Daily Poker Quiz: Archive

Shown cards
2008-08-04

You wake up and find yourself in John Hennigan's clothes at the WPT Borgata final table. You're heads-up against Chuck Kelley and the following just happened:

Chuck raised to 500k pre-flop and you called. The flop was 7 3 3. You checked, Chuck bet 700k, and you called again.

The turn card was the A, giving you top pair. You chose to check, Chuck bet another 800k, and you called once again.

Chuck then chose the somewhat unusual move to show his cards, Q 7, and play with open cards. The river comes the 3. You have eight million in chips to Chuck's five, what should you do?





Check
If you check here, Chuck'll know what you'll only call with a better hand if he bets, since you know what he's got. In other words, he won't bet enough to make him pot committed. But there's four million in chips in the pot already, and almost any bet will commit Chuck.

He could possibly bet a million or so to give you the chance to bluff, but it's not really likely - after all, why would he? It's a lot more advanced than he needs to play, and also very hard to execute.

Bet 1.5 million
You could arguably bet for value here, 1.5 million into a pot of 4M might be enough for Chuck to call. But it'll give him a hard choice - he can't raise, because knowing what he's got, you'll only call if you have a better hand, and if he calls and loses he'll only have 16 big blinds to your 68.

If he's going to call, he could therefore just as well call if you go all-in, but when the chances are so similar, it's pretty much always better to make a big bet in order to increase your overall EV.

All-in (correct)
You could arguably bet for value here, 1.5 million into a pot of 4M might be enough for Chuck to call. But it'll give him a hard choice - he can't raise, because knowing what he's got, you'll only call if you have a better hand, and if he calls and loses he'll only have 16 big blinds to your 68.

If he's going to call, he could therefore just as well call if you go all-in, but when the chances are so similar, it's pretty much always better to make a big bet in order to increase your overall EV.



Result:

Check 26%
Bet 1.5 million 39%
All-in 35%

Totally 994 vote(s)