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#869 – Controlling the Size of the Pot: Bigger or Smaller?
As I mentioned in #861, I played in a private online tournament with the gang from ThePotKings.com and agreed to turn over my hand history from the tournament (which I won) and answer questions. Their head guy, Dom, posted six videos of hands on the site and I’m working my way through my responses. I posted my responses to the first two videos in #861, two hands concerning how to play when you lead the betting and hit a great flop.
Dom has done a remarkable job of choosing hands. For the third video, he picked a hand that concerns the concept of Pot Control. Controlling the size of the pot – trying to make it much bigger or keeping it relatively small – is important in a variety of situations. This examples involves a hand in which I turned the nuts but merely called a bet, turning down the opportunity to get in all my chips and make it as expensive as possible for my opponent to draw to a better hand.
Although there are many exceptions, my goal is usually to keep pots small. First, unless I’m playing someone like Phil Ivey or Jeffrey Lisandro – there are many other names in this category and you would recognize just about all of them – I consider myself superior to my opponents in making decisions later in the hand. Second, because of my general confidence in my abilities, I usually want to win over the long haul, rather than forcing the action into one particular showdown. That’s what this hand involved.
We were four-handed at the final table and I was on the button. Blinds were 150-300, 25 ante. I was dealt Kh-10d and raised to 800. The big blind called and the flop was Js-Qd-10s. I flopped third-pair and an open-ended straight draw.
The big blind surprised me by betting out, 600 into a 1,850 pot. With the high cards, straight draws, and flush draw, I was naturally suspicious so I just called.
The ace of hearts on the turn make me the nut straight. Again, the big blind led out with a small bet, 600 into a 3,050 pot. I just called.
This led to the question asked in this video: Why did you call the turn and not raise it?
I feel that, no matter what the big blind has, it is in my interest to keep the pot small. What are the range of hands the big blind could have? (a) K-X, (b) A-K, (c) As-Ks, (d) Ks-Xs, (e) any two-pair, or (f) any set. Anything else would be either a complete bluff or possibly 8-9.
The only hand I’m beating that can’t pass me on the river is 8-9 (unless it’s 8s-9s). So the only hand I could possibly get a lot of chips from by moving in is 8-9. Even then, if it’s not 8s-9s and the other player looks very long at the T-J-Q-A board, he might fold his straight. In all the other possible holdings, we either have the same hand (so it doesn’t matter what I do), the same hand but the big blind can improve (As-Ks, Ks-Xs), or a hand where the big blind could make a flush or a full house on the river.
I decided I did not want to decide the tournament on this hand. I had the chip lead but the big blind was second in chips. Although I could theoretically make it a mistake for him to draw out by moving in, I didn’t want him to hit and cripple me. (This is especially true if he has As-Ks and is free-rolling.) I have the chip lead and I feel comfortable that I can win this tournament. It serves my interests, therefore, to press what I consider my advantage over a large number of hands rather than letting the entire tournament ride on this one hand.
The river was one of the worst cards possible, the jack of hearts. The big blind led out with a small bet of 900 into a 4,250 pot. I called, he showed Kd-7d, and we split the pot.
Conceivably, if he had moved all-in, I would have folded. Because I made the decision to potentially let him draw to a full house cheap, I couldn’t pay the price of calling after he hit it.
This hand is interesting because it puts a pair of important poker principles in opposition. First, there is Sklansky’s fundamental theorem of poker, which says that you “win” when another player makes a move that is not mathematically supported, regardless of the actual outcome. But then there is the principle about chips becoming more valuable as the tournament goes on and the huge difference in value between having at least one chip and having zero chips. Based on Sklansky and the math, you could argue that I should have moved in on the turn and given my opponent, if he was drawing to a straight or flush, bad odds to call. If he calls, hits, and cripples me, my win would be measured over all the times in my poker life time I get people make the wrong move, a large amount of which I would win.
But all situations are not created equal. Even though this was a low-stakes tournament, we were at the final table and my method of operation is to concentrate my effort on turning every final table into the highest finish possible. If this hand had occurred during the first level of the tournament I definitely would have moved all-in on the turn. But at the final table, I’m willing to make a “mistake” in a marginal situation to keep myself from being crippled in a tournament that I think I have an extremely high probability of winning.
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