A few weeks ago I told you about an amazing hand between Viktor Blom and Alex Millar where Blom called off $33k on the river with bottom pair to win a $100k pot. With K4s on a board of AJ459! (Hand of the week 34)
Well I made my own Viktor Blom call this week, in a mighty 10-20 cent heads up match. This hand really put my opponent on tilt and when I looked at it again just now I can see why!
You won’t see a more passively played, calling-station type hand all week – and what a crummy hand to do it with as well. But I’ll keep my hand a secret just for now. I’ll tell you the action first and the hands at the end.
At the start of the hand he had 100 BBs and I had 200 BBs (a mighty $40). We’d played about 80 hands up to this point and I had a feeling (but no proof yet) that when my opponent bet the pot he had nothing. This is what I call the “F*** Off” bet – one that he doesn’t want calling – it’s designed to get your opponent to…well, there’s a clue in the name)
I limp called. Disgusting play I know – particularly when you see my hand – but I’d only limped once before and he’d let me get away with it. I should have folded really but at these puny stakes….well I’m getting 2-1 with position on him so I called. I should point out that I am in no way a serious heads up cash game player, especially at these lowly stakes (who is?) I only play these stakes for a bit of fun.
The flop was Ks 2d 7d and he bet the pot.
I actually thought he was likely to have ace-rag here and missed. As I’d hit the flop I thought I’d call and wait for him to shut down on the turn. But then the turn came the Ac and he bet the pot, $3.60, immediately.
This was the “F*** off” bet in all it’s glory and I changed my mind about the ace. I strongly suspected he had nothing now. The speed of his bet was also fishy.
The river was another 7 for a final board of Ks 2d 7d Ac 7s. The pot was $10.80 and he shoved all in for $14.50.
“Well I’ve come this far”……I thought.
There was a chance he had a 7 and made lucky trips but at the time my only thought was that it looked like one last desperate attempt to get me to……well you know the name of the bet by now. I called.
And to my delight he had 6s 5s for a bit fat nothing – no pair no draw and one hope – that I effed off!
And my hand? I had the mighty 6c 2c of course. Yeah, a huge hand – bottom pair with a 6 kicker. Hehe, I am a disgrace. You’ve got to love poker sometimes.
Two things I would say about this hand. Firstly, in heads up play, your opponent has got nothing a lot of the time. And I mean an awful lot of the time, which is why you get a lot more bluffing.
Secondly, one of the nice things about poker is that you don’t have to play perfectly to win. I wouldn’t say I got “lucky” here but I did make a few little mistakes in the hand. However, because I got the important thing right I won the pot (the “important” thing in this instance being my hunch that his pot sized bets spelled weakness and not strength.) I can’t tell you how happy this tiny little $20 pot made me – just because I was right on this one thing.
Plus you need hands like this to balance out all the times you do everything right and lose to a diabolical card. Speaking of which, literally the next hand he raised and I had AJ.
I just shoved all in, an utterly ridiculous 300BBs, thinking he might call out of the pure tilt of having been stacked three times and having his soul read with my 62c.
Sure enough he did – with A4. And of course he won hand with a lucky 4. So instead of the score being $80 – $0 to me with him on mega life tilt we were $40-40 and he was ready to gamble. Not such a good situation.
