Hand To Flame About

[bobbyi]

I played this hand yesterday in a really, really good $20/40 at the Borgata. I like the way I played it. I think there are some here who may not. But maybe I'm wrong.

Cast of Characters:
EP: This guy is awful. His preflop hand selection is atrocious; he will sometimes limp in any position with a hand like T3o. He doesn't seem to fully understand the meaning of certain betting sequences. There was a hand where I had three-bet preflop with AK, the flop came TJQ and I played it strongly. By the end of the hand, it was pretty obvious to everyone what I had. The initial preflop raiser had JJ, so he couldn't get away until the end. I have no idea what this guy had, but when a blank came on the river, he suddenly raised me, I three-bet and of course my hand was good. But generally the way he played the hand made no sense. Other hands have been the same. I think he is a novice because he has had trouble figuring how many chips he needed to put out and has done things like blatant string-raises that made it clear that he was unaware of the rules about that. He is eagerly eying the $40/80 game and thinking of moving over there, but I think he can't figure out how to get on the list (we aren't helping him).

The field: Loose. Moderately passive. There are no players who I would consider solid. Several (like EP above) are terrible, and some are merely bad. Preflop hand selection is bad all around. Plenty of seven-handed flops, and people sometimes stick around with hopeless stuff, particularly in big multiway pots (we've had some hands where more than twenty small bets would go in on the flop alone).

Preflop: Four players limp. The small blind completes. I raise out of the big blind with A [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]J [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]. All call.

Flop: 2 [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]4 [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]5 [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]. SB checks. I check. EP bets. 3 players call, including SB. I call.

Turn: J [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]. SB checks. I bet. Only EP and SB call.

River: 9 [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img]. SB checks. I bet. Only EP calls.