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Phil Hellmuth专栏
Holiday Poker Game in Madison
My traditional “Holiday Poker Game” is held back in Madison, Wisconsin and this year it was a $1,000 buy in $5-$5 blind Pot Limit Hold’em game. It is always one of the highlights of my holiday trip back to Wisconsin! We play with a great group of guys, and it is a great deal of fun to play super deep stack poker. This year we started at around 4:00 pm, and by 2:00 am we had over $50,000 on the table. How often do you have chance to play no limit Hold’em with 2,000 big blinds in your stack? With the stacks so deep, a person can play 40% of the hands and still make money. Playing that many hands and still winning requires guts, heart, the ability to make big bluffs and small bluffs, and slow plays and fast plays, but the right mix can yield a large profit. Of course, the wrong mix can yield a large loss!
At around 2:00 am the following hand came up between <!-- w --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.UB.com">www.UB.com</a><!-- w --> pro player “Poker Ho” and I. With the live $10 blind on, Poker Ho and Jon Green limped into the pot, and I called with the Js-6s on the button. The flop came down J-5-2 rainbow, Ho bet out $50, Green called $50, and I decided to “Pot it” (bet the size of the pot). The players in the blind folded for my $260 bet, and then Ho quickly threw $520—a $310 reraise--into the pot. Green folded, and after a moment I called the $310 raise. The turn card was an eight, Ho announced, “I bet the pot,” and I quickly folded. Ho told me later that he had flopped a set of fives.
What happened in this hand? I love Ho’s $50 bet into a $60 pot with three fives. The other option is that he could slow play his super powerful hand and bet $20, or even check on the flop, but then he would most likely give up the chance to win a huge pot. A check here on the flop is the worst possible tactic as it denies one of the three players in the blinds the chance to check-raise the pot on the flop, and thus could cost Ho a lot of action. I mean, if one of the blinds was attempting a check raise with say, J-2, J-5, 5-2, K-J, or something similar and it was then checked around, the player in the blind might fear that his hand was no longer any good on the turn, and may well put less money into the pot on the turn. Also, a six, a four, a three, or an ace could queer Ho’s action as he would now have to fear that his opponent had a straight. The other reasonable option is a smaller sized bet on the flop. On the positive side of the ledger a small bet, say $20, would still give an opponent in the blinds the chance to check-raise, and it might lure in someone with a pair of deuces, or ace high, or a weaker holding. On the negative side of the ledger a small bet would attract a call from someone with an inside straight draw (6-4, 6-3, A-4, or A-3), and then get a huge pay off from you if they completed their straight. To sum up I like the $50 bet a little more than the $20 bet, and a check is a bad play.
As to my $260 bet on the flop, I think was a good one. I made the pot sized raise thinking that I probably had the best hand, but also to find out where I stood in the hand. I really love Ho’s $310 reraise, especially as he executed it at lightning speed. He acted so quickly that I became a bit confused. I hate my $310 call! I mean I raised it up on the flop to see where I stood—Ho’s reraise told me that I was beat--and then I called anyway! I do not like Ho’s pot sized bet on the turn. Why let me out of the hand when he was so powerful? I know why he made the pot sized bet though. He was making sure that I didn’t call with 4-3 and bust him. I would have folded 4-3, but now he gave me the chance to easily get away from one pair, and also possibly to get away from two pair (had I had it). |
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