Sunday, March 05, 2006

Knowing your "outs"

There was an amusing hand from a live $20/$40 LHE game I played today. In order to set the context more fairly, I'll give a history of the immediately preceeding hand. (I was not involved in the hand as I was waiting to post having just arrived at the table)

hand #1
9 seated live $20/$40 LHE
- preflop: UTG folds, Donk (who I have never seen before this hand) calls, MP raises, fold, MP+2 cold calls, folded back to the Donk who calls (3 players to the flop, pot size 7.5 small bets)
- flop: AsTc5s, Donk checks, MP bets, MP+2 raises, Donk calls 2 cold, MP calls. (3 players to the turn, pot size 13.5 small bets)
- turn: AsJc5s6s, check, check, MP+2 bets, call, call (3 players to the river, pot size 9.5 big bets)
- river: AsJc5s6s9s, check, MP bets, call, call. MP shows AQo no spade, MP+2 shows AKo no spade, Donk shows 2s2c for the winner.

Here is the hand I was involved in. (By the way, I suck big time. I need to learn how to count my "outs")

hand #2
9 seated live $20/$40 LHE
- preflop: Donk calls UTG, UTG+1 calls, fold, call, call, Hero checks his Qh6h, CO calls, button calls, SB completes, BB checks (8 players to the flop, pot size 8 small bets)
- flop: Th3c4d, checked around (8 players to the turn, pot size 8 small bets)
- turn: Th3c4d5h, blinds check, Donk bets (tight player in the BB says "are you sure?"), fold, MP+1 calls, MP+2 calls, Hero raises, (BB and Donk cry out excitedly and BB says "see you should't bet here without the nuts..."), folded back to Donk who shrugs and calls, MP+1 folds, MP+2 calls. (3 players to the river, pot size 10 big bets)
- river: Th3c4d5h5c, Donk checks, MP+2 checks, Hero (aka Donk #2) surrenders like a frightened little child and checks behind.
Donk very reluctantly tables Kh8h (in fact he almost threw the hand directly in the muck), MP+2 mucks, Hero mucks. MP+1 exclaims he mucked a 5.

I raised on the turn because the pot was big and I wanted to buy my Q outs. (BTW, I did overhear BB say that he mucked his QJ on the turn). Shortsightedly, I imagined my outs were any 2,7 or Q or any heart. Little did I realize how mistaken I was in what my outs were for this hand.

I know that I am supposed to bet this river when I miss and it is checked to me, but I just didn't have the heart after watching the previous hand. Boo!

It is unethical, but I suppose I could have angle shot and started to pick up my chips to see if the 2 opponents would muck. This does happen fairly often in this game.

2 comments:

CC said...

OK, you're a Donk 2 (or donk also), but we're all donkies most of the time. My strategy seems to be lose big pots and win small ones, so same tune different verse.

d said...

Self confidence is critical in gaining edges. I find that when my self confidence is very high, I can process the available information to cover a range of scenarios. That didn't happen here.
The way this hand developed, I had a line of thinking centered only on if I improved my hand on the river. When I did not, I just gave up. My only reasonable trick left in the book on the river is to angle shoot. I'm disappointed it did not at least ~occur~ to me to try this at the time.