Poker Hand: Best. Call. Evar.

Over at the 2+2 Mid-Stakes Limit Hold'em forum, forum members are discussing the virtues of bluffing and thin value betting after the last card. I take the position that a player should bet for value on the river when there is enough likelihood of being called by a player with a worse hand, but that bluffing should be reserved for one's very worst hands, the ones that have no chance of winning a showdown. Game theory tells us that the size of the range of losing hands that should be bluff-bet relates to the size of the range of the hands that should be bet for value the way the bet size relates to the pot size. And there should be a wide range of hands with which a player checks and calls a bet, and a range where the right move is to check-fold.

Here is a hand I played last Thursday that illustrates bluff-betting done right. I was playing in the Oaks Club, in Emeryville, in the $15-$30 hold'em game. I was in middle position in seat 4. The player under the gun, in seat one, limped in. I squeezed my cards and saw the queen and nine of hearts, good enough for a call in this spot. I limped in, and the player in the cutoff seat raised. The player in the big blind called, under-the-gun called, and I closed the action with my call.

The flop came 8-7-6 rainbow, giving me overcards and an open-ended straight draw. The pair outs to my nine were probably no good, because they would very likely make someone else's straight. The big blind checked, under-the-gun checked. I chose to check and see how many bets I would have to pay after the preflop raiser bet. To my surprise, though, he checked after us, giving us a free look at the turn card.

That card was the deuce of spades, putting two spades on the board. Big blind checked. Now the under-the-gun player fired a bet. I called with my estimated nine outs (six straight outs, two queen outs, and spades that make my hand counted as half an out and rounded down). The preflop raiser and the big blind dropped out, leaving me head-up with the turn bettor. While the dealer burned and turned the river card, my opponent loudly said, "No spade!" The river card was the three of clubs, making the board 8-7-5-2-3, with no possible flush. My opponent bet out once more.

Now it was time for me to go into the tank. I had planned to check after him if he had checked to me, hoping that my unimproved queen-high was enough to win a pot. My opponent was a loose-agressive player who bluffs a fair amount, and sometimes makes a point of showing his bluffs. When he does show his bluffs, they are low cards that miss the flop — precisely the sort of cards one should be bluffing with, because they have no other way of winning. So I figured either my hand was way behind a strong hand like a straight, or it was very likely ahead of a pure bluff. Would the villain be bluffing more often than one time in seven in this spot? I thought it very likely.

I called the bet. "Good call," said my opponent. He didn't turn his hand over. I didn't turn mine over either. "No pair," I said. He held onto his cards. He clearly didn't want to show his hand. I turned over my unimproved queen-high. He stared for a moment, and mucked.

"You called me down with queen-high!" he said. "You didn't show me any respect at all."

"Actually I called because I do respect your play," I replied, quite sincerely, while I stacked the chips.

I described the hand later to Debbie. She paid me the wonderful compliment of saying that my call was a "Sabyl call."

Tags: poker bluffs bluffing game theory oaks holdem two plus two hand history