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 he Guardian Poker Column |
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| Victoria Coren |
| Tues 9 Aug 2011 |
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OK, so Galen Hall came out on top – but he'd still made a bad error
So, did you see my brutal exit from the EPT Champion of Champions on Channel 4? Here's how it went.
We were down to four players, blinds 30k-60k. First to speak, Galen Hall raised to 120k with K 2. The others ed. From the big blind, I re-raised all in. What should Galen Hall do?
If you have been paying attention for the last couple of weeks, you should be replying with one question only: What are the stack sizes? The chip counts, not the hands, are the relevant factor. |
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If either of us started the hand with 500k or less, Galen Hall must call the all-in. If he's the short stack, he can't afford to put in 120k and . If I'm the short stack, he must take the cheap chance to knock me out.
In fact, Galen Hall started the hand with 1.5m and I had 950k. So . . . ? He should fold. He's only put in 8% of his stack, he doesn't need to put the rest in. With 16 big blinds, I might be moving in with a fairly wide range (it is a good stack size for re-raising all in), but his own hand is too weak for that gamble – especially when he knows that I am not a super-aggro player and nobody's stack is terribly big, so a "desperate shove with nothing" is unlikely.
But he called. He called because, as he explained to the puzzled table, he hadn't realised I had so many chips. I held 88. Obviously, the K came down to knock me out. But his play was still a bad error: he took odds of just over 5-4 when his hand was 9-4.
If Galen Hall, multi-millionaire poker professional, can miscount his opponent's chips, then anyone can. It's very important not to. Count, count, count.
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