The Final Hand

The final hand always gets the most attention. It could be the last hand of a grueling heads-up battle to determine a million-dollar tournament winner, or it could just be the hand you busted out on in your local Wednesday night tournament. Either way, chances are that you (and maybe a lot of other people) will be thinking about that final hand for a while.

In this column, I analyze a final hand from one of my readers. It was the final hand that he played in the 2009 World Series of Poker main event, and he has, naturally, spent hours analyzing and reanalyzing it. I think it’s an instructive hand, and I want to share my thoughts about it. I’ll let my reader start telling the story.

This hand occurred on day 3 of the main event. It was level 11, with the blinds at 800-1,600, and a 200 ante from each player. Play at the table had been mostly tight, with a few active players and no big-name pros. I had just doubled up to around 50,000 in chips. The chip average at this point was around 90,000. The best hand I had seen in three hours was A-5, and I had not played a hand at this level. It was folded around to me on the button, and I looked down at the A J. I raised to 4,000. The small blind folded, and the big blind (an aggressive European player) reraised to 12,000. He had me covered with about 80,000 in chips. I put him on a range of suited connectors (A-K to 7-6), pocket pairs (A-A to 5-5), and some other hands like K-Q and K-J. I decided to call.

Getting reraised when holding A-J often puts a player in a difficult situation. Because A-J is so far behind many of the hands with which people reraise, it can be tempting to lay it down. Folding is often the right play, but I like my reader’s call in this instance. Here’s why:

His opponent is an aggressive player who will reraise with a wide range of hands, including small pairs and small suited connectors. While A-J might be a heavy underdog to a tight player’s reraising range, it’s not here. In fact, according to the extremely useful PokerStove software written by Andrew Prock, A-J suited has approximately 49 percent equity against the hand range ascribed to the reraiser. Therefore, because my reader has position in the hand and also is getting excellent pot odds (18,800-to-8,000), I like calling.

The flop came down A-Q-9 rainbow. [My opponent] led out for 10,000 into the 26,800 pot. I had 38,000 behind at this point. Now it was decision time.

I don’t agree that this is “decision time,” for reasons that I’ll later elucidate. In the meantime, let’s finish with the hand.

I had top pair, and I really could not fold. Given my chip stack, I really should probably move in here, but I decided to just call to see what he did on the turn. My gut feeling was that he would check most turns, and then I would move in and take it down there. So, I just called the 10,000, getting about 3.5-to-1 pot odds.

The turn was the 10, putting two clubs on the board. My opponent checked, as anticipated, showing weakness. This was a great card for me. Now, I have an open-end straight draw and top pair. With more than 45,000 sitting out there, I move all in. I really just wanted to pick up what was in the pot already, and figured that I had outs (as many as 11) no matter what his hand was. He sat there for about three minutes, and finally called. He turned over one of the worst hands that I could have seen, the A K. To add insult to injury, the river was another ace, giving both of us trips, but his king kicker played.

Did I botch this badly or was it just a cooler? What could I have done differently?

Let’s go back to the flop for a moment. My reader has A-J on an A-Q-9 board. There is 26,800 in the pot, and he has 38,000 behind, giving him a stack-to-pot ratio of less than 1.5. When the ratio is this small, you generally should commit the rest of your stack with any reasonable hand. A pair of aces certainly qualifies as reasonable under this definition. Let’s do some quick math to verify this thinking.

If my reader commits his remaining 38,000 and wins, he’ll win 64,800 from the pot. If we simplify his 64,800-to-38,000 pot odds to 6-to-4, we can easily see that if he wins 40 percent of the time or more, it’s worth it for him to commit to the hand.

According to PokerStove, on an A-Q-9 rainbow flop, A-J has 69 percent equity against an opponent’s preflop reraising range. Since he needs only about 40 percent to go with the hand, this is a slam-dunk. Folding is, indeed, out of the question.

So, should he call the flop or raise all in? I think he should raise. On an A-Q-9 flop, nearly all of the hands in his opponent’s range will have hit something. Hands like Q-J and 9-8 make a pair and could catch two pair or trips on the turn. Hands like K-J and J-10 make straight draws. My reader correctly anticipates that his opponent will give up on the turn with most of these hands. In other words, the 10,000 flop bet is likely the last bet (unless he improves) that this player intends to make with a hand like 9-8 or K-J. On a scary flop like this one in a reraised pot, he’s not likely to shove all in on the turn with a wild bluff.

What does calling do? It gives an extra card to many hands that are behind, and doesn’t extract extra value from weaker hands. Calling just gives a freebie. My reader should have simply slammed the door on the flop by moving all in. He can even expect to get called sometimes by worse hands such as K-K or K-Q.

Let’s revisit the notion that the flop is “decision time.” It’s not. The real decision time in this hand came with the decision to call the preflop reraise. With a stack-to-pot ratio of 1.5, if you’re calling a preflop reraise, you’re shoving your stack in when you flop a pair. The math is a slam-dunk. Indeed, not only are you getting your money in if you flop a pair, you may even be getting it in on flops like 5 4 2 and 6 6 3. (Plug these flops into PokerStove if you’re scratching your head.)

I like the fact that my reader called the preflop reraise — but only if he’s totally committed after the flop when he makes top pair. I think he should have slammed the door on weak and drawing hands by shoving on the flop. And, I think he can rest easy until next year. This hand was a cooler, and was destined to be his final one.

Ed’s brand-new book, Small Stakes No-Limit Hold’em, is available for purchase at smallstakesnolimitholdem.com. He is a featured coach at stoxpoker.com, and you can also check out his online poker advice column, notedpokerauthority.com.