Sam Trickett Bluff Wins $2.5 Million Pot In Macau's Big Game

Macau’s high-stakes cash poker game has been running several weeks now, with varying stories making their way through to the poker community.
The latest piece of information coming our way comes straight from UK pro Sam Trickett, who left the game only recently with a massive US$2.3 million profit. When he departed Macau to play in the Epic Poker Tour, the game was at HKD$10k-$20 blinds (US$1,300-$2,600) and talking about the biggest bluff he pulled off while there, Trickett recalled the following hand.
Trickett with US$1.9 million in front of him was dealt 8h-6h and raised to $13,000 from the button only to call his small blind opponent’s raise to $40,000. On the Ts-7d-3c flop, his opponent then check called Trickett’s $60,000, and on the 3h turn decided to check-raise Trickett’s $140,000 bet to $490,000. Finally, his opponent checked the jack on the river, to which Trickett fired out a $1,310,000 bluff to win the US2,493,900 pot.
Explaining his though process for the “huge bluff,” Sam Trickett explained that he noticed that his opponent was an aggressive player who continuation bet too many flops, so that when he quickly checked the flop, Trickett expected a check-fold to his own bet. When he instead called, Trickett said he put him on a seven, pockets eights or even some ace-highs hand and when the 3 came on the turn, Trickett had already determined to bluff him all the way. As he explains:
“I bet HK$1.1m and he raised me to HK$3.8m. I think he’s trying to rep pocket sevens or tens here, but I didn’t think he would ever play them like that; he would have just bet on the flop. He would try to build the pot because he has no showdown value because he’s out of position. So I’m pretty sure he’s bluffing and I just call, which is how I would play it if I had a full house. I had it in my head that he would never bluff again on the river. Sure enough, he checked the jack on the river and I moved all in for about HK$8m into a pot of a similar amount. He folded after a 30-second tank.”
After recounting the hand, Trickett said it was the “biggest bluff” he had ever made in his career and doubted he would be bluffing again to that extent again. But then he would say that, wouldn’t he!