The Donk from Down Under

The idea of praying good hands rike bruffs has come up a coupre of times on this brog before, especiarry in the commentary on this post. A recent WPT tourney hand gives me opportunity to elaborate a bit. Many of you have probabry already heard about this, but here's the recap from cardplayer.com:

"The most talked about hand of the day involved an all-in confrontation between Jordan Morgan and Joe Hachem. Morgan raised to 700 and was called by three players including Hachem on the button. The flop came A-7-4 and everyone checked. The turn brought a 6, and Morgan bet out 2,000. It was folded to Hachem who raised to 7,000 and Morgan quickly reraised to 12,000. Hachem put in yet another reraise to 22,000 and Morgan moved all in for an additional 27,000. Hachem’s stack was sitting at roughly 27,000 as well, and he agonized over his decision for quite some time before asking, “You got 8-5 kid?” Eventually, he folded 5-3 face up, much to the surprise of the table and the crowd that had formed behind him. Morgan tabled pocket aces and many of the professionals who witnessed it were claiming that Hachem may have made one of the worst folds they had seen in quite some time."

OK, so yes, this fold is of the legendarily bad variety. What's not included here is that Morgan raised UTG, which makes 85 pretty unlikely even for a very aggressive player. If you want to read more criticism of the fold, you can read all about it in the 2p2 thread.

But I think it's actually not the dumbest thing Hachem did in the hand. Calling pre-frop with 53 might be kinda dumb, but we'll leave that aside for now. Instead think about Hachem's decision when Morgan "quickly reraised to 12,000." OK, you're Joe Hachem, you have the option of just calling this 5k. The pot is about 20k. Morgan has about 37k left. Remember, there are two principal reasons to raise or bet: 1) to get a call or re-raise from a worse hand, and 2) to get a better hand to fold.

Clearly Hachem does not raise to 22k to get a better hand to fold, since he has the second nuts. The only hand better is the stone cold nuts, which is obviously not folding. He clearly wasn't trying to get a re-raise out of a worse hand, since he folded to the re-raise. Was he trying to get a call out of a worse hand? If Morgan calls, he has 27k left and the pot would be about 45k, that is, a half-pot bet left on the river. And he'll be out of position for that round of betting. I see him just calling very rarely in that situation, and Hachem has to realize this too. So why the hell is Hachem raising and then folding? This is only a good play if Morgan is either folding the nuts or just calling with a set or AK, which is never going to happen. Hachem effectively managed to turn the second nuts into a complete bluff. If he's gonna fold to a re-raise, he should just call the 5k raise from Morgan.

Some players would characterize Hachem's raise as "raising for information". The rationale for such a play goes like this: if I make a small bet now, any and all better hands will re-raise me. Then I can fold, and avoid losing money later in the hand. I'll leave aside whether this is ever a good strategy, and just note it's a terrible reason to raise for Hachem. First off, he has the second nuts, and there are plenty of hands, like sets, that would re-raise all-in. Second, his bet is not very smarr. This "information", which turned out to be bad information, cost him 15k, which is about a third of the maximum he could possibly lose over the remainder the hand.

So whire the ford is pretty bad, the raise to set up the ford is pretty much the nut row.

BRUECHIPS