Jonathan Little Clicks Some Buttons in a Battle of the Blinds
This week's tournament hand is one in which looking back I think I certainly messed up at some point, deciding to "click some buttons" (so to speak) in a blind-versus-blind situation. Watch and tell me what you think.
The blinds were 75/150 with a 25 ante, and the table folded to me in the small blind where I had a little over 11,000 to start the hand and was dealt 10?4?. The big blind was a tight-aggressive player who I suspected to be fairly straightforward.
As I explain below, this is a situation where I will limp most of the time, even with such a poor starting hand, because of the great pot odds. So I did, my opponent checked, and the flop came Q?9?2?.
I missed the flop, but since my opponent could very well have missed, too, I bet 275 (a little over half the pot). My opponent called, and the turn was the 4? to give me a pair of fours.
This time I bet 525, although as I talk about in the video below I might prefer either checking or betting smaller. My opponent responded with a raise to 1,225. Again, I have decent pot odds to call, but should I? Remember, my read was this was a fairly straightforward, tight-aggressive player.
I did call, then with a little over 3,500 in the middle the river was the J?. Now what? Should I bet again? See what I ended up doing and how things turned out, and hear my analysis of this really incredibly abnormal hand.
You don't often play 10x4x-offsuit, make a marginal hand, and then decide to run a bluff with it on a scary river, but that is what happened this time!
Jonathan Little is a professional poker player and author with over $6,700,000 in live tournament earnings. He writes a weekly educational blog and hosts a podcast at JonathanLittlePoker.com. You can follow him on Twitter @JonathanLittle.
