Ben Sulsky Discusses Hero Call Gone WrongCard Player Gets Pro to Explain Thought Process of 10-High Call |
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Ben “Sauce1234” Sulsky is a nosebleed cash game professional and one of the deepest thinkers in the game. Card Player caught up him to discuss a fascinating hand he played a few months ago with Scott “URnotINdanger2” Palmer.
The Scenario:
| Game/Blinds | No-Limit Hold’em | $100-$200 |
| Player | Ben Sulsky | Scott Palmer |
| Stack Size | $32,423 | $56,526 |
| Hand | 10 8 |
J 10 |
The Action:
The confrontation started when Sulsky raised to $600, Palmer three-bet to $2,200, and Sulsky called the additional $1,600. The flop came K Q 2
, and Palmer bet $2,600 with his open ended straight draw. Sulsky made the call with his flush draw.
The turn brought the 3
, and Palmer bet $7,800. Sulsky called once again. With about $25,000 in the pot the 6 fell on the river. Palmer tanked and eventually shoved, putting Sulsky all in for $19,824. Sulsky tanked as well before finally calling with 10-8 high. Palmer exposed jack high and raked in the $64,847 pot.
Into the mind of a nosebleed regular:
Brian Pempus: Can you talk about your history with Palmer? Has he been a tough opponent for you in the past?
Ben Sulsky: I’ve played a lot of hands against Scott Palmer, about 18,000 hands in my most current database which dates from September 2010 or so. He has definitely been a tough opponent for me, being slightly ahead of me over our heads-up play together. At high stakes heads-up no limit, sometimes it’s important to play other pro players.
BP: Can you describe when this hand took place in the session? How long had the session been going? How many tables were you playing at the time?
BS: I’d assume I was losing, since my play is actually awful, and I probably just wanted to look slick with this call. With that being said, it’s not that bad — which is kind of cool, as I expect to win around a fifth of the time. We were almost certainly playing four tables and since we’ve played 18,000 hands together there was obviously quite a lot of information floating around about how each of us play.
BP: What made you think he was bluffing in this spot? Which bluffs did you think you could beat? You had said before that you thought J-9 off suit is unlikely here. Why?
BS: I thought he was bluffing very often because of a small timing tell, a very recent history (last 500 hands or so) of me folding fairly often to the third barrel, as well as history (previous 10,000 hands or so) of me calling fairly often against the third barrel, and the makeup of his range and my range in this spot lends itself to him checking most parts of his range very often on this river. His three-bet range contains a lot of made hands like K-Q+ and 9-9+ for value as well as some suited Broadway cards, as well as quite a few suited junk hands like 6-3 suited and unsuited junk hands like 9-7 off suit. I expected to often beat the bad junk part of his range, like 9-7. For example, J-9 off suit, as well as J-9 suited, is extremely unlikely as he would flat call that hand preflop — ditto hands like J-T, A-T, K-9, and A-4, all off suit. Combinatorial, a hand like J-T suited is very unlikely (four combos of J-T suited versus 16 combos of say, 9-7) although I do expect Palmer to almost always bluff with it when he does have it.
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