I'm Just A Play Machine

It felt like I was making more moves than normal this weekend, which is probably a good thing. Due to my image, most of my moves tend to work. I think a few nit regs have started calling my 3-bets light because they know I 3-bet a lot of small pairs and SCs in position, but this is actually +EV for me because they're normally OOP and have to fold to a flop half pot c-bet anyway.

I also ran a nice 3-barrel bluff which worked, and played a very interesting hand against a good 200/400 NL reg that was slumming at 100NL for whatever reason. We have almost no history, but he should know I am 2+2er and a winning player. Here is the hand in question, with commentary:

Poker Stars, $0.50/$1 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 8 Players

UTG+1: $128.05 (128.1 bb)
MP1: $145.35 (145.4 bb)
MP2: $18 (18 bb)
MP3: $44.50 (44.5 bb)
Hero (CO): $105.20 (105.2 bb)
BTN: $28.40 (28.4 bb)
SB: $159.10 (159.1 bb)
BB: $213.70 (213.7 bb)

Pre-Flop: Hero is CO with Kc Ah
UTG+1 folds, MP1 raises to $2, MP2 folds, MP3 folds, Hero raises to $8, BTN folds, SB folds, BB folds, MP1 raises to $14, Hero calls $6

Villain is a LAG, and minraises as many 400NL regs like to do. I think minraising is probably spew at 100NL on weekends especially, but that's a discussion for another time. I 3-bet, and villain minraises me back. It occurred to me at the time that villain is likely doing this with more than half of his opening range, and that the main purpose of it is to grab a hold of the postflop "initiative" in the hand, expecting me to fold to a half pot c-bet on a lot of flops.

I'm obviously never folding here, and 5-betting is actually a good option. With position however I elect to call and play poker. Note that if I'm not going to make a move on some dry flops that I miss (that misses most of his range as well), it is most definitely better to 5-bet.

Flop: ($29.50) 6h Jd Jc (2 players)
MP1 bets $15, Hero raises to $30, MP1 folds

Here comes the expected half pot c-bet on an extremely dry board. I think this is a perfect spot to mainraise bluff, because villain is going to have to fold much of his range. AK/AQ probably fold, as do pairs smaller than Jacks and possibly even QQ (ok, this particular reg probably doesn't actually fold QQ here, but some would). I end up risking $30 to win $45, so villain only has to fold 40% of the time for it to be EV neutral. In practice, I'm fairly certain villain folds >50% of the time, making is significantly +EV.

This hand functioned as a bit of a eureka moment for me. In 3-bet pots, mainraise bluffing can be a deadly tool that very few players use. It is especially effective because you are effectively risking the minimum possible on a bluff that will get very close to the same amount of credit as a shove. The key is to balance it with your nut hands in a similar fashion on dry boards. Thus, if a villain decides to shove over your mainraise with their missed AK, they'll be running into your AA/KK a decent amount of the time. I will be making much more use of this move in the future.

Results: $59.50 pot ($2.90 rake)
Hero mucked Kc Ah (a pair of Jacks) and won $56.60 ($27.60 net)

Finally, here are my EV and luck graphs for the weekend. I ran a little good in Sklansky EV, and a little bad in all-in EV, for a total of $2.7k profit ($2.2k winnings, $500 rakeback). I really need to play more hands on the weekends, 22.5k isn't going to cut it going forward.