A tragically unavoidable WSOP bust-out? Or did I deserve my fate?

[ArcticAction]

This has been grating on me since it happened … apologies if the answer is painfully obvious – your correspondent is a self-confessed learner.

$1,500 NLHE WSOP event. My annual summer VegasVacation and only WSOP event for the year. All players are strangers to one another. Your correspondent folds his first half dozen hands as utterly unplayable. Wakes up with red Kings in EP, makes a standard 3BB raise. Everyone folds except one player – no read on him whatsoever, beyond that he’s not visibly drooling or muttering audibly to himself. He has been relatively quiet, but – again – this is only the 7th hand.

Flop comes three unpaired undercards; two spades, no obvious straightening potential. Your correspondent makes a bet of about 2/3 the size of the pot. Other player calls. Turn card is (of course) the best/worst card in the deck: the king of spades. Your correspondent checks; villain promptly goes all-in, correspondent has him covered to the tune of about $50. Your correspondent calls with a sense of impending doom/feverish anticipation (in the event that the all-in was just a move given the flush potential on the board).

Doom is confirmed when the villain’s flush is revealed (he had Q8s or Q7s, as I recall). River failed to pair the board, and I was off to the buffet several hours ahead of schedule.

I don't believe that simply shoving on the flop to protect against the possibility of the flush draw would have been optimum. Any other spade on the turn and I might have have been able to get away from the hand in the face of an all-in ... but folding top set in this situation in the absence of any reliable reads?

[Cornell Fiji]

It is impossible to evaluate this hand without blinds/stack sizes. It would also be helpful to know the position of your opponent and the cards on the board.

I am assuming that the blinds were 25/50 here, I will rewrite your hand in the standard format to make it easier for others to evaluate:

Hero, UTG+1 (3050)
Villain (3000)

No reads.

25/50 blinds

Preflop:

Hero has Kh Kd

Hero raises to 150, folds to villain who calls, blinds fold.

Flop (375): Xs Yc Zs
Hero bets 250, villain calls

Turn (875): Ks
Hero checks, villain bets 2400 all in, hero...?


Your opponent made an absolutely retarded bet on the turn if you are reporting the action correctly. You open shoving the flop would have been embarrassingly bad.

It is harder to further evaluate with all of the missing information and without a live read but you probably played it fine.

[ArcticAction]

Cornell Fiji:

Many thanks for the re-formatting help with the HH ... template clearly noted for future posts. Appreciate your comments.

[SuperUberBob]

I would have bet the turn. By checking, you induce somebody to bluff with a flush draw or something like a two pair or even total air. When the shove happens, you have to incorporate that in your decision and it may make you lean towards a call. After all, the only thing that beats you is a flush.

However, if you bet 2/3 the pot and face a raise all-in, you can assume that villain is not bluffing when you're the one who has shown all the aggression throughout the hand. So, you can discard that possibility. This means you're either facing a smaller set or a turned flush. I don't quite know if I can lay top set down, but betting the turn may make your decision easier.

If you bet and face a call, you can check/call a value bet on the river if you don't fill up.

One way or another, I probably go broke on this hand. But I think betting might limit the possibilities for your opponent's hand more effectively.

[Dunkman]

This is really tough because most villains would have raised that flop with overcard(s) and a flush draw. Turn push by villain is weird too, only flush you can really put him on is a small flush that is scared of a 4th spade, but still a pretty odd way to extract value out of the hand. Anyway, long story short, I agree with Bob that I keep firing on the turn, but I can't possibly see any way that we can find a fold here.

[JoeyJoJo Shabadu]

My quick take on it... nobody shoves that early in the WSOP without the nuts or very close to.

Two years ago some guy played the first hand against Freddy Deeb and the Hero had TT and Deeb had AT. Flop was Ten Ace Junk. Big bet by hero, Deeb Calls. Turn was a blank. They get about 30% of their stacks in by this point. River is an ace. Hero bets big to about half stack. Deeb shoves. Hero tanks and mutters something like if you have Ace Ten it would suck to go out on the first hand but I don't think I can lay this down. Calls of his stack. Boom 1st hand he's out.

I don't think many pro's are all-in here without AT or AA this early. i don't think mnay people making a vacation out of it are all-in this early without a near nuts hand. quite frankly villian in your hand should in all likelihood have not shoved this deep but made a great/dangerous read. You can't have AKs (king on board), can't have AQ (he has it), can't have KQ, you have one hand that beats him and that's AJs and you raised UTG... unlikely for some players, and betting action probably tells him you don't. board hasn't paired. He's so 99% good. But the river can kill him if you have AsKx... so it is a dangerous bet.

This would be why I don't play the WSOP... there's no way I could read a hand that fast [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

I would just watch the all-ins at that level with stacks that deep.... nobody except maybe a donk like me, or perhaps Jamie Gold on a draw, can be all-in there without a flush. Maybe I'm way off and all I know about that level is what I watch... but that seems to be the prevailing way of play early.

[PoliticalRefugee]

The WSOP first hand is here I think, a little different to what you said but pretty much the same.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cixMq97Zo38

[JoeyJoJo Shabadu]

[ QUOTE ]
The WSOP first hand is here I think, a little different to what you said but pretty much the same.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cixMq97Zo38

[/ QUOTE ]

Ha..! totally different from my memory in that it was Sammy Farha and it played differently! But ya that's the hand I was referring to.

[bogey1]

I agree with leading the turn. You need to find out if he's got it. Since it's the 7th hand in a big live tourney, I'll credit him with having the goods and fold top set. Well, easy to say, but still, what is going to shove their entire stack on a flush board on hand 7 when they just called the flop? Maybe, just maybe, he has a worse set, but seems less likely.