Hugo Martin poker column: Not Too Grand

Hugo Martin is a columnist for Black Belt Poker - here he describes a couple of recent hands at The Vic, the centre of London's live poker scene.

So I watched quite an interesting hand in the $2/5 No Limit Hold’em game at the Vic the other night. A young guy, let’s call him ‘The Kid’, had joined the table and made his presence felt by raising it up pretty much every hand. That’s not to say that he was some sort of crazy lagtard, though; this kid clearly knew what he was doing.

Anyway, Fred, in early to mid position makes it £25 to go and now the Kid, on the button, three-bets to £130. Everybody else gets out of the way and Fred calls. Effective stacks are about £2,500, by the way.

Flop comes down 3-7-5. Now I must admit that I can’t remember if there was a flush draw there or not, which I know tends to be relevant, so let’s just assume for the moment that this flop is rainbow. Fred checks and so does the Kid.

The turn card is a 4. Fred now bets £300. The Kid pauses for thought and calls. The river card is another 4. Fred now gives what seems to be a barely imperceptible shrug of his shoulders and then throws two goolies into the pot, setting the Kid all in. Wow, that’s a two-grand bet into a pot of about £850.

Isuldur1 has recently made these kinds of overbets fashionable, but anyone who has played down the Vic will tell you that Freddy Carle has been doing this kind of thing for years. Anyway, the Kid, who was getting a massage at the time, sat bolt upright and clearly did not look too happy about the situation. After a long, long dwell up, he made sure he paid the masseuse what he owed her and with a fuck-this-for-a-game-of-soldiers attitude, he banged his chips down in the middle for a call.

Fred muttered, “Yeah, you got me,” or words to that effect, and the Kid turned over pocket Jacks to take down a nice pot. Now that I think about it, when Fred saw the Kid weigh in with the massage therapist, he must have felt sick.

Almost immediately, another guy at the table decided to offer his razor-sharp analysis, “It had to be a bluff ‘cos the bet was so big. If he had a house, he’d want a straight to call him, and if he had the straight, he’d be worried about the house, innit?”

Oh really? It’s that simple, eh? (Actually, it was quite ironic that this guy should give us his take on the hand considering he was doing his brains mostly through making tons of crying calls on the river and getting shown stuff like ace high or third pair and then mucking and mumbling, “I knew he had that!” but that’s a whole ‘nuther story.)

So, is Fred’s bet only a bluff (this guy didn’t even seem to go for the trendy option of saying that Fred had a polarised range)? Let’s have a look. Maybe I’m wrong, but I think Fred could easily be betting a 6 the way he played it. For a start, Fred loves to get maximum value out of his strong hands and any 6, making a straight to the 7, is easily in his range (yes, even weird ones like T-6, J-6 or Q-6 suited).

Also, don’t forget that the Kid reraised him preflop. which narrows the Kid’s range of hands. Although the Kid had been raising preflop a lot, this was only the second time he had three-bet and you can bet Fred was very aware of that. Maybe the Kid could’ve had 7-7, but that’s a stretch, so I think Fred wasn’t in the least bit worried about running into a full house. If anybody has a full house in this spot, surely Fred is the more likely candidate?

A more likely runner than a full house would be trip fours, actually. Let’s say Fred opened with A-4 suited. Stacks were deep, so, even though he knows there is a chance he is dominated when he’s reraised, I’m pretty sure he would see a flop because of his implied odds. Checking the flop to the three-bettor means nothing as that is what happens most of the time in these scenarios. Now, when the 4 hits the turn, Fred could easily interpret the Kid’s check on the flop as A-Q or A-K, so now he thinks there’s a good chance he has the best hand, so why not bet it? Once the river is another 4, a huge overbet that looks like he’s trying to buy the pot would be the perfect play if that 4 made him trips, especially if the flop had a flush draw (which, as I say, I can’t remember, which maybe makes this whole post mortem a rather pointless exercise), so now you’re more likely to get a hero call from a good player with large pairs, maybe even A-K.

Also, like I said, this Kid wasn’t a bad player, so he would’ve known that Fred was most likely putting him on big pairs and A-J suited or better, so now he knows that, with that board, Fred can really put a lot of pressure on him, and what better spot than to make one of those huge bets that look like a bluff, but are in fact strong hands? I reckon Fred would’ve even made the huge overbet with A-A and K-K. As Daniel Negreanu would say, “It’s one of those he knows that I know that he knows kind of deals.” Except that this really is one of those situations unlike one of those times that DN trots out that cliché to justify making an iffy call.

The more I think about it, the more it feels like the Kid made a bad call. I mean, what the hell is he beating with J-J? The answer is 8-8, 9-9, T-T, counterfeited two-pair hands and pure bluffs. Would Fred really play 8-8, 9-9 and T-T like that? I don’t think so, but I guess there’s a very small chance. And I don’t think Fred is the type of player to turn good hands into bluffs, so we can discount hands like 7-5, 7-3 and 5-3 that have been shafted by the runner-runner fours.

So, what I’m saying is that I think Fred’s range has a lot of decent hands mixed in with pure bluffs, as opposed to only just monsters or air. Of course, I could be giving Fred too much credit here and the Kid has a different experience and read on Fred than me, so fair play to him, he did make the right call at that particular moment.

Under Pressure

A few days later, I was involved in a coup that sort of mirrored the one above, albeit for about a tenth of the money. Once again, it was the £2/5 game at the Vic, but I only had about £450 in front of me. Normally, I sit deeper than that, but I had just lost two big pots with K-K and A-K respectively and was just wondering whether I wanted to pull up again and really get involved. It was 3.10am, so I thought I’d just play to the next collection on the half hour and go home, resigned to the fact that it was ‘one of those nights’.

Now, some strange old foreign guy that I’d never seen before sat down with about £300. He posted his big blind and I made it £20 to go with T-T under the gun. Eric, a strong player on the button, called, as did the old foreign guy.

The flop came down 4-5-7 rainbow and the old geezer checked. That’s not too bad of a flop for my hand, so I bet £45. Eric folds and the old fella calls. The turn is a 6 and now the old boy bets £100. Great, immediate service for you on the turn I thought. But, surely with his stack, all those sort of combo draw hands would’ve just stuck it all in on the flop? Hands like 6-5, 7-6, 6-4, 6-6, 8-7, et cetera.

If he has got a straight on that board, wouldn’t he bet smaller to ensure a call? There’s no way this random old donk has the sophistication to make plays like Freddy Carle would, right? By the way, did I mention that this rum cove was sporting a rather unconvincing syrup? Not too relevant, I agree, but an extra detail that paints a more complete picture I think.

Normally, I wouldn’t have sweated such a small coup, but seeing as my own paltry stack stood me two and a half grand, I was feeling the pressure to do the right thing. Of course, the old boy had no clue that I was doing my pieces as he had only just sat down, so he must be making his play based on the strength of his cards, rather than any perceived psychological pain on my part.

Man, I hate these four liner to a straight type boards; you always feel like such a cunt when you call with some marginal piece of cheese and they turn over the straight. I eyed up my opponent’s remaining chips - £105.

“It’s only a hundred,” he muttered in a thick eastern European accent.

Wow, this old motherfucker is trying to hustle me now? I decided it felt like he was trying to appear strong, so I set him all in. Unfortunately, he called fairly quickly, so I pretty much expected to be owned by this oddball senior citizen.

The river paired the 5 and I showed my hand whilst verbally declaring, “Two pair, tens and fives.”

The old boy seemed very reluctant to turn his cards over. Jeez, is he slow-rolling me? He inspected the board and my hand and, after what seemed like an eternity, mucked. Phew, that was a close one.

I resisted the urge to ask to see his hand just in case he had misread it and in fact had the winner, which seemed like a strong possibility in this scenario. OK, so it wasn’t really too much like the big hand I described at the beginning, but it’s funny how when you’re doing your bollocks, a routine decision takes on life or death proportions.