River a Full House? Just Call...
Reflections from the morning/evening couch--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here I am lazily sitting on the couch watching Poker Superstars III on FSN waking up from a late night and long sleep. Something sweet just happened though because I have seen two partypoker commercials in the past few commercial breaks. Now, it's quite possible that these shows have been put together for a while now with the commercials already edited in, but either way I think that it's good news for the online poker situation in general. If money is still being spent in this country on marketing by offshore gaming sites, then the state of online poker is not as dead as many of us have previously thought.
I played at the Venetian 40-80 for about 5 hours yesterday netting a profit of a monsterous $306. The highlight was seeing my friend Greg who I met on my trip to Casino Arizona a few weeks ago. I ended up spending some time having a few drinks with a friend of mine, and then found myself playing 30-60 at the Bellagio. This fascinating hand came.
My friend Noah from Minnesota (aka Broke Rapper) open raised the cutoff. I looked down and saw the 9 9 and re-raised. Jim, a solid player that has showed up in town this weekend from New York was in the SB and called after a little thought. Last time I saw him cold call my 3 bets he had QQ. The BB also called, and we saw the flop 4 ways. It came K Q J . All checked to me, and I was done with this hand. I checked behind. The turn came with the 9 . Well for the love of all the snakes on a plane! What the hell do I do with that card?
Jim bet, the BB folded, Noah folded, and I decided to do what any professional poker player would do. I figured that Jim could only be betting a T, and had either TT or AT. I called hoping that the board would pair.
The river came with the K . Jim bet, I thought for a moment and raised. He thought for a moment and re-raised.
It was at this point that I realized that my river raise was a pretty bad play. When I think about it now sitting on my leather couch, watching Matusow torture Hansen, listening to my brother play Led Zepplin poorly on the guitar, I clearly see that Jim could never have had AT in this hand. Further, the only possible hand that I am going to get value on is if he has TT. If he has AA, KK, QQ, JJ, or AK, I'm not getting any value. He would be able to fold AA, probably AK, and would not have bet it on the turn. If he's bluffing, he's not calling my raise. He might even fold his TT for my river raise.
I ended up turning my hand face-up and worked this all through on the table. I folded for the last bet, shocking the hell out of the table, but I knew that 100 times out of 100 times I was beat by this player in this situation. But what is frustrating to me is that even though I saved that last bet, I should not have put two bets in on the river in the first place. That is the problem that so many people run into in this game is that they base their bets off of the objective strength of their hand rather than the subjective strength of their hand. I have value bet ace high on the river, and I've just called with full houses before. It's all relative to the strengh of your hand compared to your opponents hand.
Oh, Jim had quad Kings. I ended up losing $500 in that session.
Peace and good luck,
Devo
posted by Devo @ 7:12 PM
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