interesting hand from £100 live freezeout

[samurai_tony]

OK in keeping with the fact a few people expressed some interest in my musings i thought i would post some interesting hands i partake in and my thoughts on them and i welcome any criticism of my analysis or anything new someone might have to offer.

Here is a hand from the recent £ 100 f/o at the gutshot club, it is very weirdly played and is one of pretty much the only instances where i went in with the worst of it but thought my opponent played it worse than i did which is saying something!

The blinds are 350 / 700 i am on a pretty tough table with some reasonably tricky customers. I have a reasonable stack of about 8000, which isnt great but in these events that passes for reasonable, i have made a pretty bad laydown earlier and a pretty bad bet or two where i think i could have gotten more chips with what was clearly a way better hand but due to a poor mental state on my part i was worried about the outdraws which have been coming thick and fast so my primary objective was avoiding outdraws...having said that you may be very confused as to how i played this hand but it does make some sense.

Ok so you know the blinds and my stack here is the situation...i am on the button, early position limps with a stack equivalent to mine and it is folded round to a reasonably loose swede ( i think i aoplogise if in fact i got that wrong ) who is sitting directly on my right, i have been sat next to him for quite some time and he seems to call with pretty much anything he sees as vaguely playable and any ace, he also limps, i look down at a6 off, the blinds are two pretty tight players who i do no believe will play to a raise without a big hand so whats my play here? well i thikn calling is probably the worst as it goes, my hand is pretty bad post flop if i dont hit an ace and i dont want to get trapped in a situation where its checked to me and i feel obliged to bet, folding is the most textbook play for sure but my goal is to win the tournament and i think to do that in these events you have to take every edge you can get so i have a think about my opponents holdings.

Early position has not seen a hand all night and i was pretty sure if he indeed had anything he wanted to play from such early position he would make a raise or quite possibly move in even with 22 so a limp from him i saw as uncharacteristic weakness ( i have played with him before ) and a hand he REALLY didnt want to play but kinda felt like he should. The guy to my right i thought could have virtually anything you would normally classify as something yuo want to see a flop with no matter you chip stack so i ruled out anything huge like aa kk qq ak aq etc etc but i felt he could have anything from 22 to 97 off ( really ), i then just make a mathemathical judgement that if i put in a sizable raise the blinds would more than likely fold, there is currently 2450 in the pot which would increase my stack a HUGE 25 % if i could win this uncontested and i dont think there are many spots when two players who have limped at this stage are reasonably clearly weak and there is such a huge amount in the middle for the taking, having said that i genuinly believed i had the best hand at this point. So i decided to raise it up to 3750, this is a pretty big raise even with two limpers and i thought it was an amount that would just get rid of anyone without something very playable, the two blinds folded as did tony theo albeit somewhat reluctantly but much to my surpirse the guy to my right called and here it gets interesting.

The flop comes qc 4s 5s ( i have As 6d ) and he thinks for about half a second and stacks his chips very aggressivly and just plonks them over the bet line, at first i was like...god damn thats annoying cause that was my entire plan as soon as he called which then made me think...that was also HIS plan the entire time, to stop go no matter what the flop came, so i did a little maths, the pot was my 3750 + his 3750 + the blinds and early positions call so the pot is now 9350 and his bet is 4000, i cant remember the exact amount but it was approximatly that so there is now 13500 in the pot and its 4000 to me, if i call and lose i am left with around 2750 ish if i call and win i am at almost 20000 in chips and would be in a commanding position, if i just fold i have 6750 and a below average stack but still playable.

I am getting 3-1 on my call which is normally ok but my hand is pretty bad, but what could my opponent have, i am very very certain he has a weak hand just on his entire body language, the way he has played his hand and what i have seen of his hands before this. Something like qj is very possible but pretty much only qj and qt are hands i think he would play, i dont think he has any sort of middling pocket pair such as 66 77 88, he certainly hasnt played 55 or 44 all in on that flop, 33 and 22 are possible, i rule out any big ace but A2 all the way to A8 are possible ( i believed he would have put in a raise with A9 and better ), i also believe he would play any connected cards this way and cetainly any 2 spades this way and as i am holding the ace of spades if he does i am winning currently although he has a huge draw on me, so all this is going through my mind and certainly if he has more chips or quite possibly if i had more chips i would almost instantly fold as the risk to reward wouldnt be worth it but the size of his bet, the pot and my stack put me in what i think was a much much trickier position than is immediatly apparent.

After about a minute of thought i called, this may seem like utter madness but i dont think it is at all, the range of hands i thikn he does this with is pretty big and against a lot of those hands i am actually winning and against a the rest i have some outs which include but im not counting on runner runner straight and flush, i dont think i am winning but i reaslise there is about a 30 to 35 % i am and that combined with the outs i have convinces me to call. When i do he almost mucked his hand as he thought he just couldnt be winning, he was with his A7 and fair and square it stood up.

I really dont like the way he played the hand, if he thought his ace was good i think he should move in before it even got to me, i think once i have made a raise he should fold or move in, stop going here does not work if you do not think you have the best of it, based on the stack sizes there is no hand i can raise with here that i will not call an all in on any flop and he has found the one hand i could do it with that he is actually beating ( besides a2 and a3 possibly ), personally i think if i was in his spot i would have moved in pre flop or folded the hand rather than playing a7 with a short stack against 3 other players. In hindsite i think i may have made a mistake with the betting preflop. i should have moved in preflop and avoided the ever annoying possibility of being stop-go'd on, i didnt think he would call the bet size with his hand to be honest so i thought that by seeing a flop there was a reasonable chance it wouldnt help them and being in position i could scare off a hand that might have been a 60 40 shot if we had seen all 5 cards ( remember i did believe i had the best hand preflop ), but i think this may have been a bad analysis and i shouldnt have given any player the chance to do that very same thing to me using being out of position to their advanatage. There is a good case for just folding the hand and avoidng the whole situation but that night i felt the best chance i had was to take every single edge i had no matter how tiny and that felt like a good spot.

So before you write off my raise and my call as just being stupid ( and to be frank it may well have been ) have a think about why the hand was played this way and if you would expect it to work and if not is there some way to get it to work, in short whats play gives you the most chips in your stack at the end of the hand.

Tony Dobson

[qbler]

If your read is that the 2 limpers can be pushed around and that the blinds are tight I think I'd rather push this preflop with only 11.5 BBs. The way it played out you put almost 1/2 your stack in preflop and then it seems like you talked yourself into calling with nothing in part because the pot was laying you such good odds and you wouldn't have much of a stack if you folded. If you're going to call a flop bet anyway, I say maximize your folding equity by putting him to the decision preflop. Honestly though, I just fold preflop and move on to the next hand. And yes, he did play it pretty poorly.