Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Don't be a such smartass...don't be such a donk

This is a butchered hand that I need to record as a reminder both not to be too cocky and to remember the importance of immediately recovering mentally from a setback before more damage is done.

(The dealers in this poker room miss plenty of things, so I tend to rely more on my own observations than strictly on the info from the dealer....)

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Today I was sitting in a great loose passive live $20/$40 LHE game. It is the 4th table of a chained must move setup. I'm feeling great about my reads; I'm confident; I'm relaxed. Just prior to the hand of interest, I busted the player on my immediate left and 2 people were moved up to the 3rd table of the must move chain. A new player just posted between the button and the SB. I'm seated in seat #8 on the right of the dealer, the poster is on the dealer's immediate right, and the blinds are on the immediate left of the dealer. SB and BB have been playing very loose passive; poster is new to me.

hand #1
7 seated live $20/$40 LHE
- preflop: folded to hero on button (Hero thinks: These blinds are very loose, my min raising standard needs to be 2 suited broadways), Hero looks down and finds KhQh (hey, I got what I asked for! neat, I can win a decent pot with a hand like this), Hero raises, poster folds, SB calls, BB thinks for a couple seconds (hmmm, I see that BB has exactly 1 stack of chips (2.5BB) in his left hand next to his cards, I wonder if he is going to be one of those loose reraisers trying to get all in early...He's been playing very passively, but in this case I really wouldn't mind that much), BB calls (3 players to the flop, pot size: 7SB)
- flop: dealer exposes the flop, immediately SB bets, BB quickly calls, Hero looks to see the Kc3s4d flop ; (Hmmm, I've probably got SB outkicked, no idea what BB has but not a huge concern since he has only 1.5BB left), Hero raises, SB immediately calls (yup, K-rag) , BB immediately calls (still no idea). (3 players to the turn, pot size: 13SB)
- turn: Kc3s4d9c check, check, (easy bet, SB won't check raise me unless I am crushed, and I'm certain he will raise if I am behind), Hero bets, SB quickly calls, BB moves the last 8 chips in his left hand into the pot. (hmmm, okay, I think I like just about any broadway card now; a club won't be nice but it will have no impact on how I play against SB since BB is all in; geez neither SB nor the dealer bothered to call out the all in, but nothing gets past me!) (3 players to the river, pot size 9.5BB)
- river: Kc3s4d9cAh (great, I'm not going to miss my value bet here) SB checks, immediately Hero bets, SB immediately calls, BB announces raise (WTF is going on here!) and stacks up his assorted pile of $5 and $2 chips that were behind his right hand. (Crap crap crap Dave, nice assumption on the all in... okay, I can see SB ready to muck, I need to make the crying call here) BB doesn't have enough $5 chips to make the full raise, but does have enough $2 chips to complete the bet. He stacks them up and says it is a full bet. Hero calls, SB turbo mucks. BB tables his nut wheel. (final pot size 14.5BB)

I don't think BB was intentionally hiding his chips, he just happened to have a messy pile of chips out of my line of sight. I am just very upset with myself for losing my cool after making one mistake and then not considering all the information that was available to me before lighting $40 on fire.

Had I known BB still had chips behind, I would probably still reluctantly have made the value bet on the river (if both players had checked to me; not a given since BB might have bet if he thought I would check behind - I just bet before he had a chance to act and he took advantage), but I think I would be in a clear enough frame of mind to recognize that I'm beat here 100% of the time. To top off the clear signal from the betting pattern of the LP BB, there was the additional strong tell that BB made sure that he had the correct betting amount for a full raise. Despite the 13.5:1 odds, I think this is a correct fold. I'm not convinced I should follow the Chris Fargis mantra of never folding to a raise of a river value bet (at least in this type of game; In a tougher game I won't be faced with this decision since I'm checking behind close to 100% of the time like a little girl; on the very low chance that I did bet and was check raised by a tricky player there are plenty more reasons to make the crying call)

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The initial error I made in this hand reminds me of another mistake I made very early in my live cash game hold'em career. Playing a lot of online spoils you from having to avoid making these kinds of misteps...

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