Thursday, June 30, 2011

Big pot

Tonight I had the distinct honor of meeting the one and only Julius Goat. He and Shamus and I had plans to meet for dinner at the Rio, followed by Wednesday night pub trivia at McFadden's. So I decided to get in a couple of hours of poker before dinner.

Shortly before it was time to leave, this hand came up. I had 8d-9d in early position and limped. Middle-position guy raised to $10, followed by a late-position call. Small blind reraised to $25. I would normally not call a raise and reraise with this starting hand, especially from bad position. However, I looked left and saw that both of the other two players already had three red chips in hand, ready to toss in, so I was reasonably confident that no four-bet was coming to force me out.

Besides--and here comes the part for which you are free to mock me mercilessly--I had a feeling. Normally, when I hear players say that they made some decision based on a statement like that, I just roll my eyes and sigh at the stupidity, so I'll understand and forgive in advance if you do the same to me. But I had a rather strong premonition that if I folded this hand, I'd regret it. This is a distinctly uncommon kind of experience for me. It's not like I'm getting such impulses on every hand. It probably means nothing more mysterious than some random neural firing, but I decided to go with it anyway. Again, not my usual approach to poker decision-making, and I won't try to justify or defend it further. I'm just telling you what happened.

As expected, both other players called, giving us a $100 pre-flop pot.

Flop: 4d-6c-7d, giving me both a flush draw and an open-ended straight draw. Assuming nobody else had a bigger diamond draw, that meant I had two pulls at 15 cards that would make me a winner. Not bad. In fact, it's precisely the kind of flop one most dearly hopes for when playing suited connectors in a multi-way pot.

Small blind bet $55--surely a big pocket pair, to be have reraised from out of position, then lead out into three opponents. Pot was now $150, after the rake. I had about $250 left behind. I spent maybe 20 seconds deciding whether to flat-call or shove. I couldn't get any read on what the other two were planning to do. I finally decided to risk losing customers with a shove, primarily because if any of my desired cards hit on the turn, it might then be hard to get any further action. I declared myself all in.

Middle-position guy was taken aback. He was visibly ambivalent about what to do, but finally said, "OK, let's do it," and pushed his stacks forward. He had me covered. Late-position guy, who had around $175 left, likewise shrugged, said, "OK," and moved his chips in. Small blind quickly folded, saying, "One pair is never good in that situation."

Middle-position guy had 6d-3d, for middle pair, baby flush draw, and gutshot straight flush draw. However, he groaned when he saw my cards, because the 5 to make his straight would give me a bigger one, and any diamond for his flush would also give me a bigger one. He had to hope that neither one of us improved and that his lowly pair of 6s would hold up, or that he got some runner-runner full house or his miracle 5d for the straight flush. The other player never showed.

The turn ended the drama quickly: 10h, giving me the nuts. The river was the ace of clubs.

The pot totaled $828. I don't keep track of individual pots, so it's possible that I've forgotten something bigger, but I believe it's the biggest pot I've won so far this year. It also gave me a win rate for today's session of $352/hour, just a tad above my average. I'll take it!

In case you hadn't noticed, I've been running kinda good lately.

5 comments:

lightning36 said...

Now all you have to do is make this same kind of play every day.

tyia

Wine Guy said...

As funny as it seems, sometimes these gut feelings do work. I shall not mock as I, too, will do the same thing. Depending on the number of players, bet I need to cover and position, this can be a favourable call. Not all the time, but sometimes you just gotta!

Congrats that it worked out and to such a degree..

hfrog355 said...

But I had a rather strong premonition that if I folded this hand, I'd regret it.

Also, they could have been bluffing and 9 high was gooooooddddddd.

Memphis MOJO said...

I like the shove. Why mess around? When the pot gets that big, they often call anyway and hope to get lucky.

I had two pulls at 15 cards that would make me a winner. Not bad.

You're 56+% to make either the flush or straight, so you're right, not bad.

West said...

Man you are running good. You should do a heater check and play some Keno.