Hero calls

My hero calls haven't been going too well lately, in my serious income-making cash games, anyway. (The donkalicious low-stakes HORSE games late at night online are another story.) The last three have been wrong, though I got lucky and sucked out with one of them. It's an expensive mistake to make. On the other hand, though, it's expensive to abandon the pot if you have the best hand. Money not won is just as bad as money lost (to invert a classic Caro-ism).

The Vegas Flea was kind enough to treat me to lunch at the Venetian this afternoon (thanks again!), and I had told him that I was trying to steer clear of marginal situations and close decisions, specifically including hero calls. But then there I was two hours later, facing one, hating the situation, and hating myself for having gotten into it.

I was in middle position with Qc-10c. Yay, crubs! I limped in. Button raised to, I think, $10. I called. Yeah, I know, that was already a marginal decision. When I look back at how I get myself into these messes, honestly it often starts something like this--a hand that can easily be dominated from the get-go, played for a raise from out of position. I know better than that, really I do. But sometimes I still act against my own better judgment. (If you never do, allow me to nominate you for sainthood right this minute. See Cardgrrl's confession on this same sort of matter here.)

The flop was 7-7-9 with two clubs. Yay, crubs! The button bet $15. I called. I did not stop to weigh the pot odds, having fresh in mind BWOP's recent insight: "[Y]ou're always getting the proper pot odds to call when you have the crub flush draw." (We are now on step 2 of the analysis of how I get myself into these difficult situations.)

The turn was Kc. Yay, crubs! They always get there! I thought this particular opponent, with a history of being quite aggressive, would fire on every street, so I decided to check-call again ($25 this time), with the intention of a river check-raise for maximum value. (How do I get into situations in which I have to make gut-wrenching decisions on the river? We are now on step 3 of how.)

The river was a red king. Ruh roh. I had not anticipated that. Now we had a double-paired board, and I was out of position against the pre-flop raiser, who might have just caught his miracle card to boat up against my crub flush. (Or is that crub frush?) Gulp. I checked.

How do I find myself in horrendous spots? I believe I have just laid out for you a full roadmap of the path to no-man's land.

My opponent bet $106. Why that odd amount? It was all the chips he had left, though he was leaving himself a $100 bill behind. But I had watched this guy for an hour, and everything about him was suddenly different than it had been when he had value-bet previous hands. He acted very rapidly this time, whereas before he had always been deliberate. He forcefully stacked up his chips and slammed them down in one big stack in front of him--completely the opposite of his usual calm, calculated approach to betting. After shoving out the chips, he sat WAY back in his seat, with his hands folded across his abdomen, glowering at me. I had never before seen him shift noticeably in his chair when betting, and he had never taken anything even remotely like this posture and facial expression. The bet amount was novel for him, too--his value bets had typically been half the pot or less, whereas this was approximately the size of the pot.

This was all classic stuff that should, by rights, be indications of weakness (because, obviously, he is trying to project extreme strength). On the other hand, was this guy smart and tricky enough to being doing it all as a sort of mind-game reverse-tell thing, begging for a call? Maybe.

As for his bet size, he could easily put me on a 7 here, given the line I had taken (slow-playing trips, then needing to be cautious when a third club hit), so he might expect a large bet to be called by the under-full if he had a king in his hand. He could easily have started wtih A-K, taken a routine c-bet stab at the pot when the flop was checked to him, bet his top pair/top kicker when the possible flush was checked to him, and then have made the near-nuts on the end. Conversely, though, he was definitely a player who could and would three-barrel complete air against an opponent showing weakness.

I HATE this sort of dilemma. Hate it, hate it, hate it.

I finally decided on a call. (The original plan for a river check-raise was obviously out the window, because he would only call a raise with a hand that beat my flush.) The combination of (1) the unlikelihood of him having a king and catching two more, and (2) the sudden appearance of a constellation of apparent tells, was just too much to ignore. I pushed $106 forward.*

My opponent picked up his cards and looked at them again, without showing them, and said, "Good call." GRRRRRRRRRRR! This is one of my, oh, million or so poker pet peeves. When you get called--especially when you get called for a large pot in a situation in which your opponent obviously had a difficult decision to make, show your f'ing cards already! Or, if you prefer, just muck them and surrender--that's fine with me, too. But this nonsense of expecting something like "Good call" to end your obligation to do one or the other is infuriating.

Nevertheless, after I sat there silently and defiantly, just staring into his eyes, psychically projecting all the bile and hate I could muster at his egregious lack of courtesy and ethics, he apparently concluded that he was not going to succeed at getting me to take him off the hook. He gingerly showed J-10 offsuit. How about that--I had been ahead all along! When he saw my flush, he disgustedly picked up his remaining C-note and stormed away from the table.


I suppose it's unrealistic to hope to avoid hero-call decisions. After all, the essence of no-limit hold'em, as Doyle Brunson pointed out long ago, is to put an opponent to a decision for all of his chips. Even if one were to try to avoid marginal situations by playing only ultra-premium hands, one is still going to have to make critical, difficult decisions, such as whether pocket aces are good as an overpair when an opponent's all-in suggests he may have made a set against you. So despite the irony of having to make a hero call in a difficult spot a mere two hours after having expressed to a friend my determination to avoid ever having to do so, maybe that resolution was ill-conceived to begin with.

I can't read soulz, but perhaps I can nevertheless make decisions in those marginal situations with sufficient clarity and profitability--the last three missteps notwithstanding--that I won't have to keep writing posts about how anguishing they are.




*Incidentally, I habitually do this, rather than just announce "Call," for what amounts to a stupid, purely psychological/emotional reason: It hurts less. That is, it seems somehow less painful to let go of those chips when there is still uncertainty as to whether I won or lost than to have to count them out and give them away after learning for certain that I have lost and they will not be coming back to me. I confess to having at least a few patches of irrationality in my psyche that I have not yet been able to eradicate, and this is one of them.