Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Play of the day - checking top pair

beware the feral cow packs. they hunger.
Full Tilt No-Limit Hold'em $0.05/$0.10 - 9 players

BB: $7.43
UTG: $10.12
UTG+1: $23.16
MP: $17.92
MP2: $11.10
HJ: $7.03
CO: $8.78
Button: $13.79 (Hero)
SB: $4.16

Preflop: ($0.15) Hero is Button with (9 players)
6 folds, Hero raises to $0.30, SB calls $0.25, BB folds
Standard button raise with an ace. Small blind defends. He's an unknown - no hands.

Flop: ($0.70) (2 players)
Top pair with no kicker. This is a hand with showdown value, but I obviously don't want to play a big pot with it. If I bet and he checkraises, I would have to fold. Since I want to play a small pot, I choose the flop as my street to check.
SB checks, Hero checks

Turn: ($0.70) (2 players)
SB bets $0.30, Hero calls $0.30
Now he's betting. The board has all kinds of draws on it, so he can easily put me on a draw. My plan is to call reasonable bets here and on the river.

River: ($1.30) (2 players)
SB bets $0.60, Hero calls $0.60

Hero showed , and won ($2.34) with two pair, Aces and Queens
SB showed , and lost with two pair, Queens and Eights
Hero won $2.34
(Rake: $0.16)
He could have shown ace-seven here and taken it down with a better kicker - fine, it's a small pot and I got to showdown with top pair. My check made him bet twice and I won about 10 blinds. If his bet suddenly got big on the river (like he had queen jack and hit trips), I simply fold and don't give him the value he's looking for.

2 comments:

The Poker Meister said...

Based on the way the action went down, I think this is a way ahead / way behind situation. As played, I don't have a problem. However, I don't think he's ever showing up with a gay trio (LOL - 3 queens :-) ) on the river, given his bet sizing. Without knowing stats about the villain, a case could be made to make a thin value raise on the river or just checking through like you did. I think a "small" value raise like 2.5x-3x may very well fold better Aces because your opponent knows he played the hand very weakly (i.e. a second pair hand could have been calling down his smallish bets). Just something to think about...

Forrest Gump said...

All looks pretty standard. I'd typically follow either the villains or your line in this hand. Villains bet sizing looked a bit under though - he made it very easy for you to call down and gave away his hand strength.