Book Extract: An Excerpt From The New Book By Chris Moorman

Here is in an extract of the newly published book by the most successful online poker player of all time, and 2017 WSOP bracelet winner, Chris Moorman.

Game: WPT LA Poker Classic Final Table 2014
Hand: K J
Position: BTN
Players: 4
Blinds/ante: 30,000/60,000-10,000
PreFlop: Hero is BTN with K J
CO calls 60,000, Hero raises to 180,000, 2 folds, CO calls 120,000

Flop: (490,000) 5 Q 2 (2 players)
CO checks, Hero bets 180,000, CO calls 180,000

Turn: (850,000) 7 (2 players)

CO checks, Hero bets 440,000, CO folds

Playing four-handed, Rocco is first to act and limps A 5. I raise with K J to 180,000 on the button and he calls. I could elect to overlimp here but I think K-J is strong enough to be a value raise in position and my hand benefits a ton from going to the flop heads-up. The flop comes 5 Q 2 which is pretty dry and much better for my range overall because I don’t expect him to have any sets, two pairs or overpairs. I’d be continuation betting with most of my range here as I have a lot of fold equity on this board texture.

So, after Rocco checks, I go for a pretty small bet of 180,000, which is around 37 percent pot. Rocco makes the call and now I can start to define his range a bit more. I think he has some flush draws, some Q-x and mid pairs and some suited wheel aces.

When the turn is the 7 I need to make a decision whether to fire a second bullet or to check back and essentially give up on the hand unless I improve on the river. If I had a spade in my hand it would be pretty natural to bluff but I think K-J is fairly close. At the time, I decided that I wanted to have some three barrel bluffs on four spade runouts, so this hand fits pretty well into that range as it blocks a lot of his continuing range on the turn such as K-Q and Q-J. However, given that the Q is not on the board I think a turn barrel here is a bit spewy because it gives him a lot more hands that he is pretty much forced to call down with. In the actual hand Rocco checks and I bet 440,000 around 52 percent pot and he ended up folding his hand.

Even though the bluff worked out this time and we did get him to fold the best hand on the turn, I’m not sure if I’m a big fan of my play. We don’t have much equity when called on the turn and he can still have a lot of strong hands on this board. Also, without a spade, we don’t bluff any of his nut combinations and he is still uncapped in this spot. Having said that we need to have some bluffs when a fourth spade comes on the river because we have so many barrel hands that get there on a fourth spade. So in this case K-J and K-10 offsuit seem like the best hands to use as our bluffs. If the board bricks out on the river I think I would give up on my bluff because, by that point, Rocco has a relatively strong range and my blockers aren’t very good for firing a river bet. ♠