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World Series Of Poker 2005 - Poker Hand Analysis
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Author: Marc Weinberg
We're all TV railbirds at the moment, or at least a lot of you who read this column regularly are, because ESPN is patiently handing out episodes of the 2005 World Series Of Poker, one hour at a time. I was very interested to watch the bad beat that Greg Raymer suffered, as he lost most of his chips to Aaron Kantor, an online poker player. I am going to analyze the hand, pointing out mistakes that both players made.
First off, it's interesting to note that the term "online poker player" ranks somewhere between leper and pariah when mentioned on television, or indeed by some poker players. He qualified online is akin to saying, oh he won his seat by scratching a lottery card. What nonsense! The standard of online poker may be loose but it is incredibly competitive. To win a seat for any major tournament in a satellite format is a feat - you still have to outlast and outwit hundreds and hundreds of opponents. Furthermore, all the top poker pros play online as well, and they try and qualify for these events as cheaply as possible.
There's a strange hierarchy in poker, and it's petty discrimination really - you have online poker players at the bottom, followed by tournament poker players, and at the top of the ladder are the big cash game players.
Anyway, the hand in question that crippled Raymer and essentially ended his marvellous attempt to defend his title - before the event started you would have said that Raymer had more chance working his way through the eye of the needle - ended up being a "bad beat" of sorts, but hand analysis in poker clears up a lot of issues and muddled thinking.
Now, it is obviously easy to second-guess after the fact, and once the cards of both players are known these matters are obvious to all, but here's the scenario. Before the flop, Raymer raised $100,000 holding KK. It didn't appear to be a very big raise in the context of the game. My own preference with KK is to make a large bet pre-flop and avoid action, just as I like to avoid action with QQ. You need to weed out all those drawing hands and hopefully leave yourself facing off against a smaller pair (usually the only hands that stay for the flop in the face of that kind of action). If you force someone all-in and they hold AQ or AJ to your KK it's a great result for you, and it's unlucky if they catch one of the three remaining Aces. But here, the bet was small and Kantor called with the JQ of hearts.
It's a weak call, but he had plenty of chips and it was worth taking a chance. At this stage I think he put Raymer on a medium pair, probably 88, 99, or TT and Kantor looks like he stuck to this read throughout the hand.
So, he figures he has two overcards, suited connectors, and he'll take the flop. This duly comes: 3-5-6 three suited but with one heart. Raymer now makes an error, in my opinion. You must fire here without any hesitation. If Kantor has flopped a set that's just unlucky, but you have to feel strongly that KK is the best hand at this point. He made another small-ish bet of $250,000 chips, and for some reason Kantor called. This call was the strangest part of the hand. What could Kantor be thinking here? He has no straight draw, he might have two overcards if his read is correct (a big if, and wrong as it turns out), and even then he is still a 4:1 underdog to win the pot. He must catch a Jack or a Queen to have any chance, and in reality he'd still lose the hand. He also has one of those 33:1 back-door flush draws. That's when you need runner-runner to make your flush, and it arrives 3% of the time. He was not in it for the heart, I guarantee you that.
My feeling is that he was planning to bluff Raymer off the hand on the turn when he saw the flop. He thought Raymer had medium pair in which case a lot of turn cards would scare Raymer, and Kantor could make a play at the pot. But the thinking was flawed - first, Raymer had a big pair that he had underplayed. Second, Kantor had played the hand in such a way that it would be unlikely for Raymer to believe that the turn card helped Kantor's hand, since Kantor's flat call before the flop and after the flop indicated that he had a wishy-washy hand.
The turn was a 7 of hearts. Raymer bet out and Kantor raised another $500,000 - suddenly this was a huge pot. The move by Kantor was a bluff designed to win the pot there. But Raymer immediately pushed all-in. Kantor was now pot-committed, but even still a case could be made that he should have layed down his hand. He had a flush draw but now must have known he was up against a big hand. His only outs, if he had them were the hearts, and that was 18% at best. Kantor had misread the hand badly, and by calling Raymer's all-in he was putting his entire tournament on the line since Raymer had him covered.
He called the all-in, and the river was the 2 of hearts, a dagger through the heart for Raymer, and an incredibly fortunate reprieve for Kantor. But to recap the mistakes: there were three inflection points in the hand where Raymer could have represented the actual size of his hand, and each time he would have forced Kantor to muck. On the flop a big raise by Raymer ends the hand then and there, without question. Raymer was happy for the action, and when he saw Kantor's miserable JQ suited he must have still felt happy with how he played the hand, but these pocket pairs are always vulnerable if they don't improve.
KK is a great starting hand, but it's like any top pair in a hold'em hand, and to see it cracked isn't the world's biggest shock. Kantor did nothing but make mistakes. His behavior was hardly irrational, however. He simply made a bad read early on, and then failed to adjust his read until it was too late. There is no question he erred, regardless of the outcome.
I'm not sure what the "perfect" play was in Raymer's situation. I can see the value of the small pre-flop raise since he got the action he wanted. My thought process, as a conservative tournament player, is to take down pots when there is board texture danger, and I think 3-5-6 qualifies. You want to push in a big bet here to get rid of 44 or 77 in particular, as well as A4 and A7. These are hands that people play, and KK must fear them. As it turns out, by not putting in a bet of say $1million on the flop, he encouraged an even weaker hand to stay in and beat him. Now, the hand in question was played poorly, but the bottom line is that Kantor went on to become an instant millionaire and Raymer was sent packing soon afterwards....
Related Poker Articles And News Items:
> How To Lose All Your Chips In No-Limit Hold'em
> Poker Tournament Strategy - How To Play With A Big Stack
> World Series Of Poker Main Event Stats and Stories
> The True Odds Of Cracking Pocket Aces
> Don't Start Out With No-Limit Hold'em - Work Up To It!
> How To Win At Limit Poker - Some Thoughts
> The Difficulty Of Measuring Success As An Online Poker Player
> Online Tournament Poker Meltdown
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