These are spots you will find yourself in a good deal of the time in 6plus hold’em games, you have a pretty good hand, but you are beaten by many other holdings but you want to protect against weaker hands and draws, but don’t want to bloat a pot if you are beaten.

With holdings like this, you can basically go one of two ways to maximise your wins. There is little point in betting small with these medium strength holdings, as you will allow your opponents to play nearly perfectly, call when getting the right price or even check-raise bluff you off your hand.

Today we will look at a merged bet that can serve as bluffs against some holdings but also get value from other hands, thus serving two purposes of folding out possibly better hands, but getting calls from hands with less equity.

Preflop

We have 10♠ 7♠ on the button with the 25c ante and 25c button blind posted, so we have $0.50 invested in this pot currently and a player in Mid-Position (MP) raises to $1.25, while we are on the subject, raises like this are almost a waste of time, they act like pot juicers in these games, as players will usually not fold out any of their hands for such a small raise, if you are looking to play a big pot with a solid holding in SixPlus games, you are going to want to raise around pot sized as a minimum, it’s only with this you will get short-handed or heads up. So against this small raise, we call the extra $1 and wouldn’t you believe it so do all the other previous limpers, making us take the flop 5 ways.

Flop

With now $7.36 in the pot we see of a flop of A♣ 7♦ 6♥
A pretty terrible flop for our hand with no spades and no real draw to speak of, however, the action is almost non-existent with just a 25cent bet and 2 calls before the action gets to us.

With this price, we cannot fold our hand, with direct improvement cards being any 7,10 and cards that give us a straight draw being any 8 or 9 we simply have to call this bet.

The Turn

With now $8.55 in the pot we see a turn of 10♦
Meaning the board now reads A♣ 7♦ 6♥ 10♦ giving us two pair, tens and sevens.

This hand is usually very weak, making middle two pairs in any 6Plus game is treacherous, you risk being up against all other better two pairs, straights and three of kinds on boards like this. However, in pots where the action is slow, the chances are you either have the best hand at the moment or can buy the pot.

So in position, we fire the slight overbet once checked to, going all in for $13.45. Whilst we may end up sometimes getting called here by hands like A 6x and be crushed we can also sometimes bluff hands like that out. The problem with the hand is that, whilst we are likely to have the best hand right now, there are no blanks in 6Plus games, so in a multiway pot, it is almost impossible for a weak two pair to win once all five cards are out there. So if we want to take down the pot, now is the time. We will also get calls from hands with equity, like straight draws such as Q Jx which has a double gutshot any diamond draws may call us, and with limited diamonds to hit we don’t mind getting called by these hands. Hands like A 9x and A 8x can call us with a Pair and a straight draw.

Putting in action also serves us well in the long run of the game, for instance if normally we will mainly be putting in this type of action with top two pairs, straights and three of kind, we will get action from having this hand called, even when we are called and beaten in the pot we are advertising that we can overbet jam with very borderline hands, making our future action less weighted towards only being very strong in the opponents eyes.

The perfect storm

We get called by the player directly to our left, making the pot now $34.10. All the other players get out of the way.

Our opponent tables J♦ 8♦ For a gutshot straight draw and a flush draw, with any diamond or 9 giving them the pot.

Although this sounds like many cards, with there being 4 fewer diamonds in the pack in this game and only four 9s to hit, they only have 28.6% equity at this point, making us a big favourite to scoop the money nearly three-quarters of the time here.

The River

K♠ hits on the end, a complete blank.

With the final board being A♣ 7♦ 6♥ 10♦ K♠ we win the pot with our two pair.

A nice outcome, with us getting a call from a hand with must less equity than ours and with possibly better hands having to fold to and overbet and a call, hands even as strong as two pair Aces up would fold to this kind of action.

 

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