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View Full Version : A Monster Hand, Badly Played


SheridanCat
10-15-2004, 05:18 PM
After our weekly game, we always have a $120 buy-in single table NLHE tournament. We usually start 10 handed.

Situation:
* 5 players remain
* average stack is 10K
* blinds are 400/800

A brief note on what I know about my opponent in this hand. I've played, perhaps 40 of these tournaments with him, so I have a good handle on his play. He's a very good player who can really vary his game. He has much more tournament experience than I do, and he has made the money in at least one WSOP event in the past. He also tends to do very well in online tournaments.

I'm in the small blind with about 12K in chips. The big blind has somewhat less, perhaps 9K in chips.

It's folded around to me and I find KK in the hole. I want to keep him in, so I call. He thinks a second and then checks. 1600 in the pot.

The flop comes: 8/images/graemlins/club.gif 4/images/graemlins/diamond.gif K/images/graemlins/heart.gif

I know he'll laydown an underpair if I come out hard, so I check. He checks.

The turn comes: 4/images/graemlins/heart.gif

I'm now thinking about how to get his entire stack from him. I check. He bets 2000, I call. 5600 in the pot.

I think a raise might have been good here, but I don't think the call was bad.

The river comes: [blank]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif, so no flush possible

Here's where, after thinking about it, I made a mistake. I bet out 2000. He folded after about a minute in the tank.

I really didn't think deeply enough about my options when I made the bet. My thinking was that if I check and he checks it down, I made a big error by not extracting any more out of him. However, what I failed to think about was that if I bet and he folds the outcome is the same and I still have made a mistake.

The only way I can not make a mistake is to check and let him either bet his made hand thinking it's good, or check and hope to induce a bluff bet. Either way I can come back and try to get the rest of his stack.

The way the hand had played up to that point, I figured I had, roughly, a 50% chance of him betting it on the end behind my check.

I think I've thought this through enough that I understand my mistake. Comments?

Thanks,

T