A Professional Play

I made a strong read in a hand that I played great today and I thought I'd share it with you since I know there are some budding players who read this blog.

I've moved back to playing a mix of $10/$20 and $15/$30 limit 6 handed games in the past 10 days or so and I've had some strong results. The advantages of playing $10/$20vs $5/$10 are pretty staggering. First of all at the higher stakes I generate points 40% faster! That is huge. Also the rake is pretty much the same, but the stakes are twice (or three times in the case of $15/$30) as big which neutralizes the house take to some degree. Of course the players are better, but lately it seems that many of the tough pros have either been playing bigger or smaller stakes. I haven't exactly been banging out $2,000 wins every other day like I did for a while last year, but I've had a few solid wins and no big losses.

Anyway I was in a $10/$20 game today, I got dealt AA in the cutoff and the player just in front of me raised it to $20. I three bet making it $30 to go and everyone folded to my lone opponent who just called. The flop came down 3 3 4 and my opponent checked and called my bet.

The turn was a great card - a Q. My opponent came out betting and I thought "Ah ha, he has a queen! That's probably KQ or QJ." I raised and my opponent just called. The river was a king and my opponent bet out again. I raised again and he reraised me.

This is the part where I played the hand well - I capped it. I figured if he had QQ or KK he would have reraised me before the flop instead of just calling my three bet, and if he had a three or 44 he would have check raised the turn instead of betting out and just calling. That covered all of the hands that could beat me and none of them were likely. On top of that it just felt like KQ which it was. Most players would have just called the three bet on the river. They'd think they were up against a three or a deceptively played full house, but I made the max.

It might not seem like a big deal to pick up another $20 in a pot that is already around $300, but it's huge. If I can make one more big bet every 500 hands and I'll make another $150 or so a day which is another $37,000 a year.

It's hard to trust your reads sometimes and I was really proud of myself for trusting mine in this hand.