Going blind at the Wynn

Wynn 1/3 NL - Friday, February 15nd

This day was a little crazy at Wynn, right out of the gate.  Sit down in a 1/3 NL game right away and there is a guy totally going crazy.  He declares that he is playing hands blind, and I believe him.  Sometimes you see people do that and it's a little sketchy.  A long time ago at the Golden Nugget this guy said he was playing a hand blind, it totally looked like he was, and he turned over K-K.  Not sure if  it was a coincidence or not, but it was a hell of a coincidence if it was.  This guy at Wynn though was making it VERY obvious that he wasn't looking, and he would even drop a chip on the 2nd card when it came out as it was flying towards him so there was no way anyone could think he was looking.

Hand 1 : I raise to 12 with J-J in early position.  Guy declares that he is playing blind.  One guy calls my bet, and the guy playing blind makes it $50.  Totally blind, for sure.  I'm playing against a random hand which I obviously have crushed.  J-J is a 77% favorite over any 2 random cards, based on the PokerCruncher query I just ran.  So I reraise it to $150.  Guy in the middle folds and the other guy calls $100 more blind.  Crazy!  I never see stuff like this happen, and my heart is definitely racing because I'm playing a huge pot in really weird circumstances.

Blind raise guy

Flop is Q-8-4 rainbow.  He checks.  What can I do?  I bet out $200, my "standard" cbet here.  2/3 pot.  Now he looks.  He says that was either a great or a terrible flop for me.  Shows me his cards.  Q-2.

He calls.  Turn is a blank.  He goes all-in for $40.  Obviously everyone at the table is thinking "insta-call with any two".  And he starts cracking up (rightly so) when he throws the $40 in and I don't call right away.

I'm thinking and I show the table my cards.  I'm just trying to do the math at this point.  In my head, I though that there was about $740 in the pot.  $300 preflop, $400 flop, $40 turn.  And (based on the rule of 2) I had a 4% shot to crack his hand.  So I needed like 25:1 to call.  I was getting nowhere near that (like 18.5:1), so I folded.

The reality of the situation is that it was closer than I thought, but I still made the right fold.  Based on PokerCruncher, I had a 4.55% chance to win.  And there was a little more in the pot preflop.  The $740 I calculated, plus the caller ($12).  You can subtract the blinds because they got raked off.

This means that I was getting 18.8:1 on the call.  I needed 21:1 to call.  So technically I made the right fold.  100% correct too, no need to debate, because these are the exact numbers and odds.  Sure you could argue it's worth the gamble, but that's about the only thing you could argue here.  And I'm trying to just make the right decisions.  Not happy about how this worked out obviously, but I'm happy with how I played it.

The guy was up a TON for a while, but eventually ended up dumping it all and leaving.  In his last hand my wife put a bad beat on him actually.  She got all in on a Q-Q-x flop with him.  She had K-K, he had A-Q.  Turn, king.  Ship it.

Hand 2 : Blind raise guy makes it $18 (not blind this time).  I have A-K and reraise to $60.  He calls.  Flop is K-x-x (don't remember the other cards), I fire $80, he folds.

Hand 3 : I call a $15 raise with 5-5.  There are about 6 people that see the flop, including the blind raise guy (who again is not playing this hand blind).  The flop is a dream, 10-5-3.  Bingo.  Checks to the blind raise guy and he bets $75.  Yes.  I reraise to $200.  He calls.  Turn is a king and he checks.  I have $350 left and there is now about $470 in the pot or so.  I go all-in, he folds.

The only thing I might change about this hand in the future is slowplaying the last bet a bit.  He called on the flop and there aren't really any draws (2-4 or 4-6 I guess).  I'm also assuming there wasn't a flush draw, I don't remember because I'm writing this on 2/27 so it's been a little while.  If there weren't any other draws, I could consider checking the turn behind.  I went to another WPT Boot Camp session this past weekend and one thing they mentioned is that if you have one bet left in your stack and if someone is going to call you X% of the time on the turn, but he might call you X+Y% on the river, you can hold off on betting the turn and just fire it in on the river.  Might put an extra bit of doubt in their mind that could lean them towards calling.  Like I raised the flop, and after he checks it twice to me (turn and river), I get the balls to fire in a huge bluff bet on the river.  So he calls with top pair or whatever.

I'm not saying I should have done that, but it's an option.  I'm fine with how this hand went down.

Hand 4 : Raise with A-Q, get one caller.  Flop is K-K-x.  Bet out 25, get raised to 50, fold.

Hand 5 : This was a fun one.  I raise with 5-6 of diamonds to $15 on the button after one limper.  The big blind calls.  He has at least $400.  Flop comes Q-10-7 with 2 diamonds.  He checks, I bet $20, he calls.  Turn is the king of diamonds.  He checks, I bet $45, he calls.  River is an offsuit 4.  He checks.  I bet out $115.  He calls, win.  Ship it.

That's about it.  There was some other drunk idiot at the table later that was going crazy.  He was bitching about the 2/5 game and said it sucked because he flopped a boat, basically didn't bet it, and got no money out of it when he check-raised the turn or river after some guy bet?  Makes no sense.  Then he was telling my wife she was crazy that she folded J-10 offsuit to a $18 raise.  And at the same time, berated some other lady for calling a raise preflop with K-10 and hitting against him.

Then some other idiot calls literally 3x pot on the flop with a flush draw and hits.  Then he tells the guy,   if it was any more he couldn't call.  LOL!  Are you for real?

I ended up winning $22 over 4 hours.  It was a big mental victory for me though because I started out SO far down, stuck $400 right out of the gate.