I would like to take some time to discuss a hand that I found interesting. The mathematics of the hands are fairly routine, but as usual, the psychology of the hand is of more interest to me.

The hand is taken from last weeks Friday Challenge, the $30 15k guaranteed Deepstack tournament. When offering a hand history for discussion, it's best to provide your readers with a bit of history involving both your opponent, as well as yourself to establish what image others might have of you.

In this instance, we don't have much history with the opponent. The opponent has been relatively quiet, taking a few flops but not really getting out of hand post-flop. On the other hand, we have been very active. We aggressively pushed our way up to the top 20, but recently lost a large chunk with AQ against J8. We have won the last 3 hands in a row without a showdown.

#Game No : 62932716
***** Cassava Hand History for Game 62932716 *****
$100/$200 Blinds No Limit Holdem - *** 27 11 2009 17:10:36
Tournament #25290417 $30 + $3 - Table #29 (Real Money)

Seat 1 is the button
Total number of players : 9
Seat 1: azzaruby ( $9,635 )
Seat 2: Fuzzner ( $4,072 )
Seat 4: szepan ( $13,032 )
Seat 5: Italianfish ( $5,295 )
Seat 6: lamersr ( $6,224 )
Seat 7: bonzai5 ( $10,170 )
Seat 8: feebeenoot ( $14,355 )
Seat 9: aaronlt ( $5,285 )
Seat 10: MMoate ( $9,010 )

lamersr posts ante [$20]
azzaruby posts ante [$20]
aaronlt posts ante [$20]
Italianfish posts ante [$20]
Fuzzner posts ante [$20]
feebeenoot posts ante [$20]
szepan posts ante [$20]
bonzai5 posts ante [$20]
MMoate posts ante [$20]
Fuzzner posts small blind [$100]
szepan posts big blind [$200]

** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to aaronlt [ Jh, Ad ]
Italianfish folds
lamersr calls [$200]
bonzai5 folds
feebeenoot folds
aaronlt raises [$1,000]
MMoate folds
azzaruby folds
Fuzzner folds
szepan folds
lamersr calls [$800]

Let's start with the preflop action. lamersr's preflop limp is normally not a good one. Anytime you're limping from early position, you're simply not protecting your chips. Sometimes you can get away with this early in the first couple blind levels. Once the blinds begin to go up however, there really isn't much of an argument for doing so.

Our raise is too big. Traditional standard raises have been deemed 3x the big blind +1 extra bet for every person in the pot. So in this case, that would make the standard bet 4x the blind (or 800). However tournament regulars will tell you that you don't need to bet the full 3x the blind amount to accomplish the same thing. Changing your bet amounts to 2.5x the big blind as a standard open will accomplish the same thing, and save you half a blind - which adds up over time.

So keeping that in mind, our raise to 5x the blinds is simply unnecessary and sloppy. The action folds back around to lamersr who flat calls. Again he has opted to play passively out of position, this time against an abnormally large raise.

** Dealing flop ** [ Th, Kd, Kh ]
lamersr bets [$5,204]
aaronlt ???????????

The flop comes down and more or less misses us, leaving us with just a gutshot and some backdoor draws. Our opponent moves all-in, betting ~$5200 (in affect only 4200 since he has more chips than we do) into a pot size of only ~$2400.

I have previously discussed how playing poker is like story telling. Before the flop, our opponent told us one thing. He played his hand slow, and passively. By limping and only flat calling our raise, he was telling us he had a hand that he wanted to see a flop with, but really wasn't confident enough to raise with it. On the flop, he moves all in, betting more than what is in the pot.

What he tries to tell us on the flop is that he has the best hand, and if we want to play it will be for our entire stack. However what he actually says is that he "thinks" he might have the best hand, and he is "hoping" that we don't have a King.

It would be an awful bet with a king, since the opponent has bet out, he prevented my aggressive tendencies to bet this flop. If he had a king, all he had to do was to check, I likely would have bet, and he could have stuck his chips in collecting a nice pot.

So then we have to consider, what type of hand would he have where he would try to encourage me to fold and win the pot right here? Since we have ruled out a King, the next obvious choice is Ten. It is very possible for our opponent to have a pair of tens here. He may be the type of player who likes seeing flops with close connecting hands like 9T or JT. He sees the flop, decides it isn't likely for us to have a king and moves all in trying to win the hand immediately. A flush or a straight draw is very possible. Perhaps he has a JQ and feels that we may have missed the flop, so he'll try to bluff us here, and should he get called, he still has a draw to fall back on. In this instance, we're actually a favourite with our ace high.

Another possibility is an action that I see more and more from impulsive players. They hold a pocket pair, and they aren't quite sure how to play it. So often they play it passively preflop, since they haven't developed a plan on how to play it after the flop. The flop comes down and there is 1 (or even 2) overcards. All of a sudden they switch into hyper-aggressive mode with their pair and put their tournament life on the line - PRAYING that their opponents haven't hit that overcard and that they can win the hand right here. You'll often see a line like this with hands like KK on an AXX flop or QQ on a KXX flop. (It happens often enough that I had a regular forum member do the same thing this past Monday Twins challenge at my table).

So if our opponent has a hand such as TX, that gives us 10 outs. 3 Aces, 3 Jacks, 4 Queens. However if our opponent has a hand such as 99, that gives us an additional 3 outs, where if any ten hits, we will counterfeit his two pair. If our opponent then has a pair lower than 9s, say 55 for example, any turn card above his pair and below 10 will give us yet another 3 outs. So we could potentially be looking at 13 outs on the flop, and 16 outs on the turn, and that doesn't even factor in the possible back-door flush. At worst, we're 10 outs, which is the same as having a set against a flush.

Given that it is going to cost us 4200 into a pot of about 6500, we're getting about 1.5 to 1 on our money. This means for it to be a good call, we need to win the hand about 40% of the time. Against 9T, we are almost exactly 40%. So against the hand that is most likely, and the hand that gives us the least amount of outs, we have the right price to call. With all the other possible scenerios, the 13/16 out pocket pairs he might hold, the draw semi-bluffs he might be on, making the call becomes very much the correct play. Often, making us the favourite, even against a small pair.

I find this hand very interesting, because before making the call, my first instinct was to fold. We have ace high, against an all-in overbet. How often could this actually be a correct call? It feels almost automatic to fold, as I'm sure would be the initial response most people may have without stopping to consider the hand thoroughly.

It also stresses the importance to look beyond your own cards. Simply playing the cards you're dealt isn't enough. We need to be able to look at our opponent, and make our decisions based on the two cards infront of them, as well as the two infront of you.