Strategy Snapshot: I Know That You Know

Today's snapshot digs deep into the biggest pots list for a smaller pot but an intriguing hand between leggopoker.com coach aejones and Full Tilt pro John Juanda.

(Hand history and stats from PL.com MarketPulse Biggest Pots section.)

Players: John Juanda vs. aejones

Game: $100/$200 No-Limit Hold'em, heads-up, deep-stacked

Stack Sizes: John Juanda $52,141.50; aejones $44,873

The Setup

Juanda min-raises from the small blind/button and aejones three-bets to $1,555. The flop comes down A T 5. aejones continuation bets $1,700.

Juanda decides to smooth-call and the turn comes K. aejones checks and Juanda checks behind.

The river drops out 3 and aejones bets $4,600. Juanda raises to $10,650 and aejones goes into the tank, letting his time run all the way down before shoving all-in for $41,618.

Now it is Juanda's turn to tank before eventually calling the shove. aejones shows A Q and Juanda shows Q J for the nut straight. Juanda's straight takes the $89,745 pot.

The Breakdown

The hand begins with Juanda making a min-raise off the button with Q J. Though raising with Q-J heads-up is incredibly standard, the min-raise is a little peculiar.

Ahead of the curve with the heads-up min-raise off the button?

Maybe the min-raise off the button is catching on in heads-up games. Online dominator David "raptor" Benefield has been toying with the strategy himself in the recent $25k Full Tilt Heads-Up tourney as well as in the $10,000 WSOP Heads-Up tournament.

Whatever the reason, Juanda min-raises and aejones three-bets his A Q for value. A-Q is a huge hand heads-up; he wants to extract as much as he can while he is ahead. He goes with $1,555 and Juanda calls.

Juanda makes the call because they are both more than 200 BBs deep. The deeper the stacks, the more implied odds one has. The concept is simple: if Juanda can hit a big hand with more money behind, the bigger the pot is going to be.

The flop comes A T 5 and aejones c-bets $1,700. This is a half-pot-size bet. A little on the small side, but he holds a very strong hand - top pair, second-best kicker - and a backdoor flush draw. A half-pot bet disguises the actual strength of his hand.

Juanda elects to make the call with his gut-shot. Again, he calls not because of the immediate pot odds, but because of the implied odds that a deep-stack table offers.

The turn brings Juanda's K, making him the nut straight. aejones checks and Juanda checks behind.

Holds the nut straight.

I believe aejones checks the turn not because he fears the flush but instead in an attempt to check-raise. His hand, top pair, good kicker, now with the nut-flush draw, figures to be good here a high percentage of the time.

Those times it is not, he has the nut-flush draw to fall back on. I believe the turn is a whiffed check-raise semibluff. Juanda decides to check through on the turn because he now holds the nut straight and raising will expose the strength of his hand.

The Q gives Juanda the second nut-flush draw to go along with his made straight. So the check through on the turn is in fact a good play in the long run, because if a heart falls it's very unlikely that aejones has the one card that can beat him.

Of course we know that now because we can see the player's cards, but in the heat of the moment that information wasn't available. In any case, Juanda checks through.

The river comes the 3 and aejones bets $4,600. The pot is $6,510 and aejones' bet is a two-thirds pot-value bet. When the turn goes check/check, aejones likely feels that he has the best hand and he is hoping for a call.

Juanda, however, has a straight and raises to $10,650. This bet is simple from Juanda's eyes. He has the nut straight and would like to get value out of it.

From aejones' point of view, though, this bet is actually much more complex. aejones' hand is actually very underrepresented. He bets half the pot on the flop and when called, checks the turn. It almost looks like he gives up on the hand.

Now when the river comes he takes a stab at the pot. With the information that Juanda has, it looks like aejone's range is weak. Thus the river raise by Juanda could be a complete bluff, trying to move aejones off his weak hand.

Not putting a move on.

We obviously know that that isn't the case but one can understand how aejones could think that Juanda is putting a move on him.

For those reasons aejones decides to reraise all-in, a move I do not really like. If he did indeed think that Juanda was bluffing, then simply calling the river bet would be a far better (and safer) move.

The reraise I believe is not a value raise but an elaborate resteal. He knows that Juanda knows that his (aejones') range is weak. Thus Juanda's river raise could be weak.

So he attempts to steal the pot back. This logic is somewhat flawed, though, because I don't think there are any hands that aejones loses to that fold to his river shove. Which means the shove really accomplishes the same as just calling the river raise.

After all, if Juanda is bluffing, aejones wins either way. Juanda folds to the reraise only if he is bluffing, and if he is bluffing, then aejones has the best hand at showdown. Thus the raise does not accomplish anything.

To see more hand histories from their session, or more of the Top 100 biggest pots online over the last day, week, month and year, jump to the PokerListings.com MarketPulse section.

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