Learn From My Mistake

[JFB37]

I did something really stupid last night that cost me a pretty good sized stack, at least for me (about $2500). What is remarkable is that I knew it was stupid and did it anyway. This may be the sort of thing you have to experience to get the full lesson, but I thought I would post it here in the hope that someone else might benefit.

5/5 game at the Woods. As noted, I'm just shy of $2500 and having a pretty good night, built it up from $1000 in about 4 hours. Table is a good opportunity. Lots of crappy players. The pretty good (there are no really good) players are easy to spot. Villian is very tight and has played very few pots, only with starting hands on the all too familiar charts. He has not been very aggressive and has made only one or two "moves," but they are pretty basic -- e.g., calling a weak flop bet from a (not good) pre-flop raiser and then betting the turn when the raiser checked. He has also slowplayed a bit.

The hand: I have K [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]K [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] on the button. Four limpers to me. I make it 30 to go. UTG then goes all-in for 95. UTG is awful and this is an obvious steal attempt. Villian then makes it 200 to go. I think about old Doyle's comment that the third raise means AA as pure as the driven snow but I just don't buy it here. I think that (a) Villian didn't respect my initiall button raise, (b) Villian knew the UTG re-raise was a joke, and therefore (c) he is making a move, albeit one with a good hand. So, I decide to test him. I make it 500 to go on the theory that if he has Aces he will go all in. This really twists him in knots. He thinks a long time, fidgets, and I am sure it is not an act. Finally, he sighs and calls.

Flop comes Q something something, with two spades. Villian makes a noticable reaction to the flop and then checks.

I analyze the situation and come to the conclusion that, really, the only possible hand Villian could have is QQ. I'm pretty sure that he wouldn't have called the additional 300 with AK. He didn't have AA because he didn't go all-in pre-flop. The other two Kings was a remote possibility, but pretty remote. I doubt he would have called with any other pair.

Here is mistake #1: I was pretty damn sure what he had, but I decided to "test him again." So I bet another 500 at the pot. In response, he promptly went all-in, removing all doubt.

Mistake #2: I talked myself into calling. "Well, maybe I'm wrong with my read, I have two shots at one of the other Kings, I've got runner-runner flush possibilities, and, its 'only' another 1500 to win 5000, I'm pot committed."

Why did I do this? I knew damn well that I was a lot worse than 3.3:1 to win the pot. But I still stuck the money in there. Why didn't I just pour lighter fluid on my stack?

I've been thinking about this a lot and, in my case, I think a big component of it is stubbornness. Even though I was sure that the chance that his push was a bluff was vanishingly small, I DIDN'T WANT TO BE WRONG. I would have felt like a complete chump if he had flipped over something else (I have no real idea what that might have been), which he was going to have to do to take down the now puny main pot created by UTG's all-in.

Now I am not going to let this experience turn me into Phil Helmuth and start laying it down when ever anyone exhales in my general direction. But, there are times where you have to face the facts. There is a section in HFAP that talks about the situation where you just have to be beat. This was one, and I just refused to accept it. So, to the extent there are lessons here, here they are:

First: if you don't trust your abilities and instincts in the first place you shouldn't be playing poker. So listen to what your brain is telling you. When it really matters, don't chicken out and overrule what logical, sound analysis tells you.

Second: it bears repeating, loss avoided is just as good as profit made.

Third: it bears repeating, make your money betting, not calling.

Maybe this post is useless to anyone else, but writing it helped me work through the hand and try to learn something from it.