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 he Guardian Poker Column |
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| Victoria
Coren |
| Tues 9 Aug 2011 |
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OK, so Galen
Hall came out on top – but he'd still made a bad error
So, did you see my
brutal exit from the EPT Champion of Champions on Channel 4? Here's how it
went.
We were down to four players, blinds 30k-60k. First to speak,
Galen Hall raised to 120k with K 2. The others passed. From the big blind, I
re-raised all in. What should Galen Hall do?
If you have been paying
attention for the last couple of weeks, you should be replying with one
question only: What are the stack sizes? The chip counts, not the hands, are
the relevant factor. |
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If either of us started the hand with 500k
or less, Galen Hall must call the all-in. If he's the short stack, he can't
afford to put in 120k and pass. If I'm the short stack, he must take the cheap
chance to knock me out.
In fact, Galen Hall started the hand with 1.5m
and I had 950k. So . . . ? He should fold. He's only put in 8% of his stack, he
doesn't need to put the rest in. With 16 big blinds, I might be moving in with
a fairly wide range (it is a good stack size for re-raising all in), but his
own hand is too weak for that gamble – especially when he knows that I am
not a super-aggro player and nobody's stack is terribly big, so a "desperate
shove with nothing" is unlikely.
But he called. He called because, as
he explained to the puzzled table, he hadn't realised I had so many chips. I
held 88. Obviously, the K came down to knock me out. But his play was still a
bad error: he took odds of just over 5-4 when his hand was 9-4.
If
Galen Hall, multi-millionaire poker professional, can miscount his opponent's
chips, then anyone can. It's very important not to. Count, count, count.
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