Your odds against being dealt pocket aces are 220-1. Your odds against being dealt pocket jacks or better are 54-1. Chances are, you’ll find yourself with a lot of drawing hands, meaning you’ll face the tricky dilemma of creating a big pot in case you hit your card vs. the futility of chasing.
Because the payoff for hitting a draw can be so good, many top players will be aggressive with such hands. This seems to be especially true early in big-stack tournaments, such as the $25,000 buy-in World Poker Tour Championship, where you start with $50,000 in chips and have the opportunity to play speculative hands.
At the 2008 WPT Championship at Las Vegas’ Bellagio, with blinds at $100-$200, aggressive young pro Jeff Madsen found J-10 suited in early position and raised to $600.
“If you think you’re a good poker player, you want to build pots with strong hands, and 10-J of hearts is a strong hand,” said Madsen, who became the youngest player to win two bracelets at the World Series of Poker when he did it in less than a week shortly after turning 21 in 2006.
“You want to take control of the hand, so I’ll be raising with most hands I play.”
Both blinds called, so three players took a flop of K-K-8, two hearts, giving Madsen a flush draw but creating a possible full house.
The small blind led out for $1,500. The big blind folded. Madsen called.
“I kind of wanted to raise because I didn’t think he was that strong,” said Madsen, a pro from the Full Tilt Poker online site. “I knew he had a piece, but I just called.”
The bet told Madsen something about the strength of his opponent’s hand, a piece of information that could allow him to represent something bigger himself in he didn’t make his hand.
“He bet enough where he wanted to show he was strong,” Madsen said, “but if he had a king, he probably would’ve checked or bet a little bit less.”
The turn came the ace of hearts, completing Madsen’s flush draw and giving him a gutshot royal flush draw. But he was still vulnerable to an opponent slow-playing A-K.
“He checked,” Madsen said, “and I didn’t think he’d call once he checked to me, but I had to bet in case he had a king.”
Madsen bet $2,700, a little more than half the pot.
“I wanted a call,” Madsen said. “I decided on that number because I had to bet something. If I had checked on the turn after calling on the flop, it would’ve looked fishy.”
The small blind folded.
“I wish I would’ve raised on the flop, but I don’t think he would’ve called,” Madsen said. “I don’t think I could’ve won any more money than I did.”
Jeff Madsen
JACK OF HEARTS, 10 JACK OF HEARTS
The flop
KING OF HEARTS, 8 OF DIAMONDS, KING OF DIAMONDS
The turn
ACE OF HEARTS
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Table talk
Gutshot: A four-card straight draw potentially completed by only one card in the middle.
Slow-playing: To play a strong hand passively as a way of trapping an opponent.
— Tribune
