Wednesday, May 04, 2005

Maximising The Pot

Sheldon: When my brothers and I played cowboys and Indians, I was always the Chinese railroad worker.
”Death To Smoochy”


EDIT IN: On a whim, I went back through this blog today and counted all the posts. What do you know, this one right here is post number 100! That's my century up on the board, my first post next week will be a celbratory post on this milestone as well as my tribute to those bloggers that have helped me on my way!

Another short post for today, just keeping me busy with my monster 40 minute sessions per night.

I have spoken a few times about a major hole in my game, and it popped up again last night. I would love some comments on this play and what you would do:

I decided to kill off a few more raked hands and even try to play some decent poker last night, so I went to the $0.50/$1 NL tables at Noble. About the third hand in I get pocket tens, and I make it $4 to see the flop from middle position. 4 callers come for the ride, which had me a little worried.

Flop is QTx, so far so good. I put out another $4 bet, and get everyone to call. This is either going to be very good or very bad from here methinks.

Turn fills me up beautifully, with yet another T. Checked to me, I check my quads and hope that somebody will bet into me. I have a big problem of getting the maximum out of a pot when I have the nuts, so I tried to let everyone have a free card here on the river and hit something – anything!

The river was another blank leaving me with the nuts and there was a straight possibility. The pot was $30 or so by now, and I was 2nd to act. I decided to go for an obvious week bet and see if anybody attempts to raise me. I bet out $3 into a $30+ pot, giving miraculous odds to anybody who is game, and maybe this was too obvious of a move. I got only 1 caller and no raisers. Of course my tens were good, and I left the table not long after this as my free time had expired (the Distraction came home).

Maybe my moves were a little transparent – raise pre-flop, on the flop and then checked the turn. Maybe I was just unlucky that nobody else hit anything. I’d like to know what you think.

While I was wasting some time, I thought I would just have a look into the $5/$10 game, where the stacks were triple my entire bankroll – I don’t mind being small time. I like watching poker in casinos and on TV, so I thought I would become a rail bird just for this online game to see how the big money players go. I saw one of the most stupid plays ever get paid off big time.

Ok, so I have seen about 4 hands of action and I have no read on anybody, so I can only call this one on face value. UTG, with a stack of $450 goes all-in straight away. This is a ring game mind you, not late in a MTT or on the bubble of a SNG. It is checked around to the big stack at $1100+ who calls the all-in. He shows Kings. Now I thought this could have been a bad move, as UTG is representing Aces, which would obviously dominate the Kings – but how had is it to fold Kings pre-flop? Can’t blame him for calling I guess. That was until UTG flipped over their cards and showed QTo. That’s one “Queen” and one “Ten”, not of the same suit.

Oh the fucking stupidity.

Talk about throwing out a crap shoot. I don’t know why anybody would do that with $450. That is about $100 more than I have invested in online poker at the moment, and he bet it all pre-flop on QTo. A bluff perhaps? Pretty fucking stupid bluff if you ask me.

Naturally, the flop comes down QQA. The turn and river are both rags. The big stack is shell shocked, as am I. Well, as was everyone who witnessed this travesty.

It goes to show, the stupid plays don’t just happen at the micro limit tables.

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