Poker Hand of the Week: 4/24/14You Decide What's The Best Play |
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Give us your opinion in the comments section below for your chance at winning a six-month Card Player magazine digital subscription.
Ask any group of poker players how you played your hand and they’ll come up with dozens of different opinions. That’s just the nature of the game.
Each week, Card Player will select a hand from the high-stakes, big buy-in poker world, break it down and show that there’s more than one way to get the job done.
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The Scenario
There are seven players remaining in a major European poker tournament. With a stack of 1,780,000, you are in fourth place. There is currently one short stack holding just 13 big blinds.
With the blinds at 25,000-50,000 with a 5,000 ante, you have over 35 big blinds. The chip leader, a man with some final table experience and a stack of 5,610,000, raises to 100,000 from the hijack. So far, he’s been active preflop, but has played somewhat conservatively postflop.
You look down at at A
K
on the button and make the call, hoping to play the pot heads-up in position. Your plan is ruined when two similar stacks of about 2,800,000 call in the small and big blind.
You see a four-way flop of K
QJ and both blinds check to the original raiser, who bets 200,000. You’d like to see what happens behind you, so you just call. Both blinds fold.
The turn is the 4 and your opponent bets 425,000. Again, you decide to call. The river is the J, pairing the board and putting three hearts on board. Your opponent now checks.
You have 1,050,000 remaining in your stack and the pot size currently sits at 1,685,000.
The Questions
Do you check or bet? If checking, what kinds of hands do you expect your opponent to showdown? If betting, how much? Are you betting for value or as a bluff? What kinds of hands do you expect to call with worse?
What Actually Happened
At the EPT San Remo main event and staring at a board of KQJ4J, Croatian pro Andrija Martic opted to go for a value bet of 480,000 with his AK.
His opponent, Italian pro Andrea Benelli, quickly called with 109
, having flopped the bottom of a straight. Benelli increased his chip lead and Martic was left with just 570,000 in chips.
Martic was eliminated short afterwards, collecting €76,650 for his seventh-place finish. Benelli survived long enough to bust in fourth place, good for €166,700. The eventual winner was none other than Vicky Coren Mitchell, who became the first ever two-time EPT champion and took home the €476,100 first-place prize.
What would you have done and why? Let us know in the comments section below and try not to be results oriented. The best answer will receive a six-month Card Player magazine digital subscription.
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