Take A Seat at The World Poker Tour

“Take a seat at the World Poker Tour” is a column that takes you inside the world of high stakes poker and places you into one of the seats at a WPT tournament. You will be asked to react to the play of your opponents during a hand and you will be awarded points based on your answers. Try to cover the answers with a sheet of paper or a book. At the end of the quiz there will be a rating so you can assess how well you did (or didn’t) and if you fancy your chances of possibly becoming the next Phil Ivey.

You are playing on the first day of a big WPT event where 1st place pays $1.5 million dollars and your starting stack was $10,000. The blinds have increased to $100-$200 and you have increased your stack to $14,500 but that is still behind the table leader who has $21,000. The table breaks down as follows.

Seat 1: Ted Forest (Top pro) $17,000
Seat 2: Online Qualifier $21,000
Seat 3: Online Qualifier $8,200
Seat 4: Empty
Seat 5: Unknown $6,000
Seat 6: You $14,500 (Button)
Seat 7: Allen Cunningham (Top pro) $7,500 (Small Blind)
Seat 8: Joe Cassidy (Top pro) $11,000 (Big Blind)
Seat 9: Online Qualifier $4,800

You are seated on the button with two top professional players to your immediate left. You peek at your cards and you see the As-Ad. The first two players to speak after the blinds both elect to fold their respective hands. The inexperienced but very solid online qualifier in seat 2 raises to $800 and the other online qualifier in seat 3 calls the $800. During the course of the play so far today, these two qualifiers have been playing tight solid poker and have not been taking any chances. It is folded around to you on the button and your in the hot seat now, what is your play?

Answer:

 You must re-raise here as two aces can be easily overtaken especially in a multi-way pot. You cannot afford to let the two top pro’s to your left in cheaply because they are likely to outplay you from the flop onwards. Raising to $1600 is a limit hold’em raise and is abysmal in no-limit. Re-raising all in is OK but your opponents are likely to fold and you are then left with only a very small pot. Many players raise all-in in these situations because they either cannot stand the tension or do not want to play the hand from the flop onwards. Going all-in is showing your strength too soon and you are unlikely to run into a hand that is strong enough to call you. Raising an amount over $3000 although not as bad, may have the same effect but that is a better option than going all in. Raising to about $3000 shows the ability to be able to play big tournament poker and this means not pushing the panic button prematurely. If your analysis went along these lines then award yourself 5 bonus points.

It is folded around to the two online qualifiers who both call the raise. There are three players in the pot and the pot stands at $9300. The respective stack sizes are as follows,

Seat 2: $18,000
Seat 3: $ 5,200
You: $11,500

The flop comes Qs-Qd-3c and both of the online qualifiers check, over to you.

Answer:

 I would check this down here for several reasons. Firstly there are no draws out there so giving a free card is not that dangerous unless they hold something like a pocket pair but they have been playing so solidly that medium to small pocket pairs are unlikely from that position unless they have maybe J-J,10-10 or 9-9. The pot is raised so the raiser and the caller figure to have a hand that may have hit this flop specifically A-Q or K-Q. They are straight forward tight solid players so they are unlikely to be flying around with junk before the flop. Inexperienced players who play solidly tend to slow play their monsters and that just could be what is happening here.

Going all in against a pre-flop raiser and a caller on a flop like this is asking for trouble especially when one of the players has you covered. If you bet half the pot and get called, then you still do not know where you are because someone could be calling with a pocket pair suspecting that you have A-K. What if player 2 comes over the top and goes all in with a check-raise, are you good enough to read him? If you bet this flop, they will not believe that you have trip queens and one of them could put a play on you with a hand like 9-9. Checking also possibly installs into their minds that you could be possibly sandbagging yourself. The turn card brought the 4c, making the board Qs-Qd-3c-4c. The player in seat 2 who is first to speak bets $2500 and the player in seat three 3 folds immediately, what is your play?

Answer:

Why do you want to re-raise all in? If your opponent is bluffing then he will simply fold to your raise so he cannot make anymore mistakes from that point onwards. But he may have a queen and this player has you covered in chips so you could be easily walking out of the door in thirty seconds time. Raising is not correct here at all because if he is in fact bluffing then why not just let him bluff his money off. There is a very good chance that this player could be bluffing here. He has seen you re-raise before the flop and then check the flop.

He knows that your flop check was either out of caution or that you are slow playing a monster. A-K is a very common re-raising hand and that hand has missed this flop. A bet of $2500 could be a probe, the next player only has $5200 so they will be reticent to get involved without a big hand in this situation and the player in seat 2 knows this. This leaves just you, who he could possibly intimidate with his larger stack and who may not have anything to do with that board and you have after all checked this flop. But if he is in fact slow-playing trip queens then calling prevents you from possibly getting busted.

The river card was the holy grail, it was the Ah making a final board of Qs-Qd-3c-4c-Ah. This card gives you the top full house which can only be beaten by quad queens. Your opponent checks on the river and the relative stack sizes are as follows.

Seat 2: $15,500
You: $ 9,000

Over to you now tiger, there is $14,300 in the pot so far.

Answer:

Anybody who checks because they fear four queens has obviously been drinking very heavily and anyone who folds is probably a lunatic. If you fear the absolute nuts every time that you are involved in a pot then you simply cannot win at poker, period. The only issue here is how much to extract from you opponent.

Obviously it all depends on what type of hand they hold. Going all in will get their entire stack if they have a queen and the ace falling could have given them the belief that you may bet this board if you have A-K. I still think that going all in is not the best play as it depends on your opponent having a queen for you to get anymore money out of them. Betting about 4000 makes it look like you may be trying to steal the pot and it also gives your opponent the opportunity to come over the top of you if they do have a queen. For the record, your opponent check raised you all in and you of course called with your opponent showing K-Q suited.