Last night we went up to Red Rock, and I honestly had a blast. I'm loving poker right now. I don't think I'm necessarily playing great all the time, but I'm having a lot of fun doing it and I'm trying to play well. I'm not just playing SUPER tight either. Probably too loose, but it makes for some fun sessions. :-)
Check out this hand. Now please note, I should NEVER play this hand, ever. I have NO idea what I was thinking. I was in late position (or as my wife said, middle position... she might be right) and I had A-5 offsuit. I limp after some other people limp.
WHY???? Obviously this is terrible. I can't even imagine what I was thinking at that time. But I limped, and the flop came good : A-7-5. I bet out 7, and got 1 caller. The turn was a 10. I bet out 17, and the guy raised me to 35.
This is pretty much exactly why you don't want to play A-5. I don't know where I am in the hand. I could fold, and I definitely considered it. In the past I think I'd fold here a lot. The guy could have A-7, A-10, a set, etc. But then I thought that it seemed pretty weak to fold here. I also thought, I don't want to just call and then check-call the river. I was listening earlier in the day to this "Deuce Plays" podcast and the host (Bart Hanson) was talking about the 4 biggest live no-limit leaks that people have. In the podcast he mentioned that people don't bet/fold enough, and they check/call way too much.
Actually it's funny, now that I'm thinking about this, another line I could have taken would be to just call the turn and bet out on the river. It still fulfills my desire to bet/fold instead of check/calling, but I didn't think of it at the time. That would have kept the pot smaller as I wanted. I did not take that line though.
Instead, I decided to reraise to 80. I felt that this was the right play at the time, although now I think calling + bet/folding would have been far superior. I figured that he would probably fold if I had him beat, and raise if he had me crushed with a set or whatever. He just called, which confused me.
The river came out a blank. I just checked it. He bet 35 and I called. He had 10-5 (two smaller pair). So I ended up winning a really big pot with A-5o. It was interesting writing about it just now, because I wouldn't have even considered calling on the turn and bet/folding the river until now. From a results perspective it worked out better the way it went down, but it would have made more sense to just call and bet 50 or whatever on the river, maybe 60, and fold to a raise.
Bet/folding really is powerful. It's pretty cool because it forces your opponent to bet at least 2x what you bet to blow you off of a hand. So in this situation, if I had just called the turn and checked the river, he could have bet $100. That would have put me in a really rough spot. But if I bet $60 on the river, it has so many advantages. He might fold. He might call with weaker. If he DOES want to bluff me off of the hand, two things are worse for him. One, I already showed strength on the river, so bluffing is harder. Two, he actually has to put more money in ($120) to do it. So betting 60 is actually way safer than checking and planning to call $100, because you only don't get a showdown when he raises you, and you set the price for that raise higher than what he might want to do. Wow. I never really thought about how it saves you money like that. The forcing your opponent to bet 2x to bluff you is really interesting and I never thought about it before. This is probably boring to read but I'm really having an epiphany here.
The characters at the table were insane yesterday. This one old guy with about $100 played a hand where he raised preflop (with AA, of course). He gets all in on the flop against some kid across the table on a K high flop. At the end of the hand, the other kid turns up his KQ (one pair). The old guy is like "Are you going to tell me what he has?" and the dealer says "Kings" or whatever, so the old guy turns his hand up. Total slowroll btw, but whatever. Then the old man just starts bitching that the dealer didn't tell him what the hand was. "I hope I didn't put you out" or whatever. The dealer just said no, its my job, etc... Then the old man keeps going off, "Unbelievable! Fuck this guy!" and didn't tip him at all... what a moron.
Best hand of the day yesterday by far was this one. Oh, another A-5 hand I think! Haha. I limped with A5 (suited this time at least). About 5 people on the flop, and the flop was J-7-2. 2 of my suit. I decided to bet out 7. I got one caller, and he was in position. The turn was an offsuit 9. I decided that I'd try to take it away and double-barrel this one, so I bet out 15. He called again. OK, I still have the flush draw.
River comes a card lower than jack, another blank. I missed. I decided I wasn't just going to let this guy have the pot. I thought about how much to bet, and I thought $25 looked credible, like I was trying to get a call. In retrospect there was probably 10 (preflop) + 14 (flop) + 30 (turn) = 54 in there, so a little less than half pot. Definitely a good size bet for my purposes. The guy starts thinking about it. He turns a jack face up and starts staring me down! Talking, do you have this beat, etc. I must have looked super nervous, I know I felt nervous. I figured if this guy had a jack he would call me 100% of the time. He ends up folding. Then I show my A-5, no pair, no hope. :-) Totally fun.
Another lucky hand I had was with K-Js. I was in the blind and saw a flop 4 handed. The flop came A-A-x. Checked around. The turn was a 10. I bet out 2 bucks (lol). Got 2 callers. The river was a queen, giving me the straight. I bet out 15 bucks, a pretty big bet - pot sized. Then a guy raised me 20 more! I didn't really consider reraising at the time, but maybe I should have. I just called, he had some ace-rag hand, and I won a pretty nice pot.
Overall, a good night. I ended up winning 83 bucks and I had a lot of fun doing it. Can't wait till the next session. :-)
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