today i was watching the 50/100 nl game on UB and saw an interesting hand. it was a short handed game with fizzlesticks, HASSON SLACK (HALLINGGOL from stars), and mahatma (prahlad friedman). this particular hand involved mahatma and hasson. i dont have the hand history but i'll explain what happened.

fizzle folded from the button and hasson raised to $300 from the small blind. mahatma reraised to $800 or $900, i don't remember exactly. Hasson thinks and calls. flop comes down 27K, 2 to the heart flush. hasson checks and mahatma pushes all-in for about $18000 into a pot of $2000. Hasson has about the same stack so its $18000 for him to call. he thinks and folds.

I'm thinking to myself, wow, what a stupid over bet, i'm sure he has a monster but why not bet for value. then i really start thinking about the hand and started to love his play here. He reraised preflop and probably had a great starting hand. and mahatma isn't going to push all-in for 9x the size of the pot without the nuts. the nuts on this flop is KK and he flopped top set. hasson raised, thought, and called, a likely play by someone with a middle pair (77,88,99,1010), although he may have had any number of other hands as well, but this is most likely. mahatma must have figured the only possible action that he will get on this hand is in the unlikely event that hasson also flopped a set. value betting the flop is pointless because the only hand he thinks he will get action from here is a set, probably more likely 7s than 2s. so an all-in overbet might in fact be a value bet here because he will double up if hasson calls with 7s. it would also be very hard to put someone on KK here and would be extremely hard to lay down the set of 7s if in fact this is the hand that hasson had. i think he makes this play knowing that most of the time the other guy will fold but when he runs into set over set he will be more than paid off for it.

i'd like to hear other thoughts about this hand and my analysis of the hand