The Dumbest Thing I Did on Friday

Poker is a difficult game to learn and teach because it is so situational - while you are trying to outsmart your opponents, they in turn are trying to out smart you. They change their strategies, lay traps, try to induce you to bluff and do all sorts of sneaky things. This is particularly true in No Limit - where a massive bet could be a desperate bluff or a sign of a monster hand. You sometimes wonder, "Why would he bet so much? If he had the nuts he would bet less hoping for a call." So you call the enormous bet only to see your opponent turn over the stone cold nuts. Why did he bet so much? The obvious answer is that he had you pegged as a guy who would suspect he was bluffing by betting so much. He was thinking about what you would be thinking about and he was right. The bastard.

I was playing on Friday at a table with a mixture of professional and recreational players. The pros were making a killing off of the fish, who were calling down marginal hands. I got luck early on when I flopped a straight against one of the pros and extracted maximum value as he was on a million draws and missed them all. I wish I could say it was skill, but unless you can learn to flop straights you have to admit it was just dumb luck.

I made the mistake right then of thinking I had wounded the pride of the pro, and this assumption led me to make a bad decision a few hands later, when I was dealt QQ on the button. There were six guys in for the $2 min-bet when it got to me and I raised it it to $10. It folded back to the guy I had just beaten. He only had about $120 left in chips and he pushed half his stack in making the bet $60. It quickly folds back to me. All I could think is that this guy wants revenge. Well you  picked the wrong guy to try push around buddy!  I announce "all in" and the guy calls sometime between me saying "all" and "in" - but still I think I'm okay until he flips over pocket aces.

Oops.

81% of the time the aces hold up in this situation. Luckily for me this happened to be one of those 19% occasions. A queen came on the flop and my trips held. But despite the happy ending, I know that I had been out-played. I gathered my chips and hoped I could avoid a mistake like that in the future. The lesson is not to assume a strong player will let emotion dictate their play. Weak players let things like wanting revenge influence them, but pros don't. If a pro re-raises you pre-flop (particularly if you have a tight image), it usually means he has a real big hand.