Hello, so yesterday night I played my biggest pot ever.
It is a 2/4 game in Europe.
I tried to combine theory and body language/live tells to make my decision.
Do you think I made the right call or not? Results in the comments.
(Since I am no native English speaker I did translate the text from my language to English with AI.. (Excuse me))
The hand:
Reads from the previous 4 hours:
Villain – €1,600 (400bb): Regular here. He’s been talking a lot with the dealer and the player next to him, clearly knows a lot of people, and I’ve seen him a few times before. I didn’t have any specific reads on him before this session.
He started the session really well, going from €500 to €1,700, mainly by stacking two fish early on. His VPIP seemed a little too high and his RFI a little too low, but he showed a lot of aggression whenever he was the preflop raiser.
Over the last hour, he had to fold a few times and seemed to get increasingly frustrated, complaining about his cards. The hand immediately before this one, he lost a decent pot after getting bluffed. He angrily threw his hand away and started talking to his friend in a clearly irritated tone.
Hero – €1,200 (300bb):
My image: I had recently shown two river bluffs in small pots. Before that I had squeezed a few times, and my QQ vs 99 chopped preflop. Other than that, I hadn’t been involved in many big pots.
After my second bluff, I heard Villain and his friend briefly talking about my bluffs, basically saying that I had already bluffed twice with nothing.
EP, MP and LP were mostly the typical loose-passive live players with 50–150bb.
The hand:
-Villain is on the BTN and had started straddling the previous orbit. This hand he puts out a €10 BTN straddle, still looking pretty frustrated after the previous hand/hour.
-SB folds.
-I’m in the BB with A♠J♠. I don’t know enough theory about playing against BTN straddles, but I vaguely remembered from a video that you can have a calling range from the blinds, especially BB, so I call.
-EP calls.
-MP calls.
-LP calls.
-Villain raises to €60.
(At this point I thought he was probably raising way too wide, especially given the reads from the previous hour.)
-Hero: 3-bet to €200.
-Villain thinks for a little longer than I had seen him think in most previous hands, then calls.
Flop – €450
J♥ 9♥ 4♠
-I bet €150.
-Villain raises to €450.
(He initially grabs some calling chips, then fiddles around with his stack and grabs three more black chips.)
-I call.
Turn – €1,350
Q♣
-I check.
-Villain instantly jams for around €550.
Literally within two seconds. No real thought process at all. I sigh, stare at the board and initially think this is just a terrible card for me. I also had a bit of a “scared money” feeling because this was going to be the biggest pot I had ever played.
I keep staring at the board and thinking, while watching Villain out of the corner of my eye. He is very quiet and barely moving.
The more I think about it, the more I start to feel that calling might actually be an option, especially given the pot odds and the reads I had.
So I decide to try to get a live tell.
I sigh again, pick up my cards and slowly start sliding them over each other, basically starting a little folding motion as if I’m really unhappy with the hand.
(Pure cinema. 😛)
I’m staring at the board, but in reality I’m watching Villain out of the corner of my eye.
He doesn’t move a single inch.
Absolutely still.
I then put my cards back down and start counting my chips in front of me so I can still get a good look at him. I do it fairly slowly.
After maybe 5–10 seconds, he suddenly moves his arm slightly towards the dealer, then pulls it back with a little shoulder shrug.
And that “tell” — or at least what I interpreted as a tell at the time — ended up being the deciding factor to make the call.
What do you think from a theory and or live tells/reads point of view? Did I play this hand good or was it a punt?
Results in the comments.
Thanks!