What’s your most memorable hand?
For most players, there’s a turnaround hand that launches him or her down the path of poker for life. It’s something like an epiphany where a sudden clarity of purpose, a meaning to it all, a reason for waking up, breathing and buckling your belt, lands on top of your head like a milky gob of the Pope’s cum. It often converges with the moment you learn how to riffle chips.
Anyway, I’ve been blessed/cursed with an uncanny knack for hand recall. Blessed because I don’t need to log everyone’s play at the table. Cursed because it often makes me overthink and overplay hands. But while there are dozens — if not, hundreds — of hands I can remember playing (and corresponding boards and opponents’ hole cards), there’s one hand in particular that strikes me as the one that showed I had some ability for the game — particularly, the live game.
It was within the first 4-5 months that I had learned to play seriously. I was playing 2/5 NL at the Palms in Vegas. I had patiently worked my buy-in of $200 to around $1100. A very tight player (read: a pro) was sitting to my left, under the gun. He comes in for a raise at $20. A very loose, passive tourist who was the chip leader at $1300 called. His call in turn induced another 3-4 callers (the guy was sucking out on everyone and had a huge target on his forehead). I’m in the big blind, look down at my cards and see Q-10 of hearts.
I call and the flop comes out. Ace heart, 7 heart, 2 heart. I flop the second nut.
I ignore my stiff dick and knock the table check. Pre-flop raiser bets $75 at a $125 pot. Chip leader calls. Fold. Fold. Fold. Action comes around to me, and I bump it up to $200. Pre-flop raiser hems and haws, and frustratedly mucks his hand. He mutters, “Nice raise.”
For some reason, I’m completely honest and say, “I have to protect my hand.”
He responds, “Well, you just did.”
I immediately put him on AK, with the King of hearts. The chip leader calls. Everything in my soul is telling me that I now have the stone-cold nuts, and that I should trap the chip leader.
Turn comes 6 of clubs. I check. Chip leader checks.
River comes another heart. There are four hearts out there. The sole king of hearts crushes me. The chip leader has me covered. I push all-in.
Chip leader is staring at me. His hesitation tells me that he followed me in with the non-nut draw. Someone asks for time. He’s sitting there, sweating, with a half-smile on his face like, jeez, well I’m in Vegas and I’m here to gamble. I hate my fat wife and ugly kids. Fuck it, he thinks. “Call.” He flips over Jack of hearts. 7 spade. He’s looking at me expectedly.
I flip over Q-10 hearts. Scoop up the $2200+ pot.
The table is stunned. There’s first the collective WTF from the donkey call. But once that settles in, the table is thinking, How could he push with the non-nut? How did he know he’d get called with the third nut?
I still can’t answer all these questions. I just had a feeling. The pro next to me shakes his head, less for laying down the nut and more in acknowledgment that I had made a sick read and an even sicker play.
Anyone can play the nut, but to know deep down inside your turd tunnel, you have someone beat and to force them to make a mistake… That’s the element of intuition, strategy and gamesmanship that makes me love this unholy game.
Loading ...
Add New Comment
Viewing 8 Comments
Thanks. Your comment is awaiting approval by a moderator.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
I don't remember any one particular hand that opened up the game for me. That last trip to Vegas was a serious epiphany of religious magnitude. For the first time, the game was crystal clear to me and I could easily divorce the random elements from the elements that I could exert influence over to sway the game my way.
Got a long ways to go yet, but, I honestly feel for the first time in the six years I've been playing that my game is hard to approach by others.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
I suppose part of it is that I've tried to treat each hand like its own little battle in the greater war so I try to push them out of my head. That's not to say I'm not trying to profile my opponents at the time.
I suppose if I had to find a memorable moment, it was the first summer that I regularly played poker: the summer between high school and college where I chose not to work and earned a little spending money playing five-card draw and mooching off my friends at late-night Denny's sessions. Add to that a good dose of insomnia and watching old WSOP coverage on ESPN probably around 1999 and I was itching to find a game again. It only took me 8 years to find it.
Once I found my way to JG's house, I got the bug bad and got some scratch together, bought some books and chips and felt, and started a micro-stakes home game. Add a couple of trips to AC to the mix and I'm proud to be the degenerate I am today.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
I once lost a $700 pot at Galaxy (club in NY -- are they still open?), playing NL1-2, because the other dude was drawing to a flush, when I already had trips on the turn. Your opponent's idiocy, or sheer perversity and lack of respect for money, is something you always have to take into account. Rationality goes out the window -- and you have to factor this in.
The other thing that we forget is -- while we're busy reading our opponent, she's busy reading us. We make a play, and get called, and get called out, and we fume: how the fuck could you make that call? They made that call because they had a read on us. And this is a mindfuck -- poker is a moving target, and the target shoots back.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
This past Friday at the Borgata, playing 1-2, sat with 100, had run up to 270 only losing one showdown and cultivating a very tight, very solid table image against some loose-aggressive players 3-5 to my left. Been playing well and winning without having any strong pockets, but never getting caught having to show a bad play.
Having folded more than a full round in succession, i look at 7s8s in the button with 2 limpers. I bump to 10, my standard open raise thus far. BB calls, limper in MP calls. Flop comes Q 5 6 all spades. I've flopped a flush with a draw to the stone-cold nuts. BB bets out 20 into 30+ pot, MP raises to 100, I move in for 160 more, sure I have the best hand but wanting anyone with a naked high spade to have to pay for it. I put the BB on top pair, MP raiser on a pair with K or A spades.
Right now, would you have played this any differently? Only other option i see is smooth calling the 100, but with a player behind who could re raise (though his stack was smaller than mine), and be ready to fold if a 4th spade comes. This play is against all of my instincts, however, especially in a cash game, but I also had a time limit and did not have much time to buy back in and build back up before I had to leave the tables for at least 4 hours.
So, yeah, without knowing the outcome, how would you have played this? BB was loose but unpredictable, I had a good read on him most of the time, though. MP limper/raiser was decently solid, but had a backwards hat w/ sunglasses on top and a poker-themed shirt, and gave me an impression of thinking he was better than he was but could hide it with confident-seeming aggression.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
It's a fucked situation, MP is going to call you any which way you
go. If you push, he calls, if you smooth call, he gets his flush.
The math says to push, you are ~75% to win (4% chance to hit that
straight flush) but, on the other hand, it's possible that this guy
has a J or T high flush and is protecting it against the K. But if
all he has is a flush draw he can't call if you've made it 270 to
roll, but in 1/2 anything is possible. So, yeah, you have to raise
here. It's really the only thing to do.
You could fold, you're only in for $10 at this point, but the $100 bet
from MP is fishy. I'm trying to think what would prompt me to overbet
the pot like that in MP with a flush draw on board. By raising here,
I'm giving two people the opportunity to reraise me. I'm guessing
that $100 was 25% of his stack? For me to make that bet in MP I'd have
to have second nuts or better or top pair/overpair with a high spade
for the flush draw. Or trips. I'm not going to raise 55 or 66, but
I'll call $10 to see a flop. I hit a set and I'm going to bet to
protect it. But in this case, I'd make a safety bet to see where they
are at, so I'm not going to put 25% of my stack out there, maybe a pot
sized bet, ~$60. I've reraised the initial bettor, which signals some
strength, but with two to act, I need a clearer picture of where I'm at.
But, if I'm in MP and I do have second nuts, I'm going to smooth call
the original bettor, or min raise him to generate some action. So I'm
going to have to say the chances of him having trips are pretty small,
having second nuts or better is about the same. So the only likely
hand this guy has is top pair with a high spade, maybe JJ or 10-10,
but he would have raised from MP pre-flop unless he was trying to
replay a WSOP episode, which might be likely considering his poker t-
shirt.
So yeah, I'd push.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Suffice to say, I did not hit my straight flush on the river. But the river was the 10s, so I would have been fucked even if my reads were more correct.
I hate 1-2.