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Covering live poker tournaments for a living affords me the chance to peer countless thousands of hands played out, a lot of which give interesting and potentially valuable insights into how players — both amateurs and professionals — play the sport. On this ongoing series, I'll highlight hands I've seen on the tournaments I've covered and spot if we will be able to glean anything useful from them.

The Scene

For this week's hand, we're rolling back the clock slightly to a tournament I played in Las Vegas while the arena Series of Poker was in full swing, one from the $570 Grand Poker Series Main Event on the Golden Nugget.

I managed to bag a pittance on Day 1b of the event, then on Day 2 ran up my 14 big blinds to a pleasant stack of about 460,000 and was within the money. That's when the hand described below went down.

The blinds were 6,000/12,000/2,000 with not up to 100 players left within the event and around $130,000 up top for the winner. I had already three-bet the player on my right once or twice and subsequently lost both pots, and that i could tell he wasn't about to fold anything to me going forward. The massive blind on this hand had recently joined the table.

The Action

It folded around to the cutoff, who opened for a raise to 30,000. At the button, I called with . The large blind came along, making it three to a flop of .

The big blind led out for 46,000 and the player within the cutoff called. I raised to 150,000, and the massive blind quickly folded. The cutoff came along after asking to look my stack, then the turn was a . The cutoff checked and that i pushed my last 280,000 or so in.

The cutoff snap-called and revealed for a straight. The river was a brick, eliminating me from the tournament.

Concept and Analysis

This hand put me in a tough spot at the turn, though I FEEL the streets leading as much as it played out in relatively standard fashion.

Preflop, I MIGHT occasionally three-bet sevens here, but against a player whom I THINK is actually never folding and refusing to offer me an oz. of credit, I FEEL calling in position is better by far. If I flop a suite against a man who isn't going to put anything decent down, there's potentially a ton of value — plus I WILL BE ABLE TO use position to manage the pot and often win unimproved on certain board textures.

On the flop, the large blind leads out, which I WOULD NOT usually expect most players to do with really strong hands. When the cutoff just calls, I figure it is very likely that my hand is healthier nowadays. As straightforwardly as he was playing, I just didn't see him flatting a hand that beat me while allowing a 3rd player within the pot with a board that might get ugly very fast if a four-straight hit.

However, my pair is ultra-vulnerable as almost any turn card could beat me if I'm putting the cutoff on , calling with overcards and a straight draw, which I figured was his perhaps hand.

Given that reasoning, I MADE UP MY MIND to raise, and nothing about my guess of his range changed when he called. I figured he was peeling with what he correctly estimated to be 10 outs.

The turn is a slightly interesting card because it puts a four-straight at the board, but I also picked up an open-ended draw to a greater straight. There's definitely an issue for checking and seeing if I improve, as I now have safer equity against hands which are all the way down to six outs or less. Plus it's possible my opponent slow played a collection or is stronger than I think.

However, I MADE UP MY MIND to compliment my read and push. I DID NOT really see many threes in my opponent's range, so I ASSUMED I had the most productive hand and the pot was now over 450,000, bigger than the scale of my remaining stack.

Unfortunately, my opponent had the only hand I probably will need to have been most wary of, and that i was the person who had six outs, failing to hit one at the river. I collected an 85th-place ticket for a modest profit and was left wondering if I must have checked back. What do you're thinking that I must have done?

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