Strategy Snapshot: Lizard King Gets Crowned

With most of the high-stakes action happening live, we hit up some $40/$80 Hold'em online between Isaac "luvtheWNBA" Haxton and Aaron "aejones" Jones for our snapshot.

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

Players: Isaac "luvtheWNBA" Haxton vs. Aaron "aejones" Jones

Game: $40/$80 No-Limit Hold'em, six-max, Full Tilt Poker

Stack Sizes: luvtheWNBA $17,105; aejones $18,351

The Setup:

This hand it's folded to Aaron "aejones" Jones in the cut-off who raises to $240. The button and the small blind fold. Isaac "luvtheWNBA" Haxton (aka the Lizard King) elects to smooth-call in the big blind.

The flop comes down 2 6 7. Haxton checks and Jones bets $400. Haxton check-raises to $1,600 and Jones calls. The turn brings the 9.

Haxton bets $3,500 and Jones shoves all-in for $16,511. Haxton eventually makes the call. The river is the 8. Jones tables the 7 7 and Haxton is forced to muck his A A. Jones' three-of-a-kind takes the $34,250 pot.

The Breakdown:

Folded to in the cut-off, Jones makes a raise to $240. This is 3xBB and a pretty standard raise amount. His range from late position when folded to is very wide and 7 7 is near the middle.

Haxton decides he is going to slow-play his A A. Slow-playing should generally be avoided by most amateur poker players. While you think you're trapping the other player you're really just making your hand more difficult to play.

However, this is high-limit poker and there is no one way to play a hand. If you do the same thing every time you become predictable. Also, Isaac Haxton is extremely skilled and has a ton of experience, so he is no stranger to sticky post-flop decisions.

They go heads-up to the flop. There is $520 in the pot. Haxton checks and Jones bets $400 with his top set. With the absolute nuts right now he elects not to slow-play.

He knows he would bet the bulk of his range here so there is no point in checking with a made hand. The whole point of being aggressive is so that if you are always showing aggression it is hard to to tell whether you actually hold a real hand or not.

So if you flop a monster hand then bet it the exact same way you would air.

Haxton, who has A A, also holds a big hand - one that he feels is very well-disguised. Knowing Jones plays aggressively, he decides to check-raise with his overpair. He feels that his check-raise will get paid off by a wide range of hands.

Haxton: Doomed.

Since Jones plays aggressively and can thus be betting the flop with a number of hands, that means Haxton too can be playing back at him with a wide range of hands. That means the A A is at the top of his range. Haxton check-raises to $1,600 and Jones calls.

The turn brings the 9. Haxton bets $3,500, still believing his overpair is good. Jones shoves for $16,511. At this point, Haxton was probably cursing himself for having slow-played the rockets.

However, because his hand is so underrepresented at this point, he elects to make the call. Of course much to his chagrin he is drawing to two outs on the river. The river bricks out 8 and Aaron "aejones" Jones rakes in the $34,250 pot.

This just shows that slow-playing can and will get you into some difficult situations. I'm not saying never slow play, because poker is never that absolute. Just know that if you decide to slow-play then you can end up having to make some very difficult decisions on later streets.

Haxton went from betting for value on the turn to making a crying call when he was raised. Unfortunately for him, his opponent had flopped a set and he was doomed to lose his 200BB stack.

To see more big pots from their session, or more of the top 100 biggest pots won online over the last day, week and month, jump to the PokerListings.com MarketPulse section.

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