Poker Tropical

In the big blind, you find yourself with (9,9) and the action is folded around to the small blind. You know this player to be aggressive, and true to form, they decide to put in a strong raise equating to about a quarter of your stack. This is problematic in the sense of you having a fairly strong, yet vulnerable hand, and the amount of chips it will cost you to get involved.

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Personally, I feel that with your opponent being aggresive in nature and the preflop raise coming from the small blind, this does look very much like a clear cut blind steal attempt. I would be tempted to to push all in, partly to ward the opponent off from trying the same thing again. Remember that bullies prey on the weak, and aggressive blind stealers are no different. If they see a player throwing away many hands and passively capitulating often when raised preflop, they will target that players big blind if position allows them to.

Despite all this, in the situation at hand, there is another option in the shape of flat calling. I do not think I would fold at all in this position because of the circumstances surrounding the raise, but a flat call can give you the chance to get away if the flop is too dangerous. If the cards on the flop are all lower than a 9, or if a 9 hits, then this is a prime position to be in I feel. The aggressive player is very likely to be behind, and very likely to put in a raise anyway, because the board will not look overly dangerous (unless the board is a 9 and two big cards that our opponent hasn’t hit).

If we flat call and see a horrible flop of (J,K,A) or something similar, then at least we didn’t commit everything preflop, and that is regardless of whether our opponent would or would not have folded if we had. If we do make these sort of all in pushes preflop, it does often force our opponent to fold, but if they do call with two overcards, we’re 50/50 for all our chips, and that is not a favourable position to be in.

This week I went along to my local tournament feeling rather refreshed after having a couple of weeks away from poker over christmas. Upon arriving I found out that a new league was going to be starting off again after the success of the last one, which added some extra excitement to proceedings.

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(I managed a very respectable 4th place in the grand final tournament at the end of last years league).
In the first half an hour or so I had one confrontation of note, after limping into a pot from late position with (Ks,5s). Of course I didn’t have much of a hand, but I do sometimes like to see some action early on when the blinds are very small. I picked up a straight draw on the flop which then became a straight by the turn, however I was wary of a bigger straight. Due to this possibility, I cautiously flat called my opponents bets, only to find he had a two pair right up until he made his full house on the river. It could have been far more damaging than it was though, and I only lost 1,000 of my 6,500 stack. Later on I also checked down a top pair feling I was outkickered and was proved right, and so my damage limitation skills were certainly on form.

The killer blow came after just over an hour though with the blinds at 200/400. In very late position with two limpers, I decided to move all in with (A,10) reasoning that if either limper had a stronger hand than (A,10) they would have raised the pot themselves, and so couldn’t possibly call me. It was simple logic, yet perhaps flawed, as the more inexperienced player who had limped in, called, then turned over (J,J).

I hit my Ace, but then she hit her Jack too, an so it was all over. I perhaps shouldn’t have been quite so aggressive on that hand, but my reasoning was fine seeing as anyone in their right minds, in early position, with (J,J)…really should have raised preflop. But alas that is poker for you, players and cards will always surprise you when you least want them to.

Some might feel that the days of Seven Card Stud are for the most part, past. The game used to be the most popular form of poker, and you will often find older players will know the game far better than the younger generations, as is the case with Razz too. Despite this, Seven Card Stud does have it’s followers, and is still one of the three main games offered on most online sites.

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The game begins with two cards dealt face down and one face up, to each player participating. Following this is a round of betting, then another card face up for each player. Another two face up cards are dealt to each player with a round of betting between each one, followed by a final card face down. In this way, players will all have their own board cards, some of which will be exposed, and some concealed. This of course gives extra scope for bluffing and representation of hands during play.

I am sure variants of poker will continue to go in and out of fashion, and perhaps there will be a return to popularity for Seven Card Stud somewhere down the line. As long as online poker rooms continue to offer these games and tutorials on how to play them, I am sure that will always be players who can play games other than Holdem.