Shorthanded Horrendous Play

[mojolang]

Me and my friends were playing a "tournament" in which all players buy in for a designated amount and everyone gets 100 chips and the blinds start at 1-2 and get raised every 15 or 20 minutes. Anyway with blinds @ 1-2 I get
A [img]/forums/images/icons/club.gif[/img] Q [img]/forums/images/icons/club.gif[/img] on the button after UTG folds. I make it 7 to go. Only the BB calls. As a note this player is extremely unpredictable at times and will take flyers. Needless to say this burns him often in the wrong situations but it nevertheless causes some problems for me.

Flop:
T [img]/forums/images/icons/club.gif[/img] 5 [img]/forums/images/icons/spade.gif[/img] 7 [img]/forums/images/icons/club.gif[/img]

He bets 10, I raise 10, he reraises ten. Now, right here is when I should have moved on him. I'm a 54% favorite over a ten and it would really put the heat on. I rashly called and saw the turn with my powerful draw.

Turn: 6h

He bets 10 I call.

River: K [img]/forums/images/icons/spade.gif[/img]

He bets 10, I fold

At this point I was going to attempt a bluff but he bet the ten into me and I opted to fold. Now here is the part that killed me he turned over.

Q [img]/forums/images/icons/spade.gif[/img] 4 [img]/forums/images/icons/diamond.gif[/img]

Let this be a lesson on how NOT to play good draws against maniacs. However it should be noted that if the Q did come it would have been a blood bath.

Joe

[tewall]

I'm confused by the betting. You have this posted in the NL and Pot limit section, but the betting is as if it were limit, except that everything is 10 and generally in limit the bets would double on the turn.

[mojolang]

The blinds were 1-2 does that sound like limit if we're betting 10? It just happened that teh bets were in incriments of 10 apiece.
Joe

[tewall]

I posted a response, but it looks like it got lost in the Internet either somewhere.

The blinds make it sound like NL, but the bets like limit, which is what makes it confusing.

Normally bets are expressed in terms of the pot, not a unit of money, like 10. It's very unusual for a bet of 10 to be re-raised 10. Say there's 10 in the pot, so a bet of 10 would be betting the pot. A raise of the pot would be a bet of 40, which would keep the raise in proportion to the original bet. A raise of 10 ( a bet of 20 ) is much smaller in relation to the pot than what the original bet was, which makes it an odd bet. It feels like a bluff, showing weakness, or a sandbagging move (feigning weakness with a powerhouse that doesn't mind being drawn against). When one sees bets of 10, 10, 10, then it looks like limit.

With as good a draw as you had (nut flush plus overcards), and the small stacks, you don't mind getting all your money in at all. Your initial bet of 10 was fine, but your opponent's raise of 10 was wierd. At that point you could have gone all-in. Good draws do not mind being all-in on the flop where they have two cards to hit. What you don't want to do with a draw is have a sizeable portion of your stack in at the flop and then be set all-in on the turn when a blank hits. You either want to keep the pot small to where you can draw something to bust your opponent with cheaply, or go ahead and get the money in. You don't want to be half-way. The problem with the cheap route is it's obvious when a flush hits, so you may have trouble getting paid off. That's very player dependent however, and there are people who will pay off your flushes, so sometimes cheap will work fine. When you raise 7$ you've eliminated the cheap possibility and are committed to go after the pot (and backing it with your stack) when you get a flop which hits your hand. Otherwise there's no point in raising.

When he continued to show weakness on the turn, you still could have taken the opportunity to set him all in as he likely would have folded and even if not you still have a lot of outs.

His bet of 10 on the end was a bad bet. A bluff should have been a bigger bet.

Given the small bets your opponent was making, the way you played your hand wasn't bad (except for not calling at the end). Your opponent was giving you odds to chase. But if he had been making normal bets, with a drawing hand you shouldn't be calling him. Either fold or take the lead.

By the way, for your tournament, you might enjoy making the blinds smaller in relation to your stacks, which would allow you to play more hands without having to go all in.

Hope you guys have fun!