Introducing New Section: Post-Fold Therapy 🏥

I have to share my pain because it’s been a month and still, today I spent a whole half an hour thinking about this hand.

Solaire Casino, Manila

NL 200. Straddle and something like 5 callers. I complete the bb with A♦️2♠️

Flop comes A♥️2 ♣️ 8♠️

I check and to my surprise it gets checked through. 

Turn comes 3♥️ and that’s when things get weird.

The small blind leads. I call. All over sudden, the straddler puts a big raise.

Everyone else gets out of the way. The small blind quickly enough folds and I look at the straddler. A TAG/nit on a huge stack. How many hands did I even see him play today? Straddle, then checks his option. All right, it’s almost never AA. What hands, that he’s raising for value, do we beat? 8 2, 8 3, 2 3. That is possible. How likely would he even raise with these hands here? We loose to AA, 22 (aces impossible, deuces less likely because we have one) A 3, A 8, 33, 88 and, obviously 45 is the nuts.

What bluffs can he even have? A flush draw? Two hearts with a four or a five? 4-4 or 5-5? There’s lead and a call from the blinds, three more people to act behind him, would this guy really get fancy in this spot?

I try to talk to him, but the nit sits without a making single move or a sound. 

I fold my top and bottom pair and show hoping that he shows too (that works way too often in Manila) but he doesn’t buy it. Guess, it was a kind of “He has no bluffs here ever at all” type of fold. 

What doesn’t let me sleep?

The guy did not play many hands or straddle. 

It looked like a perfect runout for him to represent a big hand in an unraised pot and his table image would make his play look credible.

The flop was checked through and then I called the turn, so my hand was underrepresented. The small blind was a player who might have easily lead here with an 8.  

Maybe I played my hand too passive in an unraised pot to being with.🐔 

Or am I just giving my opponent too much credit, thinking he was a capable of making a move here?

I don’t know, but something tells me he owned my fucking tail. Nice bluff, sir 🦊