An Interesting Yet Dull Limit Hand for Analysis

Monteroy

I was watching the 100/200 limit game on stars for a little while while bubbling in another tournament, and this hand sort of got me to scratch my head a bit. In many ways it is pretty unremarkable (ie: no huge river straight flush beats full house appeal), but I was kind of surprised to see what both players had in the end because I can't imagine I would have played either hand as both of them did, particularly calling all the way with ace high and no draw.

The thing about the winner of this hand is he is either extremely good at knowing his opponent or is just a calling station that got lucky that someone tried to bluff him. Without watching for that long it is hard for me to make that distinction (which obviously is a healthy one).

When I see this type of play at the low limits when I was grinding out a bonus I never thought anything of it since a lot of people called all the way with ace high, king high - hell 7 high. Anyways, here is the hand - and those who are into limit poker if you care to comment in any way that is appreciated.

PokerStars Game #1159866371: Hold'em Limit ($100/$200) - 2005/02/02 - 13:09:48 (ET)
Table 'Scorpius' Seat #3 is the button
Seat 1: milus ($4931 in chips)
Seat 2: parliament ($1991 in chips)
Seat 3: LEARNER ($5780 in chips)
Seat 4: FrigginDonk ($4144 in chips)
Seat 5: Ilari FIN ($4292 in chips)
Seat 6: icfishies ($5494 in chips)
Seat 7: ERaddock ($4933.50 in chips)
Seat 8: Team Angle ($5996 in chips)
Seat 9: ChipMovr ($21578 in chips)
Seat 10: weways ($7750 in chips)
FrigginDonk: posts small blind $50
Ilari FIN: posts big blind $100
*** HOLE CARDS ***
icfishies: folds
ERaddock: folds
Team Angle: folds
ChipMovr: folds
weways: folds
milus: raises $100 to $200
parliament: raises $100 to $300
LEARNER: folds
FrigginDonk: folds
Ilari FIN: folds
milus: calls $100
*** FLOP *** [3h 4c 8d]
milus: checks
parliament: bets $100
milus: calls $100
*** TURN *** [3h 4c 8d] [Ts]
milus: checks
parliament: bets $200
milus: calls $200
*** RIVER *** [3h 4c 8d Ts] [2h]
milus: checks
parliament: bets $200
milus: calls $200
*** SHOW DOWN ***
parliament: shows [Jc Qs] (high card Queen)
milus: shows [Jh Ad] (high card Ace)
milus collected $1747 from pot

Buster

I am trying harder to put players on hands lately, and here's my thoughts. Before the flop, I put the raiser on a pocket pair, suited ace, or face cards, and the re-raiser on pocket JJ or better or big slick (although that might be a marginal play). On the flop, first raiser on A3 or A4, reraiser on high pocket pair. When I got to the end, I was kind of stunned. This can't be typical of higher limit HE.

Please feel free to blast me on my reads.

CrazyJoe113

i would imagine, what they are both thinking is that the other guy has high cards, so he's not fitting into the flop, parliament is probably thinking, if he's got a high pp he would raise, milus thinking parliament has..... oh jeez, i have no clue what either of them were thinking, i fault milus more than parliament, like i tell my girlfriend "calling with nothing and betting with nothing are COMPLETELY different"

ScottyZ

My guess here is that there are many things going here that go beyond the current hand. This hand, studied in isolation, probably seems pretty weird.

Open raising with AJo two off the button in pretty standard. So, what's going on with the QJo next to act making it 3-bets?

There could be many things going on here, most of which have to do with table image.

If the QJ perceives the AJ as making a lot of out of line steals, but giving up on them quickly, this may simply be a re-steal attempt (probably with the intention of betting flop & turn if checked to both times).

If the QJ believes his own table image is very tight, he may feel that re-raising will represent a monster pre-flop hand. Another re-steal attempt which may be effective if excecuted by an Uber-rock even assuming the AJ flops a marginal to good heads-up hand.

On the other hand, if the QJ is an ultra aggressive player (which would automatically explain 3-betting without a "proper" 3-betting hand), and the AJ picks up on this table image, he may well be justified on calling him down on a non-threatening looking board with only the Ace-high.

This approach, though costly when the read is wrong, will typically be equally (i.e. same number of bets) profitable when you are correct that your Ace-high is good.*

Might the AJ raising at some point be better? It might, but it depends on the nature of the QJ opponent. Some super agressive players are easily pushed off their bluffing strategy when confronted with resistance. Others auto-raise when you attempt playing back at them.

Raising also puts you in a pickle when your opponent (aggressive or whatever) actually has a decent piece of the flop, and the trouble with aggressive play from the AJ here is that it's difficult to imagine pushing your opponent off a better hand than AJ now. Many opponents would see it through to the end with hands as bad as any pair, AK and AQ at this point. Raising is obviously excellent if your opponent is the type who may give up on such hands heads-up.

I can think of several specific opponents who I would play an AJ this way (i.e. just a call-down) against with this texture of flop. I would also occasionally check-raise the flop and the lead on the turn against a very aggressive opponent who I thought is making a move.

The general explanations for the post-flop action is probably that the pot has gone heads-up, and that both players are thinking players who are playing under assumption that the oponent is also a thinking player.** It's likely enough that Ace-high is best to make calling down okay is some cases (again, depending on your own & opponent's table images).

This hand is night and day as compared with low-limit loosey-goosey mutli-way call-downs with hands like Ace-high.

ScottyZ

*The fact that he may draw out of you is probably somewhat balanced that you will sometimes draw (or redraw) out on him in cases where you were not in the lead. The raggedy uncoordinated flop texture and the post-flop being heads-up are key. Draw outs are not too massive a concern in this sort of hand.

**Of course, it's not impossible that one or both are just donkeys too.

Monteroy

"This hand is night and day as compared with low-limit loosey-goosey mutli-way call-downs with hands like Ace-high."


That was pretty much the feeling I had after I watched it and thought about it and I was annoyed that I did not really have a good context of the players to really figure out what may have motivated that hand. One of the players (QJ guy) was playing with a very short stack as well (about 7-10 BBs total) and I have no idea if he started with that or lost a ton via this style of play.


I would like to think there was a lot more to this hand then what you see at the low limit tables where playing the QJ like that is suicide as you may very well charge into a bunch of calling stations and lose to K2 off that calls all the way.



"Of course, it's not impossible that one or both are just donkeys too."

Heh, that was the part that kind of made me scratch my head because I realized that one or both may be extremely powerful players or may just be utterly horrible players and that on the surface seems to be an odd either/or selection. I suppose that's one reason why poker is interesting.