A Hand at No Limit Holdem part one

This first hand is a hand that was sent to me by one of my students in 2008. I actually began my Project Pokerquest in the spring of 2008 and in this, I attempted to transform novice poker players who play poker online or live into very successful online players and if possible, get them playing high stakes poker eventually. This is something that is now ongoing and anyone who is interested in joining Project Pokerquest and being mentored and bankrolled can contact me.

One of the players who came to me was actually quite an experienced player but he had a flaw in his game that simply needed correcting if he had any chance whatsoever of moving up.

The hand went like this, the game was a $2-$4 no limit hold’em six max game and it was folded around to our hero in the cut-off who open raised to $12 and it was folded around to the big blind who called. Our hero held the Jc-10s and the flop came down Jd-7s-3c and the big blind led out with a bet of $18 and our hero called the $18. Both these players had $400 stacks at the outset of the hand. The turn card was the 2h and the big blind led out again for $46 and our hero called again.

The river card was the 2c that made a final board of Jd-7s-3c-2h-2c and the big blind fired out again on the river and bet $130 and with top pair, our hero called the $130 bet. The cards were revealed and the big blind had 7d-7h for a flopped set and they had simply bet out all the way and been paid off. Our hero lost over half of his stack and was forced to top up his stack with a re-buy.

I then asked him why he had played the hand in this way and I have provided a broad version of his response here.

“I had seen this guy bluff at the pot several times and I had top pair and did not want to concede the pot. My hand is not that strong and I did not want to escalate the pot. I figured that if I was ahead then I could simply let them bluff their money off and I was controlling the pot size so that it did not get out of hand”.

I see this type of thinking all the time and in my mind, it is perhaps one of the biggest faults of intermediate poker players who have reached a certain level. But they are looking at the situation wrongly if they think that they are controlling the pot when they play like this. There are so many flaws with this type of thinking that it is difficult to know where to start.

The first thing to remember is that when you have adopted a “pot control” call down stance like this that you are in fact letting your opponent control the betting. They are firing out on every street and you are merely responding.

What this means is that your opponent can choose whether to bet out on the next round or not and you are far from guaranteed to make any more money off them even if you are ahead and stay ahead. Look out for part two of this article coming soon.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson
Author – “Winning Cash Game Poker”
Come and try the new and improved poker software on bwin.