A friend of mine (let's call him Will) came down to the casino to play a little poker. The plan was that we'd sit at the same table, have some fun, and I could maybe give him some advice to improve his game.
I arrived at our agreed upon meeting time but Will had gotten held up and wouldn't be able to show for another hour. I took $100 to a table and lost it in a half hour when my queen high flush lost to an ace high flush. Damn. Luckily I had a reserve buy-in, so I got more chips and decided to play uber-tight. How embarrassing would it be if I lost all my money before Will even got here? A sad excuse for a poker mentor.
When Will arrived my table was full, so he started at a different table and put his name down to be transferred to mine when a seat was available. Luckily this didn't take very long and he soon sitting at the far end from me. This made conversation between us difficult - I'd have to raise my voice loud enough for the whole table to hear. I could see he had only about $50 in chips - the minimum buy in.
He lost a lot of chips when he was dealt pocket jacks and limped in and the flop came with an ace on it. Someone (let's call him Don) bet and Will called. The turn was a blank and the Don fired out another bet and Will called again. Now it seemed to me that Don almost certainly had an ace. If Will was playing standard poker, his two calls would mean he almost certainly had an ace as well. If both these assumptions are correct, the question becomes who has the better kicker? If this were a standard situation, you would assume neither guy had a very high card to go with their ace, otherwise they probably would have raised pre-flop, so each guy is now in that awful position of having no clue if his hand is good or not. The river was a nine. Don, who I assume was worried about the strength of Will's hand, checked. If Will had a big stack he could easily have bluffed Don, but he only had about $15 left. He checked as well. Don turned over his ace with a shitty kicker and Will showed his pocket jacks. The pot went to Don.
What happened here? Will made the mistake that all newbie players make - he couldn't lay down a good hand. He was dealt pocket jacks - a good hand - and couldn't get away from it. Simple as that. All players make this mistake when the first start out. All of them. Every single one of them who ever played. The first step to becoming a good player is learning how to recognize when your opponent has a stronger hand than yours and folding even if your hand is a strong one. Sounds easy, but it definitely is not.
