Garrett Adelstein is a cash game legend and for many one of the best live players on the planet. In our Poker Hand of the Week he shows why by getting the absolute maximum out of Jennifer Tilly with flopped Trips.
Poker Hand of the Week Setup
Our Poker Hand of the Week comes from the latest episode of the new High Stakes Poker Season 9, which features poker superstars Phil Ivey, Daniel Negreanu, Tom Dwan, JRB, Patrik Antonius, Doyle Brunson, Garrett Adelstein and Jennifer Tilly.
Garrett and Jennifer are both very deep with effective stack sizes being 833 big blinds. Adelstein has Tilly covered at the start of our Poker Hand of the Week.
Poker Hand of the Week Action
Preflop:
Jennifer Tilly straddles to $800 and Garrett Adelstein makes it $2,500 to go from the button with 
. Jennifer probably wants to set a trap by just calling out of position with 
. Everybody else folds. Pot Size: $6,000
Flop:
Heads-up to a very interesting flop of 
. Adelstein hits it perfectly by flopping Trips, while Tilly is in a dangerous spot with her slowplayed overpair.
Jennifer checks, Garrett makes a $2,000 continuation bet and Jen check-raises to $6,000. Adelstein just calls. Pot Size: $18,000
Turn:
The 
turn is a fantastic card for Garrett as he improves his very strong hand even further to a full house. Jennifer gets a bit more cautious by just check-calling Adelstein’s second barrel of $8,000. Pot Size: $34,000
River:
The 
on the river is an absolute blank and Tilly surprisingly leads out for $15,000. Garrett makes a huge and polarizing raise of 6.7x pot to $100,000.
Although, Tilly can only beat a bluff at this point she decides to pay it off just to get shown a full house. Garrett Adelstein wins a massive $234,000 pot.
Poker Hand of the Week Analysis
Very interesting hand. Let’s take an in-depth look at it. Oftentimes losing a big pot is a chaining of mistakes.
In this case it starts preflop, when Jennifer just calls Garrett’s button raise out of position with Pocket Queens. Setting a trap every once in a while against an aggressive player is fine, but Queens are way too vulnerable and troublesome to just call out of position.
She instantly gets punished on the flop, when Adelstein makes Trips, which puts herself in a difficult spot. However, Jen still seems to be convinced that she has the best hand as she check-raises the flop. At the latest, when Garrett smooth calls her check-raise all alarm bells should be going on as this indicates a very strong hand.
The turn makes it even better for Adelstein as he now can be certain to have the best hand. Jennifer wisely check-calls Garrett’s small second barrel.
The river doesn’t change anything and, for no apparent reason, Jen now leads for $15k. To be honest, when first watching the hand I was not sure if this was intended to be a value or a blocking bet.
However, once she calls the massive 6.7x pot raise by Adelstein it becomes apparent that Jennifer was indeed looking for some value here, but what in the world did she put her opponent on after this nutted line?
Poker Hand of the Week Conclusion
Maximizing your value is essential in cash games and Garrett shows to perfection how it is done.
Jennifer Tilly was playing overly aggressive in this session and Adelstein beautifully took advantage of it by making an extremely large raise on the river to get the maximum out of his full house.
Those type of value raises can make the difference in live cash games between booking a small win and being up a ton.
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