Worst. Call. Ever.

Will Grimm: You killed my friends!
Delatombe: I only wish you had more!

”The Brothers Grimm”

I don’t know why I did it, but I made the most stupidest call last night in the 180 person SNG at Poker stars. We talk all the time about considering all the possibilities, how your opponent is playing this hand and what that means they are holding. I made an absolute perfect read…about 2 seconds after the fact.

We were down to nearly half way, and I had a stack of about $3000 from the starting position of $1500. My opponent sitting directly to my right had me covered by about $200 or so.

I am getting no cards what so ever, but I am not loosing many chips just by folding all the time. I finally win a hand at the flop with a continuation bet and then get dealt AKd UTG. I raise it up some, and get two callers. The flop comes AJ6 with one diamond. I think I’ve done ok, and when the BB player makes a $400 bet I double it to $800 instantly. He thinks about it for a while, then call. The turn puts 2 hearts out there, and this time he checks. I put out a raise for half of what I have left, hoping he just had an ace and will fold, but he calls time and thinks some more. He uses up about every damn second he has and then types “hmmm” in the chat window. He eventually raises me all-in, and I called because I am an idiot. Maybe I could have put him on AK also, but really I don’t think a single thought went through my head when I made that call. Immediately afterwards, I had the best solution to my play.

He’s called a bit of a raise when the blinds are climbing, so protecting isn’t really a part of the arsenal here – at least not protecting with a call anyway. So he has something decent and wants to see a flop. AJ6 rainbow isn’t a great flop, but it has some interesting cards out there. I made another bet at the pot, and he thinks about it for ages. Why would he think about it for that damn long? Because he has a hand that he doesn’t want to get rid of. What could it be? I don’t think he would think this hard with a gut-shot straight or back door flush. If he had AK, he probably would have at least called straight away or put me to the test.

But before I got a chance to see his cards, and I had already called, I knew exactly what he had. He was worried that I had the rockets, because he hit his set of jacks on the flop. The “hmmm” should have been a giveaway also that TPTK wasn’t going to be enough. He did have pocket jacks, and I was drawing dead and out in 99th.

This concludes what was about my tenth down session in a row. No great big losses, no “down swing” or anything, just one poorly played hand an hour which is enough to sink you.