I was playing through the hand history of a player who played at the $25-$50 level at NLHE the other evening and this is a player who I know full well has been very successful in online tournaments lately. This hand highlights the key differences between tournament poker and cash game poker and the differences in how it alters your mindset.
Our hero was in the big blind with the As-Kd and it was folded to the hijack who open raised to $175, the button called the raise and so did our hero. The flop came Ad-5s-5c giving our hero a good hand on the flop. He checked and the original raiser bet $375 into the $550 pot and the button folded.
Our hero didn’t want to scare his lone opponent away and called the bet. The turn card was the 8c and he checked again with his big slick and this time so did the original raiser The river card was the 2s and our hero checked again. The original raiser bet $300 into the $1300 pot and our hero raised to $1300 and was shocked to see his opponent move all in for a further $4000.
The sad part of this story (sad for him that is) is that he paid it off and ended up getting stacked. To say that this player has no future playing NLHE cash games is perhaps the understatement of the year. But let us look at his play for a minute. He was out of position and even though he has big slick, his call pre-flop is fine as part of a balanced strategy. He is out of position to two opponents and you certainly do not want a big pot with a hand like A-K.
So controlling the pot when out of position is fine. Quite often in poker you will be forced with dilemmas where it seems like your are neglecting opportunities to win pots pre-flop. But you must balance this with the fact that escalating the pot with many hands in NLHE is not a wise thing to do and especially when the stacks are deep like what they are here.
On the flop he goes into “letting his opponent bluff his money off mode” and simply check calls which again isn’t a bad play. The turn gets checked around but when he checks the river his opponent bets $300. Now in no way can you raise this bet! If your opponent has thin air then they have no call!
If they have something mediocre then they also have no call as a river check raise represents a very powerful hand. This guy told me that he thought that the $300 bet was a blocking bet but if that was the case then he can only call. You won’t find your opponents in desperation mode in cash games like you do in tournaments.
Plus it is not beyond the realm of probability that your opponent is holding a five or even pocket eights or deuces or even A-8. If you suspect that your opponent is stealing on the river then just call. His play up to this point was designed to get his opponent to bluff his money off. But yet when he succeeds in getting him to bet, he then raises hoping to get paid off by a worse hand…somehow I don’t think so.
Even if you suspect a blocker bet then a check raise signals a big hand and your opponent is aware of this before they have to put any money in. His river check raise was bad enough but calling the all in was something else. He confessed to me that he ended up out thinking himself on the river and was convinced that his opponent was putting a play on him based on something that he had seen earlier.
For the record, the other player had the 8s-5h for a full house but I supposed you kind of guessed that it was something like this didn’t you. But pot control is everything in NLHE and this just underlines the motto of “big pot big hand” and two pair can hardly be classed as a big hand. When I am playing on Cake Poker I see this all the time but you only generally see it at the lower stakes games where players invest far too much money relative to the strength of their hand.
You don’t tend to see players go for their entire stacks like this at the $25-$50 level but it does happen. In fact I have seen unbelievably bad play far higher than this but the mistake committed here was in the player’s technique which is a far more worrying factor. But as long as tournament players keep dropping into cash games then cash games will always remain profitable.
Carl “The Dean” Sampson is sponsored by Cake Poker and can be seen at cakepoker/thedean
