Have you ever made a play against somebody that you wouldn't have made against anybody else?
Whether it's a big adjustment, a big gut read, or maybe just a big grudge, history has a way of tilting the odds.
Today, I'm going to review two hands that I have not seen yet between Alan Keating and Peter. My team tells me I'm in for a treat, and I think you might be as well.
Hand #1: Bluff Catching in a $900K Pot
The first time Alan and Peter played together, Peter won a $2 million pot—and the rivalry—had been established.
Let's see if I can make sense of how that led to whatever is about to happen in these hands.
Okay. So, it’s 200/400 with a $400 big blind ante. We start with Steve raising in late position, which is an interesting way to kick off the hand. Peter calls with . I would usually raise or fold this.
And Keating, in the big blind, calls with , which is standard—or he could squeeze.
Almost $5k in the pot.
They check to Steve, who bets $4k. I mean, he's betting near pot. That’s not... actually, on this flop, it's not terrible sizing. But if you have offsuit in your range, and your range is this wide, probably ill-advised. But anyway, that's neither here nor there.
I know that the hand's going to be about Peter and Alan. Both of them have a little bit of something.
So Peter raises, which is not crazy in and of itself. But what's interesting is that I know that Alan doesn't fold here. I know he continues in the hand, which is non-standard. So, I'm excited to see what happens next.
Alan, with bottom pair, facing a bet—a pot-size bet, almost—and a 3x raise.
And without that much hesitation, makes it $41,000.
They're another $450k deep, which is 1,100-some big blinds.
So that kind of... it doesn’t really change—it doesn’t mean that you should be making plays like this. However, it does allow for a lot more play.
So when stacks get deeper and deeper, a lot of players who are more aggressive, who like to kind of take it to the streets, they get a lot more comfortable, and they get to do that more often. Because they don’t get punished—if there’s a 100 big blind stack that can just shove their stack in over this... I mean, he's putting in 100 big blinds just on this flop with bottom pair.
So, if you're up against a short stack, you can get really punished for that. In this case, they have a lot of room to play. And somehow, Keating puts in $41k with the best hand so far. 62%.
I don't know if he had a read on Peter, like the way that he put out his bet. That's possible. I don't know if he was doing some range analysis, like Peter would be 3-betting aces, he'd be 3-betting kings, he'd be 3-betting sevens, he'd be 3-betting Ace-King. If that's true, then maybe not a lot of value hands make sense. Like, you could have a compilation of reads on somebody that would make this very likely a bluff.
Or maybe he just wanted a battle.
Either way, they head to the turn with $91,000 in the pot.
$58,000. A little under 2x pot.
Peter now, I think, has a very easy call. He's got a draw with the ability to improve. He has a pair, so he's beating bluffs. Although, in this case, Keating is kind of bluffing and actually beating Peter's hand.
So, the interesting thing is—I thought this was going to be the first standard play in the whole hand, which is that Peter was going to call.
But instead... he’s raising his bottom pair.
So what Peter’s thinking is: "I either think that Alan is semi-bluffing with something that I want him to fold, or I think he's going thinly for value with like an Ace-Ten–type hand, and I want to make him fold that."
Obviously, I don’t have the level of history that they have between each other. I don’t have every hand. That read doesn’t make a lot of sense. I don’t know that Alan would 3-bet flop with a hand like Ace-Ten. It seems like it would be strong value hands or bluffs—which this is, one category of bluff. It’s a made-hand bluff, but it is a bluff.
It's possible that Peter made the same read on the flop that I was talking about Alan making on him, right? Alan would squeeze with aces, he would squeeze with kings, he would squeeze with Ace-King, maybe squeeze with sevens. And so that means his value range would be A-7 or K-7. And that’s really all that makes sense—unless he has 7-7, which would also make sense.
And there are these fun moments in poker where both players are putting in too much money for the types of hands that they could have, and... you have to figure out what exactly is going on.
But... and I, for one, can see the cards, and I don't know exactly what's going on.
I would say this is the craziest play yet in the whole hand—which is saying something. So Alan calls the $117k more. The pot is $440,000.
Alan only has $235k in his stack. He has about a half-pot size bet left. And he's putting in a lot of money with no real outs against a value range.
If Peter has or , Keating's drawing dead—and doesn't have a chance to improve. It's not like, given what I do know about their history, or even just watching this individual hand, it's not like Keating's thinking, "Oh, maybe the will hit on the river, and I'll lead out for half pot and make him fold a set." That's not happening.
So Alan really must be making the read that Peter’s bluffing—that Peter raised the flop, called a 3-bet, and bluff-raised the turn in a pot that is now already 1,100 big blinds.
Four on the river.
Alan’s going to check again with just over a half-pot remaining, and Peter shoves here.
What’s interesting about this—I mean, other than everything—is if you're Peter and you’ve raised the flop, gotten 3-bet, you faced a bet on the turn, you raised the turn, got called... If we want to simplify it, there are two possible scenarios:
Alan Keating has a big draw that has missed, and your six wins at showdown. So maybe Alan has , for example.
Or, Alan has a made hand. Now, to put in that much money on the flop and turn, if Alan has a made hand, usually that would imply he’s value 3-betting the flop and he has a hand like , like , like .
And given just watching this hand play out, I don’t think anybody thinks Alan would fold a hand like that. So Peter, to bluff with his six, has to make the read that Alan is doing this with a hand like a —he’s bluffing with a . Or maybe the one kind of more feasible thing would be... maybe Alan has and is kind of going for whatever-it-is merge on the flop—getting some money in with a pretty good hand and good equity while not capping his range on the flop.
But really, like... Peter can’t expect Alan to fold two pair-plus, I think, given the way that the hand’s played and given what they know about each other. So I’m just trying to think what he's thinking through. And it might be the case that I’m putting a lot of thoughts in their heads that aren’t existing. They might just be kind of playing the player and reading the situation and kind of feeling it out.
If Peter had gotten here with, you know, a , then I get it, right? He can’t beat anything, and it's kind of a clear bluff. But he can actually beat a couple things at showdown. And while it shouldn’t tilt things too much, it just kind of makes you think—what hand is he trying to make Alan fold?
My friend Nick Schulman says it very, very well. I couldn’t put it better:
“Best or worst played hand of all time.”
I mean, I knew that he was going to call, because my team picked the hand—but still, to see the call? Pretty remarkable.
Strategically, I’ve probably already said more than I even should about a hand like this that is just so far out of the realm of normality.
If there is a second hand to follow—and I know there is—I can’t wait to see it.
Hand #2: Peter Sniffs Out a Suspicious Story
All right, here we are at hand two.
This is from a few weeks later—at the time of me recording, this is very recent. In the million-dollar cash game here, the stakes are $1k/$1k with a $2k big blind ante. Stacks are a million dollars (and more), and I’m excited to dive into this.
So we see Peter under the gun with . He raises it up to $6k.
Allan calls with , which—you know, is a little bit too loose, but in the realm of what we just saw, it’s nothing. And Jack wakes up with two queens. He goes to $26k.
Again, I’m sitting here wondering: how does Alan Keating stay in this pot?
But... he does make the call. flop. There’s $116k in the pot. Alan has $843k in the stack. And somehow the hand’s not over.
So, in comparison to the last hand where we had a bet and a raise before Alan had the action to him, here we have a bet and a call.
The bet was smallish in terms of pot size—relative to the pot size.
So he might sense weakness. He might think that Peter would raise with all of his hands that are better than one pair—which is probably true.
I don’t know what he’s thinking of Jack. But... so this is a spot where I actually—this is less crazy to me. And I’ll tell you why:
If he has a read on Jack—that Jack has a relatively tight 3-bet range—then here’s what’s happened: Jack 3-bets with a range that is tight, and is by definition capped at one pair, right? I don’t know that this is true—but he could know this.
So if Jack doesn’t 3-bet , which most people don’t in this spot… if Jack doesn’t 3-bet suited, then it would be the case that he has one pair at best. He fires out a smallish bet, which is representative of a range that has a lot of overpairs. So all is well and good there.
Now, Peter doesn’t raise. And so it could also be the case that Alan knows Peter would raise if he could beat aces on this board. Now, I’m sure he can’t know that with certainty, but he could be very confident. He could certainly be making a read like that.
And so if that’s the case, both of his opponents have one pair at best. There’s $151k in the pot and two people have one pair. There’s a lot of money to play for. "I think I can make them fold one pair by the river", and so... let’s go for it.
So this one—I can actually get behind. I think this can be a really sharp play in the right scenarios.
And the only thing about this that makes me think it might not be the right scenario is that... I don’t think Alan Keating has the image to pull this off at a high success rate.
Whereas if you're playing even in a private game where you play with the same people regularly—even a home game—where you get to see how people play and they get to see how you play, there are fewer showdowns, right?
Alan plays on TV a lot, and we get to see his cards. And we get to see that he’s out of line regularly. And he’s got this history against Peter where he’s been very out of line.
This, I think, is obviously not theoretically sound whatsoever, but I think it's a very good exploit in certain circumstances, with the right read.
And I think, potentially, a really sharp one. Because here’s the kind of strategy—because, you know, how much strategy are we going to include in this video?
Here’s the strategy tip I want you to take away:
In a spot where a pot’s getting big and your opponent’s capped at one pair, there are a lot of opponents who just won’t get stacked with one pair. They are not willing to get stacked with one pair in a spot like this. And so you get to just win the pot.
And so I would advise you to kind of go a little bit crazy if you can make that read really confidently and you have the image for it.
Keating with the raise: $280k. Jack calls. We know Peter’s not going to fold.
Interestingly—I mean, he should expect to be beat by Jack, at least some of the time. So I would fold this as Peter, even with the history, which I’m sure I only know half of. Because, first of all, Alan could have me beat pretty easily—or could be drawing to a hand that has me beat, or gets to bluff a lot on future streets.
Peter’s thinking about this, like I said. Yeah, he could be beat by Alan. Alan could be either drawing to a hand that has him beat, or gonna be able to bluff a lot of turns and rivers.
I would get out of here with these jacks—and especially because not only do I have to worry about Alan, but Jack. Jack 3-bet, and then bet-called this flop. So he’s representing queens, kings, and aces for the most part.
We have $621k in the pot. Alan doesn’t have much more than that in his stack. The turn is a brick.
Alan’s still almost laughing.
Jack will be checking here, you would think.
Okay, so this is interesting. Jack did not check instantly. Normally, in a spot like this—and neither did Peter—so normally in a spot like this, Alan’s made a big raise on the flop. The turn is a brick. Alan’s representing a very good hand. You’d usually just check to him automatically.
The fact that they didn’t could mean a couple of things.
Now, we can see their hands. To me, even seeing their hands, it could still mean one of those two things:
- They’re considering shoving, because he’s got just over pot left, and maybe he has a combo draw, and they don’t want to see the river.
- They want to discourage him from betting. They want it to seem like they were thinking about shoving.
And actually, even seeing their cards, I don’t know which it is.
I think that Alan, I mean, he plays live so frequently that he’s going to think about the fact that they took their time checking to him in this spot. And I would imagine that those two things are what he would interpret it as.
Alan Keating checks back.
on the river.
I mean, I kind of know already how the hand's going to play out, but I still want to see it.
And here, we know that Jack’s not considering betting this hand. So whatever he's doing is acting—or just taking his time, as he normally does.
Peter, on the other hand, could consider betting jacks here, because I don’t know how he could expect to have the best hand, honestly. He doesn't have a diamond blocker, and it looks like he doesn’t consider it. But I would consider it, as Peter—like, bluffing. That looks really credible for Peter to bet. He called the flop. He called a raise. It looks like Alan was giving up on a bluff. And so it looks like Peter either has showdown value or a draw.
missed. That’s the only draw that missed. Well, I guess .
I guess he has a few combos of potential bluffs, but I think it’d be kind of credible. And if he had the , I would like it—because he can’t go check-check and have win here.
It’s just—as crazy as these games have played, I think it’s extremely, extremely unlikely... unless Jack is a very specific kind of player that, I don’t know, has a lot of like here.
It’s interesting that Jack is—as we can see—being genuine, that he has a tough decision. It could be because there's a player still behind him to act. It could be the case that he would act that way regardless—you can fake that.
Alan looking off into the distance, wondering where it all went wrong.
He knows he has . He’s not folding yet. And he knows—I mean, he’s got a history with Peter. He knows how Peter plays.
So you can’t feel great if you’re Alan here.
And truthfully, I don’t think he represents this very well. Like, he does okay, but if you think about it... he raised the flop with a pot-size bet left. He didn’t have the ace of diamonds, so he didn’t have the nut flush draw. So what did he have? to call it off? Or was he raising to then fold to a shove—which is pretty awkward stack-to-pot ratio-wise.
So I actually don’t buy this.
I was behind the flop play—well, with certain things a little bit different—I was cool with the flop play. And in theory, right, you have a diamond in your hand, diamonds hit the river, this is a good kind of bluff combo, etc., etc.
I don’t think he represents it.
I would call him here. Because like... what flush does he have?
specifically is really the only one that makes sense to me. Maybe , but that’s two very specific combos.
That’s what Peter’s thinking right now.
Sometimes you bluff in these spots, and then as they’re thinking, you’re like, “Oh man, this doesn’t make sense. I wouldn’t play any value this way. They’re going to figure it out.”
I’ve been there many times. And usually I’m wrong. Usually I’m giving them too much credit for understanding my exact ranges.
But sometimes... sometimes you just know.
I don’t claim to be an expert at body language—but I just, I don’t know. I kind of get the sense that Alan might be in that headspace right now, just knowing: “No, I don’t... I don’t know about that river shove I just made.”
You can’t take it back though.
I mean, Peter with a very bad calling hand, right? , no diamond. But I don’t think that’s the way he’s thinking about it—nor should it be.
There’s the call.
Some fun hands. Some really fun hands.
And... it’s fun analyzing them. I often kind of revert to my—well, my 15-year history of making training videos. I revert to strategy right away.
But sometimes, with a hand like this, you just gotta sit back and watch and... take it in.
I hope you enjoyed hearing my thoughts—which, you know, I have no idea if it reflected any of their thoughts during the hand. But I enjoyed watching it.
Thanks for watching it with me. I will see you next time.
Until then, take care and good luck.
