Size Matters

Since this claims to be a poker blog, it'd be good if I posted about poker once in a while.

(That was your cue to skip this post if you don't give a rat's ass about poker.)

Cutting right to the action, I had pocket 8s in the cutoff and opened the action with a raise, which was called by the small blind and by the UTG player, who had straddled. The flop wasn't all that great: K-T-6, three suits. Action checked to me, and I bet half-pot. The small blind folded, but UTG called. Channeling Dawn Summers, I had already mentally ticked the "fold to any bet" box when an 8 hit the turn, completing the rainbow of suits and giving me a set.

This was a pretty harmless looking card, and oddly the UTG player decided to bet into me, roughly half pot. Given that I held two 8s in my hand, it was unlikely the 8 improved him. 7-9 seemed too implausible (even for this particular game). He could theoretically have had a pair of 6s, but to me it seemed more likely that he had KT and was afraid that, in the absence of obvious draws, I would check behind if he checked the turn.

To sum it up, I put him on a big hand, and I had a very well disguised, even bigger hand, with only 4 cards to dodge on the river. Seemed like a good place for a call, and call behind is exactly what I did.

The river was a disaster: another T for a board of K-T-6-8-T. He checked to me. Despite the fact that I'd put him on KT, there was no way I could check behind with my full house, right? Right? So I made a small "value bet", about a quarter of the pot. He promptly check-raised all-in.

"God, that is *such* a sick card," I moaned.
"I think you should fold," he replied.
"I think I should fold too. And do you know what I have?" I opened my 8s to show my full house. Several other players at the table looked at me like I was crazy.
"You're not going to call?" one asked incredulously. "This would be an insta-call for me."
"He has KT!" I shot back. "Don't you?"
"Pretty close, anyway," the villain said.

I went back and forth for a while on whether or not to call, but finally I figured that it wasn't really much money that I was calling for, and who am I to lay down a full house?, so call I did. Sure enough, UTG opened KT and took down the pot.

Now, apart from displaying my mad Danny N.-esque reading skillz, what's the lesson of this hand? KT looks like a monster on the turn. There are two ways to play my set from there. (1) Put in a raise right away; (2) Wait until the river. I think both lines can be correct, but the choice depends on the stack sizes of each player at the time.

With small- to medium-sized stacks, there's no reason not to put in a raise on the turn. There is little to no chance the villain is going to release his hand if he can't get too badly hurt by the raise. On the other hand, if the stacks had been much deeper, I think waiting until the river is generally the better play, because a large turn raise on this board, with a deep stack behind, looks pretty damn fishy and may make the villain edgy about taking his hand all the way to a showdown. Besides, there are only 4 cards to dodge on the river. It's unlikely that the villain's hand will improve to the point where he beats you, but he will probably be quite happy to put more money into the pot.

So for anybody who says stack size doesn't matter, and that the trick is all in how you use the stack you've got, I say bullshit. Stack size can totally influence the best line to take in any particular hand.