Poker can be so streaky sometimes. I’ve had a decent month in February so far, up a few thousand overall with random swings here and then – but finally today I managed to break out of the cycle to score a $3,961 day, playing a mix of $2/4 and $3/6 No limit hold em at Party.

I was splashing around quite a bit today being very aggressive, and I attribute this to the fact that I’ve been playing a fair bit of Heads-up poker, where aggression is absolutely key. I think it’s helped my regular 6max game tremendously, as it’s landed me in quite a few difficult spots that forced me to stretch my mind.

I won’t deny that a lot my money today came from noobs who didn’t really know what they were doing. Take this hand for example:

Hero ($1,485.44)
SB ($1,085.80)
BB ($600)
UTG ($720.91)
MP ($706.20)

Preflop: Hero is Button with Kh, As.
UTG raises to $12, 1 fold, Hero raises to $48, 2 folds, UTG calls $36.

Flop: ($105) 5s, Jh, Ad (2 players)
UTG bets $40, Hero calls $40.

Turn: ($185) 6h (2 players)
UTG checks, Hero bets $133, UTG calls $133.

River: ($451) Th (2 players)
UTG bets $250, Hero calls $250.

Final Pot: $951

My opponent’s play is pretty weak on all streets. First of all, he leads into me with middle pair after I raised preflop. The first problem for him is that all better hands are calling/raising, and all worse hands are folding. I decided to call since I had a read that this player was weak, and I figured it was pretty likely that he had nothing at all or a weak Ace and perhaps he would bluff off more money on later streets. There were no draws to be concerned about. The turn blanks off and I bet to extract value from my opponent from a likely weak-ace.

On the river, the villain makes a fundamental mistake. He has some show-down value, so the best move for him is to check. He is not getting called by a worse hand at all. But he for some reason bets into me, basically giving me his unwanted money. I had to think for a second to determine whether he actually had me beat, but given my read that he was a weak player and his odd line, I figured I was ahead of him a good amount of the time.

My opponent needs to realize that if he checks the river, I will check behind all medium strength hands (such as a Jack or weak-Ace) and only bet my monsters or complete bluffs. There is no value in betting a medium strength hand on the river, as you only get called by better hands, and you still can perhaps win at show-down if your opponent checks behind. You also have the opportunity to snap off a bluff by your opponent if you have good reason to believe he’s bluffing.

Tags: cash games, poker, Poker Strategy, poker theory

This entry was posted on Friday, February 15th, 2008 at 2:20 am and is filed under Poker Results, Poker Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.