Can you stand your ground on NL5K?

In our latest hand of the week we're taking a look at a spot from the highest stakes of online poker. Are you ready to play with the big boys?

With the help of our German coach ironpumper, we will be taking a look at this special high-stakes hand. It's special for several reasons, the first being that there are no recreational players at the table. All four participants regularly play at NL5K and so are consequently very accomplished players. Another reason this hand is special is Hero's hole cards which he plays very aggressively on the flop.

The hand is played out between sauce123 (Hero) and llinusllove. sauce123 is only playing with a stack of 50BB, an uncommon stack size for this level of play that, if you didn't know better, could lead you to assume that he's not a regular. However, he's been playing all sorts of variants on the very highest level for years, making him a fierce opponent in No-Limit cash games, PLO and other Mixed Games.

At NL5K, you will usually find Sauce camping out at one of the empty tables, ready to play any regular keen on a battle. The reason he starts with less than 100BB is that some regulars leave themselves blind down without re-buying until there are only good players left at the table. This way, they can put themselves back into a mathematically advantageous position against those regulars who stick to a deep stack. This effect is amplified when playing in a multi-way hand. The popular short stack strategy was the starting point for many ambitious players years ago and was based on this exact advantage.

Let's get into the action

Let’s see if the smaller stack was really an advantage in this spot. Hero completes preflop with a trashy . Regularly completing in the Small Blind should definitely be avoided at smaller limits where the rake still takes a huge chunk out of the winrate. At limits like NL5K though, you can comfortably play 60% to 70% of your hands in the SB, especially when playing with antes.

When determining your complete range, is certainly a hand that you can skip. The reason Hero is still playing it here could be due to reads or an unknown table history. After the Big Blind's raise to 4BB, Hero's only options are to fold or to call. A raise with such a hand would lead to a very wide complete/raise range, while almost always playing complete/fold should lead to never completing in the first place. It’s safe to assume then, that sauce123's plan with a preflop complete was to call a subsequent raise as well.

No help on the flop

The flop doesn't help Hero at all, except for the backdoor flush draw. The Big Blind is a huge range favourite on this board and will be c-betting almost his entire range.

Hero now decides to make an unexpected move by check/raising. The standard option should be to check/fold. sauce123 has to have a very particular plan or, at the very least, a particular read to justify this. He must also assume that his opponent will almost never fold against his check/raise on the flop, meaning that he will almost always have to play the turn with his rather meagre looking hand.

The decision on the turn

Hero is able to pick up a flush draw once the hits on the turn, though. The question now is which plan was prepared on the flop in the event of such a hit. One option is to check and call according to odds and outs. Obviously, continuing with that approach would make things relatively simple, however, it would also mean giving up any initiative that was picked up on the flop.

Another option would be to lead on the turn for 1/2 the potsize, calling a possible push from Villain. The advantage of this would be that we can save some money on the river if our opponent calls and we are not able to hit our flush by then.

The final option could be an over-push for maximum fold equity. However, our opponent could assume that this had been our plan all along, leading to him calling with a very loose range since he doesn't want to be bluffed out of this hand.

With that information at hand, it's your turn to decide which action to take next:

Last week’s poll results

Last week we told you about Italian user alborto and his Ace pair hole cards during which we paused play on the turn to ask you what your move would be, giving you a choice of three; All-in, fold or call.

All-in proved to be the most popular option, but the community were split. Seven voted for the All-in, six opted to call and our Czech members were tied.