After watching all of these pros play tournaments you would think I could learn that patience is often rewarded and that you just can't waste chips unnecessarily and expect to do well in these contests. I did not demonstrate those skills in last night's 5 PM Deepstack.
Wednesday was going to be my first day off after nine days of work, so Tuesday looked like a good day to play a tournament after work. I spent the day dealing the Duece-to-Seven Triple Draw (day 2) and was out when the swing shift showed up. Timing was such that I could get into the 5 PM late registration (level 4) where I start with 10,000 chips or wait for the 7 PM and start with 5,000 at level 1. I chose the extra 5k.
Not that I made good use of those chips. In level 6 in middle position I raised with J♠️10♠️, got called by the button with the largest stack and saw a flop of 10♦️9♣️4♥️. I made a continuation bet of about half the pot and got called. 2♦️showed up on the turn and I made another half pot bet which was called. In my mind I planned to bet the river if any card came up that was Jack or smaller and check if anything larger showed up. Irritated when the Q♣️showed up I made an impulsive decision to bluff. Bad choice. My opponent called holding K♥️J♦️ to knock me out with the absolute nuts.
Note to self: Middle pair is not a good hand to bluff with. It gets calls from hands that beat you and folds from hands you beat. No value in bluffing. The fundamental strategy of betting is to either get opponents with worse to call or get those with better to fold.
After beating myself up for not playing smarter I decided to try my hand at the cash game and see if I could win back my buy-in.
Good choice. Got lucky. Called a small raise on the $1-$3 No Limit Hold'em game with 3♠️4♠️ on the button. The raiser was an older woman at the far end of the table having an animated conversation with the player next to her. Another player in the hand asked, "You know him?"
"He speak my language."
"What language is that?"
"Hebrew."
The World Series of Poker is truly an international event.
The Flop gave me bottom pair with a 3, so I called her continuation bet. When the Turn added a flush draw for me I thought I could run a little bully bluff against her smallish lead and raised it 3x. Her response was to re-raise her short stack all in with top pair. I called for the small additional amount.
It's always good to have outs when bluffing: Flush on the River. The beauty of No Limit Hold'em. Voilà. Won back my tournament buy-in in one hand at the live action table.
My pal Barry tells me he wins more against good players because the bad players don't know when to fold. The good players are willing to seriously consider folding a top pair or an over pair when faced with a raise on the Turn. Your typical small stakes cash player has a tough time with that decision. I know. I've gone bust often enough holding something like QQ or KK.
Famous last words: "Don't go broke with just one pair!"
No comments:
Post a Comment