Misplay or just bad luck?

Let’s stop there for a moment, as I think about it. Paired boards are funny things in holdem. They often represent great semi-bluffing opportunities in these kinds of heads-up situations. You raise with AK or some other big card holding, and the flop is a bit of a whiff, when the board comes 833 or similar. Continuation bets with the AK-type hands should be somewhat automatic here. Your opponent is so much more likely to have missed as well. What kinds of hands do people call raises with (rather than reraising themselves)? Generally speaking, it’ll be hands where they’re worried about their kicker. They limped or made a small raise with an Ace-rag suited, got raised (or re-raised), called, and now they’ve effectively received only two cards that might improve their hand, not three. The best part is you can often take these pots down cheaply. You don’t need to make a near-pot size bet here; half-pot, maybe even a little bit less, should do the job just as well. Sometimes, you can even convince your opponent that YOU are the one with the Ace-rag, that you happened to have hit trips, and that you’re slow-playing a monster, and can even get an overpair to fold.

But I digress: This didn’t happen here–I had a legitimate hand, and had gotten called. Possible hands here for villian: a diamond draw, a Four, a Ten, some other middle to big pair (figure pocket Eights on up), or most importantly (and let’s not leave this part out) a “thought”. This was a reasonable opponent I was playing against–he knows the “continuation bet with AK on a paired board bet” play as well as I do. It was quite possible that he was calling to set up a play on the turn (which these days, they seem to refer to as a “stop and go”, or “floating”).

The turn card was a Ten, putting two pair on the board. My guy checks to me. If he’s on a float, or a worse pair than Kings, I need to value bet to protect my hand here. Checking seemed awfully wimpy. I fired, and he check-raised me! My recollection is not 100% here on stack sizes, but let’s just say that calling is not an option here; it’s either believe him and fold, or call BS and shove it in. I had to stop and think about this one, so I’ll let you do so also..I’m leaving some dead space here, so you can decide before peeking ahead:
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I couldn’t get the diamond draw, plus 88-QQ range, PLUS the trying to drive me off my possible AK out of my mind. I shoved. He called immediately. His hand: JhTh, for the full house. No King for me on the river, and I was felted.

This one was really kind of tough. It became even tougher when another player at the table said he had folded the case Ten, so this was a one-outer for my opponent, who even admitted that he was also going to fire on the turn if a third diamond had come off on the turn; I was booked for a difficult decision on this hand, almost without regard to what the actual turn card was.

The whole way people talk about “reading hands” has changed so much in the past few years. Everything used to be about trying to put your opponent on a specific hand and then acting accordingly. Nowadays, the talk is all about the “range” of hands your opponent might have. If there’s a 10% chance he has an overpair, a 30% he has a flush draw, a 50% chance he has two pair, and a 10% chance of a bluff, you’re supposed to count up your chances of winning against each of those hand types, do all the math of counting your wins against each hand type with the card(s) to come, multiply the intermediate results by those percentage chances of each hand type, and then make your decision. Staring into your opponent’s soul and getting a dead read on your opponent’s exact holding is for the Daniel Negreanu’s, the Antonio Esfandiari’s, etc.

So the real question is, I suppose, did I give enough weight to the idea that my opponent would have a hand that would include a Ten? If I did so, I could have checked the turn, and called whatever value bet he might have made on the river (don’t think I could ever consider folding). However, look at how many cards he would have fired with on the turn which would not have improved his situation: Diamonds, potentially any medium-big card (Queen or Jack), another four, perhaps even an Ace as well. That’s a pretty big range there.

I go back and forth on this one. Sometimes I get this feeling that him having a Ten is just so obvious, and I was a dunce–other times, I think my opponent is certainly good enough to put me to the test with a wide variety of hands, so I was forced to call (btw, this theme will come up again in the days ahead, so keep an eye out for it).

Interested in other opinons, for sure. I’m trying to work chronologically through my notes here, so it’s going to be a few more strategy posts before we get back to a couple of lifestyle posts here. But anybody who wants to follow the adventures in real time is welcome to subscribe to my Twitter feed, which is kind of a micro-blogging/IM-like/SMS service. You can follow it on the web for free by just going to my twitter page:

http://twitter.com/SteelWheel