Hand of the day 06/05/09
Posted Tuesday, June 09, 2009 by bparis
I had quite an interesting first week in Vegas. After going 0 for 3 in my first three WSOP events (all NL holdem), I decided to hop over to Caesar’s to play a $500 side tournament. Despite drinking all day long, I managed to finish in 13th or so (only final table paid), and my friend was bagging chips to come back for the final table the next day. I was planning on driving back Friday morning, but since we now had to stay anyway, I figured I might as well play the $2500 NL WSOP event that day. I overcame my pounding headache to go register about 45 minutes into the tournament, only to discover that I was $1000 short of the buyin, as I had been thinking it was a $1500 event. Naturally, I did what any online pro would do - I asked the first person I saw if I could borrow $1000. Luckily, this person happened to be Mark “Markysals” Salinaro, who had just won over $190,000 getting 4th in the $1500 NL event (congrats Mark!). Me and Markysals have played tens of thousands of hands together online, so he had no qualms about doing me a favor and saving me a trip to the bank. Many thanks to Mark for being such a chill guy.
I headed into the tournament room and sat down at just about the sickest table ever. The table included online pros Mohsin “chicagocards” Sariana and Justin “WPTHero” Rollo, as well as live pros David “Devilfish” Ulliot and Humberto “chaaaaaaark” Brenes. I started with 7500 chips, and the blinds were quickly up to 50/100 as I had arrived near the end of the first blind level. The table was fun, gathering a lot of attention for the well-known players present. The following hand came up, and it was the first hand I had played of the day.
Seat 1 (small blind): Humberto Brenes
Seat 2 (big blind): Unknown
Seat 4: Mohsin Sariana
Seat 8: Justin Rollo
Seat 9: David Ulliott
Seat 10 (button): Bryan Paris
all players have approx. 7500
Bryan Paris dealt [6c 9c]
Mohsin Sariana calls 100
Justin Rollo calls 100
David Ulliott calls 100
I’m on the button with a suited two-gapper. We’re 75 big blinds deep, so position is a big factor, and I can use whatever live reads I can pick up to potentially bluff someone off the hand later if I flop a draw. For an investment of slightly over 1% of my stack, I’m willing to take a flop here.
Bryan Paris calls
Humberto Brenes calls
big blind checks
FLOP [Kc 6d 2c]
Humberto Brenes checks
big blind checks
Mohsin Sariana checks
Justin Rollo checks
David Ulliott checks
This is a great flop for us, as we now have middle pair and a four flush, an excellent drawing hand. We’ve got 14 outs against top pair and 9 outs against a set or two pair. Nobody has shown any interest in the hand, so we might as well bet and see what’s going on.
Bryan Paris bets 450
Humberto Brenes raises to 1,000
everyone folds back to button
Great, so Humberto has check-raised us, showing that he likely has at least top pair, possibly even better. With all of our outs, we’re not folding. We still have about 7,000 behind to work with, and we’ve got position, so 3 betting him here seems imprudent, as it would fold out most of the top pair hands that we have 14 outs against and only get our money in against the sets and two pair hands we have 9 outs against. On top of that, we have a deceptive hand in position. Calling the raise and working forward from the turn seems to be the most prudent course of action.
Bryan Paris calls 550
TURN [3c]
Humberto Brenes checks
There’s our money card - the flush has come in, on an otherwise non-threatening low card. Humberto check-raised the flop, and then checked, so it’s not likely that he has a higher flush unless he’s taking some really weird tricky line. We can figure that I’m ahead, so what’s the best way to extract value? Well, since he check-raised the flop, he knows that I know he’s probably strong. Now he’s checking the turn on a flush card, indicating that he didn’t like the turn. If I bet here, my line is perfectly consistent with a flush draw, and he will be wary about paying me off. However, if I check, I can definitely get a bet in on the river, and maybe he’ll even lead into me. The downside to checking is that it gives him a free card to make a higher flush or a full house if he has a set or two pair, but in this spot, I was willing to take that risk.
Bryan Paris checks
RIVER [8d]
Humberto Brenes bets 1,000
Well, well… our plan has worked perfectly. We’ve represented that we don’t have a flush, and now he’s making a smallish value bet, trying to see if his hand that was strong on the flop is still good. We definitely need to raise to extract more value from his two pair and set hands, but how much? If we make it too much, like all-in, we eliminate all his hands except for higher flushes, which definitely isn’t good. On the other hand, we want to make sure we get as much value as possible out of him. A balanced amount seems best, so I chose 3,200.
Bryan Paris raises to 3,200
Humberto Brenes calls 2,200
Bryan Paris shows [6c 9c], a flush, nine high
Humberto Brenes mucks
Waiting a street here to extract value enabled us to win lots of extra chips on this hand. While it opened us up to the risks inherent in giving a free card, this danger was more than outweighed by the extra value that deception gave us. A little bit of creativity and a lot of luck enabled us to win a big pot on a marginal hand pre-flop, showing the power of being in position with drawing hands.
I went on to lose this tournament in excruciating fashion, but several more interesting hands arose before then which I’ll be covering over the next couple of days.
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