NLH - Rounds 3-4

First hand back playing 75-150 seat 6 raises to 350 and we call from the SB with JQ. Flop comes 7QK. We check and he checks. Turn comes 6d putting 3 diamonds (inc king) on board. We bet 400 and he calls. River comes 4d giving us second best flush. We bet 800 and he calls. We show our Qd. He shows Jd and folds.

Next hand seat 5 limps and we limp from the button with 33. Flop comes 46Q. BB bets 350 and we call everyone else folds. Turn comes 9. He checks and we bet 750. He folds.

We bet 300 with A9s from seat 5 and the button raises to 1050. We call. Flop comes 236. We check and he checks. Turn comes A. We bet 900. He calls. River comes J. We bet 1600 and he calls with AK to take the pot.

We raise to 550 from seat 5 with 88 and get calls from the button and the BB. Flop comes 9JK. BB bets 800 and we fold.

Seat 7 bets 375 and the button calls and we call from the BB with JK. Flop comes 6TJ. We bet 850. Seat 7 calls. The turn comes 9. We bet 1700 and he calls. River comes 4. We bet 3400 and he raises to 8000. Hmmmm. We lose to an overpair, a set, JQ or JA, all of which are very possible. We fold and he shows JQ. Wow. Ouch.

Things were going so well. We have 14,300 now, just under the starting stack. That's fine.

Seat 3 raises to 350 and we call from the SB with TQ. BB calls and flop comes 468. Good flop for a bluffing blind. We bet 550. BB folds and seat 3 calls. Turn comes K. We check and he bets 1100. Hmmmm. His flat call post flop means he probably doesn't have a pocket pair so the question is whether he has a king, which is not at all impossible but seems less than 50%. Nothing to back that statement than my occasionally wrong gut. We raise to 2400. He goes into the tank and folds. I suspect he had Ax.

We raise to 350 from seat 7 with AQh - our first premium hand of the day. The button re-raises to 950. Hmmmm. We could re-raise but if he has a premium hand he will raise and we will have to fold. Let's see the flop. We call and the flop comes 8JK. Not what we were looking for. He could have JJ KK or AK. We check and he bets 1050. We just call. Turn is a miracle T giving us a straight. We check and he bets 2200. We can call and slow play but then we have to hope he bets the river. Or we can raise he and if he calls bet into him again on the river. We already did the slow play thing with this guy when we had the full house. We raise to 6200. He calls. That's great. Our only fear is that he has a set and rivers a full house. River comes J pairing the board. If he has a Set or a J with a 8T or K, he has a boat and we're dead. Of course he shouldn't pre-flop raise with any of those jack hands. We check and he pushes all in. Hmmmm. The pot is about 16500 before he bets and it's now about 8,000 to us to win almost 25,000.

Now it's a strange probability question. If there is less than a 75% chance he has a boat we should call. He is betting like he has one. But he is also the aggressive player at the table. That doesn't mean he doesn't have it, just that it's less compelling to look solely at his bet to make a prediction. He would also bet this way with JA or KA, which we beat, or QA, which we tie.

This is a toss up, maybe a little against us if he's not an aggressive player. We call and he shows KJh for the boat. I should have put more weight on a suited KJ as something he might pre-flop raise with.

Okay - that was fast. But tomorrow we are back in Stud8 again. So we wont be blogging tomorrow because it's too difficult to blog about stud.

All the best,
Donkey