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June 20, 2006

Back in (the) black.

After all my muttering about bad beat lately, I need to shut up now because I came in 2nd in an SNG this morning and finished first in one tonight, more than erasing my losses yesterday.

Pocket kings held up and flopped sets against short-stacks who went all-in pre-flop with A-4o. I was able to make well-timed bets with draws on scary boards (my favorite tonight was a board of [8h Ks 6d] [Js] when I held 10-9s - a queen or 7 made a straight, Qs made a straight flush, any spade made a flush - it didn't matter that I didn't have a made hand - my hand had so many outs - and so many people had checked the flop and to me on the turn - that I HAD to bet the pot). My semi-bluffs worked and pushed people off stronger hands. In short, it was all zen tonight, baby.

One very interesting hand that prompted some discussion when it was over (I think in part because it was the hand that burst the bubble) was this one:

120/240 - No Limit Hold'em - 3:07:00 ET - 2006/06/20
Seat 4: mow grass (1,910)
Seat 6: welderles (3,295)
Seat 7: puckett101 (5,715)
Seat 8: dingo1414 (2,580)
mow grass posts the small blind of 120
welderles posts the big blind of 240
The button is in seat #8
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to puckett101 [Jd Qd]
puckett101 raises to 750
dingo1414 raises to 2,580, and is all in
mow grass folds
welderles folds
puckett101 has 15 seconds left to act
puckett101 calls 1,830
welderles is feeling confused
dingo1414 shows [Ts Tc]
puckett101 shows [Jd Qd]
*** FLOP *** [4h 2s 3d]
*** TURN *** [4h 2s 3d] [Qs]
*** RIVER *** [4h 2s 3d Qs] [2d]
dingo1414 shows two pair, Tens and Twos
puckett101 shows two pair, Queens and Twos
puckett101 wins the pot (5,520) with two pair, Queens and Twos

The person knocked out asked me why I called and I had actually debated calling. What it boiled down to, for me, was that the pot was a little over $3,600 and I was being asked to call $1,800 with J-Qd. That hand isn't a lock, but I'm getting 2-to-1 on my money - if I'm understanding pot odds correctly, that means the correct mathematical decision was to call and besides, I had them covered and then some. While it would have switched chip leaders, I still would have been in the game with sufficient chips to make plays. The person calling asked what I put them on - I think it's a leak in my game that I didn't put them on a hand exactly (i.e. I didn't think they had pocket queens or A-Jo or something else like it). I thought about the math, how they had been playing, what hands they had played before and how, how many chips I put into the pot and the possiblity that they were trying to take down the pot right then, adding over $1k to their stack in the process. I had also been running the table a bit, raising into blinds with a fair number of hands - not quite stealing, but not quite winning legitimately. I just priced them off their hands and, as we all know, that can lead to frustration and frustration leads to anger and anger leads to tilting and betting with crap. In short, I knew they had something but I also didn't figure it was that strong with so few people remaining in the game.

As it turned out, I won the hand - I suppose that means that, regardless of whether my math was right or wrong, my play was correct. In running the numbers afterward, my hand was a slight underdog before the flop, a bigger underdog after the flop and - oddly enough, a 95% favorite after the turn.

If you have any thoughts on it, I'd appreciate it.

Posted by puckett at June 20, 2006 08:00 AM

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