Book Extract: Chris Moorman's Latest Now Available

Moorman, The Inside Story Of The Most Successful Online Poker Player Of All Time is now available. An extract from the book is available below. You can get your copy from D&B Poker publishing.

Game: Online Tournament $100+$9
Hand: A 7
Position: Button
Players: 9
Blinds/ante: 25/50
PreFlop: Hero is Button with A 7
6 folds, Hero raises to 112, SB folds, BB calls 62

Flop: (249) K 9 2 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets 109, BB raises to 350, Hero calls 241

Turn: (949) Q (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets 493, BB calls 493

River: (1,935) 3 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets 1,700 and is all-in, BB folds

This hand is from the early stages of a tournament before antes have come into play. Action folds to me on the button where I have a 53 big blinds stack and make a standard 2.25x open with A 7. The small blind folds and the big blind defends. Even though I have a small sample size on my opponent it appears that they are playing on the looser side having only folded two out of six times to a continuation bet and also perhaps on the aggressive side considering they have also check-raised one of those six flops.

The flop is K 9 2, which is one where I have a decent range equity advantage.

Some of my opponent’s really strong hands, such as A-K, K-K and 9-9, will 3-bet preflop as well as hands such as K-Q suited. They also have a lot of hands that have very low equity on this board and will be forced to fold versus a bet. For this reason I make a value/protection bet of 109 into 249 (around 44% pot). My opponent stays true to his loose-aggressive stats and check-raises the flop to 350. With the nut flush draw it’s a no-brainer decision for me to continue in this hand but one mistake I see a lot of play­ers make here is to shove all-in. If I do this and get called it’s true that, with an overcard to go with my nut flush draw, I’m never in that bad a shape.

However, playing in position it’s far better to call with my hand and have the potential to win the pot on some runouts if I don’t improve. I wouldn’t be 3-betting the flop with any hands I’m continuing with so, although I do have a number of flush draws here, I also have strong made hands such as K-K, 9-9 and K-9 to protect my overall range and strengthen it, given that I also have some weaker gutshot straight draws.

After I make the call on the flop the turn is the Q which brings a second flush draw and my opponent checks. At this point I can either take a free card to try and realize my equity and maybe win at showdown with A-high (admittedly this is unlikely) or start turning my hand into a bluff. This is a close decision and depends on whether I feel the opponent is likely to check-raise the turn when facing a bet. If there is a strong chance they could take this action, betting the turn would be a disaster as I’ll have to fold to the shove and don’t get to realise my equity.

However, on this spe­cific board, I felt this would very rarely happen as I didn’t expect my oppo­nent to check a strong hand on the turn for fear that I had too many hands that would check behind. The main reason is that all my marginal hands, such as Q-J, J-J, 10-10, J-9, 10-9 etc, are going to want to check behind. Even hands as strong as K-J and A-K are going to want to pot-control on this scary turn card in case my opponent was checking the turn with J-10 or Q-K. For these reasons I thought the most likely type of hands my op­ponent had were gutshots on the flop that now made a pair such as Q-J and Q-10 and I decided to bet the turn with intention of bluffing the river on a brick or value betting if I make my flush.

Once my opponent calls the turn there is 1,935 in the pot with 1,700 in effective stacks behind. The 3 on the river changes nothing and I de­cided to follow through on my plan to shove a brick river. It’s true my op­ponent can put me on a missed flush draw here, but a lot of them have showdown value and won’t be ones I choose to bluff with such as 9-x and Q-x hearts. Also, I wouldn’t expect my opponent to think that I will bluff with A-x hearts combinations or open with the lowest suited cards giv­en that there are no antes in the pot preflop to fight for. I still have a ton of value-bets on this board including K-Q, K-9, Q-9 and J-10 (for all of which I can have both offsuit and suited combinations), as well as all sets which will balance out these missed flush draw bluffs and put my opponent in a very tough spot with their bluff-catcher.