Do you have what it takes to play at NL5K?

A weak opponent seems to have got lost in the high stakes. Can you seize the opportunity or will you fail miserably?

In this week's edition of our community hand of the week we're focusing again on a hand played at the highest levels of poker, once again with the help of our German coach and high stakes analyst ironpumper.

Usually, NL5K tables only see action when a weak opponent gets lost on a limit of this magnitude. Therefore, we're first going to have a closer look at the participants in play.

Judging by stack sizes, bigi123456 should catch our eye since he has the smallest stack with $3,493 (see history below). OBORRA doesn't have a full stack either, although keep in mind that high stakes regulars often don't rebuy to 100BB so long as they have their targeted weak opponent covered.

Diving into the action

So we can assume OBORRA started out with 100BB at the table and simply chose not to rebuy since, like the rest of the table, he only wants to play against bigi123456 anyway, probably, thus making him the main target for everyone.

In our specific sample hand, bigi123456 attempted a steal in the Small Blind with a 3BB raise and got 3-bet by 0human0, a regular on NL5K, with . Figuring out 0human0's plan in this spot is a bit tricky, but the most likely explanation is that bigi123456 previously folded against a lot 3-bets, leading to 0human0 assuming he's in a profitable spot for a 3-bet bluff. Usually, a regular would simply just flat call in the same situation in order to outplay his opponent in position postflop.

Taking it postflop

0human0 is able to hit a Two Pair on the flop, obviously making him the range favourite and thus enabling him to play with a high bet frequency while maintaining a low bet size. The goal here is to keep weaker hands like gutshots, mid and top pairs in the opponent's calling range.

If we played for a stack of 100BB, a 2/3 pot-size bet would be the best choice on the turn in order to enable us to push the opponent's top pairs like AK/AQ/AJ all-in on the river without any issues.

However, due to bigi123456's small stack size, a 1/2 pot-size bet suffices since it could lead to him calling once again with some of his mid pairs.

The decision on the river

Now we've reached the decisive part of the hand. Villain decides to donk all-in with $1965 into a pot of $3102. The question is whether Hero should call that big a bet in this spot in order to see a showdown.

Since the didn't really change much and only a set with Pocket Eights and a Two Pair with A8 hit, one should assume calling would be the right choice. However, we still can't be 100% certain that bigi123456 is in fact a weak player that just got lost here...

Last week's poll results

Last week, we asked you how you would appraoch Hungarian member laci24's river play. Well, we received 895 votes and, overwhelmingly across our communities, Call received the most votes, peaking in Spain where 76% came out in its favour.

To push or fold were your other two options and in France (25%) and in Russia (29%) fold was the popular shout but in both Italy (21%) and Poland (26%), members would have pushed. Russians were also the least likely to call whose 56% return was the lowest of those polled.