Smooth Sailing

Yesterday poker was quite fun, and since I haven’t played any interesting NLHE hands for a while, there was one hand with multiple factors that made it interesting:

Hand number 1: Overpair plan

Starting point: Table is having a good time and there has been quite a lot of action.

NLHE 2.5/2.5€ blinds, effective stacks around 350eur, dead raise to 10€ from UTG+1

Hero HJ: 9♣ 9♥

Hero raises to 25, BTN calls, UTG+1 calls

Flop: 8♣ 4♦ 2♠

UTG+1 checks, Hero bets 37.5€ (around 1/2 pot), BTN raises to 120, UTG+1 calls, Hero…

…decides to call

Turn: T♦

UTG+1 checks, Hero checks, BTN checks

River: 6♣

UTG+1 checks, Hero bets all-in 192.5€, BTN calls, UTG+1 folds – Hero scoops the pot with pair of nines.

Analysis: The preflop open was a bit smallish but fine, and flop is obviously great for us. We bet 1/2 pot since its multiway and we’re sandwiched in case both opponents continue – could consider also betting a bit smaller. When button raises and UTG+1 calls, we’re either way behind or in a decent shape against 8x and a possible straight draw or another pair. Since we don’t have that much behind we could argue for a shove, but I would just flat my sets and hands like AA or KK against the raise here so wanted to play this hand also by a range flat. The runout is quite good although 75 and 53 got there, but as UTG+1 checks on the river and is the most likely player to have a straight draw like that (since he pretty much needs to call all hands after putting in the dead raise and being offered great odds preflop, including 530 and 75o) we’re pretty likely to be ahead and can go for a thin value shove here.

Lately most of hero’s mistakes have occurred due to dead money in the pot in the form of missed blinds or something similar, and otherwise we’ve been able to stick to the theme of 2020 pretty nicely. Booked the trip to Kings of Tallinn and we have a little over 3 weeks to grind the cash games before this trip – may the flops be with us!