Many of the best poker players in the world pride themselves on making great laydowns, but ultimately there’s a problem with that.
“You can’t win a tournament by continually making good laydowns because if you do that, you’re going to be out,” said Barry Greenstein, who plays in the biggest cash games in the world and is known as the “Robin Hood of Poker” because he donates his net tournament winnings to charity. “At some point, you have to play the pot through.”
With blinds at $100-$200 in a $1,500 buy-in event at the 2006 World Series of Poker, Greenstein drew pocket queens under the gun and raised to $600, committing almost one-quarter of his stack. Action folded to Randy Holland, who re-raised to $2,000 from middle position.
Barry Greenstein
QUEEN OF SPADES
QUEEN OF CLUBS
Randy Holland
KING OF HEARTS
KING OF SPADES
The flop
ACE OF SPADES
8 OF HEARTS
3 OF DIAMONDS
The turn and river
2 OF HEARTS
7 OF SPADES
“It looks bad because that’s the type of raise you’d make with aces or kings,” said Greenstein, who plays online at PokerStars.com. “AK is usually going to raise more to try to scare me out in case I have 9s or 10s. A raise of only three times what I came in with is saying, `I’m trying to keep you in the pot.’ “
Greenstein could lay down his queens and try to build his stack from his remaining $1,900 or he could shove it all in and risk his tournament life. His decision-making centered on his table image and his stack size in relation to the blinds.
“Someone raising me will sometimes do it with jacks or 10s or A-Q or A-K just because I play enough hands,” said Greenstein, author of the expert “Ace on the River.”
“Normally in these tournaments if I don’t have a lot of chips and I have queens, I’m forced to go with them because people will make plays on me being a loose player more than they’ll make it on a tight player who they think has to have aces, kings or queens under the gun.
“So, it’s hard for me to get away from queens heads-up just because of my style of play. If I had a lot of chips behind me, I probably would’ve just called and tried to make a decision on the flop.
“But I already had a quarter of my stack in there to start, so this was going to be my hand to win to keep going. I only had 12 times the big blind; that’s very short chips to start with. If you have two queens and you’re short-chipped, you’re pretty much forced to play them.
“If it was a coin flip, I was paying my last $1,900 and I’m getting almost 2-1 odds and if he has A-K, I’m a 55-45 (percent) favorite.”
So, Greenstein moved in. Holland called and turned over K-K. Greenstein was more than a 4-1 underdog. When the board came A-8-3-2-7, Greenstein was out.
“When you’re short on chips, you just can’t ante the whole time,” Greenstein said. “Sometimes you’ve got to play a hand.
“A lot of those people who make great laydowns are never getting hold of chips. The people who are getting chips aren’t the ones making all the laydowns.”
Table talk
Loose: A player who gets involved in a lot of hands.
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srosenbloom@tribune.com
