"You don't look like a horrible player"

I went slumming tonight--hit the Stratosphere and the Sahara. I really dislike playing in both places, but they're such consistent money-makers that I keep them in the rotation to visit once in a while, especially after a losing streak, to get things back on a positive track.

At the Stratosphere, my second hand after sitting down with $100 I was dealt A-Q of diamonds. I raised to $12 after a couple of limpers. I was called by the big blind and the guy on my right. The flop was J-8-2 rainbow. Nothing great for me, but nothing too scary, either--good chance it missed both of them as much as it missed me. Both opponents checked, so I put out $25. Big blind folded, guy on my right called.

This didn't look to me like a check-call of great strength, as if he had flopped a set or something--more like maybe he hit the 8, and decided to stick around to see if he could make two pair or three of a kind. So I'm not worried yet, because an ace or a queen should give me the winner, and even failing that, I think he's not feeling married to his hand, and is probably susceptible to being pushed off of it. I'm an unknown entity to him, and he's out of position, so if I'm right that he doesn't have a monster, and he misses the turn, he likely isn't going to be willing to put in a lot more money.

The turn card is an offsuit 10. I didn't think he limp-called before the flop with an 8-10. I also didn't think that he called on the flop with a gutshot straight draw, so in all likelihood that card didn't help him. He checked, adding support to my theory. I have $63 left in front of me, and there is about $85 in the pot, so I shove. Even if he calls, I should have outs with an ace, queen, and now a king would give me the nuts, a Broadway straight.

He thinks for a while. Finally he shows me a K-J offsuit, smiles, and says, "You don't look like a horrible player, so this must be no good." And he throws it away.

I smile back and say, "I'd like to think I'm not horrible."

He says, "Yeah, you had me beat."

****
We now commence the strategic advice portion of this blog entry. This hand perfectly illustrates what's wrong with limp-calling with a hand like K-J. Of course, you might hit a miracle flop with two pair or three of a kind, but that's less than 2% of the time. If you're calling a pre-flop raise on a 2% hope, you're throwing your money away.

If you are the pre-flop raiser with K-J, a flop like J-8-2 rainbow is just about ideal. You have top pair, strong kicker, little to fear from draws, and nothing that looks like a two-pair hit with which an opponent might have called your pre-flop raise. It looks like smooth sailing.

Conversely, if you limp with the same K-J, then call a pre-flop raise, now how does that J-8-2 flop look? You have to worry that the raiser has A-J, J-J, Q-Q, K-K, or A-A, against any of which you are a huge underdog. You have no draw to save your bacon if you venture further. And being out of position, you have to either check--thus showing weakness, inviting an aggressive opponent to bet even if the flop missed him, after which you have to basically guess where you are in the hand--or bet, worried that you'll have to abandon those chips if you get raised.

That's why people call K-J and similar holdings "trouble hands," because they are frequently dominated and make it very difficult to deduce whether you're ahead or behind, so that it's easy to make large mistakes--especially when playing from out of position.

If my opponent had thought this through ahead of time, he could have saved himself $37. He could have thought, "What would be a pretty good flop for me that isn't relying on a 2% or less probability? Maybe something like J-8-2. But even if I get that, how sure can I be that my hand is good? Not very. Might be better just to wait for a better spot." He could then have let go of the $2 he had invested, or, if he ran through that mental exercise first, just folded without even putting up the $2. Another approach would have been to raise with the K-J before the flop, thus making a lead-out continuation bet after the good flop a very natural move.

Alternatively, he could have done one of two things on the flop, once he realized that the flop was about as well-suited to his hand as he could ask for. First, he could lead out betting at it, stealing the initiative from me. If I'm holding A-K, A-Q, A-10, pocket 10s, etc., it's going to be hard for me to call. If I come over the top of his bet, he can still choose to fold. An affirmative $25 bet does him a hell of a lot more good than check-calling my $25 bet, not only in terms of giving him a chance to win the pot outright if I've missed, but in terms of getting a lot more information about whether he's ahead or behind. If you're willing to invest $25 on this hand with a call, take the aggressive route and stick it in up front, forcing me to make the decision.

Second, if he wanted to be even more daring, he could check-raise me all-in after I bet the $25. There's a pretty decent chance that his hand is good here. Even if it's not, he invests $63 to potentially win the $60 or so that is already in the pot, plus my last $63 if I call, so he's getting 2:1 on his money if I call, and it's pure profit to him if I fold. Given our stack sizes (he's sitting on about $300), this is an extremely reasonable move.

For the record, if he had check-raised me, I certainly would have folded. If he had led out with a $25 bet on the flop, I would have either folded or moved all-in over the top, depending on my sense of his strength; I'm really not sure which way I would have gone. At the very least, he would have given me a hard decision, and anytime you make an opponent face a difficult decision, you open the door for him to make a costly mistake, which is basically your whole object.

Instead, though, he played it passively, like a coward, and gave away $37 when he had the best hand. Of all the ways he could have played his hand, the limp-call/check-call/check-fold was absolutely the worst option. (It is because people often do things like this that the Stratosphere and the Sahara are consistently profitable for me.)

I'm glad you don't think I'm a horrible player, sir. I don't think you're horrible, either--but you do need a lot of work on the basics of the game: use of position, aggression, and hand selection. Employing any of those three things correctly probably would have won you the pot, or at least caused you to lose a lot less.