$50NL @ Prima. villain and i have played over 1000 hands together...we respect each others play...and we're actually pretty friendly. i know his play pretty well and he knows mine. he's generally solid....slightly loose, pretty aggressive....calls preflop raises a bit too much with AJ/AT type hands...but that's the only leak i've seen in his play. table was tight and passive...and i wanted to change that up a bit. so i'd been raising a lot preflop and following up with flop bets...even with nothing.

villain limps UTG....folded to me...i raise to $2.50 from MP with [5c]. i don't usually do this..but the table was way tight/passive. folds to villain, who calls.

flop: [Qc][As]
pot size: $5.75

villain checks.

ok...with AQ or better he would most likely have raised up front. and he will generally lead the flop with top pair. so i'm not too worried. he might be getting tricky with AA....or he might have 77. but he plays his big hands fast so if i bet....he'll raise with a monster. other than that i think i can buy this pot. i've bluffed him on the flop a few times...but i've never followed through with a big turn bet without a legitimate hand.

i lead for $5...villain calls.

turn:
pot size: $15.75

villain checks again

now....like i said above...in well over 1000 hands with the villain....i have never followed up on a flop bluff with a turn bet. every time i've bet out the turn against him...i've had a hand. i'm convinced that he's got a weak ace and he thinks i'm just screwing around like i sometimes do. i decide that he'll fold to my turn bet, because he's not a moron.

i lead for $15. villain thinks a long time.........then calls.

oops.


river:
pot: $45.75

i honestly feel a little bad and i know that i've probably just lost a friend at the poker table. i bet $20....villain calls with AJ.

im not trying to say my play was amazing or anything. but i'm wondering if you guys think i went too far with trying to "play the player." i was pretty sure of what he had....and in this situation he would have usually folded preflop or on the flop....and certainly on the turn. but he was apparently convinced (we talked about this afterwards) that i was bluffing with way more frequency than was normal. he was "sure" i was bluffing and i was "sure" that he'd fold anyway. am i a moron?

jon

Nobody's replied, so I'll stick my neck out.

Are you a moron? No. Do you think this situation never came up when Doyle, Slim, and Sailor Roberts were riding the circuit? I can feel confident it did, probably many times. Your play was certainly much better than his. No apologies.

Did you lose a friend? C'mon, now that's where you're going off track. Famous saying of Johnny Moss: "I'd bust my grandmother if she was sitting at the table." A friend buys a friend a beer, after the game, with HIS money. At the table, my only friends are my chips, and I like to have lots and lots of those friends.

CJ

nice job!

So you got a nice river, had he popped you back on the flop or the turn, you probably would have went away. He should have found out 'where he stood' long before!

yeah....i mean...i was just kidding about the "losing a friend at the poker table" thing. he's cool about it...and if he wasn't...well...i still have the vast majority of his chips. what i should have said was "i'm going to look like an idiot when this hand gets shown down."

jon

I'd have looked like a happy idiot.

(but, then, I always look like that)

CJ

Why such a weak bet on the river? put him in!

because i wanted to get paid. he's not calling off $40 more with AJ. his timer ran down to about 3 seconds before he called my $20.

jon

So if your micracle card doesn't come on the river, you can push and he folds. Win/win. Terrific place to be in, having that solid a read on the guy.

Your opponent played that hand horribly. Not once did he show any aggression..and that's why he lost. I think you give this guy too much credit.

guys...thanks for all your responses. good to know i'm not completely idiotic. two points i wanted to address though:

1. i think betting $20 over shoving in my $40 on the river is pretty obviously correct. who says he's going to call off $40 more (we both had about $60 stacks)? he only had 1/3 of his stack invested in the pot and could quite easily fold to an all-in..especially if i trusted my read of a weak Ace. this way...i give him slightly better than 3-1 on his call and he's not faced with the decision of whether to stack off or not. plus....i think it looks weak. i've bet pot on the flop and turn. he'll think i'm trying to buy it on the river but chickening out.

2. i don't think im giving him more credit than he deserves. he's among the winningest players in my PT database at these stakes....and that's after i've watched him take some nasty full-stack beats.. he's usually aggressive, sometimes creative, and generally makes solid reads. i don't think i've ever seen push all-in while way behind, or call all-in while behind at all. i'm not sure how....but he knew that i had nothing. and that the best way to get more $$$ out of me was to let me keep firing away. granted...it backfired...and personally i think he had enough money in the pot by the turn to raise me out of the pot. but he's quite a good player.

jon