Some Poker Thoughts

Whenever I lose a hand (or when I see somebody else lose a hand), I like to examine the situation and try to figure out why the hand was lost.  By far the most frequent reason why somebody loses a hand (at least as it seems to me) is because they get involved pre-flop with inferior cards.  A small pair from mid position . . . two high cards from early position . . . garbage from the button . . . kicker problems compared to your later-position caller.  All these fall into the category of being just too darned loose pre-flop.  After the hand is lost, the loser feels they have been outdrawn or unlucky; but really what happened is that they went to war with inferior weapons.

That's why I will almost always fold an Ace in mid or even late position when somebody else has entered the pot.  I've written about this before; my Ace-Six in middle position is beat when there are four other folks in the pot and an Ace flops.  So why even force yourself to make those tough post-flop decisions?  Just let it go; your investment is zero; wait for a better hand.

It really surprises me how many folks think they are the next Daniel Negreanu or Freddy Deeb or Gus Hansen, and call a pre-flop raise with Eight-Six offsuit.  The pros know how to get away from a bad hand like this post-flop when they are beat.  I don't, and most of the folks I play against don't either (even though they think they do).

And don't even get me started on complete donkeys who hold onto a nice pre-flop pair such as Queens or Jacks, or even Kings, and continue to bet like crazy after an Ace flops and they're beat.  If I have Queens pre-flop on a board with an Ace, I'll fold it so fast you won't even realize what happened.  It is truly appalling how many poker players can't do that.

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I've been making plans to visit Foxwoods next month while I'm in Cambridge on business.  It's made me think about my last trip there, and how enjoyable it was.

I showed up around 10:00 am to play some $2/$5 no-limit.  There wasn't a seat open, so I put my name on the waiting list.  Soon, they had so many folks waiting for that game that they decided to open up a brand new table, so I sat down at it with eight others and played all day.

I left around midnight, which is a decent 14-hour session.  Everybody else who opened the table with me had already left, except for one guy who was still playing.  When I got up to leave, he also decided to leave, so we walked up to the cashier cage together to cash in our chips.

As we were walking up there, he said, "You know, I have been watching you play now for 14 hours, and I was never able to figure out what hand you had whenever you were in the pot.  I could just never figure it out.  Whenever you showed down, I was always wrong in my guess.  You always played differently than how I expected."

I thought that was a really nice thing for him to say.  He didn't have to say that.  (I suppose maybe he says to everybody just to butter them up.)

Table image is important, but sometimes it just doesn't matter.  I remember one time I was at a cardroom in Shoreline (the Hideaway I think it was).  It was a $4/$8 limit game.  I don't really like to play that kind of game because the rake will just kill you (I wrote about that earlier also) but I guess you could say I was out "slummin" that day and just didn't care.

The players were atrocious.  It's the kind of game where the way to win is just to be patient and wait for a good hand, and when you end up with the nuts just value-bet like crazy.  So that's what I was doing -- fold, fold, fold, fold.  The folks at the table were joking about it.

Then I get dealt pocket Aces, under the gun.  I bring it in for a raise.  A guy in middle position chuckled and said, "You had to brush the dust off those chips before you could bet, didn't you?"  He said this while he was putting in his chips for a call!  Of course, I won the hand, after betting (or re-raising) each street and letting him call.  He showed King/Jack which paired the Jack on the flop.  Astonishing.