This hand comes from the first level of PKR Live III, when I decided to make a move and almost got myself into a lot of trouble. I hadn’t been particularly active so far in the tournament, and because of that I thought it was a perfect opportunity to squeeze from the blinds with As-6s when geoffbrent raised to 300 and was called by zanzibax. I made it 975 to go, as I figured geoffbrent wouldn’t slow-play a monster with a player still to act after him and thus I would find out pretty quickly what sort of hand he had. As for zanzibax, he wouldn’t be flat-calling a raise early on with a monster often enough to make it worth worrying about.
geoffbrent folded and zanzibax called my three-bet, which was a little puzzling as you would expect him to have the weaker of the two players’ holdings and be more likely to fold.
Flop: Ac-3c-5d
discomonkey bets – 1,250
zanzibax calls – 1,250
The flop seemed okay for my hand at first glance, but I could easily have been dominated. In this spot I have to bet to see how he responds, so I bet 1,250 into around 2,000 and he flat-called, which is the response I least wanted to see given that I was out of position with a weak top pair. If he was ahead I was in big trouble and if he was floating me (which is unlikely given the stage of the MTT and the action preflop) or had a flush draw I could still be pushed off my hand if the wrong cards came out.
Turn: Ac-3c-5d-Ad
discomonkey checks
zanzibax checks
The turn was the Ace of diamonds which brought a second flush draw, but that didn’t concern me as much as whether he had one of the two remaining Aces in the deck. I checked to try to gauge his hand from his reaction, as I expected that he’d check an Ace here almost 100% of the time, bet a lot of flush draws and probably be split between checking and betting with underpairs 9-9 through J-J. He tanked for around 20 seconds and then checked, which instantly said to me he had a bigger Ace, as he also smiled just enough to tell me he had a hand. At this point I was very suspicious and probably giving up on the hand, and definitively checking without any improvement on the river.
River: Ac-3c-5d-Ad-6s
discomonkey all-in – 8,000
zanzibax calls
The river was an offsuit Six, giving me the full house. Given my read that he had a big hand prior to the river, my only move here is to move all-in. My check on the turn sent the message that I’d given up on the hand, so my shove on the river could look like a desperate attempt to win the 4k+ pot. I did just that and moved in for around 8,000 which is a fairly large overbet. I was insta-called by A-K and scooped the 20,000 pot.
Why do I think I played the hand well?
My preflop three-bet squeeze to take down 700 chips of dead money is fairly standard in the modern game of poker. However, a hand like A-6 suited is the type of hand you should be careful building the pot with, as you can get into spots where you can hit your Ace and still be behind or get put under pressure and end up folding the best hand. When making moves with these types of hands I would suggest picking on players you can read well or ones who won’t get creative on scary boards.
On the flop, I think leading with my Ace is fine. I want to know at this point whether I am ahead or not and if I get called I probably have to shut down. On the turn I used a live read to gather that I was likely to be behind. Betting is an option in this spot, as many players will not give credit for an Ace when there are two of them out there, but with the sort of marginal Ace I have it’s best to exert pot control here and analyse the opponent knowing the way he will play certain types of hands on this kind of board. Given the action I think my check is optimal.
Come the river I get maximum value from all hands that call me and generally those hands that call are going to pay any price as they are strong hands, which is why I shoved all-in. He’ll call with A-K/A-Q/3-3/5-5/6-6 and these are pretty much the only hands that will call me. Given my read of zanzibax being strong on the turn, the only move for me is to shove all-in for value.
Karl 'discomonkey' Fenton is a member of Team PKR Pro. To find out more about him and to read more articles written by Karl, please click here