PezRez on 29th June 2010
As I looked at in my post ‘Destroying Value Pt. 1’, sometimes you have a hand that is likely to be best but you can play it in such a way that minimises the value you get from it. Here is a common situation, in which I have pot-committed myself preflop with a big pair and an overcard has flopped. I certainly can never be folding at any point in the hand – but do I have options besides pushing all-in at the earliest opportunity?
PokerStars Game $110+$9 USD Hold'em No Limit - Level IV (50/100)
Seat 1: Player 1 (3007 in chips)
Seat 2: Hero (2568 in chips)
Seat 5: Player 5 (1490 in chips)
Seat 6: Villain (1935 in chips)
Hero: posts small blind 50
Player 5: posts big blind 100
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Hero [Qh Qd]
Villain: raises 200 to 300
Player 1: folds
Hero: raises 500 to 800
Player 5: folds
Villain: calls 500
*** FLOP *** [3s Kd 5h]
Hero: checks
Villain: bets 1135 and is all-in
Hero: calls 1135
*** TURN *** [3s Kd 5h] [8d]
*** RIVER *** [3s Kd 5h 8d] [Qc]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Hero: shows [Qh Qd] (three of a kind, Queens)
Villain: shows [Th Jd] (high card King)
Hero collected 3970 from pot
Obviously this play will not work against a thinking opponent. Against an opponent who understands pot-commitment and knows that you do too, your check will appear very suspicious. In this case, you may as well ship it in as soon as you can, as that is what he expects you to do with your entire range. However against a less-gifted opponent, particularly an aggressive one, giving him a chance to make a last, desperate move with his speculative ‘nothing’ hands is very much superior to pushing all-in and destroying the value you can get by inducing a bluff. There are few free cards to worry about. If you know you’re not folding, you may as well give him one chance to fish himself with no outs. As you can see, he’ll do it surprisingly often.
PezRez
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Nice to see some HH's from you guys. Always very interesting stuff. Could you link my blog up if possible ? If not no problem. Have just started playing Stars 6max Regs, still at 12$ but might catch up with you guys in a while ;-) Cheers , Entabeni.
ReplyDeletevery nice play i usually reserve that for shorter stacks who just shove as soon as you check the flop. blimey hes in there with 10jos out of position in a 3 bet pot! i play ladbrokes, do most games on stars have these types of fish at them?
ReplyDeletesender tvstar
Most don't, Stars is one of the least fishy sites unfortunately. There good customer support andquality software make it worththe tougher tables worth it in our eyes.
ReplyDeleteWhy not get it allin preflop?
ReplyDeletety
gl
I would have liked to have got it all-in preflop, but I was not the player who flat-called. Pushing over his raise to 300 would have been somewhat excessive; with QQ you really do want action, so whilst reraising is mandatory you don't need to make it so large as to chase away your opponent. In this case it is unlikely he would have called with his JT if I pushed, whereas with the line I took he was all-in on the flop with essentially no outs.
ReplyDeletePezRez