Rate each player's play...

[gunbuster]

Hand I observed the other night.

Two players in mid-position. Blinds are 75-150. Player A has 5500 and Player B has 8500. Average stack is about 5000 and there are 70/90 players left.

Player A open-raises to 450. Player B, directly to player A's right, smooth calls. Everyone else folds around.

Flop comes K 8 4 rainbow. Player A bets the pot. Player B calls. Turn comes with an 8. Player A Checks, player B checks behind. River comes with another 8. Player A pushes all in and player B calls.

Player A turns over AQ for 8 full of queens. Player B turns over A8 for quad 8's.

How did each player play?

Now personally, I find it hard to give someone credit for having the case 8, and I think player B's call of a pot-sized bet on the flop was fairly poor (it was for more than 1/8 of his stack with middle-pair, top-kicker), but he got lucky and gave enough room for player A to hang himself.

How might you have played it differently?

[fnurt]

Something's not quite right here. Was there a Q on the flop instead of a K?

[Jon Matthews]

or did he have QQ?

[Rickfish]

I agree pre-flop call on A8 looks a bad call. What would he do with an A92 flop? Essentially he seems to be playing for A8 on the flop for the implied odds. But the odds of flopping A8 is so remote it is not worth 450 chips. Maybe he thinks he is such a good player he can call and outplay A on the flop. But when the flop comes Q82 and A bets is he intending to put A on AK and outplay him? If it comes something like 752 then maybe B was going to represent a medium pair.

[Rickfish]

Asssuming that A had AQ, B had A8, and the flop was Q84....

The bet on the river by A was bad as he can only tie or lose. Check and call is excusable but what has B flopped that he thinks he will call with that is worse than QQ888? At least check might induce a bluff. Maybe A was thinking "if I check and he bets I will call so I might as well bet myself" but that is bad poker.

[gunbuster]

[fnurt]

I think calling a raise in this situation with A8s is a very bad idea unless you know the raiser has been raising very loosely. I'm assuming it was suited, maybe it wasn't!

Having called with A8 I don't really think you can fold on the flop. Middle pair with top kicker is a nice flop heads-up, it doesn't make sense to call pre-flop ("maybe he's raising with nothing!") and then fold once you make a good hand ("he raised, he must have something!").

I also don't agree that it was bad for AQ to bet on the end although I certainly wouldn't have gone all-in. There are certainly hands that would call a value bet, like pocket pairs, maybe AK. The better question is, what hand are you afraid of? Only the case 8, which isn't very likely to be in your opponent's hand heads-up. Now after you value-bet AQ and get raised all-in, would you be able to lay it down? That's a tough one, since it could just be another Q...

[Greg (FossilMan)]

As others have already pointed out, calling the preflop raise with A8 is pretty likely to be wrong. If you have great reads on the player and good control of them, then calling with A8 (or really any two cards) is only dangerous when a third player also comes in.

Since B didn't fold on the flop, he clearly doesn't have a great ability to read A, so this reinforces that the preflop call was a mistake.

However, ignoring the preflop error, everything else was done just fine by B, and either correct or at least not terrible by A.

Later, Greg Raymer (FossilMan)

[gunbuster]

I definitely agree with most that the pre-flop call w/ A8 was pretty loosy-goosey play. But what do people think about calling a pot-sized bet on the flop?

In this case, player A showed pre-flop strength, and then bet again on the flop. I think the worst that player A could have would be AK, but AQ or a pocket pair bigger than 88 would be likely as well.

[fnurt]

I think any time you cold-call a raise you have to be prepared to play on the flop. Depending on the opponent's style, raising with the intention of mucking to a re-raise might be the best play. Against some hyper-aggressive opponents A8 might rate to be the best hand and you'll make the most money by just calling them down all the way as they try to run you off it.

The bet from the pre-flop raiser on the flop is virtually automatic for many players, so like I said above, it's hard to understand how anyone could give up at this point without even trying to find out if A8 is ahead. If you're going to give up every time you don't flop top pair, then you shouldn't be calling raises in the first place, and you're definitely making it correct for your opponents to raise with a huge variety of hands. Put another way, people who cold-call raises but will let you run them off the hand on the flop are a great source of chips.