Poker Hand of the Week: 10/16/15You Decide What's The Best Play |
|
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.
The Scenario
There are five players remaining in a major international poker tournament and you are all in the money. You are sitting with 406,000 in chips and the blinds are at 5,000-10,000 with a 1,000 ante, giving you a little more than 40 big blinds to work with. There are two players sitting at 23 and 29 big blinds, another at 42 and the chip leader has 62.
The action folds around to the very aggressive chip leader in the small blind and he raises to 35,000. You look down at Q
2 and decide to defend. The flop comes down 6
5
2
giving you bottom pair.
Your opponent bets another 35,000 and you call. The turn is the Q, giving you top and bottom pair. Your opponent bets 85,000 and you have a total of 335,000 behind.
The Questions
Do you call or raise? If raising, how much? Are you raising to protect your hand against potential draws or for value? How do you extract the most value? If you call and your opponent checks the river, how much do you bet? How does your position in the hand affect your decision? How does your current chip count affect your decision?
What Actually Happened
In event no. 1 of the 2015 World Series of Poker Europe, Rick Alvarado called an 85,000 bet from Stephen Chidwick holding Q2 on a board reading 652Q.
The river was the 10 and Chidwick moved all in. Alvarado eventually called off his last 250,000 with his two pair, but Chidwick showed down Q5 for a better two pair to score the knockout.
Alvarado earned €23,310 for his fifth-place finish. Chidwick was eliminated in fourth place, taking home €32,600. The eventual winner was Greek poker player Makarios Avramidis, who won the gold bracelet and the €105,000 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.
Copyright © 2001-2024
CardPlayer.com. All rights reserved.
