01-29-2002, 02:03 PM
Two seats opened up in the $15-30 game and after the smoke cleared there would be three of us left at the $6-12 table. With no collection, I was a most happy camper.
I had only been in the game a few minutes and I didn't recognize either player. The guy on my right started the three-handed game on the button and he put out a live straddle. Pretty good play I think. So I did it too, next hand, on my button. Right away the SB put out three bets and the BB put out four bets. This was at AJ's, with a five-bet cap.
We'll presume (and rightly so, as I quickly learned) that it will get capped preflop by the SB no matter what we do. Okay, it's your play. Your options are:
1) Look at your cards and fold
2) Look at your cards and cap it
3) Do not look at your cards and cap it
My thinking went like this:
I'm in for two bets, and they will be in for five bets each, so that's 12 bets in the pot. It costs me three bets to stay in, and I've got the button. No brainer, right? Is this a case where the "correct" play is to cap it in the dark?
Plus, this all went on while the dealers were changing which made it kinda funny. How would you like to be dealing and sit down to a three-handed game with 15 bets already in the pot and three bug-eyed loonies itching to gamble?
Back to strategy, could this mean that the best way to defend against the staddle-on-the-button in a three-handed game is for the other two players to cooperate and cap it every time, thereby damaging whatever advantage the button player might have, essentially turning the whole game into a capped-every-time hoedown?
A touching aside is that the player on my right turned out to be a fairly sophisticated player who had a well defined gamble switch and when it switches he knows it and accepts and revels in it. Something I must have said or done, maybe it was all the folding preflop I was doing, made him say later on that it's okay if I don't gamble with him and the other guy. "Whatever makes you comfortable." His sincerity was unquestionable. And so was mine when I said, "You cannot imagine how comfortable I am."
Tommy
I had only been in the game a few minutes and I didn't recognize either player. The guy on my right started the three-handed game on the button and he put out a live straddle. Pretty good play I think. So I did it too, next hand, on my button. Right away the SB put out three bets and the BB put out four bets. This was at AJ's, with a five-bet cap.
We'll presume (and rightly so, as I quickly learned) that it will get capped preflop by the SB no matter what we do. Okay, it's your play. Your options are:
1) Look at your cards and fold
2) Look at your cards and cap it
3) Do not look at your cards and cap it
My thinking went like this:
I'm in for two bets, and they will be in for five bets each, so that's 12 bets in the pot. It costs me three bets to stay in, and I've got the button. No brainer, right? Is this a case where the "correct" play is to cap it in the dark?
Plus, this all went on while the dealers were changing which made it kinda funny. How would you like to be dealing and sit down to a three-handed game with 15 bets already in the pot and three bug-eyed loonies itching to gamble?
Back to strategy, could this mean that the best way to defend against the staddle-on-the-button in a three-handed game is for the other two players to cooperate and cap it every time, thereby damaging whatever advantage the button player might have, essentially turning the whole game into a capped-every-time hoedown?
A touching aside is that the player on my right turned out to be a fairly sophisticated player who had a well defined gamble switch and when it switches he knows it and accepts and revels in it. Something I must have said or done, maybe it was all the folding preflop I was doing, made him say later on that it's okay if I don't gamble with him and the other guy. "Whatever makes you comfortable." His sincerity was unquestionable. And so was mine when I said, "You cannot imagine how comfortable I am."
Tommy