constant crises

garden city has opened up a new game. they're calling it 3-100 spread limit hold'em, which is a ridiculous name. it's really a 1-3 no limit hold'em game with a $100 cap bet and a $100 min/max buy-in. i've played two separate sessions in the game and, actually, have found both games to be tougher than a normal no limit game in vegas. apparently lots of the 20-40 players are "coming down" to play it, as the upside is still large (i booked a small win on wednesday in the game and a large win yesterday). check it out if you have some time. last night an interesting hand took place near the end of my session. no bad beats here. read on: player under-the-gun raises to $18 pre-flop. he was a relatively solid but unimaginative player who was now starting to loosen up and raise lots of pots. the table was tight-aggressive, but had mostly been a stealing and walking show the last ten hands. two off the button, i looked down at AdTd. not giving him a huge amount of credit, i thought about min-raising to use my position and take control of the hand. i opted to call. guy behind me has $33 and he moves all-in. pretty standard. he was a donkey who could be doing that with any ace or face cards. the button, an ultra-tight player called. now that is a scary call, because he is believing himself to have great 3:1 pot odds probably, meaning he could be calling with hands as poor as 67 suited and 22. the original raiser smooth-called the $33. in my head, i felt like i could safely rule out his having a large pair, as it seemed like he would try to thin the field with such a hand. i was probably looking at overcards or a middle pair (hoping to flop a set). as i said, the man one-off-the-button didn't scare me as his chips were all-in. the button freaked me out a little, just smooth-calling. i called the additional $15 and saw the flop. the pot was $136. the flop came: Th9d4h. a good flop for me, though a flush draw was out there. original raiser checked. i put in a half-pot bet of $65. i was happy to see the button player fold immediately. this is when the original raiser check-raised to $165. i took a quick peek at his stack and saw about $100 behind that. i had him covered by a wide margin. i went into the tank. i'm clearly representing a T. probably with a good kicker to call $33 before the flop. he must know that if he gets called here all of the rest of his money is getting into the pot. possible hands he could have: a) AA, KK, QQ, JJ, TT, 99: i'm a big dog here. he didn't re-raise pre-flop with these hands, but it was essentially three-handed after the flop. did he feel as though he might be walking into a trap before the flop and wanted to see how it came out? if he was playing the hand that way, his play after the flop makes perfect sense. it just doesn't seem to mesh with his pre-flop play. b) AhKh, AhQh, AhJh, KhQh (overcards with flush draw): i had been watching this guy play for 4 hours and had seen him smooth-call out of position with a flush draw multiple times. he was so wedded to the move that these hands just seemed unlikely. possible though. c) QhJh, Jh8h: no. if you can't figure out why these don't make sense, think a little harder. d) 88, 77, 66: only truly aggressive and confident players would be check-raising a half-pot bet with a hand like this. considering my bet was not weak and my table image was excellent, could he imagine making a play like this? e) no pair, no draw: would he check-raise with a blind nothing? seems so unlikely. he had seemed to be a very careful player. i had put him on overcards as a possible hand before the flop though. to make this interactive, take some time to think about: 1) what do you think he has? 2) what would you have done? put your answer in the comments section (because honestly, i know who's reading this anyway). i'll put out the answer next time :).

tags: poker, garden city