Round-up: How did you fare at the high stakes?
We’ve finished our fourth batch of high stakes hand reviews, so let’s take a look at all the spots and results that were discussed this time.
Once again we've given you several tough spots that actually occurred at limits up to NL10,000 and asked for your line of choice. Often our members were able to pick the right one, still sometimes slipping up in a spot that looked simpler than it actually was.
Of course, that's not a surprise. After all, we've "played against" the best of the best, with 3-bet pots and out of position spots coming along on top.
What to do against the RedBaron?
Except for chiller911, almost everyone got tricked in this particular tough spot against one of the best sharks roaming the high stakes.
Of course, the first mistake in the hand already occurs preflop by 3-betting with 
. A simple fold definitely would have been the better choice. Afterwards, the turn requires us to play check/fold, even though we're sitting on top pair. OtB_RedBaron's range is simply so strong that neither firing a bet nor playing check/call would make a lot of sense.
It's important to look at as a pure bluff 3-bet before the flop. We're 3-betting not in the hopes of hitting a weak top pair. Instead we want to get our opponent to fold right away. Postflop, you can basically only continue with monsters.
Side note: If we had a redraw, for instance, if our king or the 8 was a spade, then we actually could have played the turn differently.
Easy money on the river?
The decision in our first high stakes hand review seems to have been a tough one as well since there was an equal amount of votes for each option in our communities.
In the actual hand, our Hero Bit2Easy decided to go all-in directly for almost pot-size after hitting a weak top pair on the river. If you're putting trust into the current solver tools on the market, that seems to have been the wrong decision, though.
Instead, against an aggressive opponent, check/fold or check/call would have been the recommended play. There's quite a simple reason for this: If we push ourselves, we give our opponent less of a chance to make a costly mistake..
There are no easy turns at NL10K
We held a weak mid-pair in the second high stakes hand we had a look at and the question was how to continue on the turn.
Since the usual move is to first check with your entire range, we wanted to know whether you would fold, call or raise against a subsequent bet by the opponent.
Almost 50% of voters picked a fold as the preferable line. However, in our opinion, that's not the correct answer for that spot. Of course, we're only holding a weak mid-pair but it's still quite well suited for a bluff check/raise, allowing us to balance our value range.
We also have to take into account the blockers we're holding: QQ, QJ, 66 and 67 are all blocked by our hand. Additionally, we're not blocking any straight draw combos, further supporting a bluff as the best possible decision on that turn.
How well do you perform out of position at NL5k?
Our Hero jinmay decided to go down a rather weird route by continuing our third reviewed high stakes hand with a bet of roughly 1/6 pot-size but almost no money behind. He probably intended that to be a block bet since he definitely can't play check/call with his hand anymore.
Almost half of our voters were in favour of an all-in though, an understandable choice given the rest of the stack. Still, we really don't have any fold equity in that spot and our hand is way too weak, leading to check/fold actually being the more optimal line.
