This hand could easily be called the battle of the lags!  Pre-flop there’s a raise and reraise with two callers and the best hand is pocket 9’s.  Going to the flop we have  Daniel with the best hand, 99, followed by Antill with 44, Stucke has KTo, and Jones with 72h.  The BB is 600 and Daniel has made it 2200 to play so the only player with odds to make the call here is Antil with the implied odds to set mine.

 

I can’t imagine what the others are thinking.  Perhaps they know Daniel plays some off the wall gappers and they are hoping for a lucky flop here to double off him.  With Daniel as the aggressor, it makes no sense he is weak and to play to hope for luck.

Flop comes 246 rainbow.  Joens puts out a weak feeler bet of 2800 which is less than 1/3 the pot.  To see if his bottom pair and terrible kicker is good this is a wasted bet.  You don’t want to know if your garbage is good betting on a flop.  If you want to make a bet at all it should be to take the pot on the flop and make it believable of ½ to ¾ the pot.  With so many callers preflop to a raise and reraised knowing you have bottom pair garbage kick and MUST catch runner runner to make any decent hand, just check fold like the KTo did.

Anything else is a waste of chips.  Especially when you have a known LAG player that is a world class pro and can play any gapper this flop COULD be all over your opponent.  Sure enough, Daniel comes in with a strong raise almost pot size now.  With all undercards it is safe to presume you are ahead with a middle pocket pair.  Stucke folds as does Jones with his 72. 

Antill just calls, trying not to reveal anything about the strength of his hand.

Flop is an 8 which helps no one but Daniel checks followed by Antill again not giving any information away about his hand.  The river card is a scare card pairing the 8 on the turn.  Daniel checks and Antill bets out about ½ the pot.  Daniel made an excellent lay down even with 3 to 1 pot odds to make the call.

Just the right amount of aggression and then backing off mid hand gave Daniel the information he needed to avoid going broke and not get overcommitted to the pot.  It also goes to show that the dominate hand preflop is not necessarily the best hand at showdown even live.