Hand Reading - MLG Style, Today's WPT 10K at Borgata

[DonT77]

Here is a hand I played from today. See if you can put a hand to the two key players involved.

I had about 16K of my starting 20K chips left. The blinds were 100/200 (Level 4) and I'm in the CO.

A tightish, seemingly straight-forward MP with about 20K in chips open-raised to 700 (std for him). Folded to me, I called, and all folded behind me. 2 to the flop (pot = 1700).

The flop came AT6-rainbow. MP bet 700, I called.

The turn was a 4, putting two diamonds on the board. MP bet 2000, and I raised to 4000. MP thought a few seconds, then called.

The river was an offsuit Jack. MP thought and checked. I thought, then bet 2000 and MP called.

What were our hands?

[Melchiades]

You have TT, he has AK.

[curtains]

I don't know why but I hate questions like this and find them cumbersome. Don't worry I'm not attacking the OP, there have been quite a few of them recently.

I'd much rather just know your hand and talk about the play on each street. It's useful enough, we are already trying to figure out what one player has, why do we need to figure out what everyone has?

[slickpoppa]

[ QUOTE ]
I don't know why but I hate questions like this and find them cumbersome. Don't worry I'm not attacking the OP, there have been quite a few of them recently.

I'd much rather just know your hand and talk about the play on each street. It's useful enough, we are already trying to figure out what one player has, why do we need to figure out what everyone has?

[/ QUOTE ]

Because it is a useful skill to try and read hands that you are not involved in so that you can gather information about other players when you are not in a hand

[DonT77]

I agree that questions like this are cumbersome, but I find these type of questions useful because to become a really good player you have to be able to think at this minimum level of thinking:
1) what do I think my opponent has
2) what does my opponent think I have
3) what does my opponent think that I think he has

I think you'll see when I post the results how important it is to answer these questions.

[curtains]

Yes but you can learn to do this while actually knowing your hand and just trying to deduce the opponent's range of hands. Also just because I can make a guess as to what you have, doesn't mean that opponent will also.

Anyway you should probably just ignore me, its just a pet peeve of mine. I feel that knowing at least one player's hand and then working from that is more beneficial as a learning tool, as this is the situation we face over and over when we play poker.

[sirio11]

[ QUOTE ]
I'd much rather just know your hand and talk about the play on each street. It's useful enough, we are already trying to figure out what one player has, why do we need to figure out what everyone has?

[/ QUOTE ]

I kind of agree with curtains here, there are enough variables involved in the hand if we know one of them; not sure if the benefits of trying to guess both hands outweights the fact that you tend to be lost with too many variables. But I understand it's just a different way to do it and some people find it helpful. I just have a hard time to give an opinion when there are too many variables.

[ QUOTE ]
You have TT, he has AK.

[/ QUOTE ]

I was thinking something similar to this. You SHOULD have two pair or better, so 66 and TT make a lot of sense, and to a lesser extent AT. He's playing like a very clear AJ-AK.

I also sort of agree with curtains. I'd really prefer if only one hand were up for debate here, although I like the idea of not basing your read on your own hand.

[Punker]

Both of you should have thought before your flop action.

I hate the use of "I thought and then" or "He thought and then". I await the first "My opponent mindlessly called". </rant>

For hand reading, its hard to say for certain without knowing which two cards on the turn were diamonds. If the ace was not a diamond, a whole new range of hands (mostly related to Ax of diamonds, for both of you) come into play. If the ace was a diamond, its a different story.

[DonT77]

The time that somebody takes to make a decision sometimes tells you something about the strength of their hands.

You do bring up a good point about the suit of the Ace making a difference - in this case the Ace was not a diamond.