their flush on the river as they just called the final bet, a little strange to pay to hit their card and then only call a block bet.
If we can learn anything from Steffan’s opponent in this pot its that we need to be shoving for value with strong hands on the river against block bets.
Steffan’s hand is never a flush on the river, he overbet the turn and bet small on the river, with a stronger flush its safe to say Steffan would have jammed the river for maximum value.
Tough River Spot with Straight
Another spot where Steffan has led out on the River but got raised, his hand is pretty strong having a straight, but this a better straight and a flush possible…
So what does he do…
Steffan opts to call here sometimes and fold sometimes, he says that it’s possible he could be getting bluffed but it’s hard to imagine a hand that would be bluffing, maybe some holdings with Ace of spades in their hand…
It could be a chop too, but Steffan makes a disciplined fold and looking at this spot it’s hard to imagine this hand is ever winning the whole pot, I think there are some chops some of the time, but calling near $170 to chop the pot is not an exciting prospect either.
Getting Raised on the River with a Flush
This is yet another horrible river spot for the Pro, he is very high in his range but this raise just screams the nuts when it’s from most players…
So does he manage to make the hero fold with the 3rd Nuts?
Steffan decides that he is going to be beaten a good chunk of the time, but he is just too strong to fold, some players might even raise him for value with a weaker flush like the Jack high flush for example!
So he does make the crying call and gets shown the A♥ 4♥ for the nut flush, a tough break but this is simply a cooler, we can’t go making Queen high flushes and then folding them, we will simply be over-folding too much doing this.
A good way to think is that if ever someone could raise us with a worse holding as a possible value raise, we need to be calling off… and this is exactly one of those times.
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