Hard Poker Rule: The moment you get involved in a pot, you need to put your opponents on a range of hands so you have some idea where you are.
The detective work involves betting amounts, stack sizes, position, history with players and other factors. The difficulty makes this an important task, and as good as the top pros are, they make the wrong reads at times.
At the $10,000 buy-in 2007 World Series of Poker main event at Las Vegas’ Rio Hotel, with blinds at $50-$100, charismatic young pro Kirk Morrison drew A-6 suited in the small blind.
A late position player raised to $300. The button called, as did Morrison. The flop came A-K-4, two spades, giving Morrison top pair/top kicker and the nut-flush draw.
Morrison checked, hoping to check-raise, but the original raiser and button checked behind him.
Kirk Morrison
ACE OF SPADES
6 OF SPADES
The opponent
4 OF CLUBS
4 OF DIAMONDS
The flop
ACE OF HEARTS
KING OF SPADES
4 OF SPADES
The turn and river
2 OF DIAMONDS
QUEEN OF DIAMONDS
‘Yeah, it went awry, but at the same time, I’m going to lead out on the turn anyway and take down the pot,” said Morrison, runner-up in the $25,000 buy-in World Poker Tour Championship in April at Las Vegas’ Bellagio. “Taking down a pot without a showdown is huge in these deep-stack tournaments. Eventually, you will get unlucky, so the more uncontested pots you can win, the easier it is.”
The turn came the 2 of diamonds. Believing he had the best hand, Morrision bet $1,000. The original raiser called. The button folded. Instead of taking down an uncontested pot, Morrison had to determine what his opponent was calling with.
“His call kind of put me in check there because he’s getting short on chips and he’s not calling almost a third of his stack with nothing,” Morrison said.
“The guy I was playing against, I had crippled him earlier when he had aces and I flopped a set of queens.”
So, Morrison had his opponent badly out-chipped but began to think top pair wasn’t good enough.
“I was thinking, ‘I’m going to have to hit this spade on the river,’ ” he said.
But he didn’t. The river came the queen of diamonds.
“I quickly checked because it might make other players act quickly on their hands or think I’m real weak,” Morrison said.
His opponent shoved in for his remaining $2,600. Morrison called and lost to a set of 4s.
“I was surprised when he turned that hand over,” Morrison said. “I thought I had him. But he played it very well. He fired out his bet quickly and I thought it was weakness. Wasn’t a very good read on my part.
“If I know I’m absolutely beat, I don’t care how much is in the pot, I’ll lay it down. There’s too much made of pot odds sometimes. If I think I’m beat, I’m going to lay it down.
“But for the amount of chips he had left against my stack and with top pair, I’m going to call.”
Table talk
Nut-flush draw: Holding four cards of the same suit, including the ace.
