Welcome back to Polker Hands everyone, and today we're breaking down a hand between two very well-known players: Dan "Jungleman" Cates and Xuan Liu.
Our hand begins at $25/$50 with a $50 ante, and Jungleman straddling up to $100.
Xuan looks down under the gun plus one at pocket jacks and makes it $400 to go. It folds around to Jungleman in the straddle who looks down at . Now both players here are sitting on about $40,000, so effectively around 400 big blinds deep.
This is some very deep stack poker.
Jungle now decides to re-raise to $800.
When you're in the straddle in spots like this, hands like this do like to re-raise some of the time. They play well and they balance out when you re-raise with your stronger hands. I will say, normally you see some of the lower suited hands like to squeeze here—hands like seven-six suited, six-five suited—but I'm sure ten-eight suited gets in the mix sometimes as well.
Although this size is clearly not very serious from Jungleman.
When you re-raise here preflop, you probably want to go somewhere between 4 to 5x the raise—so something like $1.6K to $2,000.
$800 says "I'm just playing around," which, given the way that the table talk goes, kind of seems like that's what's going on here at this table.
— "You have to give me action. Last time I did this..."
— "Good fold."
— "How much are you playing?"
— "A lot. You can let it go if you're scared."
— "Raise."
Yes, she seems very scared, Jungleman. That’s why she’s re-raising this to $1,400. What seems to be an almost minimum raise. I don’t even know what’s going on here.
I would say when you three-bet, you probably want to go $1.5K to $2K. When you four-bet, you probably want to go more like $2K to $3K, depending on what she wants to go with here. Either way, these are some extremely small sizes from these players, and it seems like they're kind of just joking around a little bit with pocket jacks.
Xuan chooses here—I would say you don’t mind either option versus a traditional three-bet. You'd mainly flat versus this kind of bullshitty small three-bet. You do probably four-bet more often. So I don't mind either option.
The flop comes jack-nine-deuce with two hearts. Both players flop huge. Xuan with the stone-cold nuts, top set here on the flop, and Jungleman with an open-ended straight draw.
But what might be even more interesting on the flop is this table talk:
— "Would you min-four-bet pocket nines here? Jack-nine suited? Jack-nine offsuit? I don’t think you would do a jack. I don’t think you’re that great."
— "What’s the size here?" (Xuan bets $1,500)
— "The nerds are going to have a fuss about this one. The nerds have got something to say."
— "In a four-bet, I can’t bet this size on this texture?"
— "Oh no, they don’t like this size. No no no. This is a no-no size. This is 2018 shit."
— "Isn’t that the kind of poker we’re playing today?"
— "No, we’re playing advanced stuff."
That’s right. Drink up that water, Phil. I’d be looking for a way out of this conversation too. I mean, I’ve not seen an exchange this awkward since 2023, because that’s when Texas banned porn.
So, Xuan bets half pot, which does seem totally fine to me. These players are very deep, and this board has a lot of texture. I think this is a fine size from her.
And then for Jungle, with an open-ended straight draw, it’s kind of interesting. I think calling and raising are both fine. You’re deep enough where if you check-raise, you could call a three-bet in theory—although I don’t think you’re going to get three-bet all too often. Certainly something to be considering. If you do check-call, you make sure you give yourself some playability on the turn, so I don’t hate that line at all.
He does go for the check-call and we take a turn.
"All right, I check," Jungleman said on the turn. "What do you have here? Honestly, what the actual [expletive] can you have here? You can only have a set of jacks."
Wait, what? That was an insane read. He put her on one single hand—and it’s the hand she does have.
What a crazy cooler here on the turn.
The nuts for Jungle. The second nuts for Xuan. It’s a four-bet pot. Very, very unfortunate turn here for Xuan, particularly because it’s so hard to put your opponent on a straight in this situation.
— "That’s the only hand I can have."
— "That’s the only hand you have. You can’t have anything good."
— "I can’t have hearts. I can’t have aces or..."
— "You can have all that. Yes. But all that stuff’s weak here, because..."
— "All that stuff is weak?"
— "I've got all these nut combos. I could have pocket twos. Like who knows what I have. I could have nine-two suited."
— "You're going to three-bet min-raise me with pocket twos?"
— "Yes."
Here's a little tip at home if you're new to table talk:
When someone is actively trying to say that they could have a hand, they almost never have that hand. I'm not saying it's impossible, but I'd have to find a pretty specific instance. Usually, when people say that, they're trying to set up an imaginary world where they have something else than the hand they really have. Also, when the hand they say they could have is a weaker value bet, they tend to have a stronger one.
I can think of one instance of this happening. In fact, he's sitting right here at the table (Phil Hellmuth).
So, Xuan's sure making a very big laydown here.
Back to poker. Xuan decides to bet $8K into about $6K here on the turn. This is a fine bet. It's setting up for a roughly equal-sized river jam. If Dan does call, it'll be a $29,000-ish bet into $21,000. So this seems good here from Xuan.
I don't hate the idea of once in a blue moon checking back the turn to give yourself a few very strong hands on different runouts. That said, we have two flush draws and all the straight draws. So I like betting. I like the size. I like everything I'm seeing from Xuan in this hand.
Back over to Jungle now. Dream situation developing. You have the nuts here on the turn in a four-bet pot and your opponent is barreling large. When your opponent starts to use really big sizes, your hands do a lot more calling than you might normally think.
However, I think in this spot with ten-eight of diamonds, I mainly prefer to raise. If I have a hand like ten-eight of spades or ten-eight of hearts, then trapping gets a little bit better, because should the flush roll off, you still have an extremely strong hand when you river a flush. And while one of the flush draws you won't have, you have great coverage on the majority of rivers with the non-spade, non-heart hand.
Not only do you have less equity versus some of those bluffs, but you also now unblock more of the draws that can be betting here on the turn. So I do like a strategy of check-raising all in here with ten-eight of diamonds.
Facing the check-raise, Xuan has no choice but to call, of course, with top set. And she's going to get the bad news. However, she does have 9 outs. If she boats up, she will win at least half of this pot. They're going to run it twice.
And sometimes things work out for you in poker, much like signing up with a particular word on a particular website works out to the tune of 20 free coins. All you have to do is make your first purchase to get the free value.
All right, we're all in here for an $80K pot. Running it twice. Can Xuan get there on either run?
Second river:
Pretty unfortunate session for Xuan there in Hellmuth’s home game. I think she actually played awesome in all these hands. So, what are you gonna do?
That's poker sometimes, guys.
