A lot of people who visit this site are obviously wanting to see more hand analysis and discussion about poker however there are a couple of problems with doing this as far as I can see.
1. Most hands are terribly uninteresting especially ones that turn into big pots, set vs AA, draw vs overpair, draw vs set. Yawn...
2. Most hands are too complex to analyze in No Limit with several different avenues being correct depending on circumstances and actions. It is why when you ask a top player for advice on a hand the invariable response is "It Depends".
3. I play relatively high stakes online where information is very important and to be honest I don't want my opponents reading my hands and gaining important information on how I play in certain circumstances. The playerbase is small at high stakes and you play with the same people too often. Some people who I play with have Blogs where they discuss hands sometimes and the information you can glean is too useful.
However, with all that being said I will still post some hands and analysis whenever I feel it is "interesting" and "useful" to someone learning or trying to improve, not very debatable as far as correct actions are concerned and of course not harmful to me in the future (which is why player names are left blank) =)
So with that all said and done here is one that fits the criteria :-
(5 Handed, 10/20 NL Game, $2000 buy in)
UTG limps for $20, next player limps, as does the button. The small blind folds and I check in the BB with A
T
.
The flop is 4
7
T
. There is $90 in the pot.
I bet $60 and the pre flop UTG calls the $60 (He has $2135 and is a good player). The next player calls the $60 and raises $120 more. He is a semi short stack and after his raise he still has $618 left(I have no information on this player). The button now cold calls the $180 raise, this player has $1885 left and is also an unknown quantity. The action is now back to me with $570 in the pot.
Now generally, in No Limit especially at higher stakes you do everything you possibly can to not turn limped pots into huge pots with mediocre holdings. However, this is only a general rule and you should recognize situations where you must deviate from the safest road to maximize your profits. In this situation it is now very important to reraise with your hand to try and knock out 1 or 2 of your opponents who almost certainly have draws on this flop.
A quick hand analysis tells me that the UTG could have a wide variety of hands but most likely some draw such as 56, 89, 68, any gutshot such as J8 etc or of course a club draw. I fully expect him to fold to any reraise I make here. The semi short stack who made the reraise can have any T here as well as a club draw, any open ended straight draw and perhaps 444 or 777. But on balance a reraise with my holding is almost certainly correct versus him also. The final player on the button who has cold called the $180 is the slightly more worrying factor to me as even though a likely holding for him is a club draw, it is also feasible he is now trapping with a big hand such as 444 or 777.
It is pretty clear you have to raise here to shut out draws and if you can't do that at least you have made them pay big to hit the turn with their 4-1 or 5-1 shot. How much to raise though? The important factor to me here is to take advantage of the short stack and use it against the other players. For instance if I just raise to $1000, the UTG will fold, the short stack will call all in and the button will fold any draw but bust me for a full stack when he has a monster. However, if I raise decently but smaller than the short stack has left something nice and likely could happen. Let's see :-
I called the $120 reraise and then reraised a further $360. This gave the UTG player a $480 raise to call which he wisely folded instantly too. The short stack then just called my reraise which as it turns out will be a clear mistake for him leaving himself with only $258. The button then cold calls this reraise taking us to the turn and creating a $1770 pot. The nice thing that could have happened would have been if the short stack had just pushed all in instead of calling my reraise. This would have given the button a real tough decision as on this site I would have then been given the opportunity of reraising all in if the button cold called this reraise. Unfortunately that did not happen.
The turn was the 6
. Giving us a board of 4
7
T
6
.
The pot is $1770. I have $1496 left, the short stack has $258 and the button has $1525 left.
The shortstack is not a consideration any more as he does not have enough chips to make us fold obviously. All concern is now with the button who probably has a club draw but could still have something like 89, 58c, 53c, 444, 777 or some weirdly played 2 pair. Even though these are all fairly unlikely we will be able to eliminate them completely with the following safely play which will maximize our winnings but minimize our losses when he has us beat already.
The play is take advantage of the short stack who is almost certainly going to move all in if we check to him with his paltry $258. If this happens we will be able to see how the button feels about his hand. A call will almost certainly mean he is still drawing and a big raise will mean he has us beat and is desperate to now shut out our drawing hand (as he would perceive it to be).
The action that took place was that I checked, the short stack moved all in for $258 and the button quickly called the $258. At this point I instantly put him on a flush draw and reraised all in to try and shut him out.
The pot was now $3782 and he would have to call $1267 to hit his flush. With only 3-1 pot odds he will certainly be making a huge error if he calls to hit here as he needs 4.1-1 pot odds just to break even if he has 9 outs. He thought for a long long time and then correctly folded.
The river was the 3
.
The short stack turned over Q
T
and I scooped a pot of $3780 for $1744 pure profit from what started out as a regular run of the mill limped pot. The button then started cursing in chat that he had a club draw and would have hit on the river =).
Stuff that some of you may have done different that you might want to think about.
1. Some of you would have folded on the flop and some of you would have called. Calling is almost certainly the worst of these two plays.
2. If you had in fact raised as I did a large proportion of you would then have bet out on the turn trying to protect your hand. But you would have had to bet so much on the turn that you would lose a full stack every time the button has you already beat. And if you don't bet huge on the turn you will give the button odds to hit his flush anyway. Neither of these scenarios are appealing.
3. If you had instead checked the turn like I did, some of you would almost certainly have just called the short stacks all in along with the button, scared of the already huge pot and how vulnerable your hand feels in this situation.
It is even harder to play a hand like this well when you are multi-tabling and that is why you are able to play much better the less tables you have open at once. It is way too easy to just fold on the flop here if you are 8 tabling and not analyze it all properly. I only play 5-6 tables max and always give myself a good amount of time to act so I don't miss good opportunities to maximize profits.
Whenever you play a hand exactly like you would if the cards were turned face up such as this one, you are playing exactly in line with Sklansky's Fundamental Theorem of Poker which you can read in Chapter 3 of Sklansky's "The Theory of Poker". In this case I did exactly that.
The sad part though is that for every time you do get it all right the players will sometimes still call, hit their outs and bust you anyway =) But hey, "thatsssssssssssssssssssss Poker!"
