Quiz 3 – A-Level Examination 5

Time to get those thinking caps on again guys and gals for your monthly test of just how good a No Limit Hold’em player you really are. You may have seen the likes of Gus Hansen, Phil Ivey and “Devilfish” Ulliott on television and thought that you could do as well as those guys or even better. Well now is you chance to see what you can really do in the poker arena.

Marking will be strict and I will take no prisoners, almost like when I play really. So come on now, don’t let me down.

The setting is a $5-$10 blind No Limit cash game online. You have been sitting in this game for about thirty minutes and you have only seen two pre-flop raises and several of the players seem to have the propensity to lose their entire stack if given enough rope. You started with exactly $1000 but that has been eroded slightly as you are down to $840.

You are dealt 7h-7d under the gun (player to the left of the big blind). Don’t get off to a bad start now!

When you are playing in games as small as this, you need to give the weak players enough rope to hang themselves. The game is passive so you are unlikely to get raised behind you although it is not necessarily that bad even if it does. Your position is bad but you won’t be hanging around on the flop anyway in a multi-way pot if you fail to connect.

Raising is not that great a play and especially in small online games like these. If you are raising in order to be deceptive then you are failing to understand the dynamics of the situation. Many players in this game will be doing other things besides playing poker or could even be playing several games at once. The power of your deceptive play will be lost in this situation and you will be overplaying a mediocre hand from out of position.

Folding is not the worst poker play imaginable but it does waste what could be a great opportunity to win a bucket load of money. If you correctly deduced that a call was correct with this hand because of the fact that there had only been two pre-flop raises in thirty minutes then award yourself 10 Bonus Points!

You limp in for $10 as do two other players after you, the small blind tosses in the extra $5 and calls as well. The big blind ( a tight solid player ) raises to $40 and all of the five players have between $500 and $1000 on the table with the big blind have just over a grand. What are you going to do now Tiger?

Do not be intimidated by the raise, sometimes players make plays like this trying to pick up the pot because they think that the limpers hands cannot withstand any real heat of which they are mostly correct of course. But a $40 raise is not enough to drive out four opponents all of which have sizeable stacks. If you call, you will likely promote a big multi-way pot as other players will likely call after you.

Folding is not terrible but calling $40 is around 5% of your stack and this is an acceptable percentage of your stack to speculate with a hand like this. Re-raising will certainly drive out the other limpers but if the big blind has a big hand then you are in trouble. It is better to save plays like this for live cash games where you can get an angle on your opponent by being able to actually see them.

You call the raise as do two other players. There is $210 in the pot and four players. The flop comes Ac-7s-6d and the big blind checks, it is up to you now soldier.

A set of sevens on the flop may seem like a powerhouse but it is far from being the kind of hand that you can take to the bank and especially on a board like this. Checking is giving out a free card to limpers and any number of straightening cards can demote your hand to being second best. Betting the pot gives drawing hands incorrect odds to call but it is also not a big enough bet to prevent bad players from tagging along with second best hands.

The big blind is either checking trip aces in which case you are in serious danger of losing your entire stack or they are afraid of the ace and have raised with a strong pair like K-K, Q-Q, J-J or maybe even 10-10. Set over set is an occupational hazard in No Limit Hold’em as is having Kings in the hole when someone else has aces but that’s life.

You fire $200 into pot and the player to your left folds and the player next to them goes all in for $580, could they have three aces? The big blind thinks fore a while and eventually folds, what is you play?

Call                     10     pts
Fold                      0     pts

Quick…..make an appointment to see a doctor if you folded. The only player who could realistically have top set is the big blind and they have folded. If you play No Limit Hold’em as cautiously as this then you have no chance or did the fact that I mentioned trip aces throw you a curve ball. The call is simple and straight forward but imagine just how much more difficult it would be if the big blind check raised this flop.

Despite the fact that trip aces is looming large in this hypothetical scenario, I would just grit my teeth and pay it off. I just couldn’t fold second set in this situation. The flop raiser likely limped in with a suited ace and hit two pair or has bottom set. This was the likely scenario but it was in fact WRONG as it turned out that my opponent had A-J and needed to catch runner runner to overtake me….they failed to do it and I took the pot down.

Now for the harsh reality of the marking, if you don’t like my comments beside the totals….well I am not apologising.

This quiz was prepared for the official magazine of the televised WORLD POKER TOUR and has been reproduced here with their kind permission.