A question for Steve Hudak
 

Steve,

What's up man. We have actually never met, but we happened to date the same girl at umd, and I know Danny. Anyways a friend of mine Jon Hubbell, who I think knows you as well and I were debating a hand that you played.-

Doug Lee has the button in seat 7, Pham raises under the gun to $16,000, Hudak reraises to $46,000, and Pham calls. The flop comes 7c-7h-5d, Pham checks, Hudak bets $50,000, and Pham thinks for a minute or two before saying, "I'm all in." The action is now back to Hudak, who would be calling with all of his chips. But Hudak folds, and Pham picks up a $202,000 pot.

Now he seems to think that you had a big ace and made a read that Pham had a pair on the flop and decided to lay it down.

Now my thinking here is that if you read him for a piar preflop wouldn't you just flat call the preflop bet and then make a decision on the flop? I think your reraise before the flop indicates big pair or big ace, and your play on the flop indicates big ace, but if you had a big ace wouldn't the pot odds dictate a call? I thought it would be a tough laydown if you had anything better then AQ.

If I had to guess I would say you maybe had KQ. I mean this a total random guess because I don't know what the blinds and antes are, but that was my thought.

I'm very curious to hear your thought process on this hand.

Thanks man,

Robert

Re: A question for Steve Hudak
 

what does "read him for a pair preflop" mean?

is it possible that the range that pham open-raises with is different than the range with which he calls a reraise with and check-raises all in on a 7-high flop?

you go back to square one also.

Re: A question for Steve Hudak
 

I had AK. Preflop he could have a very large range. On the flop I had 95k and bet 50k into a pot of over 90k. I'm left with 45k and after he check raises all in my thinking was it was less than 5% for him to have worse than a pair (and probably much less).

After the hand he told someone at the table he made a mistake because he had 55 for a fullhouse and thought I would auto call. He thinks if he would have called the flop I would stab at it again on the turn or call the river.

He could easily have been lying but thats what he said for what thats worth.

Re: A question for Steve Hudak
 

wait, you were getting over 5-1 on your money here? what are you thinking?

Re: A question for Steve Hudak
 

[ QUOTE ]
wait, you were getting over 5-1 on your money here? what are you thinking?

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Pure game theory says to make the call, right? I struggle with this constantly but some common sense has to be thrown into the mix when making this kinda decision....just a doknkey luckbox in training [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Re: A question for Steve Hudak
 

Yes. I already said what I was thinking.

Re: A question for Steve Hudak
 

i thought my question would be clear but i guess it's not. let me rephrase. what would you do if he went all in and then accidentally exposed his two jacks?

Re: A question for Steve Hudak
 

Thanks for the reply Steve.

Re: A question for Steve Hudak
 

If it was that simple I would call as I would expect to gain 19,800 chips in EV by making the call.

In the real-life situation that occured if you do an EV analysis giving my opponent a reasonable hand range based on his actions then things change alot. I suggest you do that and keep in mind that it is the final table of a tournament.

Re: A question for Steve Hudak
 

you said: "there is a less than 5% chance he has worse than a pair." i said: "based on that how can you fold?" you said: "i already said what i was thinking."

so i guess now you are saying that you really thought there was a good enough chance that he had 7x, 55, AA, KK (this should have been the answer to my original question). fair enough i guess, but these hands seem so unlikely to me i have trouble seeing how a fold could be correct.

i mean, admittedly i've never played with kido but it sounds like he is a volatile, erratic player. he moved in with JT when he easily could have folded after hachem had committed half of his chips. based on this it would seem that there is a reasonable chance that he can tell for whatever reason that you don't like your hand and is taking a shot with a hand like AJ or KQ.

Re: A question for Steve Hudak
 

Giving him AA, KK, 55, 7x only 20% of the time, a hand I'll be way ahead of 5% of the time, and a pair QQ or lower besides 55 or 77 75% of the time my EV would come out to about +15300 on the call. This is a pretty small gain compared to what I'm riskig by putting the chips in. I'm not sure if this would be worth putting the chips in for, I'd have to do some more calculations.

At the table during the hand I put the chance at him having one of the hands that had me in bad shape much higher than in this calculation. This was based on alot of factors you had to be at the table to see and I know you disagree with my guesstimates.

Re: A question for Steve Hudak
 

fair enough, i mean 20% seems wildly pessimistic to me, i would have put it at more like 5%.

Re: A question for Steve Hudak
 

Let's try to guess at what his preflop calling range is. He's probably going to fold any hand except a pair or AK. I'm not sure how likely he is to reraise all in preflop with a big pair or AK. To simplify things lets say he always reraises all in with AK and calls with every pair (just hypothetical). Then on the flop when he checks theres 6 each of QQ-22 excluding 77 and 55. Thats 6 each of 9 hands. Theres 1 77 and 3 55 hands. Theres 3 each of AA and KK. This would put him at 18.5% to have me in really bad shape.

Clearly, this number isn't accurate as some of the time hell reraise me preflop with AA or KK. I wouldn't be surprised to see him slowplay those hands (espcially AA) preflop though as doing so would make it almost impossible for me to get away from after betting the flop whereas I might be able to get away from a huge preflop reraise.

It's not accurate at all but I thought you'd be interested to see how high the percentage is in this simplified model.

Re: A question for Steve Hudak
 

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Thats 6 each of 9 hands. Theres 1 77 and 3 55 hands. Theres 3 each of AA and KK. This would put him at 18.5% to have me in really bad shape.

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well yeah you made an error here it's 10 out of 64 hands not 10 out of 54 so even in your model it's only 15.625%

also again you know the player better than i do but i would think the majority of the time he is reraising you with AA and KK before the flop.

if you really think he is not capable of being in there with something like 87s then i'm even more inclined to call as that was my biggest concern.

Re: A question for Steve Hudak
 

Oops yea my mistake. No I don't think he's calling preflop with hands like 87s.
I don't see why it would make you more likely to call though if he doesn't have 87s as if he did you'd also have to include the other suited-connected type hands in his range and the vast majority of those make only a str8 draw on the flop or completely miss.
We pretty much agree on how to do figure out the EV in this case, it just comes down to our specific reads to adjust the numbers.