Covering live poker tournaments for a living affords me the opportunity to see countless thousands of hands played out, many of which offer interesting and potentially valuable insights into how players — both amateurs and professionals — play the game. In this ongoing series, I’ll highlight hands I’ve seen at the tournaments I’ve covered and see if we can glean anything useful from them.
This week’s hand presents a situation in which a player having presumably flopped the best hand is doubtful about being in the lead by the river, making a river check-raise an option with which to try to represent something stronger.