Ignoring the Indicators

The Legends of Poker tournament recently concluded, and not without some success for me. Unfortunately, I can't go into the specifics of my success. You see, several years ago when I first started writing columns for Card Player, my wife, who does the first editing on all of my work, continually deleted any mention I made of any successes I might have had.

Debbie, my lovely wife, would make it perfectly clear to me that there would be no bragging, no self-adulation. Always be humble was her motto for me. I always tell her it's a good thing she never married anyone like Muhammad Ali or Phil Hellmuth.

Anyway, knowing how limited I am in that vein, I thought I might go in the opposite direction and talk a little about how badly I can play poker on certain occasions.

Without going into detail, due to the restriction of my "wife-editor," I was having a pretty good Legends tournament and was feeling like I was on a roll. I was looking forward to the main event, $5,000 buy-in no-limit hold'em. I have always been fond of The Bicycle Casino's $5,000 main event because if I could, I would mention that I won it in 1994.

So, with great anticipation, I entered the "big one." The structure was good and there were lots of players – 667. There was, as they say, a great overlay. Many of the players had won their way into the tournament via a satellite, and some from the Internet.

I started the tournament well. Within a couple of hours, I had built my stack from $10,000 to more than $15,000. It is a terrific advantage to start a big tournament like this by getting ahold of chips early. It is great to look around and realize that no one at the table can bust you, with the exception of maybe one other player.

So, after a great start, I went into one of those streaks in which I started slowly falling backward. I found myself back where I started, at about $10,000.

I hoped I could make a move before the break, because I knew I didn't want to come back the next day with a short stack. When we took the last break of the evening, we were left with only one more 90-minute limit before we broke for the day. About half the players were gone by then.

Halfway into the round, with about 50 minutes left, I still had not been able to make a move. I had about $9,500. I still had enough chips, but I was willing to gamble in order to make some kind of move before the end of the day.

The blinds were $150-$300 with a $50 ante, and I was in the big blind. The first player on my left raised the pot to $600. I did not know this particular player, but I did know that he had raised two or three pots from early position since he had moved to our table, and his raises had always been three or three and half times the big blind.

That's when a little bell went off in my mind; it is what I call an "indicator." I thought there was a good chance that he had a "big hand." Two other people called the $600 bet. This, I liked. It would cost me only $300 to call and I would be getting great pot odds.

As the third player entered the pot, a thought (or, more accurately, a wish) went through my mind. I prayed, "Let me see something like A-K." You remember the old saying, "Be careful what you wish for." Well, guess what I looked down and found? A-K suited.

"Indicator" No. 1 – the small raise up front – had disappeared from my mind. This was the first hand I had seen in an hour. I finally had a hand, so I raised $3,700. The player who originally opened studied for a while, looked everyone over, and then raised the pot about $10,000. The next two players did what I suspected they would do, and passed.

Now, I had "indicator" No. 2. First, a player limps in or underbets the pot up front, and then reraises for lots of chips.

I thought there was a 95 percent chance that this guy had aces or kings. But, wait a minute. I looked down at my stack; I had about $5,400 left. That in and of itself was not significant, but what was significant was that I had one $5,000 chip on the bottom of the stack with 13 or 14 $25 chips on top of it. Maybe, I thought, the player who had raised hadn't seen the $5,000 chip on the bottom. The chip colors were not that different. Maybe he just wanted to shut the other players out and deal with a player who was almost all in.

Nah, I thought. I had gotten two good indicators, so the player had to have either aces or kings. Once again, wishful thinking crept back into my mind. I wondered whether this player would make the same play with queens. If so, I would be a small underdog and would be getting great pot odds.

Nah, he had to have aces or kings. Besides, I would still have more than $5,000 left if I threw my hand away. That little voice that guides me through tournaments told me the correct play was, "Find the muck."

A few minutes later while driving home, I felt like a guy who thinks about taking a shortcut through an alley. He sees that it's a dark alley with a couple of shady-looking characters at the other end of it. He completely ignores these two "indicators" and decides to take a chance and go that way anyway. I think you know how both stories end.

For what it's worth …