I picked up a good book to re-read, "Your Worst Poker Enemy" by Allan N. Schoonmaker, out of my library and I was just thinking about this play that occurred a time ago between two people that I know. Charlie, who is currently living in Vegas and deals at Ceasers. Wayne H. a well known high limit grinder, want to talk about a guy who I have never seen get felted, this is the guy. Charlie a time ago was grinding out and playing in a lot of games,5-5 NLH, 5-10 NLH, 10-25 Pot limit Omaha. Wayne H. has been around for a long time, older gentleman who wears a ball cap 95% of the time. He has played just about anywhere in the United states and is usually walking around at a large tournament looking for a good cash game to sit in. Both of these guys know their way around a poker table.
So, I am sitting in a 5-5 NLH game next to Charlie, he is in the two seat, I am in the three seat and Wayne is in the ten seat, right next to the dealer...he likes that seat, go figure. I am under the gun and fold. Two limpers to Wayne, on the button, who pops it to about $20. Now Wayne has not been involved in any hands for about an hour, since he had sat down. Charlie knows Wayne, as would any regular at Harrahs. Small blind folds, Charlie, big blind, contemplates for a few seconds and calls in a theatrical, splash my chips kinda way. One of the original limpers calls also. SIDE NOTE: Could the limper have a strong hand to call a tight player and a hesitating BB flat call? Odds? Hand strength? Just wondering...nothing to do with the rest of this...very random huh?
The flop...babies, 2c5h7d, rainbow at that. Charlie checks, limper checks, Wayne...checks! Turn card is a 10s, Charlie bets 3/4 of the pot, limper folds and Wayne pops it another $100. Charlie goes into the think tank, he's making hand movements and talking to himself and shaking his head and nodding his head and shaking his head and you know what I mean...sorta Gus Hansen like. SIDE NOTE: I have this read on Wayne, I knew at this moment that he was semi-bluffing...also if he did have the best he would not have put in the raise here he calls and makes his play on the river, yet I was sort of right and I was sort of wrong...lets read and you will see.
Charlie, reluctantly, calls! So now I am sitting there going what the hell, A10 Charlie(I was thinking of a lot of hands but will not list them here)? I can see that Charlie is hurting because he does not know where he is with Wayne and he is trying very hard to put him on a range of hands here but can not figure out why he raised other than to get him off his hand, thus the reluctant call...hmmm?
The river is a 3c, Charlie, checks, Wayne counts out his chips, now at this time at Harrahs you could buy in for whatever you wanted, Wayne looks at Charlie's stack of $1200 and casually...CASUALLY tosses in two pink chips...$500 a piece! Charlie starts to pull his hair out! Almost, literally. So we have over $200 in the pot, an F'ed up board and an over sorry super over bet of $1000...WHY are you SQUIRMING Charlie! He literally asks for time stands up and is going through what can beat him and ruling them out...Wayne could have played anything from that position...wait until I tell yah what he played...GOSH!
Somebody, after five long minutes, asks if they can call clock...I step in and say "NO! let him think it out, that's a lot of money." Usually when I say no people tend to listen, wonder why?
Finally Charlie says..."I've seen you make this play with absolutely nothing and they always laid it down to you...I call!"
Wayne sticks his head out and non-chalantly says, "Huh, you call?" Looks back at his cards and looks back at Charlie. Charlie, who is very eager now, flips his cards over...two black Kings!
"I know that, Charlie." Wayne said. "But you let me get there, this time."
Wayne tables the A4spades!
Charlie yells something goes over and shakes Wayne's hand and picks up the rest of his chips, says bye to me and leaves with a red ass.
I talked to Charlie later and asked him why he did not raise back into Wayne on the turn, he said that he wanted Wayne to make that play on the river but it was bigger than he thought and he HOPED it was a bluff.
Egads, and that was an actual hand that happened a while ago but these two were level threeing it the whole time.
Any questions?
Stay nice as rice and mello as jello!
2 comments:
So the first SIDE NOTE caught my interest - the dude who limp/calls PF in between the BB and the button. I think his calling range is probably pretty wide. I don't think he needs a big hand to call with. Pretty simply, the PF action isn't really indicative of serious strength, right? He's seen a strong player raise the button in the presence of apparent weakness--the button could be raising a wide range of hands. The BB may realize this as well, and thus likely calls with a wider range than normal. And also, b/c the BB hasn't played a hand in an hour, he is now at liberty to open up his range and speculate b/c he has established a tight image. As long as we know the BB is a good, thinking player--and not just an airtight, nuts-only rock--then we can't ONLY put him on a monster when he calls here OOP. That has to be a consideration, of course, but not the only one.
So....couple the probable wide range of his opponents' hands with the pot odds and it seems to favor a call from the limper. Especially with a small/mid pair or hands that flop well (98, T9, JT type hands). And his position post-flop is the key.
If he doesn't hit the flop really hard, just go away. If he hits it hard, he's in a great spot to slowplay for value b/c he's trapped between 2 players who could get into a raising/outplaying war on the flop or turn. For example, think about him having 55 here; he has plenty of implied odds to limp/call PF. He has a good chance of winning a big pot off of one or both of his opponents if he drills the flop (and having the 2 opponents in the hand improves his implied odds for him to set-mine, for example).
Very good. In that position at times, I do like to limp with a small pair to try to hit a big hand...implied odds...so key in that situation and probably why he called, he had the odds though he was at an in-between position. I liked the way you broke this down. For me though, I knew all the players that were involved, so I had a biased view of saying that the guy should have folded. As a matter of fact the guy who limped in between had pocked 4's and told me after the hand.
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