I must watch 6 or 7 poker shows a week on TV (love that Tivo!) and while watching, I always try to play everyone's hand before they actually play it themselves. I find more and more that the "expert commentator" will often verify my move when the player involved doesn't do what I would have done. Of course, it's easy for both of us, because we always know what cards everyone has, but I try to not let that affect my decision. In any event, I think I'm learning more about the game by doing this, so I thought you might like to try something similar.
What I'm going to do here is set up various situations where you know only my cards, play out the hand and then have you try to determine what cards my opponents are holding. My opponents' cards will be shown in the Answers section, plus I'll explain why I believe the betting action points to them holding those cards. Of course I realize that any hand can be played in various ways and there's certainly nothing to stop someone from playing 2-7o as though it were a pair of Aces, but I'll try to give you enough information to arrive at a reasonable conclusion. If you disagree with my answers, that's great, because it shows you're at least exploring all of the possibilities that can exist. There are very few absolutes in the game of poker because it, unlike chess or backgammon, is only a partial-information game; we really never know exactly what our opponents are holding until they turn up their cards.
Most of these situations are hands I actually played - primarily in tournaments - although I might be a bit off on actual bet sizes, etc. I will try to set the scene as accurately as possible, so give it a shot and see how you do. I plan to make this a regular feature of our Poker School, which is why I titled this "Part 1", so if you have some thoughts on the type of analysis you'd like to see in the future, please email me.
Hand # 1. It's early in an online NLHE multi-table tournament where everyone began with T1500 (the "T" means tournament) chips. The blinds are T25 and T50, I'm UTG and first to act. I have an average stack of T1625 , am dealt A-Ko and raise to T150. Two players fold, a player in Middle Position, also with an average stack re-raises to T500, the rest fold to the Big Blind, who goes all-in, making it T1100 to me .
Question: What cards does the BB likely have?
Answers
Hand # 1. The pot has about T2000 in it, which is nearly 2 to 1 pot odds on my T1100 call, but I'm folding here because I think the BB has me beat and if he doesn't, so what? It's just too early to get into a coin flip, unless I know I'm one of the weakest players in the tournament, in which case I probably have to gamble in order to win. But in light of the re-raise that I would have at least called, which was followed by a player with another average stack who raised again by going all-in, I'm all-out. When the cards were shown, the BB had K-K and the MP raiser who called, lost with A-Ko.
(Source: GameMaster)
