Hand Analysis Continued, and Knowing When TPTK is Beat

Thank you for everyone's comments on my questions yesterday about how to play KQs from middle position after an early position limper in a 6max tournament as the new chip leader. I am still a little amazed at the lack of support coming in for the line of overlimping this hand before the flop, but I guess I have to give some credit to the thought that perhaps raising generally in this spot is better. I guess the thing is, I would like to know from you guys who favor raising here, what kind of hand do you think is worthy of an overlimp there instead of a raise? Is it only the medium sooted connectors and low pairs? But not KQs? KQs seems like a good overlimp candidate to me. I guess the thing that has me a little baffled about this particular situation is that if you told me you think that raising there with KQs is a slightly better play than overlimping, I would say fine you might be right, just as I am doing here now. But for the most part, the people who have commented in favor of raising there don't seem to think this is a close decision at all. Most of you seem to believe that limping KQs from middle position after an early position limper in 6max nlh is a terrible play and easily worse than the preferable alternative, which is raising. I do not agree with that sentiment at all, and I still think KQs is a very nice candidate for overlimping in this spot, given the near-nut flush and near-nut straight possibilities. With the probability of a playable hand in the blinds, KQ has got to be behind that range. It's behind all pairs and all Aces. It's behind the range.

Where are the really great, thinking poker players out there weighing in with their comments? Here is a list of ten people I would like to get a read from on the question of how they like to play KQs at 6max nlh from the cutoff after the UTG+1 Hijack player had open-limped ahead of you:

1. Chad, who knows tournament poker better than just about anybody we regularly play with (yes, Scott Fischman included).

2. Lucko, fresh off his cool $6700 win by taking down the Pokerstars $27.50 buyin 25k guaranteed tournament. This thing is an abject monster, with 2000 or so uberdonkeys entrants most nights and half the buyin of even the 28k on full tilt.

3. Wes (not Pirate Wes -- but I'd love to hear your thoughts too -- but "On the Road" Wes who plays as high and as well as anyone).

4. Waffles. For $.05 - $.10 perspective.

5. Miami Don. The Vegas cash gamers' perspective.

6. DoubleAs. I doubt if Scott reads here these days if ever, but if you're out there I would be interested in your take on this question as someone who moved up through the ranks before our eyes and someone who has won in both cash and tournaments.

7. columbo, who is Chad's vote for most improved blogger in the past year, and I think it was Drizz who claimed columbo is the best post-flop poker blogger there is.

8. Surflexus, who with 114 Mookie titles has easily earned the right to have his thoughts heard on this important topic.

9. Fuel55. For the $50-$100 nlh take.

10. And lastly, the Surly Poker Gnome, for the perspective of another guy who plays high and plays well and whose analysis of the game and of hand decisions is proven solid.

So everybody go and click on each one of the links there and let's see how many of these guys we can get to weigh in with their thoughts on the KQs debate.

So on Wednesday night after running top and bottom pair on the flop into the flopped flush against eventual tournament winner twoblackaces, I spent a good deal of time reviewing some hand histories from earlier this week. I found an interesting hand that occurred actually six hands in to Mondays at the Hoy this week at my starting table. I am posting the hand history here (anonymized) because I think the hand is a great example of a time where it should have been obvious to one of the players involved that his TPTK hand was no good. Recognizing when one pair is no good is a key skill of any great no-limit player, and this was a situation as I sat and watched the action where I simply knew there was no way TPTK was taking this pot down:

Full Tilt Poker Game #5477492347: Blogger Big Game (40523592), Table 8 - 15/30 - No Limit Hold'em - 21:36:06 ET - 2008/03/02
Seat 1: Big Blind (4,985)
Seat 2: UTG (4,910)
Seat 3: UTG+1 (4,850)
Seat 4: Middle Position #1 (5,465)
Seat 5: Middle Position #2 (4,880)
Seat 6: Hijack (5,030)
Seat 7: Cutoff (4,910)
Seat 8: Button (4,955)
Seat 9: Small Blind (5,015)
Small Blind posts the small blind of 15
Big Blind posts the big blind of 30
The button is in seat #8
*** HOLE CARDS ***
UTG folds
UTG+1 folds
Middle Position #1 folds
Middle Position #2 folds
Hijack folds
Cutoff folds
Button raises to 90 So here you've got your standard stealy-looking button raise
Small Blind folds
Big Blind calls 60 BB calls 60 into 135 pot, could mean a fairly wide range of hands if he puts the button on a steal.
*** FLOP *** [6c Qc 7h]
Big Blind checks
Button has 15 seconds left to act
Button bets 170 Fairly standard c-bet here of 170 into a 195-chip pot.
Big Blind has 15 seconds left to act
Big Blind raises to 550 Hmmmmmm.
Button calls 380 Notice the lack of delay Button bet, got checkraised and then smooth called the checkraise here. This should indicate a big hand or a big draw in most cases.
*** TURN *** [6c Qc 7h] [Ts]
Big Blind has 15 seconds left to act
Big Blind checks Hmmmmm again. The big checkraise on the flop, he got called, and now he checks it here.
Button bets 1,130 Now this is where I'm starting to get a good picture of what is happening here. The big blind just ran a large checkraise on the last street, and the button smooth called that checkraise. Now the turn card completes one of the obvious draws from the flop -- the oesd with 98 in the button's hand -- the big blind checked and the button went and bet out strongly, even after getting checkraised on the previous street. If there was any doubt that the button is sitting on a monster here after the flop, I believe that doubt is just about gone after this lead bet on the turn, and the big blind should be picking up on this as well by this point in the hand.
Big Blind calls 1,130 Hard to figure what the big blind is smooth calling with here, but I'm sensing that I don't like it.
*** RIVER *** [6c Qc 7h Ts] [5c]
Big Blind has 15 seconds left to act
Big Blind bets 1,000 The river completes the possible flush draw, but with the big blind having checkraised on the flop as large as he did, it is highly unlikely that that checkraise was designed to elicit a free card on the turn for a drawing hand, so I'm not sure what he is representing with this bet here.
Button calls 1,000 Not surprised to see this call, as I am putting the button on a large hand here given his flop and especially turn action.
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Big Blind shows [Qs As] a pair of Queens
Button shows [6d 6h] three of a kind, Sixes Exactly. Here the big blind on the TPTK had to know he was beat after the button got checkraised and yet still bet out on the turn. This is bad hand reading in my view, and an even worse "value bet" at the river with just one pair.
Button wins the pot (5,555) with three of a kind, Sixes
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 5,555 | Rake 0
Board: [6c Qc 7h Ts 5c]
Seat 1: Big Blind showed [Qs As] and lost with a pair of Queens
Seat 2: UTG didn't bet (folded)
Seat 3: UTG+1 didn't bet (folded)
Seat 4: Middle Position #1 didn't bet (folded)
Seat 5: Middle Position #2 didn't bet (folded)
Seat 6: Hijack didn't bet (folded)
Seat 7: Cutoff didn't bet (folded)
Seat 8: Button showed [6d 6h] and won (5,555) with three of a kind, Sixes
Seat 9: Small Blind folded before the Flop

So I would love to get anyone's thoughts on this hand. To me, it was as obvious as the day is long that the big blind's TPTK was beat by the time the turn lead bet happened, and if I'm the big blind I am folding my AQ to that bet from the button on the turn. And no way I am betting out on the river in that spot. Am I right or am I right?

Another Mookie Flushed Away, and the All-Suited Flop Concluded

Wow. A crazy thing happened to me on Wednesday night about 30, 35 minutes into the Mookie on full tilt. So I'm sitting on my bed with the laptop on a pillow on my lap (those of you with laptops will know why I choose to have a pillow between the bottom of the laptop and my merely 98.6 degree skin of my legs), and as usual I haven't hand a single playable hand yet, through probably 30 hands. Annoying. But standard. I mean I haven't even sniffed a hand. I might have had QJs one time, and I think 44 at one point in the first couple rounds. But that's as good as it got.

So I'm sitting there, I'm playing the Mookie, and my starting stack of 3000 chips is probably somewhere around 2800 or 2900 or so. I had been up a couple hundy, down a couple hundy, but nothing major in either direction as I recall. Eventually I limp from the cutoff with 96 of diamonds. The flop comes...all three diamonds. Now, you would think this would excite me. But I know better. I say to Hammer Wife "Wow. I flopped a flush. And this is where Hoyazo busts out early from the Mookie." Now, when you flop the flush, in all but the most unusual and runnerrunnery of situations, the only way you can lose is to a guy hitting a higher four-flush on you on the turn or river, so of course that means my big objective here is to get one of the two other players in this pot to either lay it down or get it allin when I am a 2-to-1 favorite. So imagine my happiness when someone in early position bets out, and then another player raises, all ahead of me. Now I basically "know" that one of these guys has some kind of pair or two pair or set hand, and the other guy must have the Ace or King of diamonds along with some other kind of hand or draw. I pause the requisite few seconds to fake-think, and then I push allin. Firsty folds immediately, and riggstad in middle position instacalls. I'm bracing to dodge a fourth diamond on the turn or river, and with just 7 left in the deck I am going to be around 70% to win the pot, which I've already known from the minute the flush flopped for me I was not going to win.

At least full tilt made it easy on me. Riggstad flips up his cards, and he, of course, has also flopped the flush. The King-high variety. IGH among the first handful of players out. Nice. And that's when the strange thing happened.

At first it was just something I felt lightly touch my hair on top of my head. My first thought was a fly or something must've landed on my head and be walking around on my head or something. Not usual but nothing so unbelievably crazy or anything. But then I felt it again, on the other side of my head. And suddenly right in front of my eyes, a streamer or something flew past. And that's when I heard the trumpets. It was a festive beat, kinda like what they used to run at the end of Let's Make a Deal. And all of a sudden, there is confetti all over the fuckin place. My bedroom is completely beseiged with party gimmicks and party sounds. Just as I start to wonder what the hike this is all for, Wink Martindale comes through my bedroom door and announces that I have just lost for the 2 millionth no-limit holdem hand with a made flush on full tilt poker! Yay for me! Who knew, I thought, who knew. What an exciting time for me.

I've written about it here before, but I cannot win with a fucking flush to save my life, and it's not for lack of aggression, due to slow-playing or for not respecting the presence of a pair on the board. My Poker Tracker stats show it all, where I have still lost over $1500 in total with made two-card flushes, and that's just in cash games. Again, this is situations where I've made a flush with both of my hole cards, and only 1 out of 14 losses with made flushes was to a full house. That means I've lost thirteen effing times just in cash games and just in the past 4 or 5 months or so that I've been running Poker Tracker, where I made a flush using both of my hole cards, but ran into a higher flush from my opponent. I submit to you all that nobody out there can come up with a more recockulously unlucky statistic than that about their own play. And I'm not even touching how many times I bust out of tournaments with these same two-card flush hands, including this week's Mookie. Bahh. Full tilt has been absolutely lambasting me lately. What else is new. Congrats to leftylu for yet another Mookie victory, blahblahblah. Eat it.

Oh yeah, I also got talked into playing the Dookie this week, pot-limit holdem, but then some no-name called my allin on the flop with absolutely nothing but an inside straight. It filled on the river.

Did I say "Eat it" yet? Cripes.

So on to the conclusion of this week's hand analysis. To recap one last time, I checked out of the big blind to see a 5-handed flop with K9 of hearts. The flop came KT6, all spades. I checked and then called a small bet on the flop, thinking my top pair is likely good but not wanting to commit much with a 3-suited flop out there and still two cards to come. Then when an offsuit 7 came on the turn, I bet out nearly the size of the pot, and just one opponent, the original flop bettor, called my nearly pot-sized bet to see a river card. The river came another rag, the 3 of hearts, and I asked what do you do here (my opponent has 460 chips remaining in his stack):



The comments to yesterday's post interestingly tended more towards checking than betting here, and in fact the majority of the commenters appear to think I am likely behind here and certainly should not bet. A few of the comments took the opposite tack, which is the side I came down on, and I will explain why, although again some of the comments I think pretty much hit my analysis head-on.

Of course, there is always the possibility that I am up against a flopped flush. That possibility is always going to be there, and I'm never going to be able to make that possibility go to zero. It's there, it's possible. But in terms of probability, I simply was not worried at this point about my opponent having either a flopped flush or a stronger King than mine. Let's review the action and put ourselves in this guy's head as best as we can:

On the 3-suited flop, he bet out small from late relative position after a few guys has already checked the action to him. This could mean a lot of things, but to me seems most consistent with either some decent pair on the board, or more likely a flush draw. Maybe a little bit of both. The made flush might also bet out small here, if he's a real man, but that's still a fairly remote possibility odds-wise (forgetting my Mookie story from last night, of course). Then on the turn when a raggy card fell, I bet out and bet out solidly. I bet nearly the size of the pot for a very good reason -- only a bet that size will tell me what I need to know about my opponent's hand at this point in the action. If I bet out a third of the pot here, he may again call with second pair top kicker, top pair shit kicker, or any number of flush draws. But by betting nearly the full pot on the turn, as soon as my opponent called, leaving himself just 460 chips into a now 1200-chip pot, I felt I had formulated a very reliable read on the guy. If he's got the made flush here, as at least one of the commenters mentioned, there is aboslutely no point to him not pushing allin here. Of course I'm calling based purely on pot odds, and he can only lose me on the river, not get more chips from me than the allin he could have clearly gotten on the turn. So no way I put him on the made flush here.

Similarly, I feel his just calling (not raising or folding) on the flop made it highly unlikely that he held some kind of a King in his hand. While I suppose a very specific (and thus very unlikely) holding very close to my hand might have just smooth called there with the 3-flush on the board -- something like K8 or K7 perhaps -- put yourself again in his position for a minute. There's 3 spades on the board, and I check-called his smallish bet on the flop. He has got to put me on a flush draw here. Now, with just 460 chips left in his stack after calling my 390-chips turn bet, why on earth would he just smooth call with a hand like, say, KQ for top pair better kicker than me? What if he had a set, or two pairs or something like that? He's going to smooth call me with the 3-card flush draw sitting out there, while leaving himself an almost unthinkable 460 chips left in his stack? He's going to make it that easy for me to draw out on him, even when he has just that few chips left to put into the pot that is now nearly 4 times as big as his paltry pile of chips over there? When I thought quickly about it that way, I just did not think at all that this guy had top pair or better, which I think would either fold (if he's a Man) or raise (if he's a donk), or the flush which I'm sure he would have raised there on the turn. Thus, I felt very strongly that my K9 was ahead, and in fact my biggest concern was maybe him misplaying a hand like KT or KJ by failing to raise me allin on the turn. And that just seemed very unlikely to me overall.

All of this analysis led me to just one obvious option, as inuited by Bayne in his comment -- this was a clear candidate for the reverse hoy:



Anybody want to guess how he responded to this river bet by me? I'll give you some space to formulate your guesses, and then you can scroll down for the final screenshot and see what happened:



























Foldy foldy! Can you believe it? And believe me, for his last 460 chips he was not folding any top pair hand there, not after calling off most of his stack on the turn with that hand. Nope, this was a good old fashioned flush-chasin' donkey, who had nothing else in his hand but probably the Ace♠ and some other junk. So I really enjoyed reading all of the analysis on this hand, and hopefully most of us can at least learn something from the way that the others who commented would have played this hand. Feel free to post your thoughts on the way I played the hand, but FWIW I like the way that I played it, and despite careful reading and consideration of all of the commentary, I would play this hand the exact same way again. I think the all-suited flop ends up being a specific situation that is somewhat unique, but calls for a somewhat unique strategy for taking on a multiway pot when I also manage to flop a hand that I assume to be best right now.

See you tonight at 9pm ET for Riverchasers on full tilt. Password is "riverchasers". Show up tonight if for no other reason than to be at my starting table and you can flop the nuts against my second-nuts in the earlygoing. There's just nothing like that feeling of knowing that there are donkeys literally seated all around you like you will feel tonight if I am near you at the virtual tables. 9pm tonight means probably no gym for me, but I will I'm sure hit up the Wii Tennis for a bit tonight as well as I continue to work my rating up over 1800. That's right you Wii Heads, you read that right. 1800 and change, and counting. I'll dominate you anytime in Wii Tennis or Bowling, whoever you are.

The Mookie, Running Bad, and More Hand Analysis

OK it's a Wednesday in the online poker world, and that can only mean one thing. The Mookie on full tilt. 10pm ET tonight, password as always is "vegas1". And it looks like just to change things up, Mookie has changed things a bit from regular nlh to 6-max nlh tonight. Mwaahaahahaha, one of my favorite games. So I'm looking forward to that for sure, and I plan to try to evoke some plays from my big WSOP cash this past summer in 6-max nlh to make another deep run at my elusive first Mookie title [Edit: My bad. I know Mookie is having a 6th child (yes he is crazy) but I mis-read his blog to say that tonight's Mookie will be 6-handed nlh. In reality that was just a pun from Mookie and the actual Mookie tournament will be remaining a full ring event. My apologies.]. I'm so sick and sad guys....I've won ten grand in a big online tournament. I've won 5k 3 or 4 other times, and a lot of smaller yet significant cashes along the way. I've won major once-a-week online tournaments, I've won 2000+-field nightly events, major satellites like the WSOP Bracelet Races which I have won three of in two years of playing on full tilt. But even after all these triumphs, all these affirmations of my play, all I fucking want to do is win a gush durned Mookie. I'm sick, what can I tell you.

Maybe Wednesday will be the night? Uh...no. If any of you saw how hard and how dumbly I donked out of the two tournaments I played on Tuesday evening, you would know I am in all-out donkey mode these days. I've finally been broken down after about 4 weeks of running bad, and now I'm playing like an abject donkey. Last night I pushed pocket Jacks on all three streets against a guy who I knew from his call of my preflop raise held an Ace in his hand, so even with the Ace flopping and me knowing all along I was behind, I donked off my entire stack about 90 minutes in to the nightly 28k guaranteed nlh tournament. Similar story nearing the bubble in the 9:45pm ET token frenzy that has been so good to me over time. And I'm already looking forward to spewing out early tonight in the latest Mookie tournament. So come join the fun where for only $10 + $1 you can play with all the major bloggers every week in the weekly Wednesday night Mookie tournament at 10pm ET on full tilt. And hey, maybe you get lucky and be at my starting table for some free-ass chips. Good times.

So back to the hand we've been looking at this week. To recap, I checked from the big blind to see a 5-handed flop with K9s in hearts in the very early rounds of the nightly 28k on full tilt. The flop came KT6, all spades. I checked and then called a 90-chip bet into a 150-chip pot on the flop from a player I suspected of being on a spade draw. One other player to my left made the call on the flop as well. The turn then brought an offsuit 7 and I was leading off from the big blind, and I asked for opinions on what I should do here on the turn.

Once again the commenters left some excellent thoughts on how to best play this hand. Basically the commenters to this part of the question seem to fall into two categories: the check-folders, who still don't want to risk anything to try to win with top pair 9 kicker, and the bet-outters, many of whom might not have called the bet on the flop but at this point seem to advocate betting out here.

I will admit up front, I am squarely in the bet-out camp here. In fact, I think this comment from Columbo pretty much sums up my feelings about the hand 100%:

Columbo's comment, with my thoughts embedded in red font:

"ok, let me admit something right now. I did not comment on part 1 because I play this exactly like Hoyazo does, but did not want to take any guff for it. Smart man. On the all spade flop with Top Pair, I want to check, not because I fear being behind, but rather to keep the pot small. I do this to "set up" my turn play when a non-spade falls. Exactly mofos, exactly. This hand actually broke down so far exactly how I wanted it to since the flop. I check-called a small bet on the flop (I would have folded the flop to any large bets or any raises), hoping no spade hits on the turn so I can take the pot away from the drawing hand when the odds are terrible, or at least make him pay way too much to draw to the river.

Now, when the non-spade falls on the turn, the only bet here is a pot sized bet. I might get called by a big spade, but if I am he is a big dog. No one else should call unless I am in trouble (like against two pair). I agree and disagree on this one. I think in general a standard pot-sized sort of bet is the way to go here. But, especially since we're so early in a fonkfest like the nightly token-buyin $28k guaranteed, I actually think a lot of high spades will call here -- most players with the A♠ or the K♠ in fact I think will call this bet, stupidly, as will most other flush draw+ hands, like flush draws with middle pairs, flush draws with gutshots, etc. This is a good thing for me, so that when I put in a well-sized bet on the turn, either everyone folds and I win, or some chasers call at bad odds, which is also a big win for me as long as no spade falls on the river.

The nice thing about the all spade flop is that you are not expecting to get re-raised on your leading bets. You expect call or fold. So you can control the pot size from around the front.

If you do get a caller of the pot size bet, then you must really think about your river lead. Maybe a blocking bet, maybe give it up, depending on the opponent." Very well said. The tricky part here is putting the turn caller on a hand here, and then acting correctly based on that read, adjusting for whatever the river brings.

So there's my view. When the all-suited flop falls and I have no part of the flush but I do have a probable best hand like top pair, I don't like to commit any more than I absolutely have to on the flop when there's still a 35% chance of any fourth flush card falling on the turn or river left in the hand. So I will usually check my top pair there, knowing I am likely best and that there is a big draw out there, and I will either call a small bet or fold to a big one or to any additional raising action. And then my move on the turn is to check-fold if the flush draw fills since I all but know I'm behind (and that the other guy isn't folding) at that point, but if the flush card does not fall, then I want to bet out sizeably in that spot to either chase out the guy with the flush draw who stuck around on the flop, or make him pay way too much to draw to the flush since there are so many soooted donks out there in online poker land.

So here I am, betting out for a nearly pot-sized bet on the turn:



The player to my left folded quickly (missed draw), but the original middle position raiser guy thought for a bit and then smooth called my 390 chips. This put 1200 chips into the now-huge pot, and the river came down another offsuit low card, another total rag. Now there are 1200 chips in the pot, my opponent has just 460 chips left and I have just 970 chips remaining in my own stack. Action is to me.

Do you bet out here? If so, do I have any reasonable options for bet sizes other than putting my opponent allin (minus one chip of course)? Or am I checking here in case my top pair 9 kicker is behind? If I check, am I going to call the inevitable allin bet from my opponent for his last 460 chips? Or am I check-folding at this point?

Let me know your thoughts, and tomorrow I will have the conclusion of the hand up as well as some more analysis of the comments and the issues facing us in this situation, which actually comes up more often than you think if you play a lot of no-limit holdem. In the meantime, if you haven't already registered for Wednesday night's Mookie tournament, WTF is stopping you? Let's get going already! See you there tonight.

MATH Recap and 3-Suited Flop Hand Continued

Now this is really getting redickulous. Somehow this week, RaisingCayne managed to not only add a 6th final table in 7 appearances this year in the MATH to his resume, but he actually won the thing outright again, his 3rd overall MATH win again in just 7 lifetime events. Wow. Even more amazing to me is that I left the pc once I watched Columbo get eliminated on a short stack in 6th place, thereby ensuring that none of the cashers this week would threaten the three-headed hydra atop the 2007 MATH moneyboard, at a time whem wormmsu, playing in just his second ever MATH, had about 40k in chips and Cayne was down to I think 5 or 6k, and in last of the 6 remaining players. So I didn't see how it all went down, but all I know is when I logged in this morning, Cayne had done it again. I read on Cayne's blog about a huge suckout ITM at the final table in a hand that he effed up against emptyman so it seems there was some more donkery to be had for Cayne after I signed off, but let's be honest. This guy has final tabled the MATH 6 times in 7 tries, he came in 2nd once and he's won it outright three times. Obviously he is doing something right.

In the end, with 24 runners on the night and the top 3 finishers splitting the $576 prize pool, third place and $115.20 goes to IslandBum1 who recorded his first MATH cash since winning one of the early MATH tournaments involved in the Battle of the Blogger Tournaments this past spring. Ending in second place, after the big suckout referred to above, was emptyman who won $172.80 for his efforts, and as I mentioned, this week's big winner once again was RaisingCayne, who won the $288 first prize for his continued domination of the event I once reigned supreme over.

And here is the updated 2007 MATH moneyboard, taking into account this week's Mondays at the Hoy tournament:

1. Bayne_s $1175
2. Columbo $1168
3. Hoyazo $1162
4. RaisingCayne $1110
5. Pirate Wes $792
6. VinNay $775
7. cmitch $774
8. Iggy $745
9. NewinNov $677
10. Lucko21 $665
11. Waffles $650
12. IslandBum1 $642
13. Astin $616
14. Tripjax $561
15. Julius Goat $507
16. bartonf $492
16. mtnrider81 $492
18. PokerBrian322 $490
19. Chad $485
20. scots_chris $474
21. Emptyman $461
22. Fuel55 $458
23. Mike_Maloney $456
24. RecessRampage $434
25. Otis $429
26. Surflexus $402
26. Miami Don $402
28. jeciimd $382
28. Jordan $382
30. Blinders $379
31. lightning36 $371
32. ChapelncHill $353
33. Zeem $330
34. LJ $326
35. OMGitsPokerFool $324
36. oossuuu754 $312
37. leftylu $295
38. Wigginx $288
39. ScottMc $282
40. Fishy McDonk $277
41. Irongirl $252
41. Manik79 $252
43. Wippy1313 $248
44. swimmom95 $245
45. Byron $234
46. wwonka69 $216
47. Omega_man_99 $210
48. katiemother $209
49. Pushmonkey72 $208
50. Buddydank $197
51. Gary Cox 194
52. 23Skidoo $176
53. Santa Clauss $170
54. Iakaris $162
54. Smokkee $162
56. cemfredmd $156
56. NumbBono $156
58. lester000 $147
59. Heffmike $145
60. brdweb $143
61. Mookie $137
61. DDionysus $137
63. Patchmaster $135
64. InstantTragedy $129
65. Ganton516 $114
66. Fluxer $110
67. hoops15mt $95
68. Gracie $94
68. Scurvydog $94
70. wormmsu $91
71. Shag0103 $84
72. crazdgamer $82
73. PhinCity $80
74. maf212 $78
75. Alceste $71
76. dbirider $71
77. Easycure $67
78. Rake Feeder $53

So for the second straight week, our three cashers have already previously cashed in the MATH this year, leaving our total number of Hoy cashers on the year at 78 different players. Emptyman climbed up to 21st on the list with his second place finish this week, while IslandBum used his third place cash to jump to 11th, and Cayne remains in 4th place while adding another $288 to his MATH haul from just the past couple of months. The win leaves Cayne as the fourth member of the $1100 club in the MATH this year, and just $65 away from Bayne who still leads after the three of us at the top all failed to cash for at least the fourth straight Mondays at the Hoy tournament. The top of the board is fast becoming anyone's to grab hold of, and if Cayne has shown us anything it's that you could start playing the MATH at any time and still have an impact that is felt in just a short period of time. Way to go Cayne, and I can only hope I'm at your starting table next Monday night in the next MATH.

So, back to yesterday's hand analysis question. To recap, I checked my option out of the big blind with K9s and 4 limpers in the pot ahead of me, and the flop came down KT6 all suited, not in my suit. The small blind checked to me, and I asked how you would be apt to play this hand on the flop:



As usual there were a lot of well-thought-out comments. As a general statement, I am definitely in agreement with the majority of the commenters about betting out somewhere near the size of the pot on a flop with lots of potential draws like this flop has. Mostly everyone seems to like either betting out "to see where I'm at", or check-folding. Personally, I'm not a fan of either, in this specific case. In general, again, give me a flop like KQx with 2 diamonds or something, and I would be likely to do exactly what most of the commenters suggested, and bet out to protect my top pair hand. But, in particular on a three-suited flop, there is almost always going to be at least a couple of guys who are going to call me with their shit flush draws on this flop. Always. Because anyone with any spade can think they can win this pot all of a sudden. So in these all-suited flop situations specifically, I tend to check here. I actually have absolutely no reason to assume that my top pair is behind here; most likely, I'm figuring, I actually have the best hand right now. But with any reasonable-sized bet, I have in my mind basically no chance of eliminating any more than two of the other four players still in the pot, and if any spade falls on the turn, then I will be immediately sacrificing the bet I just made on the flop. So, unlike other draw-heavy flops where I generally like to bet out with a hand like top pair, in this situation of a surprise all-suited flop, I often like to check, with the intention of calling anything but an overbet from another player, and with the intention of check-folding the turn if another spade comes, or potentially betting out on the turn if a non-spade card hits the board.

So I checked it here. The next two players checked behind me as well, but then the middle position guy bet out 90 chips into the 150-chip pot, and the small blind folded ahead of me, bringing the action to me:



As I mentioned above, I checked with the hope of someone on a draw or a middle-pair-top-kicker kind of hand, with the intention of trying to see a turn card as cheaply as possible. So I called the bet, more or less indifferent to the other players behind me calling, although with such a weak top-pair hand, folding them is probably a better move for me than having them stick around to try to suck out on me.

In the end, just the player to my immediate left also called the 90-chip bet, at that point into a 330-chip pot, and everyone else folded. Three-handed, we saw a turn card of an offsuit 7. With the small blind out of the hand, action was to me.

Now what do you do here? The turn card is more or less raggy garbage, and there is now 330 chips in the pot. I still have K9 on a K6T7 board with 3 spades all on the flop. Do I bet out now to again protect my top pair hand and find out where I'm at? How much in relation to the 420 chips in the pot would you bet, with 1360 total chips in my stack? Or do I check here? Anybody looking to check-raise in this spot? How about the check-folders out there?

Poker Weekend, Reading Hands and the NFL

Good morning to everyone from what is definitely a beautiful late summer morning in New York City. It's inthe low 60s for the commute in what for the past several months have been the intolerably hot and sweaty tunnels under the city, and I have to say that really does wonders for my mood in the office in the morning. It's nice not to show up at my office in my dorksuit and dorktie already sweaty and uncomfortable. It's been a few months since I haven't felt that way upon my arrival at the office, so hopefully this will be a trend for a bit and maybe we can have a nice fall for a good month or so unlike usual here where things often tend to jump straight from summer into winter, and winter into summer. And all this has me in a nice mood this morning to make the usual Monday morning announcement here at the blog, once again banner courtesy of Duggles this week:



Yep, Monday night at 10pm ET on full tilt is the latest Mondays at the Hoy tournament. As always our little shindig will have a buyin of $26 or a single Tier 1 token, and it can be found under the "Tournaments" - "Private" tab. The password as always is "hammer". Last week we saw a handful of first-timers show up, none of whom made the money as I recall in stark contrast to our usual run of beginners' luck in this weekly Monday night event, but maybe this week will be different if some more of you out there will make tonight your first time playing the Hoy, if not your first time playing with the bloggers as a whole. And plus there's still that juicy logjam atop the 2007 MATH moneyboard between BBT killer Bayne, Columbo and myself, so you never know if this Monday will be the night that one of us breaks the virtual tie and asserts himself in front of all other players who have participated in Mondays at the Hoy so far this year. I am already registered and I plan to make some noise myself, so hopefully you'll be there on full tilt tonight at 10pm ET to see how the action unfolds.

This weekend was more or less a wash for me on the poker front. First of all, I barely played as I was out with friends from out-of-town both Friday and Saturday evenings, although I did put in maybe 2 or 2.5 hours of play overall between Saturday late night and Sunday evening, the end result of which was basically about a half a buyin loss at the 2-4 6max cash tables overall, and no major tournament cashes worth mentioning here. If anything, my best poker news of the past few days and what enabled me to turn a slight profit overall on the weekend was when I sat down to a late-night session on Saturday, I did not like any of the mtt's that were running, so I ended up jumping into another of those $110 buyin 1-table turbo sng's, the same thing I had messed around in a bit a month or two ago. This would be only the fourth of these I have ever played in, with an early suckout elimination and two victories to show for my first three forays into the world of higher-buyin sngs, and, well, here was the result:



After four of these $110 turbo sngs, which admittedly is nothing resembling a large enough sample to really be able to draw profitable conclusions I know, but I have got to say that the play at this level buyin is absolutely not any better than the play I see in the lower-buyin mtts and other sngs I have played in. In this particular event, a couple of guys busted out early moving allin with basically 2-to-1-against flush draws and failing to hit, and at least two doofuses who busted early on foolish river bluffs that had not been set up properly. Otherwise I was able to get value from my strong hands and use deceptive-looking betting to knock a few guys out by getting them to call my bets with inferior hands. I did get brutally sucked out on once when I had amassed a huge chip lead 3-handed (we were already ITM at this point), but then I nailed a triumphant suckout of my own to make two pairs on the turn to get my stack right back once again be in great chip position against my other two ITM opponents. In the end I busted #3 when he pushed allin from the button with a crappy hand and high blinds and antes and I called him with the JackAce, and then on a 567 flop I purposely played my A7 slow when heads-up, successfully goading my opponent to reraise me allin on that flop with just an 8 in his hand for the oesd. My TPTK held up and I was $495 richer. I really should play in these things more often, given my track record in just a few of them so far. Sitngoes really are the most boring thing a guy can do in online poker though, so I'm trying my best to stay away as much as I can.

OK so today I'm going to start a project here that I suspect will take the next few weeks to get through, and that is focusing on how I lay reads on players when I play online poker. I want to discuss what contributes to my reads on players, how I act early in the hand to try to isolate or confirm those reads in some way, and then what I like to do to react to the reads I do have on these players. The first hand I want to review is one that I played through over the past few weeks in my online poker travels. Here's the setup:

You're playing the nightly 10pm ET 28k guaranteed nlh tournament on full tilt. The buyin is $26, and this is still the very early blinds rounds, with blinds of 15 and 30, and starting stacks of 1500 chips. You are in the big blind with K9s. UTG limps for 30, and the player second to act limps behind. Third to act then limps behind as well, and the action folds around to the small blind who also limps for another 15 chips. I'm sitting on a good sooted hand here, and can probably even get equity value from a small raise if I can keep all five players in this pot, but in the end I like the check here:



I might actually be more apt to bet here if I had held a weaker hand, thinking that I don't mind reopening the betting because if anyone reraises me I will quickly fold, and otherwise I probably have very little chance of winning a multiway pot with a poorer hand. With K9s, however, I actually could win this hand, either with a strong flush, or by pairing either of my hole cards if things break out just right. K9s is not a hand I would call a reraise with, so I risk being blown out of a pot that I would like to see a flop with, when instead I can just check, give away absolutely nothing about the strength of my hand, and take a shot at hitting something on this flop and trying to win what is shaping up to be a nice sized pot in the earlygoing of a large mtt where it's so important to get off to a good start early.

The flop comes K6T, all suited, unfortunately not in our suit, and the small blind checks the action to you in the big blind:



What do you like to do here? Are you betting out with your top pair 9 kicker into five other players on a 3-suited flop? Does the all-suited nature of the flop make you more or less likely to want to bet out to protect your top pair in this spot? Can you risk giving away a free card to anybody holding any spades in their hand? If you bet, how much would you bet into the 150-chip pot, and if you check, do you check with the intention of folding to a reasonable-sized bet of say between 2/3 and the full pot, or do you intend to call or raise a normal-sized bet with your top pair in this spot?

Please leave your thoughts if any in the comments and tomorrow I will move on to the rest of the action with this hand.

Otherwise, before I go I just wanted to hit on a couple of very brief notes from the NFL this weekend. First off, GO E-A-G-L-E-S EAGLES!!!! tonight. If we start off the season 0-2 with losses to the hapless Packers and then the even worse Redskins, I am not going to be a happy camper as a lifelong Philadelphia sports fan. Even after the Phillies spent the weekend beating down on the Mets again for their 6th, 7th and 8th consecutive victories head-to-head against our hated New York rivals, an 0-2 start to the Eagles season is not going to be received well by anyone or anything Philadelphia. I picked the Eagles minus 7 points as one of my two picks of the week here on the blog on Friday, and I'm sticking with that today.

And speaking of my picks of the week, my other pick was a 7+-point victory for a team that is considered one of the top teams in the AFC, a team who ended up running up 45 points against the alleged worst team in the NFL on Sunday. So, you figure I had to win that bet, right? Nope! Not only did the Cincinatti Bengals fail to cover the 7 point spread against the lowly Browns in scoring 45 points this weekend on 6 passing touchdowns from Carson Palmer, but they didn't even win the game straight up. Somehow the Bengals, who it seems have literally the worst defense in the NFL, managed to give up 51 points to Derek Anderson in his first NFL start for Romeo Crenell's Browns team. So that was one game that I was kinda right about, but overall still wrong about, and that takes me to 1-1 so far on the season.

Interestingly, though, I wrote on Friday about the three "setup"-looking lines I saw for this past weekend, one of which was the Bengals and a 7-point line that looked strangely low for one of the league's best teams against the league's worst, in a week with 4 or 5 other games with higher lines than that one. And look what happened -- the Bengals didn't even win the game outright, let alone cover that seemingly too-low spread. Surprise surprise. Similarly, I declined to pick the Saints -3.5 points despite that laughably low spread against a Bucanneers team that also seemed to be one of the worst in the NFL. The result? Bucanneers surprise most everyone by blowing out the Saints, in what now has to start us asking questions about just how good the Saints are this season. Despite leading the entire NFL in offense in 2006-07, this year's Saints so far are absolutely blowing on offense. No other way to say that. They blow so far, period. So that was another interesting one that I correctly identified as a trap game that the Vegas linesmakers love to try to dupe people into playing as often as they can every year. In the end, they only one of my three "too good to be true" picks that managed to win their game and actually cover the spread this week was the hated Cowboys, who scored a 17-point victory at Miami and covered the half-a-touchdown line Vegas laid on the game. Even the Cowboys did not look dominant in this game, but in the end it was just too much Marion Barber and too much TO for the Dolphins, who really do look to be one of the very worst teams in football so far through two games this year. Hopefully my Eagles will not be following suit tonight, where I still fully expect them to pounce all over the Redskins at home in The Link in South Philly.

A couple of players have really stood out as well so far through two games in this new NFL season:

Where the hell has LT been? You can throw all the option touchdown passes you want....but 1.9 yards per rush? Whaaaaa?

Similarly, where in the world is Larry Johnson? 28 attempts for 98 total rushing yards and no scores through two games so far in 2007? For a guy who was picked top-three in mostly every fantasy league out there? Blech.

Seattle Seahawks? You suck.

Chad Johnson. Yummy. Two games, two huge performances with multiple touchdown scores.

Plexico Burress. Mmmmm-hmmmm. Also four touchdowns in 2 games so far for the Suckgiants.

And oh yeah -- Randy Moss with Tom Brady throwing to him. Oh shit.

One thing has been constant though -- the NFL continues to rule the hearts and the minds (and the televisions) of Amercan sports fans. For the time being, American football continues to be the sport to watch in this country, and it consistently delivers an interesting, and more than that, a competitive product. In stark contrast to baseball where teams can set up their own television networks, build their own new stadiums and use that money to continually outspend all other teams by sometimes a significant multiple, the NFL consistently puts out a product that everyone loves to watch, to play fantasy games around, and just to root for since any year, just about any team can win.

OK that's enough for today. Let me know your comments on the hand I profiled above, and I'll see you tonight for Mondays at the Hoy!

Al Rocks the Bloggas, BBT Re-Freeroll, MATH Recap and Hand Reading

What's this? Blinders final tabling an mtt? Blinders even playing in an mtt? That is good stuff, go stop by and congratulate the tight man himself for his biggest-ever online score in the 50-50 on full tilt earlier this week. If there is one thing I love reading about, it is bloggers making their biggest ever tournament scores. I wish that could happen for someone in our group every single day. Other recent career-biggest mtt scores of note include fellow New York bloggers Jordan and Sox, both on full tilt, as well as Miami Don in his recent live run at the Venetian I think it was. I love it guys, congratulations to Blinders, and keep up the good work. I hope I can join you back in that group someday soon!

Anyways, it's official: Al really can hang, and in a big way. I wrote about this yesterday, but in the end Al worked to finalize the plans for the reschedule of the BBT Freeroll after last week's server debacle, which will now be held on this coming Thursday, August 2 at 10pm ET on the off-week for Riverchasers. A big thanks to Al to greasing the skids with full tilt to get that done so quickly amidst the fallout from not one but two consecutive nights of server shutdowns over at full tilt, of which one would expect our Freeroll tournament to be surely among the lowest priorities. But more than that, Al also managed to finagle an additional token of full tilt's appreciation for the poker blogging community and what we do for them: a whopping $650 added to the prize pool to bring the total pool up to an even $2500!! This is the kind of shit that Al likes to pull out of his ass in addition to running his day job by day and his night shift at the bar / on the virtual felt in the off hours. It's amazing, really. That is basically a $2500 freeroll tournament for the 56 players in the rolls for Thursday.

And yeah, let's talk about that 56 players for a minute. To be clear, it was I who first mentioned on Monday morning to Al and Mookie that I was thinking maybe we should just include all 56 players back in the Freeroll rerun this Thursday night at 9pm ET on full tilt. That's why I posted the question yesterday here on the blog, because I had been thinking about it all weekend and was finding myself more and more moved by the arguments in favor of simply rerunning the entire field rather than just rerunning the entire field minus the 5 players who had already busted out last week. To his credit, Al, who himself had busted among the first five eliminations the first time through before the servers melted down, steadfastly declined the option that would have put him and his four donkey brethren back into the BBT Freeroll for another chance. In the end I thought it was the right way to do it, and Mookie agreed and so here we are.

Some people have written some interesting observations in light of this decision to include the 5 bustouts in the re-run from the beginning of the Freeroll. Obviously people can write and think whatever they like and I am all for openness and freedom of ideas in the blogiverse, but to be clear I won't care in the slightest if one of those five guys goes on to win the whole Freeroll. Why would I? The entire first Freeroll tournament was a no-go. As someone said in the comments yesterday, it's really just like a baseball game that gets cancelled in the 3rd inning. It doesn't matter if the score was 15-0 when the skies opened, and it doesn't matter if someone had been ejected from the game for arguing a call early on. Everyone starts it up again anew when the tournament is redone. If you think about it at the extreme I think it shows why this is slightly the most fair solution. Imagine you had just gone allin and lost in the hand before the servers crashed. You got reverse hoyed by me so you were sitting on exactly 1 chip left in your stack when the site froze up. That guy would get to start all over at 3000 starting chips, exactly even with everyone else, while the guy who had busted allin on that same hand is done. It just doesn't make sense.

If we had the capability to have full tilt just start up the Freeroll for us right where it left off last Wednesday night, with everyone having the exact stack we had at the time of the meltdown, then that would be a different story and I would be 100% in support of that option as the most fair outcome following the freeze-up. But since we have to start everyone back over at 3000 chips no matter how many chips you had won (or lost) in the first 45 minutes or so last week, to me it is just barely not as sensible to exclude the 5 bustouts as it is to include them. We're starting over. The whole thing, from scratch. Everybody in therefore makes the most sense to me. So if one of the original bustos now goes on to cash in or even win the BBT Freeroll event, I will be happy for them, just the same as I would be happy about a guy who was 0-for-3 in a rain-cancelled 4th inning game, got to come back for the makeup game and promptly went on to hit four home runs. No harm no foul with that whole thing. And before anyone goes making any assumptions about my own personal interest in this decision, I had chipped up nicely and was in 11th place out of 51 players left when the servers crashed in the first BBT Freeroll last week, so this decision actually goes against my personal interest but it is what I think is right and what I think makes the most sense to do.

So I know the solution isn't perfect. When you have a tournament voided like that, it never is. Some people had busted already, others had big stacks already. But make no mistake -- despite Donka (not to be confused with Wonka)'s comments that under full tilt's tournament cancellation policy we would have paid all the existing players out according to chip counts, in reality if you read full tilt's policy, they would have simply voided all the payouts and returned the buyins to everyone while distributing the five busted players' buyins to everyone else. So basically, if we weren't a bunch of poker writers and players that full tilt really cares about keeping happy, you wouldn't even have any choice in the matter -- in this case since we were in a freeroll tournament, we would have gotten nothing back, no payouts, nothing. Instead, we will be re-running the entire BBT Freeroll, from scratch on Thursday like we have to anyways, and to boot thanks to Al the Miracle Worker we also add another $650 to the prize pool to even it out at a cool 25 hundy. Now that is awesome. So free your schedules up on Thursday night at 10pm ET, and the 56 of you who originally qualified for the event should already be registered for the new rescheduled Freeroll in just a couple short days from now.

OK last night's Mondays at the Hoy tournament saw 26 runners, with me easily dominating the field throughout most of the second half of the event. BBT crusher Bayne even made it all the way to 14th place this week before busting, what would have been one spot short of the BBT points if we were still doing that right now. Wtg my man Bayne!

Anyways as I mentioned, at some point around the middle of this week's MATH, I took over the chip lead from my buddy jeciimd, which was helpful since I suffered two horrible bad beats when allin with at least a 2-to-1 chip lead, but thanks to that stack I was able to weather the storm and still coasted into the final table with a solid chip lead. Sadly, the poker gods would see to it that I could not hold on to cash in the event, as I suffered not one more, not two more, not three more but four more suckouts against me just at the final table, a pile of bad luck that I was just not able to overcome despite my superior play throughout this event. It happens in poker tournaments, but boy does it leave a sour taste when it does. All I know is, by the time it got down to the bubble with just four players left, I felt like I had already eliminated each of the other three remaining players at least twice, and yet there I was still stuggling to officially vanquish them. Eventually of course this recockulous string of bad beats caught up to me, as I found the dreaded JackAce in four-handed play and ended up allin preflop against jec's QQ. Especially funny there is that, after six suckouts against me over maybe a 90-minute period, and absolutely zero suckouts in my favor all night when the best luck I could muster in the whole thing was winning two preflop races to eliminate these two guys from the tournament, this AJ for me was in my small blind, and jec happened to find his QQ in the big blind. So it wasn't enough that I found AJ short-handed with four players at the table, but it was a small blind - big blind special to boot. Thanks for the love, full tilt.

Anyways, so I bubbled in fourth place after ripping up the field all night, leaving pokerbrian322 to end in 3rd place, winning $124.80 for his efforts after holding on following a huge stack in the earlygoing in this thing for his second MATH cash this month. Second place this week went to jeciimd, who made his second or third blogger cash since the end of the BBT in taking down $187.20, and who in his defense is probably the only guy of the last few left who did not suck out on me twice during the tournament. And winning this week's Hoy title is bartonf, who nabbed the $312 first prize in winning his second Hoy of the year, representing his only two cashes in this event in 2007 as well. Batronf overcame around a 3-to-2 chip deficit vs. jec when we got to heads-up play, so well done to Bartonf as well as to our other two cashers on the evening.

And here is the updated 2007 MATH moneyboard, updated including this week's results:

1. Bayne_s $1175
2. Columbo $974
3. Hoyazo $849
4. VinNay $775
5. cmitch $774
6. Iggy $745
7. NewinNov $677
8. Lucko21 $665
9. Waffles $650
10. Astin $616
11. Tripjax $561
12. Julius Goat $507
13. bartonf $492
13. mtnrider81 $492
15. PokerBrian322 $490
16. Chad $485
17. scots_chris $474
18. Fuel55 $458
19. RecessRampage $434
20. Otis $429
21. Miami Don $402
22. jeciimd $382
22. Jordan $382
24. Blinders $379
25. Pirate Wes $372
26. lightning36 $371
27. IslandBum1 $357
28. ChapelncHill $353
29. Zeem $330
30. Mike_Maloney $326
31 oossuuu754 $312
32. leftylu $295
33. Emptyman $288
33. Wigginx $288
35. ScottMc $282
36. Fishy McDonk $277
37. Irongirl $252
37. Manik79 $252
39. Wippy1313 $248
40. Byron $234
41. wwonka69 $216
42. Omega_man_99 $210
43. Pushmonkey72 $208
44. RaisingCayne $198
45. Buddydank $197
46. 23Skidoo $176
47. Santa Clauss $170
48. Iakaris $162
48. Smokkee $162
50. cemfredmd $156
50. NumbBono $156
52. lester000 $147
53. LJ $146
54. Heffmike $145
55. brdweb $143
56. DDionysus $137
57. Patchmaster $135
58. InstantTragedy $129
59. Ganton516 $114
60. Fluxer $110
61. hoops15mt $95
62. Gracie $94
62. Scurvydog $94
64. Shag0103 $84
65. crazdgamer $82
66. PhinCity $80
67. maf212 $78
68. Alceste $71
68. dbirider $71
70. Easycure $67
71. Rake Feeder $53

So there you have this week's MATH results, including three previous moneywinners cashing in again this week, and keeping our running total of total cashers in the MATH this year at 71, ranging from Rake Feeder's $53 total won to Bayne's smashing $1175 in profits, thanks mostly to his big run in the BBT.

In other news, I did request my Neteller withdrawal yesterday, at long last. As I've said here for months, I'll believe that money is coming back to me only when I actually see the balance go up in my actual bank account, and not a moment before. And I am especially happy for a guy like KOD and a dwarf like Iggy, because they are the two members of our group who have been public about having the largest amounts of funds "temporarily unavailable" during this entire Neteller mess. While I didn't exactly lose a ton of money at Neteller last year, it does represent a significant chunk of my total poker bankroll. Let's just put it this way, if I ever see that money again, it will represent substantially more than the total amount I have in all online poker sites combined right now these days. So it ain't nothing. It's something, and if we all get our moolash back, I will consider that a major coup and I am committed to doing something smart and responsible with that money. Guinness for the entire bar on me, anyone?

Before I end for the day here, I wanted to get back briefly to the question I had posed yesterday about reading what my opponent held in his hand. To refresh, I tried a "semisteal" with an open-raise from the button with KJo in a 2-4 6-max nlh cash game, and got called by just the big blind. The flop came AQ6, my opponent checked and I checked behind. The turn brought a King, giving me second pair decent kicker, and my opponent then bet out the minimum of $4 into a $28.50 pot, which I called. The river then brought a second Ace, no flush possible, and my opponent led out for $16 into the then $36.10 pot, as seen here:



and I asked what you would do, and what this guy likely has. As usual the responses ran the gamut and were I think very well thought out and instructive. To me this read was very clear so I will explain where I was coming from. I had put in a steal before the flop. When he called that steal-raise, I had to assume he might be on an Ace. When the flop came Ace-high and my opponent checked, I checked behind because his preflop call was clearly consistent with an Ace of some kind, and in most situations in my experience a player will go for the flop check-raise in that spot, which I did not want to face right now.

It was the turn bet that started really thinning out this guy's range in my head. If he did in fact have an Ace, most players I find who go for a check-raise but then are denied because their opponent checks as well, do not respond to that by underbetting on the turn. If anything they tend to overbet the turn, to try either consciously or subconsciously "make up for" the missed bet on the flop when their planned checkraise failed. At a minimum the guys who missed a checkraise opportunity on the flop will put in a "full" bet on the turn -- i.e., somewhere between half and the whole pot, depending on the exact nature and texture of the flop. This for me has been a very reliable betting pattern overall. So when this opponent came out with the post-oaky $4 bet into a $28.50 pot on the turn, I simply could not see that being any kind of Ace at all. I haven't acted particularly like I'm holding an Ace of any kind, and this guy therefore has no reason to think that any Ace is anything but ahead right now. And the minbet there on the turn, that's not to me a bet that "invites a call" as some of the commenters suggested. I mean, it is in that it's a very small, easily-callable bet, but it's too small and too obvious to call to be "inviting the call". It gets more money into the pot, but almost nothing as it only adds $4 more from my stack. In the end, that $4 turn bet stank to me of weakness, but more than that, of a guy who didn't love the Ace on the flop, but who after I checked it back to him on that flop, thought that whatever he had might be best after all. But not confidently. Just $4 worth of confidence.

So here I'm thinking he might have some kind of a medium pocket pair, or maybe a week Queen of some kind (soooted or otherwise). Then, when the second Ace hits the river, this guy now bets out $16 into a $36 pot. This to me also was not suggestive of him holding a third Ace here. I suppose from a "suck bet" perspective he could have been trying to squeeze another $16 out of me, but much like the turn bet, in the end I think the bet with trip Aces here would have been bigger than the $16 he tossed out there, which represented less than half the pot at the time. If I'm trying to do a suck bet there, I want to bust out with something maybe a little more than half the pot. Maybe $20-$25 into the $36 pot. $16 on the river, after just $4 on the turn and nothing on the flop -- if that's a guy with an Ace, then that is just about the most passively-played top pair and then rivered trips I can ever recall. To me, the $16 river bet actually seemed very consistent with me as well with my previous read. He bet small on the turn and I just called, so he did not think I had part of the Ace or King on the flop or the turn. It stands to reason that the guy holding 99 or Q8 or something similar would make that tiny turn bet and then bet out a little more on the river, thinking more that he was ahead after I elected to just call on the turn.

Given all this, I was right on top of this guy's having some kind of middling holding here, so I had to make the call with second pair and decent kicker. So make your final guesses, and down a bit is what he showed:












Booyah. Very poorly and transparently played by him IMO if you can really put yourself in his shoes and think about what specific holding(s) would have made you play the way that he did.

OK that's all for today. Tonight I am hoping to get in on some more of those FTOPS satellites as I continue to try to play my way in to Events 1, 2 and 7 (I am already in #3). Come check me out if you want to say hi, chat about the BBT Freeroll rerun, or get your ass smashed in in a $5 heads-up nlh sng.

MATH Pimp, and Fun With Cash Hands

OOOooh boy, another glorious Monday. Hah. Seriously though, it has been so long since I had a day like Sunday at the cash tables. Far too long. Sunday night I won more than three buyins at 2-4 nl, which is my biggest one-day score in over two months and my first really solid set of multiple sessions in probably half that time. After a ho-hum weekend at the full tilt cash tables -- and a failed attempt for a quickie trip to the Borgata for some live poker action on Saturday night -- I was a monster on Sunday. I kept the pots small when I was weak, I got people to call big bets when I was big, and I hit some effing cards in key spots. I won about a full buyin when I made a surprisingly nut flush on the river with my Q♠. I won another when I managed to flop top two and turn a boat. I got people to call my river value bets on five or six occasions over a a few tables over a few hours.

And the best part about my cash game play last night? I didn't make a single major mistake, which again is the first night I can honestly say that in quite some time. I've had plenty of up nights recently, but not totally major mistake-free ones. Over probably a thousand hands of poker on the session overall, I never lost a pot worth more than about a quarter-buyin or so. I won several that big, but I never lost one. If that ain't the key to playing profitable poker, I don't know what is. Win lots of big pots but only lose small ones. Wtg me.

Btw the actual best part about my play on Sunday was the 4-for-4 I went with pocket Aces. This brings my total since I started using pokertracker to 41 wins in 41 times dealt pocket Aces. Average pot size is still over $85 won per time dealt the best starting hand in holdem. And keep in mind, this is over 13,500 hands, meaning that I should have been dealt pocket Aces my 1/221 of the time, representing 61 times I should have been dealt pocket Aces over this stretch. I have gotten them 41 times. I guess my other twenty went straight over to this guy. Probably all of them in the first hour of the MATH or some blonkament like that.

Poker gods come smite me now.

Speaking of smiting poker gods, don't forget tonight is the latest Mondays at the Hoy tournament on full tilt!



10pm ET tonight, under the "Tournaments" tab, then under the "Private" tab. Password as always is "hammer". Please be there to call my preflop allin with J9s so that more people can leave me comments suggesting that I would ever call an allin with J9s and then defend it on the blog. Ahhh, guys on losing streaks using my blog to work out their frustrations. You gotta love the freedom of the blogiverse.

Before I forget, I understand that Neteller is officially accepting withdrawal requests again for those of us with money still trapped there after a prolonged period of inaccessibility. My suggestions are (1) get in there as quickly as possible and make your withdrawl requests, and (2) I'm still not expecting to ever see that money again until I actually have it in my hands.

Also, a quick question I wanted to poll the readers on. So we're about to reschedule the full tilt freeroll again after last week's server issues froze the event with 51 players left out of 56 runners about 45 minutes in. Now we're going to rerun the thing one day soon. What is everyone's view about including or excluding the 5 people who had busted out in the rerun of the freeroll on full tilt? Do we start it up with all 56 players again and just take a no harm no foul approach? Or do we rerun it with just the 51 players starting fresh who were still alive at the time of the outage last week? Leave your thoughts in the comments if you feel strongly one way or the other.

Oh yeah, it's been a full week and now two weekends since the final installment of the Harry Potter series came out, so I assume most of the hardcore among you have already finished the story by now, making it ok for me to at least mention here. I am determined not to give away any spoilers of any real value here, but if you can't take the possibility then you can skip ahead to the next paragraph. Anyways, all I will say here is this: I really enjoyed the book. I loved it even, just like I've loved all of them. This shit is like Lays potatio chips, really, or kind of like when you're flipping channels and suddenly find that Shawshank Redemption is running on USA again -- once you pick it up I challenge anyone to just put it down. I could not stop reading the book, just like with all the Harry Potter books, and I really give credit to J.K. Rowling for creating this really amazing and interesting story out of her own head like she did. FWIW, I did think the final climax of the book, the final confrontation, was a bit anti-climactic, but then that is probably more or less always the case whenever you end a story as epic as this tale has been. But the shit is great, there is just no two ways about it. If you're interested, don't believe any of the shit you read out there on the Internets -- I myself heard lots of negative stuff from the initial reviewers on the first day or two. The book was incredible, just as good as all the others, and it made for a great ending to truly one of the most awesome stories of my lifetime. I've spent what, the better part of 15 years of my life reading these books, and talk about time well spent. Rowling is my MVP of the summer as far as I'm concerned.

Anyways, back to some poker, here was a fun hand which I think is a good exercise in hand reading skills. We're playing 6-max holdem cash with 2-4 blinds and a $400 max buyin on full tilt. I've got KJo on the button and the action folds around to me preflop. I put in the standard pot-sized semi-steal-raise to $14, and just the big blind calls my bet for an additional $10 into what becomes a $20 pot. The flop comes 6AQ with two clubs. My opponent checks the flop, and I check it right back after a few seconds pause.

The turn brings an offsuit King, giving me 2nd pair decent kicker. This time my opponent leads out small:



This bet seems a bit post-oaky to me, and in any event I have 2nd pair decent kicker so I'm not laying down to a minbet. I call. The river then brings a second Ace, and my opponent bets out a bit more this time:



This card doesn't actually hurt me since it is offsuit and therefore I am still behind now if I was already behind before the river, and I am still ahead now if I was already ahead before the river card. So do you call here? Who is folding? Anybody raising in this spot?

See you tonight for Mondays at the Hoy on full tilt! Newcomers welcome!!

MATH Recap, MATH Pimp and an Interesting Cash Hand Question

Howdy pardners! I can honestly say that I'm always happy to be back after a few days away from here at the blog, especially after a weekend full of poker-related degeneracy at the Hammer household. There is just so much to get to, I think I can actually feel the sides of my head swelling every time I try to wrap my brain around all the different topics I have buzzing through my head right now, so I'm resorting to something I almost never do as I write this post: little shorthand notes at the bottom of the text editor to remind me of all the topics I want to get to today. It feels kinda ghey to me, but it gets the job done and that after all is what I'm all about.

So it's been a long time since my last post. I thought I might post while on my vacay, and on the good news front, I did write some or most of about four different posts, which means lots of pokery content on its way here over the next few days. But in the end as I've written about before, a vacation just doesn't seem like a real vacation when I'm still a slave to the blog every day at some point. It was bad enough that I had to do a fair amount of work reading a thick contract we have in preparation for a Monday morning conference call to begin negotiating it with some bastages from one of the big sweatshop New York City law firms. I already know that will mean way-way-too-many sessions of back and forth fighting over a bunch of minutiae that these law firm jagoffs already know is not reasonable, not standard, and not something they're going to end up getting from us in this contract, but they'll be more than happy (insistent, even) to drag these idiotic discussions out for weeks on end, all to eventually give in on them just minutes before our mutual deadline for the negotiations to be completed, probably in exchange for some other more meaningful point that they actually feel is important to get included in our agreement with them. And all the while these law firm clowns will have done their best to have dragged out and extended the time and the difficulty with this negotiation, thereby ensuring that they individually can make their billable hours targets for the year at their law firm, so that they individually can have a better shot at getting a bigger bonus this year, or at making partner in a few years, etc. So what if they hurt their own clients and the deal as a whole by purposely dragging out a week's worth of talks over 20 phone calls and more than a month, creating considerable ill will between the parties that will now have to work closely together for the next several years, generating legal costs to their client several times what they should have been and would have been if this deal were being negotiated in-house on both sides. It's all just to pad their own billable hours with the out-house donkeylawyers, and their complete lack of "just get it done" mentality -- in fact their completely opposite interest to that approach -- makes deals harder for everyone to just sign up and let the business teams of our companies actually do their jobs.

What I just described is the roadmap to my next 30 days of work. Plus those other three full time jobs I am working these days. Good times. Anyways, all this is to say that I had to work enough already as it is over the weekend with this big deal I'm doing, and as a result I just didn't find the time to blog as well. But like I said you will make up for it this week with an overflow of content. As a teaser, I have a couple of BBT review-type of posts coming which I think will have some interesting stuff for those of you who like to read here on a regular basis. I also had my first live home game in several years at my place over the weekend, which was attended by several bloggers, friends, and friends of friends. Profitable, too, but all that too is for a later post this week, other than to say that I had a fuckin great time and really wish I could do this more often. Hey, maybe it's time for us New York bloggers to get a weekly game together? That would be badass. We should be playing weekly $.50 - $1 cash for $100 buyins. I would make the time in the evenings for that, and if I could make the time then anyone could. I say that with confidence.

I would be remiss if I did not also mention that the New York metro area's own SoxLover (you may know him better as Fishiswa) won Saturday night's 28k. That's right -- going right after the KOD himself, on KOD's own stomping ground. This is Sox's first major online tournament score, so I say to you, Sox, "Welcome to the club!". It's still a fairly small club among our group of players who have ever outright won a major mtt on one of the big online poker sites, but the great thing is that it's a club that is constantly growing, never remaining constant. Despite all my serious joking aside, the overall poker skill of the "average" poker blogger is actually increasing, and that is something that makes me very happy to know, to observe from the inside, and in fact to be a part of. Although obviously it's morphed into much more than this, one of the main reasons I ever started the blog was to try to help other people, in my own unique ways, to become better players by highlighting my mistakes, highlighting their mistakes, and fostering discussion on these points that would be helpful to a bunch of players who might stumble upon my site some day. To be someone who others credit with helping their game from time to time is something I always love to hear, and while I'm certainly not saying that SoxLover specifically has ever learned anything from me, to be just a small part of the machine that helps good players become better players in some miniscule way is a role that I relish given the amount of time and effort I typically put into this whole blogging thing.

OK this Monday post has gone on long enough without the requisite self-promotion:



Back from the holiday week it is time for the next Mondays at the Hoy tournament, for the foreseeable future remaining at full tilt poker at 10pm ET, password as always of "hammer". I cannot tell you how psyched I am looking at a week of the Hoy, the Mookie, and Riverchasers, all without the pressure of the scoring system of the BBT looming over a good half the players' minds and influencing everyone's play across the board. Getting together, playing hard, taking some chances without worrying about anything external to the tournament itself, pushing with just that oesd on the flop in the first hour on an allin reraise, that my friends is what the blonkaments are all about, at least in my book, and this will be our first 3-blonkament week on that front in a long time. So come on out and join the festivities tonight at 10pm ET on full tilt!

Now before I forget, since I stopped posting for my vacation with my post from last Monday, I never got to review the results of last week's MATH tournament. As this is kind of old news now I don't plan to spend any real amount of time covering the event. Let's just say that we had 23 runners in the first post-BBT MATH, and the tournament featured surprisingly slow and tight play most of the way through, with only three players busting out in the first hour of the tournament. But for the first time in a long time, there were no "points" to shoot for, no recognition or happiness for finishing in 12th place of 23 players, and no reason to aim for that goal at any point in the event. I have to say, I really liked it. I missed this. BBT dominator Bayne was the third player out once the BBT wasn't there to kick around anymore, and Maudie showed up for her first MATH in a long time as the BBT rolled out of town.

In the end, the top 3 spots paid in last week's MATH tournament, with our very own fluxer coming in third place and capturing $110.40 for his efforts, which included calling every single time I raised before the flop without exception through the entire time at my table. And I do mean every single time. That was fun for me, but eventually I ran my JackAce on a J96 flop into Jordan 66 and my night ended somewhere in the early-middle of the tournament but before fluxer could get his claws onto my chips.

In second place for $165.60 in last week's MATH was lightning36, making his second or third appearance of the year on the Hoy moneyboard but his first in several weeks. I wasn't there to see the end so I can't comment on how it went down, but knowing who the champion was it is probably some luckbox move.

And speaking of the most recent MATH champion, for his second Hoy title in three weeks, was Lucko, who I understand is out in Vegas right now as you read this playing in Day 1d of the WSOP Main Event on Monday. So best of lucko to Lucko, and congratulations to the man who moves up into the top 10 on the 2007 MATH moneyboard with his $276 payout for another first prize:

1. Bayne_s $1175
2. Hoyazo $849
3. Columbo $801
4. VinNay $775
5. cmitch $774
6. Iggy $745
7. NewinNov $677
8. Lucko21 $665
9. Astin $616
10. Tripjax $561
11. Julius Goat $507
12. mtnrider81 $492
13. Chad $485
14. scots_chris $474
15. Fuel55 $458
16. Otis $429
17. Miami Don $402
18. Jordan $382
19. Blinders $379
20. Pirate Wes $372
21. lightning36 $371
22. IslandBum1 $357
23. ChapelncHill $353
24. Zeem $330
25. Mike_Maloney $326
26 oossuuu754 $312
27. leftylu $295
28. Waffles $294
29. Wigginx $288
30. ScottMc $282
31. Fishy McDonk $277
32. Manik79 $252
33. Wippy1313 $248
34. Byron $234
35. RecessRampage $224
36. wwonka69 $216
37. Omega_man_99 $210
38. Pushmonkey72 $208
39. Buddydank $197
40. bartonfa $180
41. 23Skidoo $176
42. Santa Clauss $170
43. Iakaris $162
43. Smokkee $162
45. cemfredmd $156
45. NumbBono $156
47. lester000 $147
48. Heffmike $145
49. brdweb $143
50. DDionysus $137
51. Patchmaster $135
52. InstantTragedy $129
53. Ganton516 $114
54. Fluxer $110
55. Gracie $94
55. Scurvydog $94
57. Shag0103 $84
58. PhinCity $80
58. jeciimd $80
60. maf212 $78
61. Alceste $71
61. dbirider $71
63. Easycure $67
64. Rake Feeder $53

Maybe tonight will be the night that you finally enter the moneyboard! Come out and play and let's find out.

Now in some other, more ranty poker-related news, I was thinking this weekend about where my poker bankroll currently resides. And then a question occurred to me. When the fuck is Neteller going to follow through with its fucking plan and let me go to their website -- as if I should have to do this again, having already registered and received a confirmation for my withdrawal many months ago now -- and re-request my fucking money back from that little segregated "trust" account they claim to have set up to house my funds specifically? They got all this positive press from the announcement back in early June about people being able to get their money back soon, and now here I am going on the middle of July, and still not a fucking peep. Dear Neteller: On behalf of all of us in the poker blogging community, give us our fucking money back and do it NOW!!!

And while I'm on the topic of rant-worthy poker-related moves, did you all out there happen to catch the David Singer interview, and just hear about the whole David Singer incident, at the WSOP Main Event? I originally found it on Pauly's top-notch one-of-a-kind WSOP coverage here, and if you haven't read it I encourage you to do so. Now I'm sure others out there will have different opinions on this issue than I do, but what can I say. I have been out in Vegas during, and have actually played in the Rio in both of, the last two World Series of Poker tournaments. I've heard the announcements, I've seen a million guys' cell phones ringing during WSOP tournaments there. David Singer's complaint essentially comes down to moving allin on Day 1 with just a primary draw -- at a time when he still had 9800 chips so there was no extreme urgency or anything -- and then getting called by (and eventually losing to) a guy with top pair whose cell phone buzzed during the hand. The player took a quick look at his phone, pushed one button (obviously silencing or diverting the call since he was playing at the poker table at the time), and then that was it. David Singer, who was eliminated on the hand with his, if I may say it, idiotic move for Day 1 of the WSOP with just 8 outs working for him, now contends that since this player "touched" his phone at all during a live hand, that his hand must be dead, and therefore the player must fold to David Singer's allin push with just a primary draw. And again, the guy did not answer his phone. He wasn't texting with anybody. His phone buzzed, he pushed a button to silence it so he could keep playing his hand. Now Singer wants his hand to have been declared dead. In a particularly brilliant suggestion, Singer has asked for the overall director of the WSOP at Harrah's to either refund his $10,000 buyin, or preferably, to simply allow Singer to play again on one of the Main Event's other later Day 1's. So now he wants to get two entries into the WSOP Main Event? I love it. All because a guy didn't answer his cell phone when it rang. Imagine what Singer would be entitled to if the guy actually did answer that phone then! Maybe a lifetime exemption from having to buy in to the Main Event ever again in his lifetime? Maybe a refund of his buyin, plus the cash that was set to be awarded to the bottom 10 cashers in this year's tournament? What a fucknut. And as is often the case with some of these superwusses in the poker world, I truly hope that the most shit that David Singer gets for this loser move is from his own colleagues, the poker tournament pros and grinders who are out there with him every week trying to find their way to, or find their way back, to a major poker championship. Personally I find it laughable what Singer is complaining about, and as always pokernews did a great job covering the event, and Tiffany Michelle kicked some serious ass in getting the story in the interview with him.

OK now that the public service announcements are done for the day, check out this screenshot I've been wanting to share with you for some time, but I've just been waiting for the right moment. I think now is finally that right time:



Go click on that link and make sure you take in what I'm showing you here. These are my stats on poker tracker, for the lifetime that I have used the product, which is about 3 months and around 10,000 hands of cash game play at 9 different levels overall. You can see there, I have been dealt pocket Aces precisely 30 times.

And I have won with them all 30 times.

Yep, you read that right. I have been dealt AA in cash games since I got my poker tracker 30 times, and I've gone on to win that hand all 30 times. 30 for 30 with pocket Aces. 30 for effin 30 guys. Forget having 'em cracked for a minute. I haven't even folded without going to showdown because I found 5 raise-callers preflop and then the flop came down TJQ all-soooted or anything. I've won the hand every single time I've found pocket Aces since I've started using poker tracker, and if you read here then you know that's going on 3 months now.

And don't get me wrong, I am fully aware that the mere act of posting this graphic here will immediately mean the certain death of this streak in my cash play. I relish that too. Bring it. I'm like Cal Ripken at this point. It's gone on so long over so many pocket Aces hands that every time I see 'em at this point, it's like "Is this the time my streak comes to an end?" "Is today Jimmy Shaker day?" It's become too much. So I know the poker gods will not let this brazen posting go unrewarded. So the least you can do is enjoy it for now, while the beatiful streak is alive and kicking at 30, knowing that no matter how horrible of a streak any of you are going on right now with your big cards -- remember for example that streak I had of AA losing to KK allin preflop, just to remind you of how low it's been for me as detailed right here on the blog -- that it can and will, eventually turn itself around. And don't get me wrong, I am playing those AA hands just right, all of them, and I haven't sucked out once in those 30 hands when I've won. I'm raising and reraising preflop and taking many of them down without a fight as a result, which is fine. But take a look at my average pot won with the Aces: over $83. $83. Over 20 big bets at 400 nl, and over 40 big bets at 200 nl, and even more BBs at the lower limits reserved for blogger games. It averages out to nearly 11 big bets per hand. 11 big bets moved to my stack every time I get pocket Aces dealt to me, and I've won 30 out of 30 times so far. Read that n weep, Aces Man!

Hey I heard a few rumblings this weekend about some fucking fun-sounding cash games at the donkey parlor known as the MGM poker room out in Vegas including some of my personal favorites Chad, Lucko, Fuel and superstoner, who got all together to donk it up at the 1-2 tables over the weekend while the guys are in town waiting for their respective WSOP Main Event performances to begin. I know that Chad and Lucko utterly killed the games, each requiring extra chip racks just to cash out of there in one trip, but more than that, I just think how much I would have loved, loved to have been out there to see that game. Sheeeeit, forget seeing the game. I wish I could have been playing in that game. Talk about a loose aggro donkfest for the ages with that crowd. Do any of them even know how to fold before the flop (or in some cases, on the flop)? Dam does that sound fun. My homegame this weekend was a blast -- see a later post this week on the topic -- but I don't know that it can hold a candle to that much aggrodonkery all congregating at the same low-stakes live cash table at the same time. Kudos to all you guys who are in the Main Event and best of luck to you all, and really to anyone who lives in Vegas or who has their life set up so they can get out there a few times a year without too much trouble. You are all better men (and women) than I am, and I salute you.

Before I go today and resume this little thing I like to call my job, I wanted to post about the biggest cash hand I was involved in since my last post, which actually occurred sometime on Thursday or Friday night when I logged in for a little cash game action on full tilt for a relatively short session during some down time at the beach. There were a couple of haters bloggers on the rail who actually saw this hand go down live, so to those of you who were there I ask respectfully that you do not give away what you know about the hand, though I don't mind if you comment without giving away any knowledge you have. But I'm going to present to you the story of this cash hand, which occurred at the 1-2 6-max nlh tables on full tilt, and I would like you to rate for me the play of the three players involved, from who played this hand the best to who played it the worst.

So here's the setup. As I mentioned this is 1-2 nlh, 6-max table on full tilt. You are observing the table when you see the following hand go down. The blinds of $1 and $2 are posted, and then utg puts in a standard pot-raise to $7. Utg+1 responds by reraising to $24. the cutoff in the next seat decides to call the $24 reraise cold. The button and the blinds all fold, and action is to the utg player, who has to call $17 into a pot that already contains $58. He mulls for a few seconds and then makes the call as well, so we see a flop three-handed with $75 in the pot.

The flop comes down 876 with two diamonds. The utg player leads out for $66 into the $75 pot. Utg+1 thinks for a few seconds and then moves allin over the top for his last $150.

The cutoff instantly pushes allin himself, for a total of about $180, once again bringing the action back to the utg player who has now led out and been raised and seen that raise called behind him on both streets. He is facing an allin call of his last $105 or so into the pot, which now contains $471. Once again utg mulls for a short time, and then he pushes the rest of his stack in as well, so the three players flip up their cards. This is what it looked like:



In the above graph, the utg player was the guy in the middle with the sooted JackAce, and utg+1 had the pocket Aces. The cutoff had pocket 5s.

Now my question for you is, what do you think of how this hand was played by all three players? Who do you think played it the best, and who played it the worst in your view? What would you change with how each of these guys played out the hand?

One other bonus question: check out that screenshot above again, and try to estimate what you think the likely odds for each of the three players was of winning the hand in a showdown since everyone was already allin at this point in the hand. When you have your estimates, if you want to see the actual odds for each hand, click here to see how close you were.

Anyways I am really interested in everyone's opinions on this hand in particular, and I suspect there will be some varied opinions of at least one or two of the players' strategies with the hand. I can also tell you how it ended up if anyone is interested after we discuss it a bit here first.

OK so I'm going to end this here for today. Once again I am thrilled to be back at the blog after a few much-needed days away (from this job, anyways), and as promised I will have lots more pokery content coming for you later in the week as well just like I have gotten used to spewing out daily for the past couple of years. Until then, best of luck and I'll see you tonight for Mondays at the Hoy on full tilt!