This is the second straight "Play a Hand With …" column that I've written for
Card Player. It's amazing, isn't it, how a single hand of poker can spawn a discussion that lasts a couple of orders of magnitude longer than the hand itself.
This discussion was between my poker buddy and friend, Jeanne, and me at a Chinese restaurant in Dublin, Ireland, during a recent tournament series. A bunch of us from the PokerStars community had gathered in Dublin to play in the tournaments and side games. Now, I firmly believe that if you go to an exotic location for a poker tournament and don't get away to see the city's sights, you're missing half the fun. Jeanne and I got on one of those on-and-off tour busses and saw quite a lot of the town. My favorite bit was stumbling across some astonishingly good street musicians in Grafton Street and Temple Bar, and what little I saw of St. Patrick's and Trinity cathedrals made me want to return there.
So, the discussion over barbecued ribs and squid in black bean sauce was mostly about the musicians, the sights, and the spectacular weather. But eventually, Jeanne sort of paused and said, "So, I was in this sit-and-go last night …"
Now, my friends have long ago learned not to bore me with bad-beat stories. So I knew this was not an "I had the best hand and then this
donkey, who had no business in the pot, got there" tale. And they also know that if we're going to discuss hands, I want details. Tournament or cash game? Limit, no-limit, or pot-limit? How deep are the stacks, what is your position, and what are the blinds? If it's a tournament, where are we with respect to the payouts? What do you know about your opponents, how are they playing, and so on? Otherwise, all I can do is shrug my shoulders and say, "Well, it depends."
But Jeanne had the information: €100 no-limit hold'em sit-and-go. It was one of the first few hands, so she didn't know the players. Everybody had started with 1,000 in chips, and there hadn't been a major confrontation, so the stacks were pretty even. The blinds were 25-50. Jeanne was in the cutoff seat (one in front of the button) with Q-Q. The under-the-gun player raised to 200 and everyone else to Jeanne folded.
"So, you pushed all in, right?"
"No."
"OK, so you did a stop-and-go. You made it 600 to get everybody else out, but price him in. Then you were going to push on the flop no matter what."
"Er, no."
"You
called?"
She grimaced. "Yeah."
"So how many other players called?"
"The small blind."
Let's pause the conversation here and discuss what we know so far:
1. That's a pretty brutal sit-and-go structure that the tournament organizers had. You get only 1,000 in chips and the blinds start at 25-50. There's not much play to begin with.
2. The under-the-gun player made a somewhat outsized initial raise. Especially with the short stacks, he was putting himself in a situation in which he'd have difficulty getting away from a hand after the flop. If he got one caller, there'd be at least 425 in the pot when the flop came down and he'd have 800 left. If an opponent went all in after the flop, the under-the-gun player would be getting 3-2 to call, and most legitimate preflop raising hands would be that good post-flop. In short, he was committing virtually all of his chips to the pot with his preflop raise. Similarly, if somebody pushed all in behind him preflop, he would have to call with anything but absolute trash.
3. Jeanne's call was - forgive me, my friend - unconscionable. With the stacks as short as they were, she should have been delighted to get all of her chips in the pot right there. The only reasonable alternative was to attempt to coax the under-the-gun player in with a raise that would be alluring to him, and then put the rest of the chips in after the flop. I might do that with kings or aces. But again, with the stacks as they were, I'd almost always just shove the cookies in. But hey, Jeanne's new on the eastern side of the pond. She's been used to playing limit poker (hold'em and Omaha) and is now learning the big-bet games that dominate the European countries.
4. As I'd feared, the small blind saw an opportunity to get a good price on a flop and jumped in. In fact, he probably
wasn't getting the right price (the stacks were too short for any sort of speculative call), but not all poker players know proper pot odds.
Anyway, we're just passengers on this bus; Jeanne's driving.
"The flop came 5-5-2 rainbow. The small blind immediately pushed all in. And then the under-the-gun player called instantly! What would you do?"
"Wish I'd reraised preflop."
With a chopstick aimed at my eye, I reconsidered.
"Jeanne, what did
you think was going on?"
"I thought the small blind had something like 6-5 or 2-2. And I was worried that the under-the-gun player had kings or aces. So, I wasn't sure which one had me beat, but I was pretty sure one of them did."
"You folded?"
"Yes, though not immediately. I agonized over it, but eventually I let them go."
I thought briefly.
"Would you push all in from the small blind if you flopped trips or a full house? Heck no - you'd check and let somebody bet it for you. No, the small blind had 7-7, and …"
Jeanne froze when I said that. Heh. I knew instantly that I'd called his hand exactly.
"He wanted to get the big overcards out. Now, it's still possible that the under-the-gun player had a monster …"
Then it hit me - just like it hits Harry Bosch in Michael Connelly novels - the under-the-gun player's original raise. You don't raise to four times the big blind with A-A or K-K - as you don't want to shut out the action. You put in a normal or even smallish raise, hoping to provoke a reraise somewhere.
"The under-the-gun player had 10-10. You folded the best hand."
"I can't believe you said that. The small blind
did have 7-7, and the under-the-gun player had 8-8. I woulda busted 'em both."
"His instant call on the flop probably threw you off. You wouldn't do this with 8-8, so you couldn't see him doing it with 8-8."
"Yes, exactly."
It's always hard to watch your good hands get beat by worse ones. But, it's harder when you misplay a hand that would have been a big winner. I know that I replay those hands in my head many more times than the ones in which I suffered a bad beat through no fault of my own. I'm sure Jeanne will remember this hand for a while, and will be quicker to push her chips in when those situations come up.
Lee Jones is a well-known poker author (Winning Low Limit Hold'em), analyst, and commentator. He works for the European Poker Tour.
