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Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Poker Quiz Question #34

Q#34: You’re in a $5/$10 NL cash game. Everyone has $1200 stacks. A tight-passive player limps in early position. It is folded to you in the big blind. You hold Ks-Ac. You raise to $40. The limper calls. The flop is 2c-Kd-Qs. You bet $60. The limper calls. The turn is the Kc. You bet $140. The limper raises to $280. You call. The river is the 9h. You check and the limper moves all-in for $875. What should you do?
  1. Fold
  2. Call

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A#34: Read (PF): We’re 120 big-blinds deep, so most villains are generally going to be playing standard, ABC poker*. A tight passive player limps in EP. When you raise it up he just calls. This would be indicative of small and medium pocket pairs and possibly largish suited connectors. Let’s call it 22-QQ**, JTs, QJs, and KQs. We might also throw in biggish one gappers, like QTs and KJs.

Read (Flop): You c-bet on the flop and get called. If there was just one broadway card on this flop, the limper might call with a wider part of his middle pair range, but with two broadways he’s only going to continue with bigger made hands and big draws. This narrows his range of hands to things like 22, JJ, QQ, JT, QJ, KQ, and KJ.

Read (Turn): The turn pairs the board with another king, and you get min-raised. This feels like even more proof of strength and/or a nut straight draw. Therefore I think the range narrows to 22, QQ, JT, KQ and possibly KJ.

Read (River): The villain shoves on the 9h river for 3/4’s of his original stack size. Said another way: he likes his hand. A lot. We can probably rule out the KJ from his range.

Estimate: Against the remaining range, your trip kings are basically drawing dead. Even if we add back in KJ, pokertove puts you at 85:15 dogtown, which means you have to be getting at better than 6.6:1 pot odds to make a crying call. The pot is ~$1640 and it’s going to cost you $875 to call. Therefore, you’re only getting 1.8:1. Further, you’re not pot committed at this point.

Decide: Yes, trip kings with top kicker looks really nice, but this is actually an easy fold.

Implement: Muck, and try to talk your opponent into showing his hand.

Answer: Fold

All-in for now...
-Bug
*The shorter your effective stack size relative to the blinds, the more you should be emphasizing big one-pair type hands and eschewing draws and set-mining. In contrast, the deeper your effective stack size, the more drawing “bust-em” hands you should be playing, and the less emphasis on big one- and two-pair hands.
**We might throw the QQ hand out of his range if he wasn't labeled "passive" in the problem statement. But he is, and I've seen plenty of weak-tights open-limp with the ladies.

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