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
There are nine players left in a tournament that started with 419. Everyone left is in the money and guaranteed $29,923 from the initial $5,000 investment. With a stack of 2,495,000 and blinds of 15,000-30,000 with a 5,000 ante, you are in second place and have 83 big blinds to work with. There is one shorter stack with just 16 big blinds remaining.
An active player who has 1,360,000 and is virtually tied for third place with three other players raises from the cutoff to 70,000. The action folds to you in the big blind, where you look down at Q
7. You defend and then check a flop of 1065
.
The cutoff continues with a bet of 105,000 and you decide to call. The turn is the 7, giving you a pair to go with your flush draw. You check and your opponent bets 175,000. You call and the river is the Q
, giving you two pair.
You check and your opponent bets 250,000. He has 755,000 remaining in his stack behind the bet and the pot size is now 1,010,000.
The Questions
Do you call, raise or fold? What would be your reasoning for just calling with your hand? If raising, how much? What kinds of hands to do you expect to call a raise that you can beat? What hands in your opponent’s range have you beat? In hindsight, do you wish you would have check raised on either the flop or turn? What about leading out on the river?
What Actually Happened
At the 2015 CAD$5,000 buy-in Fallsview Poker Classic main event, Anthony Zinno was facing a 250,000 bet from Henry Tran on a board reading 10657Q. Zinno made the call with his Q7 for two pair.
Tran only had KK
for an overpair and Zinno took the pot and the overall chip lead. Tran was left as one of the short stacks and busted in eighth place, earning CAD$39,898.
Zinno went on to win the event, earning his second World Poker Tour title and the CAD$314,629 first-place prize.
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.
