The Words I Like To Hear Most
By ThePearl on 10/29 at 10:02 PM
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The words I like to hear most.
“I think I’ve got you beat, but I’m gonna fold.”
Huh? You think you’ve got me beat, but you are going to fold? Let me get this straight. You think you have the better hand. That’s what you believe. But you are going to fold. Have I got that right?
Man, I must be playing really well. The guy across from me thinks he’s got the better hand, but even that isn’t good enough to win.
So why’d he say that?
Well, he got put to the test. The amount I bet into him was more than he was “sure” that he had the better hand.
You’d think this wouldn’t happen in Limit where often it takes one more call to find out if he was right, win the pot, and get information, but it does. I’ve seen it.
Most of the time when someone says they have the better hand and folds in Limit it’s right after the flop when they made, say, bottom pair and there are one or two big draws on the board.
For instance, if the flop comes 8c 10c Jc and you made eights with a week off-suit kicker you might be ahead. But when you opponent bets into you, are you going to call a small bet and two big bets when your opponent has a ton of outs? Are you going to consider your opponent’s potential pot odds? Or are you going to say, “Well, I think I’ve got you beat, but I’m gonna fold.”
More often of course, it happens in No Limit. You made a nice size bet on the end and your opponent either doesn’t think he has you beat, isn’t considering pot odds, or doesn’t have the courage of his convictions.
That brings up an interesting point. Trust your instinct. In the beginning your instinct will be shit. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t call. You need to learn and you learn a lot more by looking your opponent up then by folding. Now, don’t go looking your opponent up all the time, but when you think you’ve got a better hand, you’ve got to call. As you play more you’ll see more and more of your calls are correct.
If you can’t trust your instinct you will never be any good. You have to trust your instinct and you have to develop it. How do you develop “instinct?” Keep playing; you’ll be able to smell a slow-play or a bluff eventually.
Finally, when a player says those magic words don’t ever show him your cards. And don’t let yourself look relieved or disappointed or happy or whatever. Why on earth would you give him that kind of information? He just told you everything you need to know. He’s weak, he won’t play back, and he likely won’t bluff at you. Just know that you can keep pounding on this guy because he’s the type of player that will lay down the best hand.
Chump And A Chair
By AceJack on 10/25 at 11:59 PM
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The decision was made to play the 11 am (insanely early for a Saturday) poker tournament at the Tropicana. With a minute to spare my crony and I plopped down our $225 and found our seats. This was the first convenient no limit texas hold’em tournament we’d found with no add ons and no buy backs; basically it was a chance to play with other suckers who were scared of one bad beat.
The tournament starts and there are two empty seats and the chairs remain that way for 2 hours. This is either a strategic move to join the game later, having lost maybe half of the chips due to the blinds and half of the players due to the nature of the game OR these guys were still hitting the snooze button following too many drinks at The Playground. I ponder this for a while.
An hour later, I’m up against a break and find myself low on chips, with the guy on the right of me all in and the guy on the left of me putting me all in. I’ve seen the flop and it’s left me with an open-ended straight draw. Having seen my friend leave a couple minutes earlier cursing something about pocket aces on his way to the craps table, I decide to risk it. The cards are flipped over and the other two just have over cards. Dealer turns over the turn card (7 of spades) and I’ve made my straight. At the break I’m still around which can’t be said for approximately half of the original 130.
Four hours or so have gone by and my table finally breaks up; hey, it’s down to two tables! Twenty people are left and the top 18 pay, so everyone is playing extremely tight at my new table. People are folding to the blinds and turning over great cards. One guy shows that he folded QKc. The guy to my left (somehow the guy next to you at every tournament thinks you’re a sounding board) is inconsolable over this. After a few minutes, this young kid at my table says “Two people are out over there, now we can really play”. A couple hands later and he was a spectator.
I’m a very conservative player, so I stand by and watch the others drop by the way side and before I know it they’re breaking out the red velvet rope and I’m on the right side of it. A massive crowd surrounds us (ok, more like 10 people) and I find myself with an AJd. The guy in the 9 seat quadruples the big blind and I’m all in. He folds away 1/3 of his chips to me and I start thinking that I can win this!
A quarter after 5 and I’m down to one chip, but I’m still in it. There are now only 4 of us. I’m forced to call either this hand or the next. I’m dealt Q6o, which is not a great hand at all but I do have a face card and no one has called to this point. The small blind calls the 40000 big blind and this puts the big blind all in as has less than 30000 chips. I had missed this fact; after 300 something minutes I’ve lost the ability to count. The big stack has pocket 6s which win out. Two of us are out at the same time.
Fourth place, I can’t believe I did it. But as I’m counting the prize money I keep thinking if I only folded that last hand….
Maybe I Should Be The Hard Ten Kid
By other1 on 10/25 at 02:27 PM
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A little background.. Picture it… Sunday early evening at the Borgata. I’d blown a $2k marker I took out Saturday and I was busy trying to win it back with an extra $2k marker. At one point I’d blown most of that and was wondering how I was gonna pay back $4k. Anyway.. About 5pm I’d made back a good portion of my money but I was looking for one more big hit before leaving.
I was at craps, where I always go when I need to win a lot of money back. I was just getting ready to leave a fairly cold table when a new shooter walked up to the table. I figured I’d see how it went. I threw down $25 on the pass line. He rolled a point of 10. Now, as my name implies, I like the hardways, especially when one of them is the point. So, I threw $75 down to back up my pass line and then put $50 on hard ten. The shooter threw down all the chips he had left on the hard ten (about $135 or so).
He rolled an eleven..
He rolled another eleven..
He kept rolling 5-4, 5-6, 6-6. I don’t know why or how, but I just had total faith that this guy needed a hard 10 and he was gonna roll it, so I took a $25 chip and threw it down on the hard ten hop. Now, if you aren’t very familiar with craps, this is a horrible bet. It’s a one time only bet on an exact roll of the dice. Anything but a hard ten and you lose it. Well, you can guess what happened next… Hard ten!
The hop bet paid $750, the regular hard ten paid $350 and my pass bet paid $175 for a total of $1275.
That my friends, is how you play craps.
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