April Fool’s Bluff 🤡
Poker club of weirdos, sociopaths and addicts.
Thou may not limp-reraise aces or fold two suited cars preflop.
Thou must straddle.
7-2 game is on, bomb pots are frequent, and at the end of each night (those of us, who didn’t manage to bust all their daily limit of bullets finish at 4 or 5 am) we play one hand in the dark.
River action of bet => raise => all-in =>tank call by a middle pair might end up by a middle pair being good enough. And that is a normal day.
So what could possibly wrong on the first of April?
We played the whole previous night so the start is a little bit slow and sleepy. I am the zombiest person, because of having to wake up early to teach (better say, I don’t necessarily go to bed after playing and before teaching). So I smoke “hookah” 🤡, which I don’t normally ever do, feel inspired and decide to spice up the evening.
We’re 6-handed, I am more than 200bb deep and have the whole table covered.
I wake up with 7♦️2♦️ in the cutoff and make a pretty standard 3x open. Two people call and the big blind raises to 12bb. It’s Julio, any 2 card guy, but when he squeezes versus a few people he generally has a standard tight range 10++, AJ++ - and, of course, seven deuce, but that’s unlikely, because I block it.
He is unlikely to be folding to a 4-bet, so with a magic hand and in position on an agressor, I have a mandatory call, one more person calls behind. That was a bit unnecessary.
I look at the 9♦️5♦️5♣️ flop and the only remaining question is when and how exactly I am going to bluff at it.
Julio C-bets for 12bb more, so that looks like an overpair. I decide to flat and see wether I can actually hit my flush. I could raise and represent a five, but there is one more person behind, so if he has anything, that might become too expensive too fast. Luckily, he folds and we’re heads up.
The turn is an A♠️ and Julio checks. So he does indeed have a pocket pair and is hating on the ace right now. Here is where I make a big mistake by checking back instead of betting and trying to represent an ace right away.
The river comes a 3♠️ and Julio bets 30 bb. So I missed the opportunity to bluff the turn and take the lead and now face a bet and have to run a more expensive and less credible bluff, because why would I be raising here with an ace? Maybe AK or A-9, otherwise I would only call.
The line I took represented trips, boats or nothing, while had I bet the turn and river, I might have just been valuebetting an ace, which I believe Julio does not beat. Speaking about trips, how many fives do I have, calling a three-bet? Yes, maybe A 5s or 5 6s and there are not many combos of these.
Julio tanks for a long time and calls me down with pocket queens.
Flush draw busted, he has trust issues and no diamond, he’s up against the me and hates my “Got one through” dance, that’s why.
I proudly table my seven-deuce and the table explodes because ... we haven’t even been playing the 7-2 game. From that moment the game goes off rails and every big hand ends up by a river bluff.
...The game started at 9 pm, now it’s 6 am, we look at the sunrise and someone says:
“Guy’s, this is bad.. We should set a time limit.”
Everybody fake-agrees but deep inside we know things won’t change.
I end up the biggest winner, which makes me wonder every time, how insane will my winrate be when I stop making silly mistakes.
CONCLUSION
My read was right but the play was terribly wrong.
Had I bluffed it correctly by betting the turn and river, I would have been representing a wider range of hands that beat Julio and would have probably got it through. There is nothing as good as his reaction when he folds and I show the bluff.