Medium-Stakes Cash Games

The hand I’m going to talk about today happened about a year ago, in a no-limit cash game at the Irish Open. The villain was a tight-ish young player with a tattoo on his arm. I tried in vain to get a proper glimpse of the tattoo, as this will often give you a good idea of how a player plays. If a game has more than one player with an ace of spades tattooed onto his arm it, is a very good game indeed.

Unfortunately I couldn’t work out what the tattoo was, as it was partially hidden, so I had to fall back onto the normal method of analyzing a players play — watching what he does and trying to get inside his head to understand his thinking.

An interesting hand developed that allowed me further understanding of this player. He raised preflop and was called in two places. The flop came up queen-high and both he and the small blind checked, the button bet, and he then proceeded to check-raise. The button folded after a few moments thought.

Mr. Tattoo then proudly showed his pair of jacks. To me he made two huge mistakes here, first of all check-raising with jacks there is a bad play for reasons I have covered in other articles, but worse than that was showing his cards. There was no need to show the jacks, it’s not like he was bluffing, or was he — and might be hoping to use his image later? All it did was alert any thinking player to the fact that he was an unusual player. As time progressed he made a few more check-raises, although I didn’t get to see his hole cards so couldn’t glean as much information from these occurrences.

All of which leads us onto the hand in question. Two players limped and the villain limped along, I too limped on the button with 73. Had my hand been a bit better I would have raised, and had it been worse I would have just folded, but I was happy to get to see a flop for a minimal investment and great position. (If I could have gotten the pot heads up I would have raised, but if I raised the likelihood was that I would get three to five callers).

The flop came up 10 5 2. The pot had €12 in it. All the players checked to me and I bet €10. Everyone folded to the villain who raised to €40. Interesting, but what does he have?

Normally I would assign a player a very tight range in a situation like this. I would assume that at worst they had the lone ace of diamonds, but more likely they had flopped a flush. (Less likely would be a set or two pair, but I wouldn’t rule them out). This player however, had showed that there was no rhyme or reason to his check-raises, so I thought there was a good chance he had almost nothing. I thought for a while and called.

The turn was a black 8. The pot now has €122 in it. The villain has about €400 left, and I cover him. He now checks. Here I have a decision. Normally I would probably just check behind hoping for a cheap showdown. The stack-to-pot ratio is roughly 3.5-1 here, so I value protecting my stack much more than the pot.
However I had a different plan for this villain. What I wanted to do was induce another check-raise from him. This action was very important, because if I played it right I could hopefully get him to commit his entire stack on this street. How much to bet though?

Simply put, I want to bet so much that the villain will have to put so much of his stack in the middle that he will feel committed to calling the rest when I go all in. But, this shouldn’t be foremost on his mind when making the check-raise. The ideal thought process for your opponent is for him to think he is simply check-raising your bet, and to be happy he doesn’t have to put his entire stack into the middle. Its only after you push does he realize the size of the pot and how small the rest of his stack is, proportionally. All of this should be a reminder to always be aware of what situation your actions are likely to lead to.

I thought a bet of around €80 was perfect. Big enough so that he is going to have to put in at least €240 to check raise, but small enough that it wouldn’t put him off his plan. The villain made my life easy for me though, he just shoved his entire stack into the middle. Although this was all according to plan (better than I had planned actually) I still thought for a few moments before calling. When playing live it’s a good idea to always take a few seconds to contemplate everything before you commit a large amount of chips to the hand. Re-check your hand, re-check your thinking; doing both of these has saved me several thousand euro over the last few years.

So after a few seconds I called. The river was a card I didn’t want to see though, the 9 of diamonds. I remember thinking to myself, “The best-laid plans of mice and men … often go awry.” Now any diamonds above eight beats me. It would be ironic if my plan had succeeded, and I had goaded my opponent into committing his entire stack with what he thought was a total bluff, only to win because he randomly had the jack of diamonds in his hand. Or equally likely, he was semi-bluffing with the ace of diamonds.

There was a pregnant pause after the card was dealt, with neither of us making a sound. Eventually the dealer hurried us along. Mr. Tattoo had to show first since he was in earlier position. “No flush,” he called, and relieved I showed my hand. I didn’t get to see my opponents hand (I wasn’t that cruel), but from his reaction I gathered it was unlikely he had a set or two pair. He remarked to his neighbour that he had no idea how strong I was.

This hand has two lessons to learn from it. First of all, when playing aggressive players, often time the best course of action is to allow their aggression to get the better of them. Give them some rope, and they will often hang themselves. Counter-intuitively, this often means betting rather than checking. Had I checked on the flop or the turn, there is no way the pot could have gotten so big. Secondly, the tattooed villain made several mistakes.

There was no need for him to commit all of his chips on the turn, had he of simply bet the turn (which would have been normal, considering he check-raised the flop) he could have safely check-folded knowing I had a strong hand if I called or raised him. And if he was determined to check-raise, he could have gotten away with a much smaller check-raise, saving himself at least €100. Your pot odds don’t make much difference when you are drawing dead!

Daragh Thomas has made a living from poker over the last three years. He also coaches other players and writes extensively on the boards.ie poker forum, under the name hectorjelly.