Call and burn

Emotion is your enemy at the poker table. I learned a hard lesson in that last night.

I've never played a live Hold'em game before. Draw, stud and other bits and pieces when I was younger, but not for a while and not this game. But I was confident enough. I've played online and I know the ropes.

The other players were local guys, mostly novices like me, friendly and open. One was a calling station -- in for a lot of hands with whatever he had but not aggressive enough to make his wins big enough to offset his losses; another a weak aggressive type, who won the night but shouldn't have; another a bit too loose but unlucky to get blown away on a big hand; the next a tight, fairly good player; the next a loose player who was too aggressive for his cards. And me. I played it tight, throwing away a lot of hands. I've been playing limit online but this was NL, and they're different games. I would have taken the table to the cleaners at limit, particularly given that the only guy who knew what pot odds were couldn't calculate them for a flush and would be giving me money as a consequence.

So I'm nervous as hell, wanting not to embarrass myself, and the game feels different in the flesh. I can't read players as well as I can online because I have so much more information. I played tight. I had to; I simply didn't get a decent hand all night. I was dealt ATs early in the game, but didn't hit the flop and dropped a grand (of my 4000 -- not real money, obviously); a KQo was my only other half-decent hand, and I played it to a good pot. I semibluffed one of the more aggressive players with trip 2s, ace kicker. I reckon he had more and had me on something monster. I had bet it aggressively enough to give that impression. But you can't go mad on weak cards. Betting up trip 2s against a guy who you think has a stronger hand is a semibluff, if that. Chances are he has less and you're a winner anyway.

So I had a couple of orbits of throwing away the blinds. No cards and other players betting into me, or I check, get nothing on the flop and have to fold it because others bet their cards aggressively.

This is when the emotion struck. I began to question my whole game. Was I just too tight for NL? The other tight guy had made a fair bit of money. Was he a lot better than me? He'd had some cards but he'd won a couple of decent pots without having to show his cards, and he'd played some questionable hands and got away with it, hitting good flops. Did the aggro guy at the top of the table have me pegged as a rock, who he could simply bluff out of every hand? I'd bet him out of one bluff already -- making him fold a hand by showing him more aggro than he could handle. (Interestingly, I'd also taken him to within a card of being eliminated, and he'd been very lucky. Needing a Q or higher on the river to split a pot when I was way ahead, he scored it, a big turnaround for him at about 8/1 against.)

So I am sitting in the big blind with Q8o. I should throw it away. It's rubbish. It's raised into me, so I have to bet on top of my blind to stay in. So I'm thinking, maybe I'm too tight for this game. Maybe I've got it all wrong.

I have 7000ish in chips. I've put 500 in as my blind, I think it was, and I need to call a 500 buck bet on top of that. So I reraise another 500. I am thinking, I will reraise and see whether the raiser has anything or is just pumping it up. The raiser has nothing and folds but the aggro guy takes me on.

I am 1500 in to see a flop. If I hit, I might get away from it okay. If I miss, I'm going to be able to walk away without getting creamed.

So I miss and I check it. A mistake, straight away. What was the point of that? I had to bet it into him, pay five hundred more to see whether he hit the flop or had nothing too, or muck it right there and then. He calls it, I'm maybe still alive. I'm convinced he had nothing before the flop. But I've let emotion take over. I bet 1500 on hitting the flop and I missed. I have to muck it and walk away without a backward glance. He raises 1000. I'm thinking, he may have hit something in the flop but he won't have much, or more likely he's bluffing, trying to blow me away from it. I'd made him fold one bluff. Now I'd do it again. I didn't just call the bet. I reraised him. A decent player would have called it a day right there and folded. A tight player reraising you at the flop is going to have something. You've just been checkraised as well! But he didn't know the decent play. He went all-in.

I should fold. I know I don't have it and while the first raise might have been a bluff, this isn't. He's hit something at least and I have nada. I need to walk away. Okay, I've dropped some money but careful play can get it back. I'll be short stack but not by much (I'm around it even with 7ish thousand and that's part of why I'm worried). I'll be okay.

But I have 3000 in that pot. A lot of folding equity. But the odds say drop it. The head says drop it.

I call. He hit a J for a pair. That's all. Turn and river are rags and I'm down to 1000 after paying him off. My night is over soon enough after that. I'm not good enough to play a stack that short and the cards still don't help me.

The aggro guy goes on to win. It's very painful because his heads-up strategy is unbelievably poor but the tight guy doesn't know how to play it. The aggro guy either folds or goes all in. It's obvious. You let him steal your blinds, all of them, until you hit big. It's going to happen. You might make smallish bets against his big blind when you have a good but not brilliant hand. The tight guy starts doing that but he calls the aggro guy down when he is holding only A6s. Not strong enough. He could have played an hour if he had to, waiting for a monster. He wasn't patient enough. Neither was I though and I can't be critical: he made it to the heads-up; I burned my chance on a bullshit hand, letting the need to be seen as a bold player overcome good sense.

posted by Dr Zen @ 8:11 pm