Nit City Twitch.tv Hand Analysis
_Yesterday, a poker friend I met online a while back tweeted me his twitch channel that he and a friend of his started. I made an obligatory click on the link, but ended up watching it for the better part of the day. The stream was of a Bovada $60 buy in tournament.
Our hero, @ hoboinsomniac on twitter, was up and down in the top 10 for nearly the entire tournament until the later stages where he finished in 9th. I had never before done anything like this where I was able to actually watch an entire tournament, and it was awesome to see and hear him go through his decision making process as he played a hand. It was allot of fun to watch and it is great how much you can pick up from watching just a few hands. While undoubtedly a strong player, there were two plays I completely disagreed with while he was playing. The one that sticks out the most, was a triple barrel bluff that cost a significant portion of his stack and probably cost him a higher place in the tournament.
**While I don’t remember the exact details, I will try my best to represent the situation as best as I can**
Hero calls a raise UTG with KJ off suit, a player who had been playing very few pots calls.
The flop comes 9-9-10.
Hero bets a little under half the pot. Villain calls.
The turn is a 3.
Hero bets again, about half the pot. Villain calls.
The river is an 6
Hero bets about 3/4 of the pot. Villain calls.
Villain turns over AQ off suit and takes down the pot.
First off, I really didn’t like the flop bet here. Hero made it because villain had not been playing many hands and he wanted more information. That’s fine, but with a made hand here, hero would likely check to give villain a chance to catch up on the turn. So a check here instead, would have kept the pot smaller and villain may have given him credit for a bigger hand.
That said, what I do like about the flop bet here is that hero takes control of the betting in a situation where we know very little about villain’s play. That said, I would much rather call Villain’s flop bet and make the bluff on the turn and river trying to represent a hand like K10.
I must give props to villain here for sticking to his guns. It was definitely a great read on his part calling down with Ace high. In this situation, I probably would have put hero on a small pocket pair and folded.
The Nit City Twitch steam will be live pretty much every day. You can follow hoboinsomniac or _trapartist_ on twitter to keep up to date. They’re working to create a community of US poker players to collaborate. There will definitely be more hand analyses from their twitch stream in the near future!