In poker, it’s important to get value with your big hands. It is equally as important to be aware of how big your hand is in relative terms, as overvaluing your holdings can lead to huge mistakes.
The hand we’ll be looking into today is the perfect example of this concept. It shows how thinking about your hand in absolute terms, without considering the situation at hand, can end up costing you a lot of money.
It all happened during the recent Million Dollar Game at Hustler Casino live. The main characters in this story are Brandon, a stream regular, and Thomas, a mysterious businessman with a big bankroll. Brandon is the effective stack with just over $950,000.
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Preflop Action
The hand begins at $1,000/$2,000 with the $2,000 big blind ante. Brandon kicks things off from the cutoff, making it $7,000 to go with J♣J♦.
Rahul in the small blind 3-bets to $30,000 with K♠Q♣. The action folds to Thomas in the straddle, who decides to cold call with A♠4♣.
Brandon opts to just call as well, and the three go to the flop with $93,000 in the middle.
Preflop Play Analysis
Brandon’s preflop open with pocket Jacks is perfectly standard, so there isn’t much to discuss there. Rahul’s 3-bet from the small blind is also quite reasonable with his particular hand.
KQ off-suit doesn’t play particularly well after the flop, especially out of position, but it is definitely strong enough to 3-bet against the late position open.
Thomas is in the straddle with A-4 off, and his only real option is to fold. His hand is not a 4-bet candidate, and it is not the kind of hand you want to take to the flop out of position in a massive pot. So, the preflop call is the first big mistake in this hand.
Brandon can sometimes go for a 4-bet with pocket Jacks, but being extremely deep and in position, calling is certainly a more standard and lower variance approach.
Flop Action
The flop comes J♠8♦4♦, and Brandon flops the nuts with his pocket jacks. Rahul opts not to c-bet here, and he passes the action to Thomas, who checks as well.
Brandon bets $25,000, getting rid of Rahul, who completely whiffed the flop, while Thomas makes the call with his pair of aces, bringing the pot to $143,000.
Flop Play Analysis
With two callers and having completely missed the flop, Rahul’s decision not to continue with the aggression is reasonable. It is a somewhat wet board that will hit callers’ ranges pretty well, plus Thomas cold calling a 3-bet is very suspicious as he could be slow-playing a big hand like pocket queens or jacks.
With a weak top pair, Thomas doesn’t have much reason to bloat the pot, so his check is standard as well.
Brandon has the nuts here, but he definitely wants to start building the pot and charging draws and pair + draw type of hands. He opts for a small continuation bet of just over a quarter pot, which is also a standard play in multi-way pots.
Thomas had no business being involved in this pot in the first place. Having flopped the bottom pair and facing a small bet, he can certainly make the call, but folding is probably the better option, as there are very few cards that he’ll want to see on the turn, making the hand difficult to play.
Turn Play
The turn is the A♥, making the board J♠8♦4♦A♥. This card improves Thomas to two pair. He plays in flow and checks to Brandon.
Brandon continues betting, firing $77,000, which is just over half the pot. Thomas takes a few moments and then makes a huge raise to $899,000, putting Brandon all in. He wastes no time calling with the second nuts, and all of a sudden, the pot is $1,941,000.
Turn Play Analysis
Brandon’s half-pot bet is fairly standard. He wants to continue betting, and the ace is a good card to do so on, as it could have easily improved his opponent (if he had a flush draw with an ace, for example).
Thomas now has two pair, but it’s not a super strong hand. He’s still losing to all hands like A8, AJ, and all the sets, and Brandon can reasonably have all these hands.
When Thomas decides to overbet shove here, he’s essentially turning his hand with a decent showdown potential into a bluff. Brandon is never calling with worse, and he’s almost always calling with better, and when he has a better hand, Thomas has very few outs to improve.
For Brandon, this is an easy call, as he’s only losing to pocket aces. While Thomas can sometimes have aces that he decided to play tricky before the flop, the frequency of it is so small that there is absolutely nothing to think about.
Final Thoughts
Both players agreed to run the river twice, but Thomas doesn’t hit his two-outer on either of the two runs, so Brandon scoops a massive $1.9 million pot.
Thomas certainly overplayed his hand. His massive overbet on the turn can never end well. If he went for a smaller raise, that would have been better, but his hand plays best as a check-call, allowing Brandon to continue bluffing or even value bet the river with worse.
