NL400 hand Biggest Bluff of my Life

I actually think that your move would have been better on the turn. Not sure it would qualify as a bluff after you have just hit top pair, but a big bet there gives him problems, as you could be betting a flush as easily as top pair, so AA, KK, JJ or even QQ or TT is in a serious bind when you bet the turn.

That said, I am not sure about the river bluff. My problem is I don't have a good read on villain's hand. About the only thing I am pretty sure he doesn't have is AK[h]. Villain's line looks right to me for a made hand on the order of a big or pretty big pocket pair. From his point of view, you may have played him correctly to buy a free river card, so maybe he assumes that the river helped you, and the only way it could have helped you is by making your flush. So I think the bluff has credibility, even on the river. That being the case, I'm not going to quibble about whether you should have raised to $500 or pushed (There's not A LOT of difference given your stack) except to note that, everything else being equal, I am somewhat more likely to call a river all-in than I am a river raise that looks like it wants to be called.

But against an opponent who is capable of making a big laydown, in this situation, I think the bluff was unusually risky but not unreasonable. If he doesn't have the A or the K of hearts, this isn't even a big laydown. But it is risky, of course, because if he has the ace or king [h] he is calling you for sure, and if he has the j he may very well call. So you are betting your stack that he doesn't have a heart.

I wouldn't have made this bluff, though, because the absence of a heart in my hand increases the probability that he has one, and it is 50/50 that he has one if he is holding KK or JJ and 2 to 1 if he has AA. Too risky for my tastes.

Hope it worked out for you.

[Go_Blue88]

After about 10 seconds he folded. This was the first time in a while where I felt nervous during a hand. I left the table shortly after making this play b/c at the time I thought it was stupid.

However, after reading responses and thinking about it, I like the play. My hand range is very large from Villian's perspective, and from my point of view, his hand range is small. When he just calls the flop I think that this limits his range to overpairs/99 b/c I can't imagine a good player playing AhKh like that. Thus, since my hand range is wide, he can't comfortably call this bet without the Ace of hearts (AxAh). I'm going to try to do the math based on Fimbulwinter's pervious EV calculation posts, but I think Villian needs to fold ~40% for this to be a +EV play.

I haven't done any math since I took Calculus 2 years ago, so this should be interesting...

Thanks for the responses, especially the long thought out one by (mc...forgot the whole name). I agree with most of what you said, but I don't think that the bluff would work better on the turn. Also, I don't think that most good Villian's will call as often as you think with the Kh.