High Stakes Hand Analysis with Pro Player Melika Razavi P8

High stakes regular, magician, pageant queen, and CoinPoker ambassador Melika Razavi loves hitting the cash game tables. To give our community some insight into her pot-winning strategies, Melika will walk you through two great hands step-by-step.

Hand #1

Metzelos open-raises to 150 and I re-raise from the button to 525 with ; he calls.

is a good suited connector to 3bet-bluff pre-flop, especially when sitting around 100 big blinds deep.

Choosing some bluffing hands like this makes me represent lower boards as well and not only high-card boards after I re-raise pre-flop. Plus I can flop a lot of draws and continue to put pressure on him all the way.

The flop is , Metzelos checks and I cbet 350, around 1/3 size, and he calls.

The turn is , he checks again and since I still have equity in the form of a gutshot straight draw I think it’s good to bet again here to make my opponent fold ace high and hopefully some middle pairs.

Instead, he calls again and the river is a . At this point I decided to overbet shove all-in for 1.5x pot here for the following reasons:

1. I can’t win by checking and my opponent can have some missed draws, meaning he would need to fold to my shove.
2. I would do the same with , , , , and .
3. It would probably make him fold all hands worse than a pair of kings, and I can potentially make him fold a weak king kicker hand here.

He did indeed fold, and I collected 4,325 from the pot.

Hand #2

VenturaBay raises from the button to 150 and I call from BB with .

The flop is . I check and VenturaBay bets 1/3 size 184.87 and I decide to call.

The turn is a . I check and  VenturaBay bets 2/3 size 497.37 and I think this is a call but very close to a fold.

Since there’s a double flush draw and a straight draw there are too many combinations in his range that I’m in lead against; draws that I can expect him to bet on the turn with.

Also, I don’t expect him to have the deuce too often since he bet the flop. Most likely he would also fold deuces with any low off suited kicker preflop.

In the end, I decided to call and the river is a . I check and VenturaBay decides to overbet the pot to 2,394.74.

The big bet to me though looks more like either a missed draw or a hand better than two pairs.”

It’s not an easy decision when it costs me 1.5x the pot. I have to be right more often to be able to make the call and the problem here is that if he is a very good player he could do this with an overpair.

The big bet to me though looks more like either a missed draw or a hand better than two pairs. Both flush draws have been missed so I make the call.

VenturaBay showed  for a missed spade draw and I collected 6,478.96 from the pot.

Check out more hand analyses by poker pro Melika Razavi:

• High Stakes Hand Analysis with Pro Player Melika Razavi P1
• High Stakes Hand Analysis with Pro Player Melika Razavi P2
• High Stakes Hand Analysis with Pro Player Melika Razavi P3
• High Stakes Hand Analysis with Pro Player Melika Razavi P4
• High Stakes Hand Analysis with Pro Player Melika Razavi P5
• High Stakes Hand Analysis with Pro Player Melika Razavi P6
• High Stakes Hand Analysis with Pro Player Melika Razavi P7