Tuesday May 10, 2005

hands reads are not that precise At the bottom of Page 16 in the print copy of Card Player Vol 18, No 9 there is a sidebar about a hand from day 2 of the 25K WPT championship. Its an interesgting hand that Chri Bigler appears to have played wrong. The blinds are 600-1200 with a 200 ante (3600) when he opens in late position for 4k with AsKs (a raise of 2800 into a 4800 pot). The blinds call. Post flop he is against middle and bottom set on a Kh Jh 7c flop. The blinds check to him, he fires and is raised and reraised. He then goes all in and is called. The interesting part of the analysis is made by whomever wrote the sidebar (authorship is not clear).

Andy, on the other hand, realized that Chris couldn't have a set of kings because he would have checked the flop.

I don't believe this is true assuming standard player tendencies. He was in late position and so didn't have to have a strong hand to open-raise with and his opponents didn't have to have strong hands to call. The flop is an action flop so he shouldn't "expect" to pick up the pot by betting a set on the flop. In fact I think with a late position open, that flop, and two opponents he should expect action on that flop. Firing top set on that flop both gets him action and information while not revealing a lot about his hand. There just isn't enough information from the blinds prespectives to think that a bet on the flop couldn't be from top set. No, the reason for the small blind to be happy getting all his money in is that the distribution of hands that Chris could have is wide. Thinking the big blind has probably over setted him made the proportion of that distribution that he could beat even larger. The real hand read here should have been made by Chris. He bet a scary flop and had two players came back at him. Top pair top kicker isn't any good and is a weak hand to draw to. ( May 10 2005, 08:37:08 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]