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ToC Bustout Hand!
So I will NOT be winning a silver pin this month (grrrrrr), and like ALL bustout hands, this one will haunt me! I have been struggling with “blocker value” versus “equity when called value” in my shoving ranges recently, and this was a good example to share I thought. Tear me apart!
6-handed on the last two tables, so foe 1 is UTG but feels like the LoJack and opens to 3x. foe 2 is in the HiJack and calls. we are in the CutOff with our effective stack of 20 BBs, or ~6,000 chips and there are 2,730 chips in the middle already.
If this was 9-handed and the OR was UTG, this is a less tempting squeeze spot, but I looked at my HUD and this UTG player actually folds half the time they get 3bet in EP, so I felt like if they are folding that often and the caller has a capped range, we should be able to get some shoves through here. So what hands would we want to choose for that light 3-bet bluff? With the stacks as short as they are, playability is not a factor, so it really comes down to what KIND of hands do we want to have here when we are not raising for value – hands that block value in our foes, or hands that maintain decent equity vs. calling ranges?
Lots of people like to use A5s suited here and that is pretty much always a great choice to balance a value range. You could argue that with these stacks you’d be better off choosing an ace with a better kicker, like AT or AJ, which have some added equity against hands that might call the shove, like 55-99 etc. One problem I have with shoving hands like AJ and AT – aside from the fact that they are more “thin value” or “merged” than a “bluff 3bet” strictly – is that they are also blocking all the combos of hands that we want these players to FOLD – tens and jacks are kind of the definition of second-best hands, they are one of the cards in many hands that are flop-dependent, and that people are not comfy calling shoves with. Hands like KJ, KT, QJ etc will often call an open and fold to a shove. These are the hands we WANT our foes to have when we bluff-shove in a squeeze spot like this – so blocking them with our shoving hand seems non-optimal.
Anyway, in this case the OR folded and I was called by the HJ who had AK and they won the hand. I had discounted AK and AQ combos as part of a 3betting range for them, and was holding an A myself to further discount their likely value combos, but I can’t complain about losing a hand when I got my chips in as a bluff! If you can’t shove for value here, what are the hands you would choose to shove light?
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1 Reply
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This hand hits home for me. Excited to hear the replies.
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