Now it’s time for me to be honest
Last night I played in a friendly game of poker, just a $10 buy in, top 3 got paid with 7 people starting. I dominated the game.
Now, I’m not saying that to be arrogant, I’m saying it because I had 25,000 chips almost the entire game. I ended up getting second place, but I really think I outplayed everyone and made to bad decisions that resulted in me losing. I’ll explain those later.
It would be easy to say that I got a rush of cards last night, and I did, but I played them perfectly against my opponents. I knew who would be wary of me stealing blinds and I knew who would be willing to move in with marginal hands.
The hand that really turned the game around for me was my KK. I was UTG with blinds at 200/400. I knew that I need to make a substantial raise. Mitchell was immediately on my right and enjoys defending his big blinds, and I wanted to make sure anyone coming over the top had a big hand, preferably AK or AQ. I made it T$2000 to go, which was roughly 20% of my stack.
It was a “moderate” bet from me, considering my stack, but substantial to the other players at the table who all had less than T$8,000. Two folds, and then someone starts thinking. Eric considers, counts his chips, and finally says “All in.” It was only 800 more to me, an instant call. I was expecting everyone to fold but then Mitchell said “A chance to triple up? I’m all in.”
Mitchell made a huge mistake, he had to have known he was behind - a substantial bet an all in? He moved all in with AQ - it should have been an easy lay down for him, but he moved all in anyway, which is exactly what I wanted him to do. He justified it with the “triple up” comment but he was a significant under dog with only 3 “real” outs going into the flop, any ace.
Eric had 66 and he was way behind. Not surprising. I expected they’d both be all in with the worst hand.
I ended up winning an $8,000 pot bumping me to almost $16,000.
Now, was I lucky? Not really, I expected that people with hands similar to those would move all in against me, hoping I had a KJ or KQ - especially Mitchell who constantly thinks I am full of shit. Eric thought his 66 might be in a race, but ended up being way behind. It played out perfectly for me, and I think my bet of T$2000 set up the success. It wasn’t an arbitray big bet, I wanted to force anyone calling to get all their chips in.
In an attempt to be honest with myself I went through the game and decided that I played well and I made the most of my run of cards.
I ended up losing because I made 2 big bets while I was ahead in a hand and ended up losing or having to throw the hand away on the river (correctly, too). I battled back heads up from a 3-1 disadvantage in chip stacks and ended up losing with Kd7d to 4d6d. Had I made a big raise preflop I probably would have won the hand but I simply called a raise - my mistake, but I still lost to an unlucky flop.
I think I outplayed everyone all night, made two mistakes, and ended up losing because of that. I got too passive in 3 handed play and let people steal my blinds too much, which is something I need to work on, but that should come around quickly. I’ve placed in the money 4 of the last 5 times I’ve played in this game and I don’t think it’s a coincidence.
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1 Comment to “Now it’s time for me to be honest”
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Mitchell McKenney
September 10th, 2005 at 12:58 am
I had 1800 in chips… with blinds at 200/400 I cant really aford to lay down a strong ace :-p