skip to main |
skip to sidebar
the wipeout session, eliminating the slow, steady climb of profit for the month in one shot.
Flush over flush, aces cracked by a set of tens, kings cracked by a gutshot. 2 1/2 buy-ins wiped. (Only the aces were played non-standard, I was facing a 3bet from the button while I was the cutoff. I flatted the 3bet thinking his range was fairly wide, and vowed to check/shove any flop, especially a draw-heavy one. Flop was 78T, and in it went).
I actually love my stats this month (only 1800 hands). My VPIP/PFR is 16/12, down from 18/13 last month. 3Bet and squeeze percentages are up, cold-call% is down. I feel like I've tightened up some leaks around the edges.
Just have to run better. Back at it tomorrow.
I know all poker players think they are unlucky, but the guy who cracked my aces this weekend is really really lucky compared to me.
One hand after the aces hand, I was first to act in the small blind with king-eight suited. I raised into him (a tilt raise, but not a bad one), and he called. By the time the river ran out, he of course held the nine needed to fill the straight.
A flush and a straight on consecutive hands! I didn't have either all night.
Later in the evening, it looked like I was finally going to outflop him. I raised ace-nine of diamonds, he called, and the board was Ace-Nine-Eight with two hearts. I bet big, knowing he floated many bets, and he called. I had him on an ace, the two hearts, or some sort of straight draw around the eight-nine.
The turn brought a low, third heart, and of course my heart sank a bit. But I sucked it up and made a standard bet-fold of $21. He looked a bit hesitant and then called the bet. He would have raised his flushes and dumped the straights, so I now had him on some type of ace and his kicker being a heart for flush backup. I was hoping for a river brick.
And I got it. My two pair was even still the top two pair on the board, so now my best hope was that he had a lower two pair himself, or a queen or king kicker that he couldn't lay down to a big bet. I checked his stack, said "hmm, you've still got plenty of money" (a weak attempt to try and sound bluffy), and bet a cool, even $30.
He didn't look comfortable, and I was pretty sure I had him. That is, until he said "I can beat everything except that flush". Huh? Does he somehow have a straight? I checked the board again. No straight. Is he saying that with two pair? Maybe he has ace-nine like I do.
Then it hit me. He had pocket eights. He had actually flopped bottom set against my top two! He slowplayed the flop, and now he's panicking on the flushy board, putting me on the flush. And once again, I have been value betting against him with an inferior hand. For the love of all things holy...
He asked me a few questions, trying to get information out of me. I think I did a pretty good job acting relaxed and not giving anything away. "Will you show if I fold", he finally relented - he didn't want to call. "Sure", I replied. I'm a friendly guy. He folded, and I showed my top two, which got a "woooooow" from the table, and a bit of a hissy fit from my villain.
I got lucky against the luckbox, for once, and bluffed him off a better hand, even though that wasn't the intent of my line at all.
Going to work out the equity of my aces-getting-cracked hand from last night.
3 limps to me in the Friday night cash game, when I take a peek at my cards and see Ace of spades, Ace of diamonds staring back at me.
I make it $4 and get 2 callers. Flop is King-o-Spades, Jack-o-Spades, and a brick (maybe a red 4). I bet 11 into the 13.5 pot to make the flush draw call incorrect. One player calls. The pot is now $35.5
Turn isn't a great card - the queen of spades. Plenty of two pairs just caught me, and the flush draws of course. And Ace-ten. I take a look at my opponents stack before deciding on my play. He started short and has only $36 back. If I bet half of that $36 and get shoved on, I will need to call $18 to win $89.5, for a nearly 5:1 pot-odds call. Do I want to commit myself that way now?
If he shoves, I will put him on two pair, a made flush, a set, AT, and also a pair with a flush draw (say King-Ten with the ten of spades. Seems like a weak hand but this player doesn't like to fold preflop). I especially think he doesn't fold with the ten of spades, giving him a royal flush redraw (which he can't hit because I have the aces of spades).
Of all the hands he could have, I would have a staggering 19 outs vs. two pair, 14 vs a set, 11 vs. a straight (some are chop outs), 7 vs. a flush, and I'm actually ahead of top pair+flush draw combos.
I would have to weigh all likelihood of each of these combos for a proper weighting, which I can't do at the table. Just averaging the outs when behind gives me around 13 outs on average, which I would weight downward because he's much more likely to shove with a made flush than with 2 pair/set on a 3 spade board. So 10 outs roughly when behind, and at least some chance that I'm ahead, with a pot sized bet left in our stacks.
Time to commit. I bet 18, he defiantly puts his stack in. I take a few seconds to re-do my mental math, then I make the call. He shows 67 of spades for the made flush. I have 7 outs that don't get there.
I've been dealt pocket aces 10 times this month.
Number of times I've raised: 10.
Number of times I've been called and seen a flop: Zero.
So last night I isolate a weak tight limper with queen-ten offsuit. My raise works and we get heads up.
Flop is Queen-Queen-Six. ("Hellooooo, Frisco!"). My opponent checks and I check behind - I don't think he has much here, I my best hope is probably winning 2 streets of value by checking flop and betting turn and river.
Turn is an ace. My opponent checks, and I make a healthy bet of $7 into the $8 pot. He doubles my bet with a checkraise.
So, he's got the case queen, huh? How do I get myself in this wretched situations? I start putting him on a range. He's not super loose, so I can give him too many crappy kickers to go along with his queen. King-Queen and Jack-Queen beat me, and there are 4 combos of each of these available. I can rule out ace-queen - too strong a hand for this player to open limp. Would he play queen-nine, queen-eight, etc? I decide he would limp with these two hands only if they were suited. Since there's only one queen left in the deck, there's only one combo each of queen-nine and queen-eight.
This is as far down the kicker trail as I'm willing to go with this player - I haven't seen him play junk like queen-five suited yet.
So we're losing to eight hands and beating 2. I've got a min-checkraise to call. I decide the combination of having position, some outs to a win, some further outs to a chop (board pairing again), and the remote possibility that he was bluffing, to make this worth a call.
The river gives no help, and my opponent bets half the pot. I have 2:1 odds, and need to be correct to call 1/3 of the time. My combos say I'm good 2 in 10, so I'm nowhere near good yet. Add in a few bluff combos maybe? I could see this playing bluffing the turn, but I'm not sure if he follows it up with a bluff on the river after I call.
I can't conceive of a way that I'm good often enough to call the bet. I fold.
After the game is over, I ask him about his kicker. He says he had queen-five suited. A surprise to me (if true) - I've never seen him play hands of that nature. But I still like my fold given the information available to me. I think a few tough folds serve me better in the long run than "I haz trips - all in".
I had pocket aces three times tonight, won the blinds all three times. Nobody had anything
Tried to represent Ace-King once on an Ace-Ace-Nine-King board, but my opponent had Ace-King instead.
The two tables I was playing at became much too tight to win any money, but no other tables were available. This ain't like the good old days.
Finally, 3 hands before shutting down, I got 2-out stacked. My set was leading till the river, when his overpair got there.
Bleah.
Shove a draw and get called, shove a set (vs. the same player) and get a fold, then shove top pair/top kicker just as the fish hits two pair - that's the recipe for a 3 buy-in drop.
Throw in Kings getting cracked, queens paying off aces, a straight losing to a flush (3 handed), and two pair losing 3 different times, and maybe my 270 big blind loss should have been bigger.
