First, I see you realize that this is a very complex situation, partly casued by me because of my slow play on 3rd. Had I raised right away on 3rd, i believe several would fold and the hand is totally different, but as explained I chose to take a different root. However, once I saw that the party was getting crowded, I decided to open it up raising on 4th.

Your analysis of seat 1 and his holding looks plausable as to what he might hold. And it is what i put him on while I was playing it. The trickiness of the hand is now what do seat 2 and seat 5 have. As both will play a crucial part in my latter street decisions.

As for seat 2, He's betting on 5th after my showing strength on 4th, making his 3 spades look like a flush, but as I am sure you noticed, many spades are out. Had spades been live, I might have just given up the hand there.

Now what in the world in the wildcard in this hand, seat 5, doing. As said, he is a loose player. He will look start with some semblance of a hand, but once he is in, he will likely play it to the end. His catching a pair of nines creates worry for me.


As you may or may not know, this is actually the first hand that i posted. And there are several reasons for that. This hand is froma couple of months ago that i saved. I held onto it because I thought that there was some brilliant play by one of the players in this hand. One of the reasons that I don't post hands is that not too many hands that I play do I found interesting or novel, but this one is a gem, as you will see later.