Hand No. 6

The following hand provides an example of using good position and a dominant hand to maximize value for a hand.

Full table of ten players, blinds are 200/400. Player A raises to 800, Players C & D call, Player E raises to 2,000. The SB along with Players A, C, and D all call for 2,000. Pot is now 8,400.

The flop is K 9 2, with 2 spades on the board. The SB leads out for 4,000, and Player A calls. Players C & D fold. Player E goes all-in for his final 10,200. The SB calls, and is covered by Player E. After some hesitation, Player A folds.

SB shows K 10, no spades. Player E shows pocket Aces. Player A then reveals he folded K Q. I was Player B in this hand. I elected not play with Kd 9d, so I know the SB needs a 10 or running straight cards to come from behind and win the hand. Turn is an 8, and the river is an Ace, giving Player E a set of Aces. Player wins a pot of well over 30,000. SB is knocked out, but house rules allow one rebuy at this point, which may have also influenced the SB's play.

My thoughts on this hand:

I can imagine Player E was thrilled to see so much action ahead of him while holding pocket Aces. One player made a min-raise from early position and 2 players had already called. The questions for Player E is how much to raise? Player E chose to re-raise 2.5 times the prior bets, or 5 times the big blind. This bet should have been enough to drive out junk hands, but keep around the kind of hands that were shown down. The fact he got so many calls on his re-raise suggests Player E could have made a larger bet, but probably no more than 2,500-3,000.

Player E's bet was effective because it increased the value of the pot, and given he had position on everyone in the hand, he could evaluate the flop and how the table reacted. The SB leading out made sense, as he had top pair with a decent kicker. Player A just calling with top pair and a good kicker was interesting, but he did have three players acting behind him, including Player E who made the big re-raise pre-flop. Fortunately for Player A, his decision to just call gave him the option of dumping the hand when Player E re-raised again on the flop.

Player E was probably correct to re-raise all-in after the flop. There was plenty in the pot at that point, and he needed to protect his hand against the flush draw and the gut-shot straight draw. A straight call by Player E may have gotten another bet out of Player A on the turn, but again the risk of the flush draw argues against slow-playing at this point.

Player E chose an approach that built the pot, but may have also risked being out-drawn. Some may argue he needed a bigger raise pre-flop to eliminate some players. In fact, I have argued in prior entries Pocket Aces are better played against one or two players, rather than 3 or more. Here, Player E took advantage of his position to wade into deeper waters with his Aces, and he reaped a big reward for his risk.

So this is the first time in recorded history Pocket Aces held up, right? Use the comments section to let me know if you just fold Pocket Aces to save yourself the misery. And thanks for reading.