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I Need A Hand of The Week!

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  1. Ben Zugay Ben Zugay is offline

    Posts: 1
    Joined: Feb 07

    Feb 2nd, 2007 (2/2/2007 10:36am)

    My friend and I have a radio show and I want to put in a poker segment, where we analyze a poker hand, basically a hand of the week. I'm kind of a one hit wonder when it comes to poker, and yep you guessed it, its texas holdem. If anyone would like to help us out, I would greatly appreciate anyone who has a good, complete limit or no limit texas holdem hand that me and my friend can analyze on the air. Feel free to post it here or e-mail it to me at bzugay@cc.edu
    Thank you everyone for your time! Your help is greatly appreciated and will contribute to the success of our show!!!
  2. AawwNutz AawwNutz is offline

    Lewisville, TX
    United States

    Posts: 1,218
    Joined: Feb 05

    Feb 2nd, 2007 (2/2/2007 12:25pm) in reply to Ben Zugay

    Here's my most recent hand that really captured my interest.

    UltimateBet $129 7pm tourney. (stack and bet sizes may be marginally off - I don't have hand history in front of me)

    Starting stacks for the tournament were 2,500 and the blinds were only up to 30/60.

    I have QQ in 2nd position with a chip stack of only 1,020.

    I raise pot to 210.

    Short stack of 540 pushes allin from cutoff.

    JohnnyBax pushes allin from BB for 2,400

    My thinking: What would Bax be pushing allin with here???? Generally speaking, when I make a healthy EP raise with QQ, and then see a re-raise, followed by a re-re-raise, I very QUICKLY and EASILY muck the ugly step-sisters. My opponents know I am an early position raiser. They know I have something, and there are TWO people that are ready to play for all of their, or my, chips. I am beat here a very healthy % of the time.

    Obviously, I'm crushed by KK and AA. So, I start thinking about whether Bax could have either of these two hands. I'm perfectly willing to play QQ for 100% of my stack against any other hands and for 50% of my stack against the unknown holdings of the short stack. So, basically, the only pertinent question is "Does Bax have KK or AA??".

    The most interesting part about his hand was effect of the stack sizes on my decision. For the same reason that I was ready to play QQ for 1/2 of my stack, I had to believe that Bax would be willing to play KK or AA for 40% of his stack against me. I can't see any reason for Bax to "protect" his hand and discourage my action. Further, I believe that the action against me would serve as a "hedge" bet for Bax against the small stack. By this, I mean that if the small stack did have AA or an A that would suckout against KK, he would still have the chance to beat me to cover his loss against the short stack. From Bax's perspective, it didn't make much sense for him to worry about me having AA if he did have KK. If I had the rockets and he had the Cowboys, the hand was going to play itself and Bax was just going to lose 40% of his stack most of the time. Basically, from where I sat, I had to believe that Bax would want to play KK or AA against BOTH stacks.

    Now, I have to figure out how he would attempt to accomplish this goal. One guy has already committed his stack, so Bax has the first part taken care of. Using higher level thinking, how would Bax get me to commit my stack if he did indeed have me crushed? This level of thinking comes down to "How would I play it if I were Bax??". I decide that I would flat call the short stack with KK or AA to give AawwNuts the BEST opportunity to continue playing the pot. I WANT him to play based on the ideas presented in the last paragraph. I would think to myself "I know Nuts doesn't have the pot odds to make any kind of a loose call here, but he is kind of a donkey, so he might make a frustrated "I already lost half of my stack" tilty call with a hand that's way behind. If he does that, I can either get the rest of his chips after the flop, or, if he folds the flop, just build the dead money in the pot against the short-stack. If Nuts does have something like AK, QQ or JJ, he'll just push for the chance to resurrect his tourney and we'll be playing a big pot all-in."

    I finally decided that him pushing All In with AA or KK was not an ideal play because I think my image would be such that I would fold every hand that he crushed and would only call with AA, KK and MAYBE AK.

    At this point, I had to put him on specifically AK, JJ, or QQ. So, I clicked the little Call button.

    Here's the problem playing with Bax. Apparently, he was thinking at one level higher than me and knew that he could get an allin call from a weaker hand by PUSHING in that position. I'm hoping that he felt I was doing an analysis that minimize the strength of his hand and rwould esult in a call with a hand that he obliterated.

    Bax showed me KK. On the turn, I typed in NH, GG, GLA. The river was Cinderalla and I beat Bax with QQQ. The railbirds flared up expressing the opinion that I was just a gambling donk and should have known that QQ was dead there. They thought that Bax was "obviously protecting his hand." I thought to myself "protecting his hand against WHAT? Chipping up?? "He wasn't protecting his hand, he was beating me over the head."

    Bax didn't make a comment about the hand, so I'm not sure his viewpoint. But, I really think that he was just smart enough to realize that a "flat call" there sends a much more powerful message than his All In bet did. He played one level higher than I did. I was outplayed, pwned, schooled, etc., etc...

    This hand has really mesmerized me the past week. Poker books just don't teach you this kind of stuff. You learn it the hard way. I think the hand really demonstrates why poker is such a robust exercise of the mind. A battle of the wits. Sometimes, you can think yourself in circles for days.
     
  3. NuclearSteve NuclearSteve is offline

    Sterling, VA
    United States

    Posts: 1,006
    Joined: Aug 05

    Feb 2nd, 2007 (2/2/2007 12:52pm) in reply to Ben Zugay

    ComeOnPhish schooled me here. My read was that ComeonPhish wanted to see a flop, hence his call. So, I pushed to isolate against razzinu thinking that ComeOnPhish would fold. However, I failed to think about what kinds of hands ComeOnPhish calls my EP raise with. With ComeOnPhish acting after me, I probably should've taken the conservative route and folded after razzinu pushes.

    *********** # 120 **************
    pokerstars Game #8220636287: Tournament #41629705, $20+$2 Hold'em No Limit -
    Level VII (100/200) - 2007/01/31 - 22:47:51 (ET)
    Table '41629705 24' 9-max Seat #2 is the button
    Seat 1: ComeOnPhish (9720 in chips)
    Seat 2: Pwnasaurus (10716 in chips)
    Seat 3: LukeFromB13 (24129 in chips)
    Seat 4: razzinu (4855 in chips)
    Seat 5: pirate7809 (5591 in chips)
    Seat 6: NuclearSteve (8291 in chips)
    Seat 7: newfoundglry (18155 in chips)
    Seat 8: micon (31604 in chips)
    Seat 9: sheets (7000 in chips)
    ComeOnPhish: posts the ante 25
    Pwnasaurus: posts the ante 25
    LukeFromB13: posts the ante 25
    razzinu: posts the ante 25
    pirate7809: posts the ante 25
    NuclearSteve: posts the ante 25
    newfoundglry: posts the ante 25
    micon: posts the ante 25
    sheets: posts the ante 25
    LukeFromB13: posts small blind 100
    razzinu: posts big blind 200
    *** HOLE CARDS ***
    Dealt to NuclearSteve [Qs Ah]
    pirate7809: folds
    NuclearSteve: raises 400 to 600
    newfoundglry: folds
    micon: folds
    sheets: folds
    ComeOnPhish: calls 600
    Pwnasaurus: folds
    LukeFromB13: folds
    razzinu: raises 4230 to 4830 and is all-in
    NuclearSteve: raises 3436 to 8266 and is all-in
    ComeOnPhish: calls 7666
    *** FLOP *** [Qd 4d Th]
    *** TURN *** [Qd 4d Th] [Ts]
    *** RIVER *** [Qd 4d Th Ts] [Jh]
    *** SHOW DOWN ***
    NuclearSteve: shows [Qs Ah] (two pair, Queens and Tens)
    ComeOnPhish: shows [As Ac] (two pair, Aces and Tens)
    ComeOnPhish collected 6872 from side pot
    razzinu: shows [Jc Jd] (a full house, Jacks full of Tens)
    razzinu collected 14815 from main pot
    sheets said, "YIKES"
  4. gbmantis gbmantis is offline

    Waukesha, WI
    United States

    Posts: 7,413
    Joined: May 05

    Feb 2nd, 2007 (2/2/2007 2:00pm) in reply to NuclearSteve

    hey queerbag if you need help for your poker segment just ask lol
    1
  5. BillMueller BillMueller is offline OT President

    Farmland, IN
    United States

    Posts: 16,387
    Joined: May 06

    Feb 2nd, 2007 (2/2/2007 2:05pm) in reply to gbmantis

    PM NotAShark...he has all the answers on this sort of thing.
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