Live Cash Hands

September 10 2008, Lex Veldhuis

Here we are again. It's been a while. During the WSOP I wrote close to nothing, but from now on there will be a regular flow of articles again. Most of these articles will be about hands or situations that I encountered during live games. Simply writing about normal strategy topics is a bit too dry to continue doing. This is because, first of all, I've been writing about them for over 1 year now, and second of all, there comes a point where the topics get a bit scarce. It is impossible to keep on writing complete articles about a new topic every time. So I've decided to switch from theory to practice to see how we can apply all the strategy we've discussed over the past year. There will definitely be more pure strategy in the future, but sometimes you need to give poker some time to develop itself, after which you can re-write previous topics and update them.

The following article will be about random hands that come to mind which I played during the summer, covering tourneys as well as cash game hands. If it ends up being too many hands, I will continue with them in my next article. These hands are in no chronological order, and as mentioned before, they will be examples of tourney, cash game, or even some interesting online hands. The majority of examples might end up being hands that I lost, but that's simply for the reason that the past summer didn't go too well. Some of the pots are, in my opinion, just interesting to hear/read about, without really focusing on the strategy too much. I would also like to mention that I didn't stop writing because I don't enjoy it anymore, it was just a very busy time for me. Now I'm back home and recovered and the writing can commence.

During the heads-up event, they announced that the next round would be against the players who were playing their match next to you. In the first round I looked around and saw CTS and BrynKenny sitting next to me. This can be pretty important, because you can glimpse over to their table during key hands, which is what I did when playing against CTS. During the match I saw my next opponent call one hand with Ace-high and one hand with King-High, both of which were big pots. After winning my match against CTS, I had already made plans to make a lot of high valuebets against this player. This situation shows once again how important it is to focus not only on the game itself, but everything around it.

My opponent, a guy called Patgorski, was playing very passive. He limped his first 3 buttons and folded his first 2 big blinds when I raised from the button. Now, although this is a mini-sample (lol), it can still give you a lot of information. The blinds started at 400/800 with stacks of 80K. After about a dozen hands I find in the big blind. My opponent limps from the button for 800, which I don't want to see him do that often, so this is a good time to put some pressure on him, and of course I also have the hand to do so. I make it 2600 and he calls. The flop is pretty much perfect: , solid nuts yo. I bet out 3200 and he calls. At this point he could be holding a King, float with Ace-high, have a straightdraw, or a middle pair. The turn is the , basically a blank, but it does make a couple of hands a lot more interesting for him. He could have hit two pair, but that chance is very small. 68 gives him a straight, but he wouldn't be so willing to call that preflop compared to hands like 56, 67 or 78. 89 is also a possibility. There's not really a reason for pot control here, so I bet out 9600. Although I don't want to pot-control here, I would be in a very tough spot if decides to make a move now. I wouldn't really want to flatcall in that situation, but if I push, he is likely to call with hands that have me semi-dead. So a bit of a stronger bet gives me just a little bit more information.

He thinks for a while, and it doesn't look like he's putting on an act. He eventually calls and I'm hoping not to see a card between T-6 on the river. An Ace would probably be less relevant than one of those cards, as I don't see him calling the turn that fast with a hand like A7 or A5, and if he has AK I'm sure I would've noticed before. I think the worst card to come on the river now would be a 7 because of his 7x and straightdraw combinations. The river is the . I would've preferred a 2, 3 or 4, but it's definitely not the worst card that could have come. Can I check here to get a bet out of him? No. The chance is too big that he has a hand with showdown value here, i.e. middle pair. Even if he has KJ he can chose to check after my strong line and because he seemed very passive. Then I also started thinking about those calls he had made in the previous match. I had been playing a lot of small ball throughout the WSOP, but that would've been a mistake here I think. So, we're going to valuebet, but how much?

Since we're up against someone who likes to make hero calls, we want to make a bet that doesn't make sense to him. If I bet 14K here (pot is 30K), it will look too much like a valuebet, or he sees it as weakness and decides to make a hero-bluff. I decide to make a 'I have the nuts or I have $@#$' bet here, 23,500. This is quite a large bet. You could say 'Wait a minute, the pot is 30K, that bet isn't that big'. But a big bet in one 30K pot doesn't have to be a big bet in another 30K pot. If the hand would've gone differently, for example I check-raise him on the turn, this wouldn't be a big bet as action came from both players. Now it's only my line that is strong, and if I keep that up until the river, my 23,5K is a megabet. He uses his entire timebank to think (LOL! ONLINE) and calls reluctantly. I show him my hand and he looks a bit shocked and mucks his hand. As you see, the whole hand went as planned, and judging from the look on his face, he would've never added that hand to my range here.

This shows how a hand, which seems to be pretty straight forward and only takes a couple of minute to play, can actually be very interesting. Gameflow also adds to it in the beginning of the match and it is based on reads that were made BEFORE the match. If you can train yourself in this your edge will only increase at the tables.

The next hand is a cashgame hand played at a $10-$20 NL table in the Wynn. It was exactly the same as last year; live regulars, tourists and impatient online players at the same table. A straddle was on and everyone was sitting pretty deep, with all the regulars having a minimum of $10,000 in front of them. Most of the action came from Dan (Rekrul) and Elky. Both of these players play hyper-aggressive and they attack each other even more than the rest of the table. If I'm at a table with these guys I play very TAG, as Rekrul is better than me and doesn't like me playing back at him, so all you get is high variance in the wrong direction. I started the session playing pretty loose, but that changed when Dan came to the table. He announced to be super-LAG and it was obvious that he wasn't joking. He is usually very quiet and emotionless at the table and only talks to people sometimes that he likes. While playing pots he doesn't say a word and plays super fast and hard, which can really irritate some players. He constantly re-raises you, and C-Bets before you have even had the chance to analyse the flop properly, and on top of that he is also the best player at the table. He shows no emotion when he wins or when he loses and he seems to just not care, which can be very dangerous.

I immediately decide to play tight and pick my spots. One important note; Dan doesn't play bad when he's drunk. The only difference is he now overbets everything and talks more. You immediately see that he's having an effect on people, as he wins a $20K pot with KK against JJ preflop all-in after just 5 hands. Normally this guy would have never gone all-in with Jacks, but he doesn't know Dan and misinterpreted the situation. Dan is completely raping the table and at some point raised to $240 after someone straddled. This is quite a normal opening-raise in a 10-20-40 game, especially with these deepstacks. I call with in middle position. Everyone else folds and the flop is . He bets $500 and I call. I have a $15K in front of me and Dan has me covered. The turn is a and he checks. When I called the flop he said (in a far too happy film-voice) 'RUH ROH I SENSE DANGER'. Yes, that is a Scooby Doo quote, sigh. He now checks and I have the feeling he was being honest. It doesn't make a lot of sense for me to bet now, seeing as I have an OK hand and he has already proven to make some hefty re-raises if he senses weakness. He could, for example, easily check-push my $1100 bet on the turn for his entire stack, as he did a couple of hands before against a player on the turn, after which he showed 7-high.

I decide to check and see what the river brings. The river is the , not really a blank. I obviously hope that he's going to check to avoid a difficult situation. Seeing as this Hand made it into this article, he obviously didn't check. He bets $2160, just a little more than the pot. This is the perfect card for him to bluff, but on the other hand, he knows that I am likely to call him with a hand like Ax because of his image at the table and our history. What also played a role is that I've been trying to discover tells that he has for a long time now, which isn't the easiest task. But now I thought I finally found one, something I usually wouldn't think about too much. He often bet whole numbers with his nut-hands and often (but not always) added some small change to the bet with his weaker hands. Everything in me was telling me he was bluffing, but that doesn't change the fact that it's still a pretty difficult call to make on a board like that. He himself wasn't giving away any tell whatsoever, so I went back to look at how I assessed his game and, what is also important, how he thinks I assess his game at that moment.

In the end I decided to call and he said 'One pair'. I was quiet for 3 seconds and asked him 'Well, how big is your pair?' He shows his and I smile while mucking my hand. The table is literally going crazy and no one understands what I could have mucked. Then Dan asked me 'Dear Friend, what did you call me with?'. The rest of the table was also very interested to find out but I just said, 'Doesn't matter much'. He replies by saying, 'Nice call'. My first reaction was to give him a mean look, but then I understood what he meant. I thought he was bluffing and he was, only with the better hand. I just said 'thx', but that doesn't mean I played the hand right.

This is a perfect example of smelling weakness but reacting too passively. My feeling was good, my action was too passive. After thinking about the hand a bit, also with friends, the conclusion was that this was a 100% river-raise situation. This is a typical example of a bluff with the best hand and it often happens that people react with a marginal call rather then a re-bluff. If I go with my gut on this one, I will usually always win the hand with a river-raise, especially with my table-image at that point. I was playing very tight up to that moment and had only shown two hands, one overpair and one set. Good lesson and surely an interesting pot.

While writing I just realised that I do have quite a bit to say about these hands, so I think I can do a couple more articles on these. Let me know what you think of them. I will finish off with a random funny pot, where no real strategy or analysis comes into play, it's just a nice story.

We have been playing the same session for 7 hours now. Dan is up about 35K and is irritating everyone at the table. There is a Korean girl at the table who is married to a Japanese boy, who is also at the table. Both of them are in their early 20s and have completely different personalities. She plays hyper-aggressive (still good though), goes on hardcore tilt every now and then and is addicted to action. Her husband, on the other hand, doesn't say a word and plays super tight. Dan lives in Seoul, South Korea, so is fluent in Korean. He started talking to the girl and they were really getting along, which her husband wasn't very happy about. So this guy now hated Dan as well and started looking for spots to take him down.

Seven players at the table limp for $40 and Dan makes it $500 from his straddle. Everyone folds to the Japanese guy who limp-raises to $1600. The girl folds and Dan insta-pushes for the remaining $6000 that the Japanese guy had in front of him. After about 5 seconds the Japanese guy calls and the board runs out . Dan announced '10-high!' and the Japanese guy turns over !!!!! He called him with 6-high for a $15,500 pot, purely because he was irritated by this guy. Dan just smiled, didn't say a word and just continued owning the table while drinking Long Islands.