Wasted some run good

Last Friday Finch, his Dad and I took on Seabrook poker room as per usual. The tournament went really well in the beginning and I was absolutely in love with my table draw. I managed to chip up quite nicely before dumping several thousand chips in a hand that left me slightly tilted, not because I was in any way unlucky but because I played the hand abysmally.

This hand was played against a Seabrook dealer who was playing the tournament on his off day. He is a little on the older side and plays very conservatively, he may have played 2 or 3 hands in the 5 levels I had played with him. I had been opening an absurdly wide range of hands because of the weakness of my particular table and just running hot and picking up more than my fair share of openable holdings. I raised to 2000 at 400/800 with A10o and Glen made it 3200 total. That is not a typo, and it was not a live missclick by Glen, he is a dealer he knows that my raise was 1200 more than the big blind so the absolute minimum that he could raise would be to 3200 total. Flop came A 3 8 and Glen checks and I check back the turn brought a K (I can't remember for sure but I don't think any suits were relevant) and Glen bet 3,000 and I called. The river came a 10 and Glen again bets 3,000 and I made the crying call.

Here is the whole board and after will be street by street strategy about why I am a donk.

A38 K 10

Honestly when Glen made the Minimum 3bet I knew for a fact that his most likely hand was AA. (I didn't know for a fact he had AA but it was the overwhelming favorite in my mind because I had seen him making really big bets with hands as strong as KK and JJ before pre-flop.) I made the call because 1) I felt there would be a decent amount of boards I could get him off AA at some point (4 straight board pairs etc) 2) I felt very confident that if I made a better hand (e.g. trip 10s or a straight) I could play my hand deceptively enough to get paid a big % of effective stacks considering my image and him not knowing how narrow his actual range is though. 3) The price to take a flop in position was just too damn tempting, I mean 1200 more into a pot of almost 6000 with position with a reasonable chance of me knowing my opponents exact hand (though obviously I could not tell which 2 of the 3 remaining suits he had making my bluffing 3 and 4 flush boards less attractive) I think that this call would be mandatory if my hand was suited and is fairly questionable given it wasn't, it can not be that bad if I don't play like an asshole the rest of the way (which obviously I did)

The flop is literally the only street in this hand where I don't feel I royally messed the hand up. Either he has a set of Aces or he 1) did miss click pre-flop (very unlikely given that he is a dealer and actually said raise before putting his chips into the pot) 2) had a hand like JJ-KK which he felt he could min-raise against me specifically because how stupid wide my pre-flop raising range had been (also very unlikely, because 1) he is a live player and generally they have a one sized fits all approach to the game and tend to fuck it up royally when they do adjust to another players tendencies 2) I opened from EP making at least having an A high much more likely 3) He is a Nit and Nits are afraid to play in a raised pot against A2 unless they make it like 10X pre (and I had seen him go 6X pre with KK already that night) ) So this is a pretty clear way ahead or way behind situation where pot control is typically the prudent way to go. I am, at the time of this writing sarcastically patting myself on the back for not being a complete fucking moron on EVERY street in this hand at least I got the flop right.

The turn, ahh the turn, it has become abundantly clear that my pre-flop read was right (even if he had AK or KK he now has me drawing dead) and I some how blocked that clearly logical fact out of my mind and called effectively trying to catch a nit bluffing the one time in his life he is trying to (Glen prob has in fact bluffed but I am exagerating for dramatic effect). This call is atrocious and I suck at life for making it.

The river, ahh the river, I hit a card which is crystal clearly 100% irrelevant given my range analysis which I apparently stopped thinking about after the flop and to make it even more of a trivial fold Glen, being the nice guy that he is, made my river fold even MORE OBVIOUS by making a 1/4 pot sized bet on the river which should have been as good as him standing up, throwing a shoe in my face to make certain he has my attention and screaming " HEY ASSHOLE, I HAVE THREE FUCKING ACES AND I AM GOING TO MAKE A TINY BET SO THAT ASSHOLES PAY ME OFF WHEN THEY KNOW THAT THEY ARE BEAT, SO DON'T CALL THIS BET UNLESS OF COURSE, YOU ARE AN ASSHOLE "

If I had made the riskier (and still not that close to being a good play) play and shoved all in on the river then at least I could have said that I put him on 3 aces and was hoping that he was good enough to realize I was good enough to know pretty much exactly what he has and hope he was discipline enough to fold top set. It wouldn't have happened he would have called (probably fairly quickly) but at least I wouldn't have felt like such a Pay Off Wizard. Surprisingly in the brain of Joe feeling like a pay off wizard is much much worse than feeling like a spew-tard.

Despite being really ticked at myself for rewarding Glen's nittyness with my atrocious play in that hand I did manage to redeem myself and play fairly good for the rest of the tournament. The table broke I was on Finch's left for a while but thanks to going a bit card dead and having a stack size which limited most if not all of my aggressive options I was fairly tight until I got into a couple of spots where I thought I could profitably open shove (and I am still pretty sure they were good profitable spots) in 2 such push-botting pots I found myself all in (or nearly all in) with only 3 outs to hit, and both times I managed to skillfully hit those 3 outers before all the community cards were dealt. After the suck-outs I made a tough call with K8 on what I believe was a K24 board when the BB, who I have played a lot with in the past, check shoved all in for 30,000 total after my C-bet of what I think was 8,000. I did not think he called pre wide enough to have a open ended straight draw with a 53o since he had folded his BB to my button min raise the orbit before this. I did however think that he pot-controlls with K10-KQ hands a decent % of the time and 3bets AK pre-flop just about every time, sometimes 3betting a hand like KQ as well and I had seen him spazz shove over aggressive players in the past but I can not say for sure if he had done it to me.

As it turned out I was wrong and he had in fact defended his BB with a 35 offsuit and check shoved the draw but unfortunately I wasted my previous suck outs by letting him outdraw me once I called when he hit the 6 on the turn. After that I was short and lost my stack generically. As for my opponents play well I disagree with his pre flop defend especially since his excuse (which I didn't ask for) was that he thought I was only raising because he had folded his BB last orbit. But once he gets to the flop, against someone raising pre as wide as I am and cbetting this dry board as often as I would when I don't hit the board his check shove is the only reasonable option so kudos to him for being willing to play a big pot with 5 high. (as I am writing that last part it seems like it may have sounded sarcastic but it was not, sometimes it is profitable to play a big pot with 5 high and way too many players shy away from it because it scares them or because they heard Phil Helmuth go on a rant about tournament life on TV)

I spent Saturday-Wendseday on the Cape with some good friends and some new friends drinking, touristing, beaching, skinny dipping, and building a fort (yes that list is in reverse order of coolness). The trip was awesome and I had a lot of fun and I am very grateful I was a part of it and that the people that I had not met before the trip were really cool.