Flopping a Set in a Four-Way, Reraised Pot
This week I have another hand to share from a $10,000 buy-in no-limit hold'em tournament I played in Florida recently, this one involving me playing a multi-way pot in which I manage to flop a set, which is always nice.
The hand shows how I went about getting value for my strong hand. Even more importantly, my primary opponent in this hand plays it atrociously, which makes it worth reviewing in order to show how to avoid the mistakes he made.
The blinds were 150/300 with a 50 ante and began with the splashy player who becomes the main opponent in the hand limping in from middle position with K♥J♣ (his first mistake). Next to act in the hijack seat, a loose-aggressive player raised to 700, which as I discuss below is also not a good play as the raise is too small to get anyone to fold.
It folded to me in the small blind where I called with 7♠7♣, then a tight-aggressive player in the big blind reraised to 2,650. Again, the sizing on this reraise isn't big enough to discourage callers, and sure enough after the splashy MP player called — another mistake with K♥J♣ — so did the hijack and myself.
The flop came K♣Q♣7♦, giving me a set of sevens and the splashy player top pair of kings. I checked as did the big blind, then the splashy player bet 10,000 (a pot-sized bet) and the hijack seat called, with both players committing significant percentages of their stacks by doing so.
Look at the video below to hear me talk about the problems with those plays, to see how I responded with my set, and to find out how things played out from there:
The splashy player had several chances to make what were essentially easy folds, yet never made them. Don't do what he did!
Jonathan Little is a professional poker player and author with over $6,800,000 in live tournament earnings. He writes a weekly educational blog and hosts a podcast at JonathanLittlePoker.com. You can follow him on Twitter @JonathanLittle.
