Q-J?!

by Scott Fischman | Published: Dec 31, 2004

Playing tournament poker this past year, I have come across a large number of young phenoms. The poker boom has uncovered tons of talented players who might otherwise have gone unrecognized. Hailing from Sacramento, California, J.C. Tran is one of the players who has impressed me the most. J.C. has been very consistent all year long, making 13 final tables with combined total earnings of nearly 700K. At the last two major World Poker Tour events, J.C. really turned it up, finishing third in Bellagio's Festa al Lago III $2,500 no-limit hold'em event and 13th in the 10K Doyle Brunson no-limit hold'em championship event. He followed that performance with a strong showing at Foxwoods, placing fourth in the 1K limit hold'em event and fifth in the 10K championship event.

There is obviously no way to dispute J.C.'s poker skills, but as you know, a little luck never hurts. That brings me to a hand played by J.C. during the Foxwoods championship event. I am not quite sure if the following can be classified as luck. To be honest, I don't know exactly how I should classify this very bizarre hand, but as soon as I heard the story, I couldn't wait to write about it.

Here are the details: The last hand of day one is being dealt out; the blinds are $400-$800 with a $75 ante. J.C. Tran is in seat No. 2 with 63K in chips.

From this early position, he makes a standard raise to $2,400. Everyone folds around to the player in seat No. 6, who very quickly pushes all in for 40K! The player in seat No. 7 takes a couple of minutes to ponder his hand and decides to call all in with his 20K stack. Now, the action is on the player in seat No. 8, who is in the small blind, and he goes into the tank. After several minutes, he folds his pocket kings, opting to hang on to his 25K stack, and Allen Cunningham in the big blind folds quickly (so quickly, in fact, that the small blind flashes his kings to Cunningham after Cunningham folds). Now, the action is back to J.C., who has a pretty big decision to make with his Q-Q. J.C. goes into the think tank, and after a couple of minutes, the player in seat No. 6 calls the clock and J.C. proceeds to call the 38K raise. The hands are turned up and J.C. shows his queens, the No. 6 seat shows Q-J, and then the No. 7 seat rolls over Q-J. Right now, you are probably thinking exactly the same thing I thought when I first heard this story: "Wait a second! Did you say that they both had Q-J?" Yes, folks, that's right, a reraise of 40K all in with Q-J, and then a call all in with Q-J.

I am happy to say that this isn't a bad-beat story; J.C.'s queens did hold up. The dealer pushed him a 100K pot, and when day one chip counts were tallied, J.C. was announced as the chip leader!

Now, I want to attempt to make some sense of exactly what happened in this hand. The first thing I asked J.C. after I heard about the hand was, "Why didn't you lay down your queens?" Since I wasn't at the table, I didn't have all the juicy and essential details – such as how the other players had been playing all along and the multitude of other factors that come into play when making a big decision like this one.

I asked J.C. to tell me more about what was going on in his head at the time. While he was in the think tank, there was a lot he had to consider. The most important thing was the hand of the player in seat No. 6 who had pushed in for 40K. J.C. read him as having a weak hand, because the player seemed to be on a downward spiral and quite possibly was on tilt. This particular player had about 80K in chips 20 minutes before this hand came up, and J.C. felt that he could have been in a "get even or go home" frame of mind. He ruled out the possibility of this player holding A-A or K-K.

Next to consider was what the No. 7 seat was holding. J.C.'s read on this player led him to conclude that he most likely would have a very strong hand in this spot, so he started to do some math. Since seat No. 7 was all in for 20K and seat No. 6 was all in for 40K, as long as he could beat seat No. 6, whom he read as being weak, he would break even on the side pot. Now, in J.C.'s mind, there was a chance that seat No. 6 held A-K, in which case he would be taking somewhat of a gamble with his queens. Lingering in the back of his mind was a hand that played out the week before in the championship event at Bellagio. With only two tables left, J.C. laid down his pocket queens in a pot against Paul Wolfe and Kenna James. It turned out that he made a mistake with that hand, and it cost him an 800K pot and a shot at the million dollar first prize.

Continuing on with some math, he figured that if he called and won the hand, he would claim a 100K pot and end the day with 125K. If he called and won the side pot, he would still have his 60K stack. And if he called and lost the whole pot, he would be down to 26K, which was still a decent stack for the start of day two. After his evaluation, he was leaning toward the call when seat No. 6 called for the clock. J.C. looked his opponent over and decided he seemed very nervous. At that point, J.C. announced his call and the cards were flipped up.

What were they thinking? I think we have determined that seat No. 6 was somewhat on tilt and the 40K all-in push was just a suicide mission. But what about the all-in call of seat No. 7? Here's my take: I am going to go ahead and assume that this player felt that he was somewhat short-stacked, and since this tourney had been split into multiple day ones, this being the first day one, he might have felt that he wanted to gamble and either have a big stack when he returned in two days or just be out.

That brings me to seat No. 8. Why did he lay down kings in this spot? I asked J.C. this question, and his theory was that the guy may have just been content with surviving day one and didn't want to risk running into aces at this point in the tournament. If "Mr. No. 8 Seat" happens to be reading this column, I hope this makes you feel better, because I may have laid down the kings in that spot, too.

So, do we classify this as a lucky hand for J.C. to win? He basically had 60K in chips thrown at him by two guys who had no hand, and had another guy lay down a very big hand that would have had him beat. In my mind, this was the most unreal course of events that has ever transpired in one hand of poker in a 10K buy-in tournament. I wouldn't attribute J.C.'s win in that pot to luck. This just goes to show you that when things go your way in poker, you can dodge raindrops. Ending day one as the chip leader propelled J.C. to the final table, where he stayed raindrop-free until getting busted out in fifth place, adding 353K to his already fat wallet.