Thanksgiving weekend rocks in Vegas; it's one of those special weekends that liven up the local poker rooms. The poker games at Bellagio were full of the weekend tourist crowd, and the games were jamming. I meandered down on Saturday night, looking for an action game. The poker gods smiled upon me, and I found me a great $30-$60 limit hold'em game.
Seven hours after sitting down in the game, the action was as good as it gets, and I was winning 40 bucks. I used to be a guy who played 10-12 hours a day, six days a week. But these days, that's not me. This game, though, was too much fun to leave. Two women were aggressively playing every hand to the river. They were nice and friendly - and totally fired the game up! Their loose action induced more loose action from the rest of the table as players slackened their standards, looking to chase the loose money. The pots were huge! It was hard not to geta reasonable price on value, and more than one player was taking off turn cards for any backdoor draw, often correctly so!
Joe, a local amateur who plays a quality game, raised one of the women who had called the $30 from under the gun. The other woman called Joe's raise right in front of me, and I looked down to see the A
K
. I tossed $90 forward, reraising, and folding the three players yet to act behind me as well as both of the blinds.
The strength of a hand is only one factor in deciding whether to raise or reraise. In this case, I very much wanted to eliminate the players behind me, giving myself last position and also to protect any hand I might make. A-K is mostly a hand that is drawing to top pair, top kicker to win. Although many players play it like a made hand, it has to improve more often than not to win a showdown, especially against three players, and even more so against more players, as I might have faced if I hadn't reraised. That was especially so in a field like this one, with three opponents who called down not only with any pair or draw, but even most draws to pairs! Plus, one of my opponents who had already entered the pot might be holding a wired pair.
By thinning the field, I set the stage for the consistency of the pot to be such that one pair had a higher likelihood of being a winning hand. This was one of those games in which everybody was looking to get involved, and if I had flat-called Joe's raise, more players behind mewould have been likely to call it, and the likelihood of one pair winning the pot would have been decreased, thereby weakening my hand.
We took the flop off fourhanded for the three bets. The dealer burned and turned the 7
4
4
. The texture of this particular flop was such that A-K might very well be the best hand. My competitors checked to me - as fields are wont to do when there is a three-bettor in last position. I fired $30 into the pot.
To my surprise, the woman who opened the pot folded; she hadn't folded much for hours, and must have entered the pot with not much. Joe flat-called, as did the woman after him.
When Joe called the bet, I was pretty confident that he didn't have an overpair. Joe is a good enough player to know that if he held an overpair, he should raise to shut out the woman behind him in order to protect his hand in a large pot. And I knew that he knew that, and would have played accordingly. This is an example of using your own knowledge of a player's knowledge to read his hands. The woman called behind Joe and we took the turn threehanded.
The turn card was the K
, giving me top pair, nut kicker, which is pretty much what you hope for when you take A-K into a pot. Joe fired $60, folding the woman between us. It was up to me. I thought about how I could play my hand and get the most value out of it. I pondered about the range of Joe's hands. I thought it highly likely that he held a king, with a small chance that he could be bluffing. If he was bluffing, since I didn't think he held a wired pair, he would very likely be drawing dead to the hand I held. If he held a king, we might have a split or I might have him outkicked. If I raised, I believed he would probably call with any king, but there was some chance he would fold. The potwas not large enough to warrant a call from Joe, drawing to three outs, and I wanted him to put that extra money into the pot. If I raised, he definitely would fold a bluff and maybe a king with a weaker kicker.
I wanted to make sure I got three big bets out of Joe if he held a king with a weaker kicker, and try to get two bets out of him should he be bluffing. Since he was drawing dead if bluffing, those bets held high value to me. I flat-called as a "trap" play, planning to raise the river if a safe card came off. Part of the value of trapping in this situation was that if a card came on the river that I did not like, I could make my play decision based on greater information, thereby possibly saving me a bet.
Joe, being a good player, makes the effort to read hands. When I flat-called the turn, I thought he would put me on a wired pair smaller than kings. One thing to keep in mind when making such reads is that when you are making judgments based on what your opponents think, make sure that you are in tune with
their level of thinking. A major weakness I see in many otherwise solid players is the inability toc onsistently put others on a thought. They think only about how they themselves think. It's one reason that you so often hear someone whine, "How could you play like that?" Not everyone thinks correctly or logically, meaning that not everybody thinks like you and I do.
The river brought the 3
, completing the potential flush draw on the board. But the flush was not a hand Joe would put me on, nor a hand I would put him on, as I was sure that he'd have been more aggressive with a strong semibluffing hand on the flop. He had me on queens, jacks, or tens. He bet. I raised. Joe, knowing that I can be capable of raise-bluffing, especially against opponents like him who try hard to playwell, was in a tough spot. The pot was large. It was not one in which he wanted to make a major mistake by folding a winner. He hemmed and hawed and reluctantly tossed in six chips. I turned my hand over and he showed me one card, the K
, and tossed his hand into the muck.
It is important to maximize bets when your opponent is drawing dead or slim. And, of course, the first step in doing that is reading thesituation with some degree of certainty, trusting your judgment, and having the confidence to design your plays accordingly. Of course, you also must be flexible enough to re-evaluate your thinking if the hand plays out in a way that indicates your read could be wrong.
Extra bets are won by adjusting your thinking based on the situation, in order to maximize the value of your hand. The greater the edge on the bets you gain and the smaller the pot, the more risk you can correctly take to obtain those bets. It is also important to think through each hand you play: Think about what your opponents are thinking, how you think they will play their hands, and how you can best take advantage of the current situation.
New Year's weekend - probably the very best weekend in Vegas except for
Super Bowl - is just around the corner. Hopefully, those two nice ladies will be back for another visit, and if not, the good news is that there are plenty more like them!
Roy Cooke has played winning professional poker since 1972, and has been a Card Player columnist since 1992. He serves as a freelance consultant to the I-poker industry and has a successful Las Vegas real estate brokerage firm. He has written six poker books, which are available from www.conjelco.com/cooke. His website is www.roycooke.com. His longtime collaborator, John Bond, is a freelance writer in South Florida.
