Change100 at PokerWorks

Once again, a big thank you to all the readers who offered some great analysis of this troublesome hand. However, unlike the K-K hand from last week, this case is not exactly of the open-and-shut variety. Half a dozen or more potential plays were offered up, all of which have sound reasoning behind them. Let’s look at this hand one more time:

There are ten players remaining in a 45 player SNG. Six are paid. Blinds are 250-500 and play is five-handed. Action is folded to you in the small blind and you hold the 8c-9s. You have 9200 chips and the big blind has 12,500. You complete the blind and the BB checks. The flop is the 5s-6c-9c. You bet 1,000. The BB raises to 2,000 and you call. The turn is the 5c. The pot is 5,000 and you have 4,600 left.

What’s your move?

Let’s start with that old Sklansky “Fundamental Theorem of Poker.”

Every time you play a hand differently from the way you would have played it if you could see all your opponents’ cards, they gain; and every time you play your hand the same way you would have played it if you could see all their cards, they lose.

If I could have seen my opponent’s hole cards, the way to play the hand would have been as Absinthe described– “rewind to ‘The BB raises to 2,000 and you call’ and either jam or fold.”

I am holding the 8c-9s in the SB on a 5c-6c-9c board. This gives me top pair, a gutshot straight draw and a backdoor flush draw. At this point in a blind-vs-blind situation I actually like my hand and want to protect it. And like KenP points out, his holding in the BB could literally be any two cards. Being a Full Tilt SNG, there are no antes in the game, so the pot is 1,000 going into the flop after I complete and he checks. So, my bet of 1,000 on the flop was designed to A#1- see where I’m at as well as B#2- protect my hand. I don’t mind my pot-sized bet on the flop and I’d probably do it again.

However, my big-stacked opponent immediately min-raises my flop bet to 2,000. My initial thoughts are: “OK, this guy is testing me to see if I actually have anything. If he’s been watching this game at all, he knows I’d fire out a bet here well over half the time even with air/ace high/king high/whatever just to try and pick up the pot on the flop if he’s totally missed. He got that big stack by playing aggressively in position, so I’m thinking that he did catch a piece of this flop, but it’s probably not as good as my piece. Or… he could be value-raising his 7-8 or a raggedy two pair. Or… he could be trying to push me out of the pot with a draw like 4-7 or even nothing at all.” I thought I was good, but I just hit the call button instead of thinking what a re-raise might accomplish. I failed to recognize that this was what doubleas describes in his book as the “pressure point” of the hand.

If I could do it all over again, I’d take Absinthe’s line and jam right over the top of his raise. Knowing what I know now, he likely would have folded. His hand? K-5. I was right that he indeed caught a piece that was smaller than my piece and I was a little better than a 4-1 favorite over him on the flop. If he calls the push it’s a catastrophically bad play and if he folds, I drag a 4,000 chip pot and put myself in a relatively comfortable position relative to the other players’ stacks going into bubble time.

So, let’s move on to fourth street, where he turns trips and I turn a flush draw to go with my top pair and gutshot straight draw. Again, here’s where I don’t stop long enough to really think through my options. I don’t think I ever contemplated checking or folding here. I just looked at the 4,600 I had left, the 5,000 in the pot, decided that I wanted that 5,000 and the only way I was gonna get it was to shove. He instacalled, showing his trip fives and I felt the familiar bile rising in my stomach when a seven or a club that did not pair the board failed to hit the river.

This hand, to me was all about timing and I missed my window to drag a decent pot by not properly evaluating my full range of options on the flop. It was a pretty good flop for my hand albeit quite a dangerous one with multiple draws out there. One of the things I’ve been trying to work on in my MTT game is to play more aggressively on the bubble and worry less about cashing and more about accumulating enough chips to take me to the final table. A situation like this one is no time to speculate with a call on the flop and see what happens on the turn. We saw what happened. There are a lot of shitty cards for me that could fall on the turn. Any overcard is bad. Pairing the board is kinda bad. Even a 4 would put more draws out there. The flop is where I have to put this guy to a decision. If he has 5-6, 5-9, 7-8 or 6-9, well goody for him and his lucky BB. But more likely, especially when he makes the raise, he’s hit a pair or a draw and needs to be put to the test right then.

Of course, had he turned over 7-8 this post would be called “There ARE Monsters Under the Bed.”

Thanks again. Until next time…

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 19th, 2007 at 10:17 am and is filed under Uncategorized.