You nice folks deserve a hand…so here is one I played a few weeks ago.  I will make this a column some day, but right now I am in the middle of a lengthy series on how/when to bluff at limit hold’em.

I post in in the cutoff to start my session.  I prefer to take the big blind, and I never post between the blind and the button.  I am dealt 10-7 offsuit.  Everyone folds to me.  Now that is unusual these days (it used to be common before the boom), but it does happen.  Hold’em for Advanced Players says to always raise here.   I agree.  It is a raise-or-fold situation and you can’t fold (the book says that too) so it is almost always right to raise.

 When not to:

• Button is hyper aggressive, or
• Both blinds will never fold, and
• Your hand is terrible.

None of those things are true as far as I know (I would have waited for the blind instead of posting if all of these players were strangers), so I raise. 

Button and small blind fold.  Big blind reraises!  Superficially, this a very bad, as he should have very good hand.  I had played with this guy all week, however, and there was an excellent chance he was reacting to his knowledge that I would raise here with almost any hand and he was taking this opportunity to wrest control of the pot.  I had seen him make a similar three-bet with nothing earlier in the week against a player who made suspicious raises, so I knew he had it in him.

 I called, and we saw a flop of K-4-4.  Not exactly what I had hoped.  However, I had no reason to believe he had any of this (or even a hand as good as ace-high) and I decided to make a play for this pot myself.  I did not think raising here would have much credibility, as he would expect me to represent something on this sort of board, so my plan was to call here, and raise the turn or river depending on what came off the deck.

 Floating the flop is not a well known (or widely used)  limit play, and eventually I shall do a column on that concept as well.  But that s what I decided to do.  I called.

As it happened, the turn was a 10.  That changed things.  I no longer needed to bluff raise, as I had something to show down.  But should I raise for value?  I was likely ahead, but there was no certainty.  After all, he could be doing all of this raising and betting because he actually had something.  I surely did not want to solve a reraise.  i called again.

River deuce did not seem to change much.   He bet again.  I called.  He turned over Q-7, so I won.

This hand caused an interesting reaction at the table. When the betting went raise-reraise preflop, then all of that betting and calling afterwards, most people at the table expected, ummm, that we had something.  The guy in the ten-seat said, “I thought you both had a king.” 

Sometimes things are not what they seem at the table.  I hope you enjoyed this hand.

Happy holidays to all, and a wonderful and winning 2010.