My Dumb Mistake

I often have made it a point in my columns to stress the importance of paying attention. Paying attention at a poker table is important for many reasons: ensuring that the rules are followed, spotting dealers'/players' mistakes, and observing your opponents. As the saying goes, do as I say, not as I do.



Here is how I described the situation, taken from my World Series of Poker main event trip report (http://www.rzitup.com/):

Day 4 – Level 10

Blinds: $500-$1,000; Ante: $100



On the very last hand of the night, I did something that was just plain idiotic. I was in the small blind. The dealer dealt out the cards to everyone, at which point the big blind informed us that he had only one card. I looked over and saw that the other card was close to the rail, but on the other side of his chips. The player in first position also saw the card, and helped the player in the big blind get to it. I was able to point at it, and we were ready to play. As I took my attention away from the big blind's situation, I followed the action around the table as everyone folded to me. I looked down and found the A 6. The big blind was a player who had played even fewer hands than me. With it being the last hand of the night, there was no way he was going to call any bet unless he had aces, and maybe kings.



I said, "Raise," and threw in a $5,000 chip, and the big blind mucked immediately. As soon as the chip hit the felt, the player to my right said to me, "He raised," and motioned to the player in first position. The player in first position had raised to $5,500 already, and I had completely missed it. This is something I rarely miss, but the situation with the big blind had thrown me off and I followed the action after first missing the raise.



Here's where it gets weird. As soon as I realized that he had raised, I looked at him, and my first reaction was that he did not know that I did not know that he had raised. I didn't want to draw attention to it, so I looked at the table and pondered what I should do. There were three options:



1. Call for a decision to see if I could put in the $5,500 and muck my hand without being forced to raise. The problem was that the big blind had acted on my raise, so I was pretty sure they would make me raise at least the minimum. Doing this would ensure that the player who had raised would know that I had raised without seeing his raise, and he most definitely would put me all in (he had lots of chips).



2. Move all in. Again, he had lots of chips, and had raised from first position. I didn't think there was any way that he would fold if I moved all in for $33,000.



3. Make the minimum raise.



I chose the third option. After making the raise, the other player looked at me very strangely. I have played with him before, so he knows something about me. He started to count down some chips, looked at me again, shook his head, and finally said, "Ok, I call." It was at that point that I realized that he did not know that I had raised without seeing his raise.



The flop came K K 3, I checked, and he checked. The turn was the K, I checked, and he checked. We both checked the river, the 10, and he showed the 7 7 and took the pot.



I got the absolute best result with the mistake that I made. I got to put in the minimum raise and see the river for free.

That hand ended the night, and as we were bagging our chips, he looked at me and asked, "Mike, what the hell did you have?" I laughed and explained it to him. A light bulb then went off in his head. He said he could not for the life of him figure out how I could make that stupid small raise with the amount of chips I had unless I had A-A. I had confused him so much that he couldn't do anything but call and check it down.

Michael O'Malley is the poker room manager for PartyPoker.com, and can be reached at [email protected]. His website is updated regularly at http://www.rzitup.com/.