I played the GUKPT Walsall recently and found myself in a couple interesting spots that I thought I’d share with you.
The first hand I want to mention is really quite a brief one, but it’s very relevant when you think about how most people play this sort of hand, especially at lower stakes.
Five to the flop
It’s fairly early in the tournament with the blinds at 75/150. I open 9-9 UTG and get four callers, and all but one have position on me. The flop comes down 2h-9d-Jh and the BB checks to me. I bet two-thirds of the pot and everyone folds, but the result isn’t important to me. You see a lot of less experienced players like checking the flop in spots like this, as they want to let other people have a stab at the pot and not scare everyone off. However, on such a wet board it’s a good idea to bet and try to thin the field. Hopefully you’ll get raised by a Jack or a draw of some sort. The last thing you want is for everyone to check and the Th to peel on the turn, as you would be frozen and unable to get all your chips in confidently.
This sort of thinking is even more relevant in lower stakes games online. In these games there are so many fishy players who will call one street with a gutshot or Ace-high, or even a low pair, that if you hit any flop particularly hard in a multi-way pot it is certainly the best idea to bet out and try to maximise your return. Betting big relative to the pot is also a good idea, because the sort of players I’ve mentioned won’t pay too much attention to bet-sizing, and could well call you on the flop and turn, and then fold the river. Checking the flop loses you lots of value from these bad players.
History lesson
The second spot is a hand I played against Julian Thew. I’d like to mention that we’ve got a lot of history from playing three or four sessions together live in the last few months. He knows I’m aggressive, especially when I have the betting lead in a hand, and I know he knows this and that he’s capable of playing back at me in good spots.
I have around 28k in chips and he has around 21k and I open in mid position with K-J offsuit at 100/200/a25 to 525. The cutoff calls, as does Julian in the small blind. The flop comes K-Q-4 and he checks to me. I lead 1,125 into 2,000, the cutoff folds and Julian check-raises to 2,850. In my opinion I have two options here: to fold or to flat-call. I can never raise for value, as I’m never getting called by a worse hand.
I like a flat-call in this spot as I have top pair and I’m in position. Under most circumstances it’s definitely okay to peel one off here against a good player, then assess again on later streets. Folding against someone like Julian is weak and K-Q-x is a great flop for him to represent, in that a check-raise is going to succeed a lot of the time.
The turn is a brick, the 5c, which brings no flush draw. Julian bets 4,450 into around 7,500, which isn’t an unusual bet size by any means and I still have a decent hand. I also know that a player like Julian will bet the turn a high percentage of the time if he check-raises that kind of flop with J-T or Q-x or maybe total air.
I think Julian’s ‘nuts’ range is exactly K-Q and 4-4. I don’t expect him to have A-K very often at all, or Q-Q/K-K, so he pretty much has those two hands or I win. I think he has them a fair amount of the time when check-raising the flop and betting the turn, but I also think he has plenty of semi-bluffs and bluffs in his range here that make a fold or a call on the turn okay – it’s a spot where gut feeling comes into play.
In any case I decided to flat the turn and an eight came on the river. We checked it down and he showed A-K, which I was very surprised about as I expected him to three-bet me preflop with this hand rather than take it three-handed, but maybe he just wanted pot control and didn’t want to play the hand out of position against an aggressive player. It’s a line I can see the logic in.
On the whole I’m okay with the way I played this second hand in particular, however if I’d been playing an unknown or a bad player I might well have folded the flop or turn, depending on the history we had together.
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