When to Hold'em - and When to Fold'em

In the middle of a Texas hold'em game recently, I died and went to heaven. Not only did I pick up pocket aces in a hand that by fourth street featured a board of A-K-9-4, but things were about to get considerably better. After early multiway action, it was now a heads-up affair, but don't cry for me, Argentina – on the turn, my opponent and I collectively jammed the pot with a bet and 12 raises. The river brought a third suited card, the delightful case ace, which put only the slightest damper on the action, as in the final round of betting we managed another bet and 10 raises.



Turning over my cards, I silently thanked the poker gods that I wasn't in my opponent's shoes, holding kings full against four aces. The funny thing was, my opponent didn't have kings full. He had pocket sixes.



So much for the preamble; here's the punch line. On the very next hand, in another one-on-one matchup (this time I was a spectator), our young Mr. Pocket Sixes raised preflop, led out on both the flop and the turn, then applied the brakes when the river put a five-line straight (3-4-5-6-7) on board. When his opponent responded to this check by throwing out a what-the-heck-I'll-make-a-play-at-the-pot bet, the same player who one hand earlier had put in umpteen reraises with a micro pair while staring at a flush board of nothing but overcards now paused, looked thoughtful, and declining the option of calling a single bet with a play-the-board straight, soberly flicked his cards into the muck.



I'd never witnessed a passive/aggressive display quite like it. This was not someone who had simply misread the board (his own comment upon folding made that clear), nor did he appear inebriated or on tilt; if anything, he gave off the impression of an earnest young man determined to play well. So, it was with considerable interest that I listened, for the remaining half-hour that it took him to go broke, to the running conversation he held with his neighbor. Apart from confessing to be a poker show junkie, however, few clues were forthcoming. Intrigued by the thought process that had led to his decisions, I could only surmise that after watching and hearing so much about things like "sticking to your initial read" and "not backing down," along with "trying to move a player off a hand" and "making big laydowns," this hapless young Jekyll and Hyde had tossed these ideas into a mental blender, hit the shred button, and proceeded to the nearest cardroom to misapply every single one. Then again, who knows? Perhaps he was just a young millionaire with a guilt complex about his money.



Far easier to solve was the case of the poker sage at the same table who'd been holding court for more than an hour, dispensing tidbits of poker wisdom to a lineup comprised mostly of neophytes eager for any bit of information thrown their way. After a hand in which one such novice had his pocket aces cracked, the table sage quoted a statistic quite new to me. "Pocket aces," he gravely intoned, "win 86 percent of the time." Not 85 percent, mind you, but 86 percent; clearly, this was a man of precision who knew whereof he spoke, and his audience could not have been more rapt with attention, duly impressed by the breadth of his statistical analysis. "Unfortunately," he continued, "there's always that 14 percent, but hang in there, young fellow, it's important to keep playing well." A moment of silence ensued, so that the table might process this information, pay respect to the vanquished pocket rockets, and resolve to persevere in the face of adversity.



All facetiousness aside, here was a puzzle I could figure out. A nearby TV screen had been showing a poker tournament, and I'd noticed the sage watching the show between hands. At one point I'd glanced at it myself and noticed a matchup between pocket tens and pocket aces. Although I then picked up a hand and failed to see the outcome of the TV matchup, I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that the flop and turn were such as to make the aces an 86 percent favorite at that point, and that when the visual graphic came up on the screen stating as much, our poker sage interpreted it to mean that pocket aces were an 86 percent favorite period, as a rule of thumb. Talk about a little bit of knowledge being dangerous – can you imagine the heartbreak in store for this poor guy, to say nothing of his "students"?



Moral of the story: Don't believe everything you hear. Moral No. 2: If you're going to watch TV poker, do it with the sound on, or prepare for a life of disappointment.



Another humorous manifestation of the effects of TV poker would soon follow at our table, as on several occasions inexperienced players who went all in made dramatic productions of rising from their chairs to watch their fortunes play out, as if the hand's outcome somehow meant their forced elimination; this, despite the fact that at the conclusion of such hands they lost, they simply reached into their pockets for more money, called for chips, and sat back down.



Unfortunately, a less humorous all-in scenario would later occur, an indiscretion I see occurring with more and more frequency. Although the guilty party is often an inexperienced player whose gaffe owes largely to ignorance, the breach is far too often committed by experienced players who know better. A hand arose in which a player who raised preflop raised again after an apparently favorable flop, then went all in with a bet on the turn with three players to act behind him. When the first of these remaining players called, the all-in player disgustedly folded and walked out of the poker room, thereby compromising the action, as the players yet to act were now privy to information not available to the initial caller at the time of his decision. To make matters worse, it was information that clearly had the potential to change the equation entirely, since a decision to fold based on the insufficient odds offered by the side pot – which a remaining player could easily have concluded was his only likely reward – might very well turn into a call based on the main pot suddenly being brought back into play.



Although on the surface this may seem like an illustration of the oft-debated question as to whether or not players have the responsibility to protect each other's hands, the issue here is, in fact, much more fundamental. That debate – the "protection question" – centers on whether folding in turn, but in the absence of a bet, is appropriate or ethical. But even those who believe they have the right to fold in the absence of a bet don't contend that they have the right to do so out of turn. Whatever one's action is, it must come in order. That's not merely a matter of etiquette or courtesy, but an essential rule that must be observed in a positional game.



It's important to remember that when you're all in on a hand, your turn to act is at the showdown, and last. To fold before that, out of turn – and what is walking out the door, if not a fold? – is to compromise the action. Although acting in turn on the last hand of a losing session may require a few frustrating seconds of your time, it's essential to maintaining the integrity of both the hand being contested and the game in general.