Daily Hand Quiz

Why risk a straight? Take ‘er down.

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I’d bet 5.5K and hope to take the pot now.

I think it is unlikely Hero is up against 2-pr since AK may have 3-bet p/f (or raised on the flop), and Hero is holding JJ. Need to prevent multiple opponents from drawing-out. Checking is too risky for that reason.

Betting less than half-the-pot does not necessarily price-in hands that have paired, and are on a straight draw, e.g. KQ. However, why run the risk of having someone get lucky? I’d charge them more.

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Yeah, agree with previous. 7700 is a nice healthy pot. No need to get greedy here – get rid of the draws and take it down with a big bet.

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My take is a little different. Average opponent image screams one thing to me: Idiots. This is exactly the scenario that pros talk about when they say “dodge landmines” in tournaments. Just look preflop: Your TAG UTG raise 3x got zero respect and 3 people called, notice that none of them re-raised. Now you get a flop. You bet half the pot again, and all 3 people call once again. The turn bricks, and now here we are.

The problem with this board, is that we are only losing to 3 hands: AA, KK, QT. But all 3 of these are very likely from idiots in this scenario. We’re still very early in the tournament so not all of the idiots are gone. I could more than easily see one of these people just calling with AA or KK instead of r-r and taking it 4 handed to the flop. Then they hit their monster, and will passively take it all the way to the river thinking they are “slow play trapping” all 3 others, despite a straight already being on the board and now a flush draw. I could see one of them calling with a QT suited too.

We can’t be afraid of this, cuz we are only losing to 3 hands. However since it is early, I might exercise a little caution. So far we have shown nothing but strength, and all 3 of them have called the whole way. I have a feeling no matter what we bet here we’re going to get called again. We still have to charge them, but let’s not go nuts with it: we still have to dodge 3 hands that could very easily be drawing to straights, full houses, and possibly flushes. That is a lot of cards to dodge: Any A,K,Q,T or club and we could lose. The A or K will give us jacks full, but we’d still be behind any poorly played AA,KK,AK, or AJ. but half those don’t matter we were losing to begin with. A or K could potentially be a disaster card for us cuz there is no way we can lay down jacks full when faced with massive action against passive idiots. These are a ton of disaster cards for us, and we are going 4 handed still. If that river comes AKQT or club, I think we lose. Let’s use some caution here, you can’t get idiots married to their 2 pair to fold.

I say a quarter to half. Anything higher is wasted money IMO, if they aren’t folding to this, they aren’t folding to higher.

Don’t be surprised here if it comes to showdown and someone has called preflop with QT, or someone horribly played their KK the entire way. Like I said, this is the stuff pros have to dodge. This is what makes Hellmuth lose his hair at the WSOP. Where against a table of competent players you’d be ahead all day long here, but against a table of morons truly anything is possible with dead money players, so you need to be very careful in this situation. Do you really want to stack off to these dopes? Play it cautious, the pot is already high enough so you will get a nice pay day for your win and their poorly played hands, BUT there’s way too many possible danger cards, with 3 hands still against you that aren’t going away any time soon.

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samo Reply:
June 29th, 2010 at 6:14 pm

I have to disagree general. I believe the odds to flop set-over-set are ~ 119-1. Thus, the odds are in our favor that we are not up against AA or KK. If one of the villains has Q10, then I say what a lucky flop. Still, we have 10 outs on the river.

I have not been playing for very long. However, I have learned that the weaker the player, the bigger the mistakes. Let’s force that big mistake by betting larger in this spot. If they are that weak, they’ll call 2/3 just as easily as 1/3 pot. Good luck.

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