Poker Hand of the Week: 1/8/16You 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 15 players left in a big buy-in tournament, but only eight will make the money. You are currently in second place with 1,267,000 in chips, with blinds of 6,000-12,000 with a 2,000 ante, giving you 105 big blinds to work with.
A player with 457,000 opens from middle position to 28,000. You look down at A
Q in the small blind and three-bet to 80,000. Your opponent calls and the flop comes down A
Q
J
.
You bet 75,000 and your opponent calls. The turn is the 3. Your opponent currently has 300,000 left in his stack and the pot size is 336,000.
The Questions
Do you check or bet? If you think you are ahead, how do you extract value? If you think you might be behind, how do you minimize your losses? Given your opponent’s line, what hands are in his range? There aren’t many draws on board, so are you worried about protecting your hand? How can you best disguise the strength of your hand? If moving all in, can you ever get called with worse? What worse hands would pay you off?
What Actually Happened
At the WPT Philippines $200,000 Triton Super High Roller Cali Cup in Manila, Mike McDonald opted to move all in holding AQ on a board of AQ3.
His opponent, Devan Tang, immediately called all in for his last 300,000 with AA for top set, leaving McDonald drawing dead. The meaningless river card was the 7 and Tang doubled up.
McDonald went on to min-cash in eighth place, earning $351,320. Tang earned $1,405,500 for his third-place finish. The eventual winner was Fedor Holz, who took home a career best $3,463,500.
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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