don't ever give up on a pot

The title of this post was some advice my friend gave me in a phone conversation today. We review hands every Friday from the Thursday night cash game the night before. We were talking about the KQ hand from yesterday's post.

I'm not sure if I applied it exactly right, but I had a very similar hand this evening, and when I was raised on the turn, I actually thought about his advice. I also thought about the Baluga theorem (raises on the turn usually mean top pair/overpairs are beat) - there always seems to be conflicting information - in the end I figured the minraise was worth a call with TPTK.

Converting hands till the cows come home
Full Tilt No-Limit Hold'em $0.05/$0.10 - 9 players

BB: $7.26
UTG: $11.33 (Hero)
UTG+1: $10.45
MP: $2.92
MP2: $15.75
HJ: $26.43
CO: $6.10
Button: $5.25
SB: $3.59

Preflop: ($0.15) Hero is UTG with (9 players)
Hero raises to $0.40, 2 folds, MP2 calls $0.40, 5 folds

Flop: ($0.95) (2 players)
Hero bets $0.40, MP2 calls $0.40
Less than half pot was actually a misclick, would usually go .55 here. That's ok

Turn: ($1.75) (2 players)
Hero bets $1.10, MP2 raises to $2.20, Hero calls $1.10
The weak-tight alarm bells go off. Then I remember my friend's advice. Don't give up on this pot yet! You'll know more on the river.

River: ($6.15) (2 players)
Hero checks, MP2 checks

Hero showed , and won ($5.74) with two pair, Aces and Sixes
MP2 showed , and lost with two pair, Kings and Sixes
Hero won $5.74
(Rake: $0.41)
Aha, the minraise was "to see where he was at", and he found out with my call. Too bad he couldn't follow through with a big river bet - would have probably laid it down.

This was my biggest pot of a short evening. I played well but took a boat-over-boat beat to lose 60 BB. I was still up 170 on the day, though - a fine day.