Hand No. 3

In my discussion of Hand No. 1, I mentioned the sandwich effect. This entry will show how concerns about the sandwich effect (and other odd things about the hand) saved my bacon.

Very early in an online tournament. Table of ten players, everyone still close to original chip stack of 1500. Blinds are 10/20. I am Player A in this discussion.

Player A has Jc Jd and is first to act pre-flop. Player A calls for 20 and Player C calls for 20. Player D raises to 40, and Player E & F call. BB calls for 40. Back to Player A who calls 40, as does Player C. Pot is 250.

Flop is 3s 8c 9c. BB leads out with a bet of 250. Player A folds, Player C folds, Player D goes all-in, Player E & Player F fold. BB calls.

BB shows pocket 8s, Player D shows pocket Aces. Turn and river are blanks. BB wins pot of 3320 with a set of 8s. Both players had and equal chip stack, so Player D is out.

My thoughts about this hand:

First of all, my play. I hate pocket Jacks, and I especially hate having to act first at a full table with pocket Jacks. They are of course worth playing, so I limped in hoping to see a flop with a bunch of low cards. The raise to 40 was easy to call. I got the flop I wanted with the 3s 8c 9c. Fortunately, I was no longer first to act. BB led out with a pot-sized bet that was very suspicious. Since he only had to call a raise of 20 from the big blind, he could have had anything at this point. My initial thought was something like A8 or A9, but two-pair, flush draw, and straight draw are also possible. At this point I seriously consider raising his bet, maybe to 500. Then I realize there are still 4 players left to act. Now, not only I am thinking about what sort of tricky, trappy hand the BB may have, I am worried about what awaits with the players behind me. Because of the pre-flop betting I have no clue as to what anyone is holding. Since I don't know where I am in the hand, and its still very early in the tournament, I decide to fold. Turns out, I was third best at this point.

Player D decided to raise only the minimum with his pocket Aces. This is a bet I see a lot in online games. Someone with Pocket Aces or Kings raises the minimum, presumably to keep players in and build the pot. However, as I've noted before, Pocket Aces are great against 1or 2 players, but against 3 or more they start to lose their value (in a playability sense - I may need to describe this concept better in a future entry). To me, the min-raise makes more sense when the blinds are a significant portion of the chip stacks, but early on your not going to drive out many hands with that raise. In this case, I'm not sure any raise would have driven out the BB with pocket 8s. And Player D may have lost all his chips in that hand no matter how it was bet. Player D's loss here could be summed up as "Well, that's poker." But I have seen this sort of betting with huge pocket pairs backfire too many times. With some limpers in front of him, I would have liked to see Player D raise 4 or 5 times the blind to whittle the field down to 2 or 3 players. And then he probably loses all his chips.

Have any opinions on how to play Pocket Jacks? What do you think of raising the minimum with Aces? Let me know in the comments section, and thanks for reading.