POKER STARS $3/$6 NO LIMIT HOLDEM – 6 PLAYERS
While the button is a solid player, the big blind is not. Pocket sixes would usually be a 3-bet from the small blind, but with deep stacks of almost 200 blinds, they play well for a call. The weak player in the big blind is not a squeezer, so all signs point towards having a wide cold calling range.
The flop is a disaster, and Dusty checks, planning to give up. Once it checks through, the turn gives Dusty the relative nuts. No one ever checks back sets these days, so there’s simply no way he’s beat.
Hoping to represent a total air bluff, Dusty goes for a big check/raise, four times the size of the button’s delayed c-bet. The button takes the bait and makes a min-re-raise. There’s almost no real hand he can represent. The only reasonable hand he can claim to have is three sixes, but of course that would be impossible unless someone slipped an extra into the deck. (This happened once to Paul at the Mayfair Club, but you’ll never see it at Poker Stars.)
The tiny re-raise from the button is sized to prevent Dusty from jamming it in with a draw, since there’s so much money left behind. Since the button can never hold a real hand here, Dusty makes a smallish 4-bet, planning to check/ call the inevitable river shove.
Betting any river in Dusty’s position would be awful because his opponent can never have a hand good enough to call. The button is calling the turn either because he has a draw or because he wants to bluff the river if Dusty gives up. The only way he can bluff is if Dusty checks, so betting would be a mistake.
Unfortunately, the river is the absolute joker. Every turned draw that the button could have been semi-bluffing with just came in (eight-seven and clubs). While the plan was to call a river shove, the second worst card in the deck (9♣ is marginally worse) commands a retreat.
The button made an interesting play here on the turn, calling $155 in an attempt to take the pot away on the river. He applied the concept of waiting to bluff until more information is presented. Had the river not been a disaster, Dusty would have presented the information he was looking for, although it would have been false.
