Your decision? (Conclusion)

In part 1 of this post, I described a difficult situation in which I found myself yesterday. If you haven't already read that note, you might want to do so now, because I'm about to tell you, in the immortal words of Paul Harvey, the rrrrrrrrrrrrrest of the story.



I decided on a shove. Given the potential win, I decided it was worth risking getting felted. If he had a bigger set, so be it. But, as I noted before, I had seen him overvalue and overplay medium-strength hands, so that possibility was a bigger part of his range here than it would be for more skilled and cautious players. I moved all my chips across the betting line.

He asked for a count. The dealer told him $202. He hesitated not more than three seconds before saying, with a shrug, "OK, I call. But I think you rivered me."

You can imagine that I didn't like that one bit, as it perfectly fit what I had feared most: He had A-A or J-J, checked the river out of fear of the flush, but finally decided he couldn't fold such a big hand.

I showed my set. He got a very surprised look on his face and said, "Wow--I didn't put you on that at all. You're good." And with that, he flipped up his A-10 offsuit.

That's right. He had three-bet from out of position with A-10 off, then, on the strength of top pair/lousy kicker had made a nearly pot-sized bet on the flop, a half-pot bet on the turn, and finally called my half-pot all-in on the river, after an obvious possible flush draw (and less obvious possible straight draw) had come in.

He topped that off with this offhand remark: "I really thought you had hit your flush there."

After I had finished stacking his chips, I texted Cardgrrl: "Can I get a GPS tag on this guy so that I'm alerted every time he walks into a poker room?"

Of course I felt like a genius. But the truth is that I could just as easily have been wrong, and left dejected and kicking myself for stacking off in such an obviously dangerous situation. I happened to be right this time, but the relevant factors were so ambiguous and scary that my decision was, frankly, just a guess, and I'm never happy being reduced to guessing like that. You can, I think, make a sound argument that I should have folded before the flop, on the flop, or on the turn, and waited for a spot in which I could have more confidence that I was in the driver's seat before putting all my chips at risk. So while I am, of course, pleased with the outcome, I'm less proud of how I got there than you might think.