Give us your opinion in the comments section below for your chance at winning a six-month Card Player magazine digital subscription.
Ask any group of poker players how you played your hand and they’ll come up with dozens of different opinions. That’s just the nature of the game.
Each week, Card Player will select a hand from the high-stakes, big buy-in poker world, break it down and show that there’s more than one way to get the job done.
The Scenario
You are seated at an eight-handed final table with the chip lead. With the blinds at 40,000-80,000 with a 10,000 ante and a stack of 6,040,000, you are more than comfortable with over 75 big blinds.
You are dealt A
J
and min-raise from under the gun to 160,000. The action folds all the way around to the big blind, a tight aggressive player in the middle of the pack with 2,370,000 or a little over 29 big blinds.
He calls and the flop comes down A
7 2. Both of you check and the turn is the Q. Your opponent now leads at the pot for 300,000 and you make the call.
The river is the 3, putting four to the flush on board and your opponent opts to be the same amount, 300,000, leaving himself with 1,600,000 behind. You now have 5,580,000 remaining in your stack.
The Questions
Do you call, fold or raise? If calling, how often to do you expect to have the best hand? What types of hands would your opponent bet in this situation that are worse than yours? If folding, what types of hands is your opponent holding that beats you? If raising, are you doing so as a bluff, or for value? What does your opponent’s river bet sizing say about his hand? If you could play the hand again, what would you do differently?
What Actually Happened
After thinking it over for a bit at the EPT Sam Remo main event, Jason Lavallee eventually came up with a call, showing down his top pair with a jack kicker.
His oppponent, Micah Raskin, could only show down the Q
10 for second pair. Lavallee took the pot and increased his chip lead.
Raskin was able to rebound and survive long enough to finish in sixth place, good for €132,000. Lavallee made it all the way to heads-up play before busting, earning €538,089 for his runner-up finish.
The eventual winner was Ludovic Lacay, who banked €744,910 and his first EPT title.
What would you have done and why? Let us know in the comments section below and try not to be results oriented. The best answer will receive a six-month Card Player magazine digital subscription.
