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.

PeeGee's Big Adventure, Part 6: Day 1, the lineup

Photos courtesy of Wolynski. (And in case you're wondering what I'm doing with my left arm in that last shot, well, both Wolynski and I are wondering, too. My best guess after looking at it for a while is that I was pushing up my shirt sleeve, but I really don't know.)

Last night I dreamed that I was back at my WSOP Main Event Day 1 table, just as I had been all day Thursday--except that in the dream I had horrendous body odor. Everybody at the table had their noses wrinkled up in disgust at the stench, and they were all trying to figure out who smelled so bad. I knew it was me, but rather than confess that I had forgotten my deodorant, I tried to pretend that there was nothing wrong.

I don't usually put much stock in dream interpretation, but in this particular case there is undoubtedly something profoundly symbolic going on. Even if I consciously tried to conjure up a literary device to convey how I felt at that table, I doubt I could make up anything so perfect. I have never felt so out of place and outclassed at a poker table. I have never had any illusions about being a great player, but it is nevertheless deeply humbling to be faced, in such an up-close and personal way, with the reality of how much better some other people are at the game. I'm used to being the best player at the table--not because I'm exceptionally good, but for the simple reason that anybody who is significantly better would play higher than $1-2 NLHE, my bread-and-butter game. It is, therefore, quite a novel and unsettling experience to feel like the one who is not only the fish, but the fish that has begun to stink.

As most readers will have heard by now, either from my Twitter feed, PokerNews coverage, or other sources that were reporting on the day, I got unbelievably unlucky in my table draw. I was in Seat 2. In Seat 3 was David "The Maven" Chicotsky, Bluff Magazine Online Player of the Year for 2008. In Seat 4 was Tom Schneider, who won two bracelets and WSOP Player of the Year honors in 2007. In Seat 5 was Eugene Yanayt, whom I had not heard of before, but is definitely on my radar screen now. He is a 2-7 triple-draw specialist, apparently playing online under the names "FishosaurusREX" and "Oogee." In Seat 8 was Greg Raymer, 2004 Main Event champion. Finally, in Seat 10 was Olivier Busquet, widely considered one of the top handful of high-stakes, heads-up, online players in the world.

To be blunt, this table was an assemblage of just completely ridiculous, phenomenal poker talent. It got the dreaded label of "table of death" from PokerNews. Raymer commented at one point that it was the single toughest Main Event table he had ever been seated at. He then paused a beat to consider his words, and added a qualification: "If it's not the toughest of any Main Event table I've ever had, it's definitely the toughest Day 1 table." After the first level, he Tweeted, "1st break #wsop58. Somehow only up to 33K at this ridic soft table @DonkeyBomber livB Maven pokergrump oogee. #sarcasm" (He surely didn't know or care who I was when he sat down. He probably learned my moniker by checking PokerNews coverage and/or by overhearing me introduce myself to Schneider, with whom I have several mutual friends. Furthermore, I'm certain that his inclusion of me in that list was sheer politeness, not an objective assessment that I was one of their peers. The mention did skyrocket my Twitter followers, though!)

Funny story: I didn't recognize Chicotsky at first, even though I certainly should have. (E.g., I recognized him and took his picture at a charity tournament at the Venetian over a year ago, as reported here.) He had briefly introduced himself as "David" when he sat down, and I was kinda busy futzing with all my stuff at the time and wasn't really paying attention. After that, when I looked at him it was in profile and from about 12 inches away, so it didn't trigger my facial recognition from photographs. I sent a message on Twitter about the stars at my table, not mentioning him. One of my readers is Donna Lawton (@Cure _MTM on Twitter), who is head of the Utah chapter of the Poker Players Alliance. She and I have met on some of her Vegas trips, and even played a cash session in adjacent seats at the Venetian on one of them. Anyway, she sent me a private message via Twitter: "Hey it looks like the Maven is at ur table too yes?" I brushed it off with my reply: "Don't think so." I mean, I would have noticed that, right? Duh! But she was persistent and pointed me to Chicotsky's own Twitter feed (which I wasn't following), where he had commented on having Raymer, Schneider, and Busquet at his table. Well, that evidence was pretty hard to ignore, so I took another hard look around the table at the people I hadn't recognized. I had to stifle a laugh when it finally dawned on me that not only was he sitting right next to me, but he had introduced himself and shaken my hand earlier! Sometimes I can be unbelievably oblivious to my surroundings.

Of the star players at my table, I was most bowled over by Busquet in terms of who most consistently had a nose for the right play. He was just dominatingly good. I saw him lose a few small pots, but never a big one. I tussled with him a few times and could never win, no matter what I tried. He also had the advantage of running like God yesterday (e.g., cracking one player's aces with a flopped flush, starting with Jd-9d, and elsewhere calling Maven's four-bet with 5-8 suited and flopping another flush). He ended the day as one of the overall chip leaders. Watching him play I had weird flashbacks of the lyrics of "Pinball Wizard":

Even on my usual table
He can beat my best
His disciples lead him in
And he just does the rest
He's got crazy flipper fingers
Never seen him fall
That deaf, dumb and blind kid
Sure plays a mean pinball

Tom Schneider had a lousy day in spite of playing well. The most impressive thing I saw all day--in fact, one of the most impressive things I've ever witnessed at a poker table--was him face-up folding pocket tens after flopping a set, and being proven correct to have done so when Raymer showed him a flopped set of queens. He was in the tank for a long time on that decision (politely apologizing to the other players a couple of times for taking so long). It gave me time to send up the Bat-signal to my buddy Shamus, who was reporting for PokerNews. I knew that whatever the outcome, this was likely to be a newsworthy hand, and I also knew that Shamus trusted my judgment and would just come without question when he caught my eye. I cannot improve on the excellent way he told the story here.

We usually think of the best moves in poker being the audacious bluff, the razor-thin hero call, or the perfectly sized value bet. Folds aren't sexy. But I tell you, this was a world-class move by a world-class player. Not reported by Shamus was the fact that Schneider talked a bit as he was thinking. He said, "I just think you have me beat here," and, after a while longer, "I can't get over the feeling that I need to fold this." Logically, he was only beaten by Raymer having pocket queens or pocket aces (the flopped straight not fitting the action well). Furthermore, Raymer is easily capable of putting Schneider to the test in that spot with just a big ace, just a draw, or even as a pure bluff. For Schneider to get that sharp a read on Raymer's actual holding by nothing more than feel, and trust it enough to fold, after having already put a substantial percentage of his dwindling stack into the pot, well, I cannot adequately express how much it impressed me. As Raymer said, with sincere admiration in his voice, "That's a helluva fold."

Very early in my learning about poker, I heard somebody famous say that what separated the great players from the merely good players was not how much they win when they have the best hand, but how little they lose when they have the second-best hand. (I think it was Mike Sexton on an early World Poker Tour broadcast, quoting Doyle Brunson, but I'm unsure of that attribution.) At the time, I dismissed it as a cute but not terribly important observation. The longer I play, though, the more I come to appreciate it as a profound truth of the game. Schneider's fold becomes a foremost example of this principle for me. His tournament would have been over if he had not trusted his finely tuned Spidey senses there.

You've probably heard that I later took the last of Schneider's chips. I certainly didn't outplay him. It was a pure cold-deck situation, my aces against his kings. Again, I had managed to catch Shamus's attention in time for him to witness the outcome, as reported here.

In an opinion shared, apparently, by nearly everyone who has contact with him, Raymer is a smart, interesting, funny guy. He's very chatty, and an excellent raconteur of his many poker stories. But he's also willing to let the conversation veer off into the bizarro world. For a while, he got the table discussing correct strategy for playing poker heads-up with an omniscient being. Later in the day, after he had pre-ordered some sushi for his dinner break, he went on a riff about lobsters, and whether it would be worth being basically anencephalic as a trade-off for the ability to regrow severed limbs. That one thoroughly cracked me up.

More times than I could count during the day, Raymer was approached by people from one poker media outlet or another to chat. These weren't full-out interviews, but they still constituted frequent distractions from the game. He was unfailingly welcoming and respectful with them. Furthermore, I happened to see him on breaks in the halls, and he could barely take three steps in a row without a fan stopping him to ask for an autograph or to pose for a photo. With every one of them he smiled and did as requested, showing not a trace of boredom or resentment, as far as I could detect. I don't think I could pull that off for five minutes before I started going postal and yelling at strangers to leave me alone, but he has managed it for seven years straight. My hat's off to him for his patience and good will with the public--not to mention his tireless efforts on the poker political front. (He's a fellow libertarian, doncha know. We're all saints, obviously!)

The only blemish in my admiration of Raymer came when I rivered a lucky second pair to beat him in a very early pot, and he gave me the disdainful "Nice catch" line used to not-so-subtly tell an opponent, "You stupidly stayed in when you were behind." It's far from the most insulting thing I've ever been told, but I consider it slightly unclassy--whether or not the underlying message is true. It sounds dismissive and sarcastic, which, in my view, isn't cricket at the poker table. But it's not awful, either, and I'm not inclined to be overly judgmental about one stray comment in a moment of irritation. It just isn't my style, and I was a little surprised to see that tiny crack in his otherwise uniformly deserved good-guy image.

His bust-out hand got paused in the middle while the TV cameras and other media swooped down on the table like vultures. If ESPN does any coverage of Days 1A through 1D (there seems to be some disagreement among poker reporters as to their plans), this hand will surely be included, because it had a dramatic river suckout. I was pleased to be able to help my PokerNews friends reconstruct the action, as they had not been there when it began. Read about it here. From a strategic perspective, Raymer made a cagey move to open-limp-reraise, representing possible aces, as Yanayt (unnamed in the blog post) could easily have been just stealing from the limpers). But when the field folded and Yanayt reraised, Raymer's subsequent call with just 2-2 was highly questionable, a fact that he admitted when it was all over and he was packing up his things. He signed for Yanayt a large, beautiful fossil with a gracious note (which I looked at closely, but stupidly forgot to photograph for you all).

Yanayt was with me until the end of the day, but one by one we lost the others. Chicotsky was the first of them to go broke, then Schneider. Busquet got randomly chosen to be moved to balance tables, and Raymer went out. The only semi-name-brand player to join us subsequently was Nachman Berlin, who had a $419K score for second place in Event #43 just about a week ago. (Thanks again to Donna for remotely helping me quickly figure out who he was--though as it turned out, he talked about himself so much that with a little more time I would have put the pieces together.) Unlike all the others I've named, Berlin was, frankly, an arrogant ass. While I was deeply impressed with Busquet, Schneider, and Raymer's play, Berlin is deeply impressed only with himself. His assessment of his opposition on his Twitter feed after he got moved to ol' #376: "Table is real soft. 2 good players." He's one of those who is convinced he's the best there's ever been, and likes to pretend, when a hand is over, that he knew exactly what everybody had and what everybody was thinking and doing. Moreover, he's perfectly willing to tell others, without invitation, how they should have played a hand differently. But as far as I could tell, his talent did not match his inflated sense of self. He seemed to get in trouble as often as he succeeded. His aggression was not nearly as smartly controlled as what I had seen from the others. My guess is that he is not going to become a poker commodity over the ensuing years. (Of course, I won't either, but I've never claimed or pretended greatness.)

Berlin aside, the others I've mentioned (as well as the no-names, none of whom were incompetent, and all of whom were unfailingly polite and friendly) contributed to making yesterday far more memorable than it might otherwise have been. It was an exhilarating experience. Even if my killer table draw hampered my chances at a big cash, it was sure one hell of a lot more interesting than if I had been assigned to a table full of silent hooded Internet players, and a lot more educational than if I had landed at a soft table full of donkeys. For that, I can feel genuinely grateful, even if the draw proves to have doomed me to an early flame-out.

Well, I have a ton more to tell you from my Day 1, but it has already taken me a couple of hours to write this much, and I have some other stuff I have to finish up today. I might get to another post later tonight or maybe not until tomorrow, but I promise there is more.

Poker gems, #320

Greg Raymer, in All In magazine, October, 2009, p. 35.


One reason you don't trap is because the next card might kill your action. Sometimes when you're thinking of slow-playing, go ahead and bet it, because this might be your last chance to get action.

Poker gems, #319

Tom McEvoy, in All In magazine article, October, 2009, p. 33.


Phil Hellmuth says he has to be at least a 70-30 favorite before he'd be willing to put his tournament life on the line early on [in a tournament] because he thinks he can find a better spot. Meanwhile, Greg Raymer says that he's happy with about a 52-48 situation, where he has just a slight edge. I'm more of a 60-40 guy, right in the middle. If I think I've got about a 60-percent chance of my hand holding up, I don't mind taking a risk early on.

Poker gems, #200

Lee Jones, in Bluff magazine column, January, 2009, p. 65.


A couple of years ago, Greg Raymer won a Pot Limit Omaha event during PokerStars' WCOOP tournament series. When it got down to heads-up play, I instant-messaged a colleague and said, "Greg is going to take this thing down and it's not even close." How did I know? Well, it was like this: when Raymer had the button, he'd raise, and his opponent would call. When the opponent had the button, he'd limp in. So to a first approximation, every pot in which Greg had the button was three times as large as the pot in which the opponent had the button. Who would you put your money on?

At a major tournament about a year ago, I was chatting with Daniel Negreanu about the value of position. Steeling myself against a potentially fatal blow to my ego, I said, "Daniel, suppose you and I are playing PLO heads up. But one thing: I've always got the button. Who wins?" Daniel thought briefly and said, "You'd win." ...Now, just to be clear, Daniel Negreanu is ten or a hundred times the poker player that I am. But faced with me having the button on every hand, he fancied my chances better than his.

Poker gems, #129

An excerpt from a PokerNews live-blogging post earlier today on the WSOP razz tournament in progress:


Former champion Greg Raymer can be seen decked out in a bright orange shirt and PokerStars gear. He's also got a bag with him, a crazy card protector, his hat, and sunglasses.... He then leaned back to one of our reporters and said, "Razz is such a mind-numbing game that if you don't try and make it entertaining, all you'll have left is despair."

Play a hand with me

It's pretty rare that I post stuff dealing with strategy and analysis of hands, because, first, there's about a billion other places you can go for those topics, so I have little new and original to contribute. Second, I just think it's usually pretty boring to read about somebody else's poker play. It's a "you had to be there" kind of thing. Besides, if you don't know the author personally, it's hard to care much if he won or lost on a given hand or in a given session.

But I've been musing today on a hand that I played last night in a $1-2 no-limit hold'em game at Harrah's, one that required more thought and finesse than usual, and I think maybe some readers might learn something from it. I'll warn you in advance, though, that it's going to take a lot of words to explain what on the surface was a pretty straightforward hand of cards, because all of the interesting stuff was going on below the surface. This is a hand that would have been totally different if played online. In fact, it illustrates perfectly, in large part, why I'm so much more successful playing in casinos than I am on the Internet.

When Greg Raymer won the main event of the World Series of Poker in 2004, he had to deal with the usual nay-sayers calling him a luckbox, and put up with critiques of some plays that seemed, well, a little crazy. But then ESPN did a special show where he got to comment on what he was doing, play by play, and it was eye-opening: The guy is very smart, highly analytical, and always, always, always, had a thoughtful, intelligent rationale for doing what he did. It was an impressive performance. (Had I been a follower of the http://www.twoplustwo.com/ forums, I would have already known that he had, long before the WSOP win, distinguished himself as a first-rate hand analyst.) I hope to do something similar here, in microcosm, because there is so vastly much more going on in poker than who has what cards, and this hand shows that abundantly, I think.

The nature of the opponent is absolutely crucial here. She is a classic tight-weak player, meaning that she plays very few hands, doesn't bet them strongly when she has them, and seems to be easier than average to intimidate. To make matters worse for her, she's playing in a seat next to a girlfriend, and they're openly commenting on the action as hands play out (not to the point of actually violating rules, but just things like "Wow," and "oooo" and "uh-oh" when unexpected things happen). In other words, she's spinning off loads of extra information about whether she likes the situation or not.

Conversely, I've been lucky enough to establish a highly tight-aggressive image, not showing any of my bluffs, showing down only strong hands, and making good laydowns when beat, all of which adds up to the table seeing my bets and raises as deserving healthy respect. It's just the way I like it.

I have only tangled with this young woman in one pot before. She folded to my raise on the river, and I showed her that I had made the nut straight on the turn and had trapped her for that last river bet. I have no doubt that that memory will influence how she plays against me in the future.

These facts are critical, because I'm about to do something unorthodox, and wouldn't attempt it without those circumstances having set it up.

I limp in from early position with Q-10 of hearts. It's not a hand I'm thrilled with, and I won't take much heat with it, but it does have potential. Ms. Tight-Weak raises to $10, which is a pretty standard opening raise for this table. Everybody else folds.

Normally I would fold here, too, and with good reason. As Dan Harrington points out in his essential treatise on tournament hold'em, you have four weapons at your disposal: your cards, your chip stack, position, and table image. You don't need to have all four of them going for you in any hand, but it's unwise to go into battle without at least two of them on your side.

Here I have only one: table image. I'm out of position. She has a few more chips than I do. And given the narrow range of hands with which she has been raising, she almost certainly is starting off with stronger cards.

It is terribly arrogant of me to think that I can outplay an opponent without the advantage of position, without an intimidating stack of chips, and with a weaker hand. It's really rare that I would attempt it. But, as I hope I have adequately established above, the peculiar mix of factors here seems just right that I might be able to negotiate an unusually dangerous situation. At the very least, I believe that it will be easy to determine if I'm beat and get away from the hand without too much loss.

So I call her raise, and we see the flop of K-Q-2 rainbow. I check. She bets $20. I think she probably has either pocket aces or a king with a strong kicker to bet into me here, and if she had aces, she likely would have raised more before the flop. But I decide to call, mostly to see what she does with the turn card, in the hope that a steal opportunity will present itself. Lots of players like her will fire on the flop, but not have the heart to keep betting if they are called. In her case, this could be because the flop missed her (e.g., she has pocket 10s or jacks, and really didn't like the flop, but was willing to take one shot at it), or because the flop helped her, but she's worried about being trapped by me slow-playing something like two pair or a flopped set of deuces. In addition to all of that, having made second pair here gives me outs even if she has the king; a 10 or another Q will likely give me a better hand.

The turn card is an offsuit 6. I like this, because there are no flush draws to complicate the analysis. It's possible that she has a straight draw with A-J, but it's only a one-way if so, and I really don't think she's the type to have bet just a draw. If she had J-10 for the open-ended straight draw, I think she would have just limped in before the flop.

On the other hand, the turn card obviously didn't help me. I'm going to check, and basically if she fires again, I'm bailing out.

At least, that's the plan.

But then she does something unexpected: she bets $20 again. A larger bet, and I'm convinced she has a king, I'm beat, and I'm outta there. But repeating, rather than increasing, a bet size on a later street is a tight-weak player's classic scream of fear. My assessment of her is that she has sufficient experience to overcome her fear if she had two pair (especially king-queen here) or pocket kings or queens for a flopped set, and she would be confident enough of her hand to bet strongly. On the other hand, if she had missed completely, I think she wouldn't be putting in another bet at all. That means that I can narrow down her hand possibilities with almost laser-like precision: She has A-K, K-J, or A-Q. Nothing else fits the pattern here.

Repeating the same bet size after the pot has grown larger isn't quite raising the white flag of surrender, but it definitely changes my plan. I now think there's a good chance I can steal it from her. So I calmly, quietly, deliberately put two red chips on top of a $50 stack and push it forward--a check-raise, tripling her bet.

She and her friend instantly go into frenzy mode: "Uh-oh." "What did I get myself into?" "What does he have?" I like this. Unless my radar is way, way off, this isn't acting to fake me out with a monster, but is genuine concern on her part. She cuts out the additional $40, moves it back and forth between her hands a bit, looks at what is left of her stacks if she calls and loses this, but then finally puts it in. But she is definitely rattled.

I now believe that I can eliminate A-Q from her range of possible hands, because she wouldn't call a check-raise with second pair. She's just got to have a king for top pair, and most likely A-K to be willing to call my check-raise.

Well, basically I'm done with this hand. I gave it a good try, but it didn't work. I'm beat and I can't push her off of her hand. Time to cut my losses and look for a better spot.

But wait--did the dealer just put out a third queen for me on the river? Why yes, he did! Thank you, Mr. Dealer! I am about as certain as I can be that I now have the best hand. What's more is she can't think that I have a queen, because nobody would be stupid enough to check-raise with second pair (hee hee!). So I move all-in for my last $106.

She again goes into talk-out-loud mode. It takes her at least a full minute, but finally she says, "OK, I call." She then gets the bad news, and shows me her A-K. She crabs a bit with her friend about how lucky I got--which there is no denying. I hit one of five cards that would make me the winner, without which it probably would have gone check-check at the end.

Her mistakes were excessive timidity and transparency. If she had put in closer to a pot-sized bet on the turn, I would have scampered off with my tail between my legs. And consider her call of my check-raise on the turn. She should have thought something like this: "If I call here and he pushes all-in on the river, I'm going to call that. Since I'm going to be willing to risk nearly all my chips anyway, it would be smarter to push now, because if he's just trying to bully me, he might fold, but if I wait until the river and he goes all-in, it will be too late to push back against him, and, besides, that last card might help him. I can't expect my hand to get any better than it already is, so now is the time to make my stand." If she had re-raised me there, again I run away licking my wounds. Her weakness cost her nearly her entire stack.

The transparency cost her money, too, because without making herself so easy to gauge, I would have been concerned that she started with K-Q, flopped two pair, and make a full house on the river. I might have still tried the check-raise (I honestly can't say for sure), but if she had called it without fuss and drama and emotion, I would have been seriously worried that I was beat even after making three queens, and would have checked it down with her, cutting her losses. She virtually allowed me to play as if her cards were face-up on the table, which let me extract maximum value when I got more than a little bit lucky.*

So today's lessons, kids, are these: When you have a good hand, playing it timidly will cost you money. And whatever hand you have, the more you talk and react and scrunch up your face and fiddle with your chips, the easier it will be for an opponent to deduce what you're holding, and adjust his play optimally against you, which will also cost you money. That's not what you want, is it?


*Of course, these things can go the other way, too. Just a few days ago, also at Harrah's, I made the nut straight on the turn, put in a pot-sized bet, and had an opponent move all-in on me with two pair. I called, of course, and he hit one of four cards on the river to make a full house. Nothing you can do about that except roll your eyes and pull out more cash.