Solution to "Guess that Hand! 8/9/06"

Welcome back everyone, hope you all are having a wonderful Friday. I have decided to post the solution to the previous blog a little earlier than planned. I got so much feedback on the post from my favorite poker community over at www.poker-strategy.org that I wouldn't want to make them wait until Sunday to get the solution.

Another note about "Guess that Hand!" is that I am opening an invitation to any and all to send in suggestions for "Guess that Hand!" If you have any good hand examples or just some poker concepts that can be taught well through a hand example, please e-mail me at "Tireur at Gmail dot com".

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Props go to Gaspar98 who actually played a hand just like this very simmilarly and "sorta" called the hand.

The hand held by our opponent was actually A-A. The player had developed a table image of being a Maniac who will be ultra aggressive with a very wide range of hands. This poker strategy keeps his opponents from being able to make good reads on him. More importantly it frustrates players and begins to make them play more recklessly than they should, increasing opponents mistakes.

This shows a thought fallacy that occurs far too often for the beginner players. They believe that a maniac will never wake up to A-A, and it gives the LAG a very huge advantage over other players. They can not only push people off of marginal hands with their ultra aggressive play(stealing pots in the process), but when they wake up to a huge hand, their is a much better chance of being paid off by the showdown.

In this particular example it could have easily of been a set that this guy was holding as well. The lesson is that you need to play back at the LAGs, and make them respond to you, not the other way around. This will allow you to garner more information from your opponent and possibly avoid a monster vs. monster pot situation where you will lose your entire stack.

Also in this example, you would more than likely have lost your whole stack, no matter the outcome of the board, except maybe if an ace hits the flop. It was more or less a way to illustrate that you must give everyone at the table, no matter how terrible or how good they may be, respect for the fact that they can pick up a premium hand.

Another beginner pitfall illustrated here is that too often a big hand is played slow and a small hand is played fast. Big hands should always be played fast except in the rare cases of trapping a monster. Small hands should almost always be folded or checked unless you think you can steal the pot with a bet.

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This will bring me to my next lesson dealing with playing hands at different speeds. As I said before, big hands should be played fast 90% of the time, and small hands should be played slow 90% of the time. When should this change? Here are a couple examples.

You have A-6 suited in the big blind. It's limped into by one player in middle position and you check. You hit your nut flush on the flop. You have to act first, betting into such a scary flop tells that player you either have the flush or you are not scared of that flush draw. This show of strength will often make any hand fold, however, if a call is made on a bet you know that you are facing a semi-decent hand who may be drawing to a full house.

If you check instead, this may induce a bluff. The middle position player may decide that you don't have the flush and will try and represent the flush himself. Now you can either check-raise him and probably take down a decent sized pot, or you can just "smooth call." Holding the absolute nuts and maybe in a few *second to the nuts* hands should you ever "slowplay" them like this, because you may be giving your opponent a free look at the turn and river which can spell disaster for your hand.

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Picking your spots to bluff are a little more difficult. You must go through a mental checklist before deciding to bluff a certain hand.

1. Do I think the opponent has anything? (Is he weak, did the flop scare him or help him?)
2. Is my opponent(s) a calling station? (Does he call with any hand, even marginal hands?)
3. Given my current betting patterns, can I represent a big hand, or atleast a hand that can beat my opponents?(Does bluffing here make no sense to my opponent which will alert him to a bluff?)

If you answer no to 1 and 2 and yes to 3, you can safely bet here. Number 2 is the most important for a beginner to understand before trying to bluff, never try and bluff a calling station, most of the time it won't work. Number 1 is quite important, but if you can represent a hand that you think beats his hand, then bluffing may very well win you the hand. And if your betting patterns are erratic and confusing, it may be easy for another player to put you on your bluff and call you down.

Here is a good method for learning to bluff successfully once you learn to figure out whether or not your opponent can be bluffed. Think of a hand that you can *realisticaly* hold (nothing crazy like quads or something) that you think has your opponent beat. Now just play the hand as though you had such a hand and were betting it quite aggressively.

That is all for today, I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. Please continue to leave your wonderful commentary, and I will be posting another entry hopefully next week sometime.

-Tireur