PeeGee's Big Adventure, Part 9: Day 1, the hands

I have just a few hands from my Day 1 to tell you about. I'll take them in chronological order.

1.

The first occurred at about 1:15 p.m. It was the first time I was dealt the Mighty Deuce-Four. My chance to show the world what it does! I was in the hijack seat and raised to 275 (blinds 50/100) with 2h-4s. Both blinds called, including Greg Raymer in the big blind. The flop was A-J-5, all hearts. The blinds checked. I bet 600. SB called, Raymer folded. Turn was an offsuit 9. SB bet 1200. I raised to 3000. He called. River was an offsuit 3, making my gutshot straight. We went check-check. He said, "Two pair," but didn't show. I flipped over my wheel, to puzzled looks all around. Why not bet the river? I thought there was a reasonable chance he had flopped a small flush. Maybe I should have bet again, but his line was odd (particular the flop call/turn lead-out bet), so I was confused, not having a good sense of what he could be holding, and I decided to play it conservatively at the end. After having been down a bit, that hand was my first time back over my starting stack, putting me at 32,425.

2.

The first really big pot I was involved with occurred at about 1:40 p.m., roughly 90 minutes in. Both I and the guy on my right had been letting our blinds go without a fight nearly every time. Naturally, the others noticed this and were stealing liberally. I decided to take a shot at playing back. So when Raymer open-raised from two off the button, I thought he was in an any-two-cards situation, and when the others folded, I reraised as a pure resteal, with 9c-8s. (I didn't write down bet sizes for this one when the hand was over.) He thought a bit, then called. The flop was A-Q-8, all clubs. I bet. Raymer raised.

Often in poker, one's cards simply don't matter. What matters is the situation, and what the other player will think that you have. I believed that this was just such a spot. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I was trying to treat it as such a spot, whether it was or not. Raymer would know that I would likely continuation-bet a high percentage of the time, even if I missed the flop. He would also know that it was statistically unlikely that I had flopped a flush, and if I didn't, I would have to be worried that he might have. His raise, therefore, doesn't require a real hand at all; it only required him to guess that much of the time I would have missed this scary-looking flop and he can take the pot away regardless of what his own cards are. Recognizing this, I reraised him, to signal that he had picked a bad spot for that move. Obviously this play was not based on my own hand strength, but on an educated guess as to what Raymer was thinking and doing.

Raymer's response was a nearly instantaneous declaration, "I'm all in."

Oops.

Given that he had never seen me play a hand this aggressively, it was now highly unlikely that this was simply a bluff on his part. Though I had tried to make it be about the situation and not the cards, now I could win the pot only with the best cards, which I almost surely didn't have. I had to fold.

Raymer flashed the king of clubs before mucking, so he at least had the nut flush draw, and likely had either a pair (especially a queen) or a straight draw to go with it. He could have even had a made flush, though I doubt it.

So my play didn't work, but I would still defend it as having been a reasonable read of the most likely situation, and one that would have won me a juicy pot a lot of the time. This just wasn't one of them. It was a big hit, taking me down to 21,325.

3.

It was about 2:45 p.m., and I was still at around 21,000 when this next hand played out. This one was reported by somebody I don't know at PokerNews, here, with me identified only as the "player in middle position." (Such indignity. DYKWTFIA?) Go read that account so that I don't have to recount the action.

I had pocket jacks. I was tempted to raise Busquet on the flop, since he will have missed a 9-9-6 flop most of the time, and can continue only if he has a bigger pocket pair. I was hampered, though, by the presence of two others in the hand (which, by the way, is my own fault for not putting in a three-bet before the flop). The SB had hesitated before checking in a way that made me suspicious that he had a 9 in his hand and was trying to decide between a donk bet and a check-raise, and I didn't want to get trapped in the middle for a larger sum. So I just called. I kicked myself when the SB folded. My read on him had been wrong.

King on the turn. Oh, great. That just hit a large swath of Busquet's pre-flop raising range, not to mention Raymer's blind-defense range. On the other hand, he could have me on a flopped flush draw, and continue firing even with a clean miss. So I called again.

River--ace. Wonderful. Another big chunk of Busquet's range just beat me. He thought for quite a long time, then moved all in.

I briefly considered calling (he had me covered), because he could easily be doing this with a smaller pocket pair, especially if he put me on the flush draw. But if that was what he was thinking, why would he risk so many chips, when a much smaller bet would force me out just as effectively? Based on the play he had seen from me, he should never think that I would execute a river raise as a bluff on a missed draw. I might have had the best hand there, but it was so easy for me to be beat with any ace or king in his hand. I was reduced to a pure guess, and I just didn't want to risk it all on a guess in an extremely risky spot like that. So I folded.

In retrospect, I played it badly. I should have raised before the flop, and likely either won it right there, or at least I would have reduced the complexity of the situation by having only Busquet to deal with. Whether or not I did that, I should have raised the flop. If any of the other three players called or reraised, then I could be reasonably confident that I was facing a bigger pocket pair or flopped trips, and stopped putting more money in. My caution (OK, call it timidity) and passivity cost me more than a raise would have.

4.

Shamus reported one more hand in which I was involved, here. This was after the dinner break. My opponent was the most active pre-flop raiser at the table. This was another spot in which I had decided it was time to play back at the blind stealers with any semi-decent hand. In fact, I had Kc-3c here, which some of my friends refer to as a "LeDawn" (for reasons I won't bore you with). The flop was A-A-J. I check-called, with plans to take the pot away if he showed any weakness. Turn 8. Check-check. So now I'm pretty sure he doesn't have an ace.

River: Another J. Perfect for my purposes!

One of the specific tips that Daniel Cates gave me, when we met to discuss strategy, was to bluff in situations in which my opponents would have to judge that I would almost never be bluffing. This was exactly such a spot, I thought. Given how tight and conservatively I had been playing, a lead-out river bet here would just never get read by a thinking opponent as being a bluff.

In fact, my opponent's only question would be whether I had the ace or the jack. From his point of view, if I had the ace (perfectly plausible, given my rare defense of my big blind), then I had slow-played the flopped trips, trying to trap him. If I had the jack (defending with something like J-Q or J-10, presumably), then I had simply not believed him to have an ace, thought my jack was good enough for a call on the flop, and I had gotten lucky to river a full house. Either boat was entirely consistent with my line and with my demonstrated tendencies. He simply could not call unless he had an ace, and I was quite confident that he did not. So I bet.

Sure enough, he folded. He took long enough and looked sufficiently pained about it (he wasn't one to Hollywood usually) that I suspect he was folding a decent pocket pair, maybe even as good as kings or queens.

Heh heh! Stealing pots is so much more satisfying than winning them with the best cards.

That last hand put me back to around 30,000, where I had started the day. But then things fell apart. I rather suddenly hit the proverbial wall mentally with about two hours left in the day. I was sleepy, my thoughts were foggy, and I had lost interest in paying attention to the action and trying to decipher what the other players were doing. This happened to coincide with a long stretch of utter card-deaditude. (Yes, it's a word. Look it up.) I decided to just fold-fold-fold to the end of the day, and start again fresh on Monday.

The problem was that I didn't stick to that plan. After some period of folding everything, and being aware that everybody knew that I was folding everything, I would kind of randomly decide to make a play for a pot, and fail. Maybe I had tells showing due to fatigue. More likely, the conspicuous pattern of folding even more than had been my tendency all day telegraphed to everybody that I was just trying to survive to the end of the day, and, therefore, that I wouldn't be willing to play a big pot--so they made the intelligent adjustment and forced me to play big pots. This happened several times over the course of two hours, and it meant that I was putting in a raise or a reraise, then throwing my hand away--along with the chips.

That's what caused my stack to plummet in the final level, from around 28,000 to where I finished at 8325. It was my stupid vacillation between mutually incompatible plans. I would have lost far, far less if I had just stuck to my original plan of folding to the end of the day, once I recognized that my A-game was gone.

In reality, making it to Day 2 was not an important goal to me in and of itself. If I was going to go bust, it made no difference to me whether it was an hour before the end of Day 1 or an hour into Day 2--it's all the same result. I didn't decide to fold because I wanted to be able to say I made it to the second day. I decided that because I knew I was off my game, and would be able to use the chips better after starting fresh.

Whatever hand-specific mistakes I made in the first four levels paled in comparison to waffling that way during Level 5. I basically gave away 20,000 chips by being unable to commit consistently to either folding to the end or getting my chips in where I could and trying for a double-up. Half-hearted attempts at doing anything are rarely a smart strategy either in poker or in life generally, but that's what I kept trying, and failing badly. The prophet Elijah famously asked a gathered crowd, "How long halt ye between two opinions?" (1 Kings 18:21) Well, for me it was about two hours--but that was plenty of time to do all the damage.

When they announced that there were just three hands left, I was under the gun (being the unlucky one chosen to put in the big blind for the last hand of the day) and saw 8-8. I toyed with the idea of sticking it all in. But I reconsidered, realizing that if I got called it would be either for a race against something like A-K, or as a huge dog against a bigger pocket pair. So I folded yet again, paid my blinds, and bagged up my pathetic remaining chips.

I really regret how I dribbled away chips during that last two hours. But as Willie Nelson would say, there's nothing I can do about it now. I just have to start from where I am, making the best possible decision on every hand going forward.