A POKER LESSON
this is one of those poker hands that you replay in your mind......
i am in a no limit game here in reno with 1-2 dollar blind structure. some tricky players are lurking in my group of opponents. i consider myself a tight and aggressive player but not real tricky. i am on the big blind and the betting goes call, call and then a very good player raises to ten dollars, an eight dollar raise, it is then called by two more players and i look down and i have a pair of dueces. dueces are not any good at all UNLESS a duece hits on the flop which is, incidently, a 7 1/2 to 1 underdog BUT there is already 37 dollars in the pot and i know the other two who orginally called the two dollars are going to call the 8 because, there is just too much money in the pot not to. and they do. they call and so there are 6 players in the pot at ten each.
the flop comes As, Ks, 2d. i have flopped bottom set. i check as do the next two (the ones who had originally called the two dollars before the raise) and the raiser bets 20 dollars into the 60 dollar pot and he is called by one other good player who i figure is on the flush or straight draw or the royal draw and now it is back to me.
here is where i think we stand. bettor has either ace-king or ace-queen. why do i think that? a. because the orginal raise was only 8 dollars. if you have a pair of aces or a pair of kings you really don't want a bunch of opponents because your aces will USUALLY lose to someone if you have 4 or more opponents. why? well they are going to put up 3 cards in the middle and at 4 opponents, there are 8 cards out to match the 3 cards out there and you have only two cards and really you only have one card; why? because if no ace comes those 3 cards out there have a good chance of hitting someone else, especially it the flop is all paint, kings, queens and jacks and you could then be looking at various two pairs and a possible straight already. so, to eliminate drawing hands you want to limit the number of opponents by making a decent raise to weed out some of the folks. (in a game like this, a 15-20 raise is more, in the long run, profitable because you will only get called by maybe one or two people and against one you are a HUGE favorite and against two you are a favorite. so, conclusion is he does not have aces or kings. that is one reason but here is the second and, i believe, the most important, part of the equation. his bet was VERY small in comparison to the pot. there are multiple ways someone could hit a card that would beat 3 aces or 3 kings with this flop. why not take the pot right now when you know you have the best hand? his 20 dollar bet was not going to run anybody with ANY draw or pair is going to call. IT IS A REAL BITCH TO HIT YOUR HAND AND THEN NOT BET ENOUGH TO WIN THE POT RIGHT THEN AND THERE AND SOMEONE DRAWS OUT ON YOU BECAUSE YOU MADE IT PROFITABLE FOR THEM TO CALL. for instance, with the flop described above the flush draw is a 4-1 underdog, but if you add an inside straight draw as well, say Qs, Js so any ten also helps so now the draw is only a 3-1 dog. by betting 20 into a 60 pot it give a caller 4-1 right then and there and that is if no one else behind calls. the next guy is now getting 5-1 pot odds for his draw whatever it is. that is how trips get beat, you let the fuckers draw. so, my conclusion was that he had a good hand but not a killer hand because of size of bet. so i figure no trips.
now, i got trips. what to do? i have 3 options. fold, call or raise. well, i am not going to fold my trips. but i want to get the draws out. when it gets to me there is 100 dollars in the pot. i know the two limpers are going to fold against this flop. the flop has hit one guy and the other guy has a draw. i think it has hit me better. i raise to 100 dollars. (which is half my money) the orginal bettor then goes all in and the other guy folds. there is now 400 in the pot (when the other guy folds, his all in only cost me 100 and if, say he put in 500 dollars, when the other guy folds, he takes back 400 of it because all i have is 100...and so i call. he had three aces.
the bitch of the thing is, the turn card was a king which would have given me 2's full of kings but i would be very much at risk to ace-king because that would be kings full of aces. had i waited until the turn to try to make my move, the king would have stopped me dead in my tracks and would not call any bet after that. if he bet it, i would fold.
i don't know how i could have laid that hand down given my experience at this game before this hand was dealt. when i play it back over however, i have a sneaky feeling that i should have smelled a rat and not raise on the flop like i did but wait and see what the turn did bring. because by raising on the flop i am only going to get called by someone who already has me beat (the trip aces or kings) or someone who has a big draw. my hand can only improve with a duece. nothing else helps me. and, as i said in the beginning this was a tricky table. in retrospect, the guy took a calculated risk that it would come down the way it did because if it did it was going to be a huge hit for him. i made it possible for him to do so. i think i got outplayed. that there are times when the impossible read could be right. by only betting HE WANTED SOMEONE TO RAISE SO HE COULD RERAISE. i should have recognized this and indeed, wait for the turn.
well, there you go. i just got a valuable lesson. that is the thing about no limit, fucking lessons are expensive. in the long run, however, this particular one is going to a. save me a lot of money and b. make me a lot of money. he didn't play by the book. i would have played it by the book. though he took a risk of the spade or straight draw hitting he was able to make considerably more money that way. i need to learn when and how to do that. as i have mentioned before, no limit is new to me. i am ahead for the year but not nearly as far ahead as i was playing low limit hold-em. no limit is a whole new animal. you have to think a lot more in no limit than you do in limit. sherlock holmes would have done well at this game and so would brother william of the baskervilles (that was the hero in "name of the rose." sean connerly played him in the movie, umberto eco wrote the book--great book) because they both looked at everything logically. if you can do that in poker, you can win.
see, it is the lay-downs that seperate the winners from the losers. you gotta know when to fold them.
i am in a no limit game here in reno with 1-2 dollar blind structure. some tricky players are lurking in my group of opponents. i consider myself a tight and aggressive player but not real tricky. i am on the big blind and the betting goes call, call and then a very good player raises to ten dollars, an eight dollar raise, it is then called by two more players and i look down and i have a pair of dueces. dueces are not any good at all UNLESS a duece hits on the flop which is, incidently, a 7 1/2 to 1 underdog BUT there is already 37 dollars in the pot and i know the other two who orginally called the two dollars are going to call the 8 because, there is just too much money in the pot not to. and they do. they call and so there are 6 players in the pot at ten each.
the flop comes As, Ks, 2d. i have flopped bottom set. i check as do the next two (the ones who had originally called the two dollars before the raise) and the raiser bets 20 dollars into the 60 dollar pot and he is called by one other good player who i figure is on the flush or straight draw or the royal draw and now it is back to me.
here is where i think we stand. bettor has either ace-king or ace-queen. why do i think that? a. because the orginal raise was only 8 dollars. if you have a pair of aces or a pair of kings you really don't want a bunch of opponents because your aces will USUALLY lose to someone if you have 4 or more opponents. why? well they are going to put up 3 cards in the middle and at 4 opponents, there are 8 cards out to match the 3 cards out there and you have only two cards and really you only have one card; why? because if no ace comes those 3 cards out there have a good chance of hitting someone else, especially it the flop is all paint, kings, queens and jacks and you could then be looking at various two pairs and a possible straight already. so, to eliminate drawing hands you want to limit the number of opponents by making a decent raise to weed out some of the folks. (in a game like this, a 15-20 raise is more, in the long run, profitable because you will only get called by maybe one or two people and against one you are a HUGE favorite and against two you are a favorite. so, conclusion is he does not have aces or kings. that is one reason but here is the second and, i believe, the most important, part of the equation. his bet was VERY small in comparison to the pot. there are multiple ways someone could hit a card that would beat 3 aces or 3 kings with this flop. why not take the pot right now when you know you have the best hand? his 20 dollar bet was not going to run anybody with ANY draw or pair is going to call. IT IS A REAL BITCH TO HIT YOUR HAND AND THEN NOT BET ENOUGH TO WIN THE POT RIGHT THEN AND THERE AND SOMEONE DRAWS OUT ON YOU BECAUSE YOU MADE IT PROFITABLE FOR THEM TO CALL. for instance, with the flop described above the flush draw is a 4-1 underdog, but if you add an inside straight draw as well, say Qs, Js so any ten also helps so now the draw is only a 3-1 dog. by betting 20 into a 60 pot it give a caller 4-1 right then and there and that is if no one else behind calls. the next guy is now getting 5-1 pot odds for his draw whatever it is. that is how trips get beat, you let the fuckers draw. so, my conclusion was that he had a good hand but not a killer hand because of size of bet. so i figure no trips.
now, i got trips. what to do? i have 3 options. fold, call or raise. well, i am not going to fold my trips. but i want to get the draws out. when it gets to me there is 100 dollars in the pot. i know the two limpers are going to fold against this flop. the flop has hit one guy and the other guy has a draw. i think it has hit me better. i raise to 100 dollars. (which is half my money) the orginal bettor then goes all in and the other guy folds. there is now 400 in the pot (when the other guy folds, his all in only cost me 100 and if, say he put in 500 dollars, when the other guy folds, he takes back 400 of it because all i have is 100...and so i call. he had three aces.
the bitch of the thing is, the turn card was a king which would have given me 2's full of kings but i would be very much at risk to ace-king because that would be kings full of aces. had i waited until the turn to try to make my move, the king would have stopped me dead in my tracks and would not call any bet after that. if he bet it, i would fold.
i don't know how i could have laid that hand down given my experience at this game before this hand was dealt. when i play it back over however, i have a sneaky feeling that i should have smelled a rat and not raise on the flop like i did but wait and see what the turn did bring. because by raising on the flop i am only going to get called by someone who already has me beat (the trip aces or kings) or someone who has a big draw. my hand can only improve with a duece. nothing else helps me. and, as i said in the beginning this was a tricky table. in retrospect, the guy took a calculated risk that it would come down the way it did because if it did it was going to be a huge hit for him. i made it possible for him to do so. i think i got outplayed. that there are times when the impossible read could be right. by only betting HE WANTED SOMEONE TO RAISE SO HE COULD RERAISE. i should have recognized this and indeed, wait for the turn.
well, there you go. i just got a valuable lesson. that is the thing about no limit, fucking lessons are expensive. in the long run, however, this particular one is going to a. save me a lot of money and b. make me a lot of money. he didn't play by the book. i would have played it by the book. though he took a risk of the spade or straight draw hitting he was able to make considerably more money that way. i need to learn when and how to do that. as i have mentioned before, no limit is new to me. i am ahead for the year but not nearly as far ahead as i was playing low limit hold-em. no limit is a whole new animal. you have to think a lot more in no limit than you do in limit. sherlock holmes would have done well at this game and so would brother william of the baskervilles (that was the hero in "name of the rose." sean connerly played him in the movie, umberto eco wrote the book--great book) because they both looked at everything logically. if you can do that in poker, you can win.
see, it is the lay-downs that seperate the winners from the losers. you gotta know when to fold them.
posted by Ron Shock | 1:14 AM
5 Comments:
One of the drawbacks of having both the talent and motivation for providing a detailed, ordered analysis of a poker hand is the tendency to second-guess oneself. Most chaotic thinkers would never dwell on a hand or the decisions that went into it. You give it your best shot and move on.
Actually, I think you played the hand very well. Anytime you flop a set, you've got to play it aggressively. Your opponent, while "tricky", allowed his pocket aces to become vulnerable. It was only a lucky fluke that he flopped an overset of aces against your set of deuces. The lesson to be learned from this is not to make a premature laydown the next time, but to play the hell out of that same hand again in the very same situation.
I mean, you were not up against an obvious made flush or straight, and the tight pre-flop raiser could have had AQ or pocket queens for all you know. Instead of chastising the way you played your hand, why not call attention to the poor play on the part your opponent (yes, from your description of the hand he really did play it rather badly), who had those wonderful aces and then made that wimpy weak initial raise? It's not a bad streategy to try to trap with aces in NL, but ideally you would want to do this in a heads-up situation.
Besides, the chances of losing to an overset are very remote. As Doyle Brunson once said, if you bet the hell out of your set (as you should), and someone else has an overset, well, you're just going to lose money on that particular hand. But this doesn't mean that you should get gun-shy the next time you flop those same trip deuces...
Yes, you need to know when to fold them, but even moreso, to know when not to fold them just because you lost with them the previous time. In that same situation, where an ace and a king show up on the flop, take the damn trip deuces every time- preflop raise or no preflop raise.
you have a very valid point. i think in that particular game with the opponents i had i played it wrong. however, that being said, trips are such a monster hand that it is difficult to lay them down. what i should have done is lay them down when he reraised me but hindsight is always 20-20
On the flop, he could easily have reraised you with AK, which would have given him two pair (and would thus have created an ideal trapping situation for your trip deuces). I would definitely have called the reraise here.
However, I agree that the king on the turn is big trouble, and would have considered folding the trips at that point. Still, I think that going all-in on the flop is the correct play, unless you know the player extremely well and can definitely put him on AA or KK.
I agree with chaos that you played this as well as you could, so don't beat yourself up over a cooler-hand.
BTW - any chance you can bring back your poker journal - I really miss reading about your poker exploits on a regular basis...
Jim
i think i will write a little more about poker. it is truly one of the loves of my life. have played hold-em now for 17 years and the game is just fascinating. it is a people game, a math game, a logical game and a fun game. outside of fucking or comedy there is nothing i would rather be doing. plus, i can play a lot longer than i can fuck.
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