Evaluating Your Play — Part II

This is the second column in my series on evaluating your play. In the first column, I emphasized that this is both an important part of improving and difficult to do. It is an important part of improving, because it enables you to spot errors and correct them in the future. It also may highlight some things you do well, and give you more confidence in that aspect of your game. It is extremely difficult to evaluate your game in an unbiased fashion. We all tend to attribute our good results to good play and poor results to bad luck. There are several other problems that crop up. For example, it is easy to spot errors of commission. These are errors where you took an action that proved to be wrong. You called an opponent thinking they were bluffing, but they had a big hand, and you should have been able to figure it out. It is much harder to spot errors of omission. For example, your opponent bets the river and you fold. He then shows you a bluff that you failed to catch. If he hadn’t showed his hand, you would never have known you made a mistake. It is sometimes much easier to evaluate a play when you don’t know the result. Here is a hand I played recently. I will describe my plays. Try to evaluate them. Then I will describe my reasoning. See if your evaluation changes. Lastly, I will describe the result.

I had just taken a seat in a $5-$10 no-limit game at Bellagio. I came in behind the blinds, posting $10. There was a middle position limper. I had A 7 and raised to $35. The big blind and the limper both called. The flop was 3 3 4. They both checked. I bet $70 into the $110 pot (all of us had stacks of over $1000). The big blind called the limper folded. The turn was the 6. He checked and I checked. The river was the 9, and he checked. I then also checked. I made four plays on this hand 1) preflop raise, 2) flop continuation bet, 3) turn check and 4) river check. To make it simple, score each play from 0 (horrendous) to 9 (great or at least automatic).

My thinking on the hand was as follows:

Preflop — As a new player I am the button. No one showed strength. I already have my posted $10 in the pot. A raise might allow me to steal it now or on the flop. It might also shut out the blinds.

Flop — Probably an OK flop for me. No one is likely to have a trey. Since I could easily have a pair, they’ll probably fold most hands that don’t hit the board in some fashion. This seems like an automatic continuation bet. $70 should be enough to steal it. Also, if either opponent raises, I haven’t thrown away too much with this size bet.

Turn — My hand just got a lot better. I now have a nut-flush draw and a gutshot. An ace might also win for me. This looks like a classical semi-bluff. The only problem is that the big blind called on the flop. He might have a 3 (or even 4-4 or 6-6 for a boat) or some other medium pair he isn’t about to give up, like 9-9. Now that I have a lot of outs, I think I’ll just check and take my free card.

River — I missed everything, but he is still checking. He might bluff with nothing, so he must have some kind of hand with showdown value, 9-9? He might also have a monster and being ready to check-raise. If he has nothing, my ace-high might win the showdown. My check on the turn showed weakness, so he’ll have no problem calling with a relatively weak hand.

Now that you know what I was thinking, have your evaluations changed? Were my thoughts logical?

I know you’ve been waiting in suspense to find out what he had. He had A-Q offsuit, and his kicker was good enough to win him the pot. My evaluation of my play: Preflop was fairly automatic, therefore 8 or 9. Continuation bet was also automatic, therefore 8 or 9. Both these plays are consistent with a wide variety of hands, so neither really defines my hand to my opponents. I think I was beguiled by all my extra outs on the turn. Without them, I might well have fired a second bullet as a bluff. My check was rational, but a little weak. I’d score this a 4. The river gave me another bluffing opportunity, although the fact that I had shown weakness makes it harder to get away with this one and I thought I had some showdown value. I’d rate this play in the 6 or 7 range.

Looking back on this hand, I was a little surprised by the big blind’s float on the flop, out of position and trapped between me betting and the other player who could have had a wide range. I think this was an error, especially since he never tried to take to pot away from me. If I had even a lowly pair of deuces or A-K, he had conceded the pot to me. Perhaps if I had been at the table longer and knew my opponents better or if I had a table image to work with, I would have done better. ♠

Steve “Zee” Zolotow, aka The Bald Eagle, is a successful games player. He currently devotes most of his time to poker. When escaping from poker, he hangs out in his bars on Avenue A — Nice Guy Eddie’s at Houston and Doc Holliday’s at 9th Street — in New York City.