Strategy Snapshot: Of Draws and Monsters

Our latest hand analysis comes from a $300/$600 session between two of the young "gods" of online poker - Tom "durrrr" Dwan and Jay "pr1nnyraid" Rosenkrantz.

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

Players: Tom "durrrr" Dwan and Jay "pr1nnyraid" Rosenkrantz

Game: $300/$600 No-Limit Hold'em, Cash, Full Tilt Poker

Stack Sizes: durrrr $22,947.50; pr1nnyraid $25,048

The Setup

pr1nnyraid raises off the button to $1,200. durrrr three-bets to $3,600 and pr1nnyraid makes the call. The flop comes down Q J Q. durrrr makes a continuation bet of $4,600. pr1nnyraid shoves for $21,448 and durrrr calls off his last $14,747.

pr1nnyraid shows K T for the open-ender and durrrr tables the K K for the overpair. The turn brings the 2, the river the 2 and the $45,894 pot is shipped in durrrr's direction.

The Breakdown

For some reason in this hand both durrrr and pr1nnyraid are playing short-stacked. They both have 45 BBs. This is fairly strange since both players rarely buy in for anything less than the table max.

The hand begins with pr1nnyraid making a min-raise from the button/small blind. He may have chosen to min-raise because they are both playing with less than half stacks. A larger, more traditional raise would be for 10% of his stack or more.

durrrr in the big blind has a monster and three bets to $3,600 with K K. pr1nnyraid makes the call with his two suited broadway cards in position.

The flop comes Q J Q. durrrr, who is continuation betting with the bulk of his range here, does just that with a $4,600 bet. pr1nnyraid, who has flopped an open-ender plus an overcard, shoves all-in for $21,448.

The shove itself is pretty standard. His hand is way too strong to fold and just calling with such a small stack is an awful move.

Just calling the bet on the flop would leave pr1nnyraid with half of the effective stacks in the pot. He can't call the flop and then fold the turn, so shoving is best. By doing so, pr1nnyraid takes the initiative; if called, his hand does extremely well versus durrrr's range.

Tom Dwan: It's a bit of a trade-off. He's flush with cash and ridiculous poker skills; a little shy on chest hair.

Against durrrr's actual hand pr1nnyraid's hand would win 32% of the time. Not terrible, given the pot odds. However, against durrrr's entire range it stacks up much better. durrrr could fold hands that he three-bet pre-flop with and that subsequently missed the flop entirely.

Most (I hesitate slightly to say all) pocket pairs call, and because the stacks are short A-K, A-T, T-9 and other non-paired hands call the shove as well. This increases pr1nnyraid's equity versus durrrr's range.

The shove also works for another reason: You have to be able to shove with both draws and monsters here. If you only shove a flop like this with a monster, you're never going to get called by worse. You become predictable and when you are predictable, you lose your edge.

By making this move with a wide range of hands (where your equity versus range is still good), not just monsters, you become - like pr1nnyraid - a very difficult player to be up against!

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

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