Online Poker: Phil 'USCphildo' Collins Analyzes Hands Part IICollins Discusses How He Played a Marginal Hand on a Dangerous Board |
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Note: This is Part II of a two-part hand-analysis interview with Phil “USCphildo” Collins. Read Part I by clicking here.
| Info | PokerStars $500 buy-in $250,000 guarantee | Blinds: 6,000-12,000 with a 1,200 ante |
| Player | Ben86 | USCphildo |
| Stack | 658,525 | 1,209,793 |
| Hand | ?-? | K 10 |
Ben86 raises to 27,286 preflop from under the gun plus one, and action folds to USCphildo, who reraises to 92,593 from the small blind. Ben86 calls, and the flop is K
Q
2. USCphildo checks, and Ben86 checks behind. The turn is the J
, and USCphildo leads out with a bet of 96,000. Ben86 calls, and the river brings the 3. USCphildo bets 120,000, and Ben86 folds. USCphildo wins a pot of 397,586.
Shawn Patrick Green: Someone raised from under the gun plus one and you reraised from the small blind, out of position, with K-10 suited. What was your thought process behind that?
Phil “USCphildo” Collins: I like to make a lot of strong moves whenever I have a lot of chips. This is shortly after I’d won that last pot. I was the table chip leader, and I like to play table captain, especially against the second- and third-largest stacks. I like to let them know that this is my table, and they aren’t going to be stealing at it. Everything is going to run through me, and if I catch them raising too much, I’m going to three-bet them. I hadn’t completely ruined my image, and the last hand that I had shown down at this point, I’m pretty sure, was the set of aces — the absolute nuts. It’s really hard for people to make hero calls against you when the last hand that you’d shown down was three aces. “OK, you want to make a hero call? The last guy did, and he was drawing absolutely dead in the chip-lead pot.
So this guy was, I think, the third-biggest stack, and he opened. He had a stack size that made it nearly impossible for him to do anything [other than fold to my reraise] if he did, in fact, open light, here. He can’t afford to flat with a hand like K-10 or A-10, because it’s just too much of his stack, and it’s not enough of his stack for him to ever be able to four-bet shove light. If he wanted to shove, he’d have to commit 650,000. He had so many chips, and people simply do not shove that many chips in light.
Instead of flatting with K-10 and seeing a flop out of position, passively, I decided to be the aggressor in the pot. I’d probably get out-played way too often if I flat out of position with K-10. Instead, I use it as a semi-bluff preflop; if he flats, I can still make the best hand, and sure enough, the flop came out king high.
SPG: But say he flat-called and you completely whiffed the flop; you’d already acted as an aggressor preflop, do you check-fold and resign to your fate if you miss?
PC: I would hardly ever check-fold after I had already shown aggression preflop. I usually take that image and use it for one more barrel at the pot, because so much can change between preflop and on the flop. He could have had pocket eights, and all that I needed was one overcard for him to be really scared about his hand. I would have probably bet had I missed — but I hit it, so I checked [laughs].
SPG: Well, that’s another thing: How suspicious does your check look when there’s a king and a queen out there and you had shown aggression preflop? Shouldn’t he be putting you on some kind of high cards like that and become suspicious of the check?
PC: Unfortunately, I had just shown that I would check pocket aces on an ace-high board and then shove it right in their face, so if he bet behind me here, he would have to assume that I was very capable of check-shoving the nuts again. So, I thought that a check would actually freeze him more than a bet would.
SPG: So were you trying to freeze him, here, or was this more for pot control?
PC: This was a pretty standard pot-control check. I had a hand that could definitely get to showdown and be good of he had A-Q, A-J, or two tens, and I could easily check it down and have the best hand, but betting was probably going to get me into even more awkward spots.
SPG: So, you checked, and he checked behind. The turn was a jack, which was probably one of the worst cards that you could see, wasn’t it? You had an open-ended straight draw, now, but he could easily have gotten two pair.
PC: He could. He could definitely have had K-Q or K-J, but I thought he’d define his hand a little bit for me if I led into him. So, I led into him. After he checked behind on the flop, I was pretty sure that he didn’t have K-Q; I didn’t think that he would check behind with top two pair. He would probably start making a big pot by betting it, thinking that I could have checked A-Q, A-K, aces, or jacks on the flop, and he would pretty much have the best hand and build a big pot with it. After my turn-bet, he could easily have had K-J; I think he might have flatted me there with K-J, it is very likely that he would. But I also think that he could definitely have had J-10, A-J, or A-Q. He would have reraised the turn with A-10, so as soon as he flatted, I knew that he didn’t have A-10.
Since he didn’t reraise the turn, I narrowed his range down to K-J as the only hand that beat me, but A-J, A-Q, and J-10 were also in his range. So, the river put out a total blank.
SPG: Well, the river also put out three to a flush.
PC: I think that was a total blank for his range. He would probably have bet the flop with a pair and a flush draw or a gutshot-straight draw and a flush draw. I was probably going to bet-fold this river, just in case, but I think there was value [to betting]. I think he was going to check behind with A-Q and A-J, but there was a pretty decent chance that he would call with A-Q.
It also prevented me from being in an awkward spot so that instead of bet-folding, like I would here after my bet of 120,000, if I had elected to check-call, what would have happened if I checked and he threw out 400,000? Now I’m making a decision for a 400,000 bet and I don’t really know if it’s a bluff or a value-bet. But if I led into him for 120,000, he was not the type of player who was ever going to reraise that on a bluff. So, I knew that whenever he reraised he had it, and I could easily fold my hand, while still allowing a little bit of extra value on the river with top pair.
SPG: That was a pretty dangerous board, though. You had to have to put him on a relatively specific range of hands to know that you were ahead there, didn’t you?
PC: Right. I could easily have been wrong, but you can start narrowing away the hands that did beat me on that board by his actions on every street. K-Q beat me, for instance, but I didn’t think that he would ever flat [preflop] and check behind of the flop with K-Q, so that was out. K-J beat me, which he might have called with [on the river], but he never would reraise me with it. But A-Q and A-J will call on the river. A-10 would have reraised me on the turn; queens, jacks, and kings all would have reraised at some point in the hand. So, the fact that he just had been calling made me pretty confident that I had the best hand. You have to make a lot of assumptions along the way [laughs], but that’s just how you get there.
SPG: All right, thank you for going over these hands with us.
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