Getting Counterfeited...On the River
Ever had your 2-pair counterfeited? The answer is a resounding yes. But ever had your full house also counterfeited? Yes...but I'm guessing not-so-often, which includes myself.
Here's the action: I'm middle position (MP) and my hand is 66 with a stack of about 40 BB. The blinds are at 1k-1.5k-1.5k. I open to 2.33 BB and the guy right next to me 3-bets to 5 BB. Had has me covered, with about 75-80 BB (don't remember exactly). Everyone folds to me and I call. Already, there are alarm bells ringing that there is a high chance he has AA, but I still have a made hand. The flop comes KK6 rainbow, which means I flop a boat. I check and he bets 3 BB. I 3-bet him to 6.5 BB and then he flat calls. Here I'm thinking to myself that he has either AA, AK, or QQ (at worst). If he was bluffing, then the worst hand would be AQs for a backdoor flush, but honestly at the heat of the moment, I just didn't think this was possible. At this point, the pot is 25.5 BB. The turn is a red J. I check and then he checks back. The reason I checked back is if he thinks he has a better hand, I would be happy for him to bet again on the turn so that I can jam all-in for a roughly pot-sized bet. Again, any bluffs that he might have should go away because he easily has 3-streets of bluff value but since he doesn't bet here, I can discard any possible bluffs he might have, especially since there are not flush draws. It's also easy to rule out JJ here because if indeed he has JJ, there is a high likelihood that he would have bet on the turn to get value. If the range I put him on is correct, the river should be good 92% of the time.
However, the river is (you guessed it) another King. Three Kings and oh Mother Mary of God there is no way my 66 are good anymore. It's pretty much a nightmare situation for me because any pair 77+ in his hand is now better. Having 2 sets doesn't do you any good and because of that, I am forced to check on the river and here he bet's 9 BB for value, which is about 1/3 of the pot. It's such a good price and he's clearly looking for a call here. He knows that an all-in is not getting a call and based on how I bet on the flop, he's pretty much narrowed my range to 66, or possibly even KQ, KJs, KTs (maaaaybe K9s) since I just flatted preflop. But the fact that another K has arrived on the river, it's highly unlikely that I have a K (about 0.0005%). So most of the time, he should have the best hand. It's possible that he could have put me all-in on the river, but since the probability of me having quads is still not zero, I think he was playing things on the safer side and betting for value. So long story short, it was honestly an easy but painful fold. In the moment, I want to say that I played it as well as I could, but it just wasn't the result I was looking for.
An interesting point of discussion I had with my friend Yvan is whether it was a good idea to either jam or check on the turn. I think playing out-of-position put me in a tough spot to do the former and ended up checking in the moment to give my opponent a chance to bet on the turn, which he did not. Also, because this is a tournament, I played on the more conservative side since he had me covered and if an A or a K came on the river, I know that any bet he makes on the river requires me to fold. Jamming of course means that I am doing whatever I can to deny equity, but at this point, any hand within the range I put him in is not folding and he still has outs. If there are any bluffs, then I am fully in support of him giving me his money (but there definitely aren't any here). I also made the decision to check because if he checks back, I have the option to still jam on the river, especially if it's a brick. I will however say that if this were a cash game, jam on the turn is more reasonable, especially if you and opponent agree on running it multiple times for the river card.
All-in-all, a really unfortunate situation but hey that's poker. You get up and move on.