Friday, November 6, 2009

Annoyed with my play

I made a poor showing in the Thursday night cash game. I was not aggressive enough, got involved in some marginal situations, and made some poor river showdown calls to lose decent pots. I was not happy with my play. I chipped up enough small pots to keep from losing my stack entirely.

I was down $30 or so when the monster hand of the night came up. I took a free look at the flop from the big blind with 6h9h, and liked what I saw when the board was dealt 5c 7c 8s. I had the nuts. It was a multiway pot so I checked with the intention of checkraising. Mr. Pietzak made his standard $3 "feeler bet" and I got a caller in between us. I briefly considered smooth calling, but decided there was no need to get fancy here - I didn't want to do anything stupid to lose a pot I was most assuredly winning, at least at the moment. I made it $16. Mr. Pietzak announced that he was all in, without barely two second's hesitation.

I checked my cards and the board one more time to make sure I hadn't misread anything. 5-6-7-8-9. Yup, that's a straight. All black on the board, but no flush - two clubs and a spade. Most poker theorists agree that you should call an all-in with the best possible hand, so I took their advice.

"I call".
"Whaddaya got over there, 6-9?".
"Yes, I do".

It wasn't over. Mr. Pietzak had 4c6c - he had flopped the small end of the straight, and had the flush draw to go with it. 2 of the flush cards gave him a sweet little straight flush. His straight was almost no help, though - a nine would give us a chop, and the nine flush cards made for 10 outs. (with the nine of clubs removed from one of those two groups). He really got cold-decked here. He could have easily been ahead of a flopped set or a pair/flushdraw combo, or even a badly-played overpair (especially with the way I was playing tonight) - I had the one, single hand that put him behind here. But he still had plenty of ways to catch me by the river.

"You want to run it more than once?", Mr. Pietzak offered. I thought it was a splendid idea with one of those colossal, no-way-either-of-us-was-going-to-fold hands that hit us both hard, and left us with a 60-40 shot at a $100 pot. A chop would be fine. I posed "Let's run it twice", and
Mr. Pietzak agreed.

In a shocking turn of events, the next four cards were club-less, and I got my late night double up to pull out from the red into the black. One more well-timed squeezed with pocket kings took down another pre-flop "raise, call, call" pots to add just a bit more.

In a sign of an honest, clear self-evaluation of my game, I was irritated with myself all night, even after winning the monster pot - which was the result of a cold-deck and luck rather than any sort of skill. My 10 year old daughter would have won that pot. There were several lost posts earlier in the evening, though, where a well-timed raise or fold would have kept my stack more healthy.

2 comments:

diverjoules said...

Come play Sunday Matt. No browns to watch anyway. Not that I have been watching but others have been.

bastinptc said...

Hey, don't bad mouth those hands that play themselves. Not every hand should be an historic battle. As for the other stuff, well, you know what to do.