Cash Catastrophes, Vol. 3: Folding Aces Leads to Paranoia
Carlos Welch presents another installment of his ��Cash Catastrophes�� series in which he examines mistakes made in cash games, thereby providing opportunities to learn how to avoid them going forward.
The Hand
It��s my regular $1/$2 no-limit hold��em game. The effective stacks are about $300.
A player limps in, then the action comes to me in the cutoff where I��ve been dealt Q?J?. I make it $10. Only the player in the big blind (BB) calls. There��s $23 in the pot. As I await the flop, I consider my opponent and the situation.
BB is an older gentleman with whom I��ve played before (I think). I remember that he is kind of loose. In the previous orbit, I bet-folded A?A? on a K?10?9?8? board when he check-raised me on the turn.
The flop comes Q?5?2?.
He checks, and I bet $15. He calls. The pot is now $53.
Nothing unusual so far. He could have a pair of fives up to a pair of queens or possibly an open-ended straight draw.
The turn is the 5?.
He checks and I decide to check it back. The pot is still $53.
My hand is good, but it may not be good enough to get three streets of value from worse. If I am only going to get two streets, then maybe a check on the turn will induce him to bluff the river or view my river bet as a bluff and call wider. The open-ended straight draw is the only one I am concerned about and it is devalued due to the board pairing.
The river is the K?.
He checks.
I don��t think this card beats me given that he didn��t bet it, but I think it could prevent him from calling with something like 7x7x or Qx8x. Hmm... I could check back.
OR...
If he knows that I know that this is a good card to bluff, maybe I could flick out a big bet that looks like a bluff trying to represent the Kx. Yeah, that��s it. My plan is so sick!
I bet $45. He thinks for a while and makes it $145.
Ooh... now I��m the one who is sick.
What the heck does he check to me twice with that is strong enough to raise now? Wouldn��t he be worried I��d just check it back again? He��s an old dude in a $1/$2 game. He��s probably not inducing twice with a strong hand from out of position. I think he is trying to re-bluff me since it looks like I am bluffing, especially since he already got me to lay down aces on the previous orbit.
Nice try sir, but not this time. I��m on to you now my friend. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I��m not an idiot... I just look like this.
I call. He shows 5?4?.
I��m an idiot. Shame on me. Nice hand.
The Problem
Where do I even start? I think I must have leveled and re-leveled myself three times in this hand.
I had no evidence that this guy was a good player, so I should not have been trying to think about what he thought I thought about my hand. I believed that he was weak on the river, so I should have just made a small bet hoping that he would make a crying call.
Once he check-raised, I leveled myself again. If this guy thought my river bet was a bluff, he likely would have just called with the vast majority of his range that had showdown value. He would not re-bluff me with air. He certainly would not decide to turn a hand with weak showdown value into a bluff. Seriously, it��s $1/$2. His river check-raise is almost never a bluff, and neither was his turn check-raise in the previous orbit that caused me to make that read.
Just because this guy check-raised me when I had aces, that does not mean he bluffed me. In that one, I was facing one of the worst possible boards for my hand. I��m supposed to lose there with one pair more often than not. In fact, had I been bet-folding a bluff there, the thought that maybe his check-raise was a re-bluff wouldn��t have even crossed my mind.
Folding aces leads to paranoia. You wait all night for that hand and expect to win a stack when you are finally lucky enough to get it. When things don��t go as planned, you feel like somebody stole something from you. In all likelihood, they just had your one pair crushed.
Self-entitled much? Don��t be that guy.
The Lesson
Do not overanalyze rare events in small stakes live games. For the most part, an unknown opponent��s actions mean exactly what they seem to mean, especially when the action is as unusual as a river check-raise.
If I think that a guy may not be playing in a straightforward manner, I need to be on a constant search for evidence of this. However, I should not make drastic adjustments in my own play until I have seen plenty of proof that I should.
Photo: ��Pocket Aces,�� Matt Galisa. Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 Generic.
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