If you want to sharpen your poker skills and learn how to crush games, visit Jonathan Little’s elite coaching site at PokerCoaching.com/CardPlayer.
Today I would like to share with you a hand I played in a $3000 buy event over the past year WSOP . World Series of Poker.
With 100-200 blinds, I lifted 500 of my 20,000 total piles from the early position using jib jacks. A tight, aggressive kid dropped to 5,000 chips due to a recent big loss with a KK to QQ all-in preflop, called out from the middle position, and a junk player with 20,000 big blinds.
flop came 10
5
2
And check the big blind.
Although you should be very tempted to check that you don’t leave laying in the multi-directional pots, it’s a good idea to bet with your hands which are almost certainly the best but are prone to overpowering the outside, like your worst pairs.
Many players bet big in this case hoping to make sure they don’t go out, but the best play is to bet on the smaller side, roughly 700 in the pot of 1,600, in order to keep your opponents in a wide range of unwanted hands. where you crush it.
Note that if the opponents fold their hands like a 5-4, they are correctly withdrawn to the big pot, which means they are playing well. By placing a smaller bet that can reasonably be called by many lower hands, I extract value and allow my opponents to make mistakes. Remember, you want to get your opponents to play badly.
I bet 700 on the total pot of 1600. Only the narrow, aggressive kid in the short set called.
The turn was 8
.
It is very important to pay attention to the effective bet size when determining the amount of the bet, which is currently 3,775 with the bet being 3,075. In this case, I want to scale my bet so that I can go everything on the river for less than the bet size while at the same time not making my opponent feel “clearly committed” at the turn.
If I bet 2300 in the pot of 3,075, my opponent will only have 1,475 in the pot going to the river. This will probably cause him to fold so many hands that I’m crushing on the turn, which means I don’t get value.
If I bet 600 on the 3075 pot, my opponent will have 3,175 in his pot going to the river with a pot of 4275. Although this is a good chip-to-pot ratio that goes to the river, my opponent’s turn call will be profitable with any Almost two cards, even if he’s going down, because of the amazing betting odds. If you bet 600 on the turn, he will only need to win 14% of the time to make a profitable call.
Instead, I bet 1100 of the 3,775 of my opponent’s pot of 3,075 and my opponent called him.
The river was 9.
Now I decided to put everything in my opponent’s pot of 2,675 into the 5,275 pot, thinking it would connect to the many hands I beat.
Looking back at this hand, I don’t like my river bet. I lose to all hands played slowly as well as eight pockets and stubborn pocket nines. My opponent might not call all in with bluff catchers like the Q-10, thinking I should have a better hand to evaluate the pot on all three streets. It’s also very hard for me to beat many of the hands I’ve beaten except for the A-10, K-10, Q-10, and J-10 (which I block).
While I don’t like any of my options on the river, I think checking, hoping my opponent will either turn a hand like an AQ or 7-7 into trick-or-treat value bets gently with a hand like a Q-10, is ideal.
After about four minutes of thought, my opponent folded what was supposed to be a fringe cheat hunter from whom I was hoping to get value. ♠
Jonathan Little Works Twice WPT Champion with over $7 million in live tournament winnings, bestselling author of 15 poker tutorials, 2019 GPI Poker character of the year. If you want to increase your poker skills and learn to smash games, visit his coaching site at PokerCoaching.com/cardplayer.
