limit 5CD: Pat bluff in a tournament

[THEjDonk]

Here are a couple of hands from a tournament I played recently on Pokerstars. The game was limit 5 card draw. The buy-in was a dollar, and there were 294 entries.

Tournament: Limit 5 Card Draw (8000/16000) (.com/greenage22/5_Card_Draw/Converter.html]converter)

SB (112420), Seat 4
BB (65525), Seat 5
UTG (193255), Seat 1
Hero (69800), Seat 2

SB posts 4000. BB posts 8000.

Hero is Button with [4s 9s 6d Tc 5h]

Round 1: (1.50 SB)

<font color="#666666">UTG folds. </font><font color="red">Hero raises. </font><font color="#666666">SB folds. </font><font color="green">BB calls. </font>
BB takes 1. Hero stands pat.

Hero has [4s 9s 6d Tc 5h]

Round 2: (2.25 BB)

<font color="green">BB checks. </font><font color="red">Hero bets. </font><font color="#666666">BB folds. </font>

Pot: (2.25 BB - 36000)
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Tournament: Limit 5 Card Draw (10000/20000) (.com/greenage22/5_Card_Draw/Converter.html]converter)

SB (78255), Seat 1
Hero (202800), Seat 2
Button (159945), Seat 4

SB posts 5000. Hero posts 10000.

Hero is BB with [6d 6s 8h 6c 8c]

Round 1: (1.50 SB)

<font color="green">Button calls. </font><font color="#666666">SB folds. </font><font color="red">Hero raises. </font><font color="green">Button calls. </font>
Hero stands pat. Button takes 3.

Hero has [6d 6s 8h 6c 8c]

Round 2: (2.25 BB)

<font color="red">Hero bets. </font><font color="green">Button calls. </font>

Pot: (4.25 BB - 85000)

Both hands are from the final table. The guy that folded in the first hand got knocked out before we played the second hand. The guy that called me in the second didn't have much of a hand, but he wasn't the kind of player that folded a lot. Do you think that he called based on the fact that I had represented a pat hand 38 hands earlier, or do you think he would have called me down anyway?

There were several interesting hands in the tournament that could be discussed, but I'd like some opinions on these hands first. I posted more hands in my blog:

http://fivecardtour.blogspot.com/

Feel free to PM me if you find any typos or have some other suggestions for my blog. I did manage to win the tournament thanks to a lot of luck and a few good plays [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[Big Limpin]

i doubt your hand #2 opponent even watched hand #1, let alone remembers it! and even if he remembers you patting once half hour ago, that shouldnt affect his decision here. you ostensibly had a legit hand in #1...it never got shown.

the reasons why you were called in hand #2 and not #1 were probably more to do with pot size and opponent's cards (he prolly improved lol). In button's mind, AA22 is a much better calling hand than AA, heheheh. Now, if you were CAUGHT patbluffing already, especially by the same guy, then i'd give more weight to him playing policeman.

In any case, you had 1 winning hand, and won 2 pots, so props. [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

IMHO: reactionary patbluffs &gt; premeditated patbluffs

[THEjDonk]

Thanks for the response. The hand histories from Pokerstars has a feature that allows you to see what your opponent mucked at showdown. I'm not sure if I like this or not, but it let me know that my opponent called with a pair of queens.

I guess I was was lucky with my timing in this tournament. I had two legitimate pat hands that got action, and my pat bluff worked. I thought that my opponent in the first hand seemed pretty solid. The opponent in the second hand had made a lot of loose calls after the draw, so he might be a bit of a calling station.

Are "reactionary bluffs" based on game theory while "premediated bluffs" are planned in advance?

When I play a hand, I usually plan in advance if I'm going to try to bluff with it if I think it can't win in a showdown. I haven't really worked on a strategy that makes my bluff frequency game theoretically correct.

I think I'm most inclined to pat bluff with ten-high or worse. A "perfect strategy" probably includes bluffing sometimes when your hand has high cards in it too. Incidentally, tens and fives are more common in legitimate pat hands than aces. A pat bluff with ace high might be better if you think your opponent is more likely to call you with trip aces than smaller trips and so on.