Online Blunders - Part II

In the first part of this two-part series (available at www.CardPlayer.com), I analyzed a few common mistakes that I have made while playing online. My relatively little online experience led me to make some of these minor errors on a bit too frequent basis for my taste. While my online results have been excellent, they would have been even better had I not made these mistakes.

Having said that, the simple fact that I got more experienced meant that I would make these minor mistakes less and less frequently. That is the good news. The bad news is that I occasionally started making major blunders that I had never made before during all of my years of playing. In this column, I will describe one of these blunders, and the reasons that led me to making it.

Great games present excellent prospects
As I usually do, I was playing three or four tables simultaneously in my favorite game, pot-limit Omaha. The blinds were $10-$20 with a minimum buy-in of $400 and a maximum buy-in of $2,000. As always, when there are a few good but overly aggressive players in the game, I buy in for the minimum, hoping to take advantage of their overaggression by check-raising or limp-reraising early in the hand, without running the danger of getting outplayed on the later streets. (More on this specific strategy and two other specific strategies that I use to negate opponents' skills and take advantage of their weaknesses can be found in my upcoming book, Pot-Limit Omaha My Way.) However, on one of the tables there were two fairly weak and predictable players with $2,000-plus stacks, so I decided to buy in for the maximum on that table, and took an open seat two places to their left. As I usually do in this situation, I moved this table to the bottom right corner of my screen, while keeping the short-stack tables on the top left part of the screen - so that I wouldn't get confused regarding the different strategies that I use in both games. (In the deep-money situation, with position on the other big stacks, my goal would be to isolate in order to pave the way for successful bluffs and semibluffs. In the shallow-money situation, my goal would be to take advantage of my opponents' overaggression by slow-playing them, and by moving in early with my good hands and big draws.)

Fast changes and lack of attention lead to disaster
So, I am playing four tables: three as a short stack on the top left side on my screen, and one as a big stack on the bottom right side. Then, the following happens. On one of the short-stack tables, I am lucky to find aces single-suited. I am able to trap one of the skilled but overaggressive players to my left, and in a three-way pot, all of the money goes in before the flop. My aces hold up, and now I have $1,100. The good player to my left immediately leaves and is replaced by a weak-tight minimum buy-in player. So, when the button gets to me, I decide to change my strategy now that my check-raise station has gone. I complete my buy-in to $2,000 with the goal of breaking the one weak player who has more than $2,000 and against whom I have position. So far, so good.

But then I do something stupid. Because I get a decent hand at one of the other tables, I forget to move this table to the bottom right side of the screen, where I have my first deep-money table. At the same time, I get a rather weak-looking K 10 9 6 on the button with my $2,000 stack. It's not a hand I would play in a short-stack situation, but now I have position with fairly deep money against a weak player who has already defined his hand. He has made it $70 to go, and knowing his style of play, this can mean only one hand: aces. Because the money is deep, and holding four fairly live cards against his most probable hand and having position on him, my weak-looking hand has now turned into a clear call; this, despite the fact that there is one caller in the middle who could be playing the same type of holding that I am.

The flop comes 9 8 4 and, as expected, the preflop raiser comes out betting the pot, $240. The preflop caller calls again, and it is up to me. I read the caller in the middle for a weak drawing hand, something like 10-7-X-X, simply because he would raise with a good holding, but has trouble releasing marginal hands. So, when the action gets to me, my action is clear. I have a pair plus kickers, an open-end straight draw, and a king-high flush draw. Unless the bettor has aces plus the nut-flush draw, I am probably a massive favorite, and even if he has that exact hand, I am still not that much of a dog. So, this being an ideal situation to try to semibluff-raise the bettor off his unimproved aces, I raise the pot to $1,200. Making him fold the current best hand is even more likely because I am seen by many as an extremely tight player.

However, things don't go as planned. After some deliberation, the flop bettor decides to reraise all in. I know that my flush draw is probably no good now, and it is quite likely that I'm up against aces plus the nut-flush draw, or even something like A-A-9-9. Still, whatever my opponent has, I have a clear call, in as much as I am in this deep already. But first, I have to wait for the first caller, who is now taking a long time contemplating.

Major blunder in the making
Having gotten good hands on two other tables, as well, I forget to make the correct auto-call immediately, and focus on those two other hands. They are both in short-stack situations, and on one of the tables I make the mistake of overplaying kings against obvious aces. On the other table, I have a tough decision to make, as well. Irritated by my mistake, and hindered by the fact that there is action on so many tables simultaneously, I see the K-10-9-6 on the top left side of my screen and click "fold." Before I can correct my mistake, my cards have already gone into the muck. Needing to call just $800 more in a $4,480 total pot, I have made the absolute beginner's mistake of clicking the wrong button! Lack of attention, not being fast enough in making the obvious decision, and simply getting confused because of too much going on at the same time were all factors that led me to make a mistake in a situation where I easily could have gotten 35 percent to 65 percent equity in a massive pot. It was a horrible mistake if there ever was one.

Some final words
If there's a lesson here, it is this: First of all, make sure you that don't get confused because you are playing more tables than you can handle. It's better playing three tables easily than playing five when you sometimes lack the time to make the proper decisions. Finally, always make sure that you get your priorities straight. If you are faced with more decisions than you can handle, make sure that if you do make a mistake, it is in a small game or in a situation in which not that much money is involved. Otherwise, you may turn out to be just as stupid as I was: focusing on saving 10 or 20 bucks, while simply giving away a few grand. And as someone who is pretty good at mathematics, I can tell you that this is not the proper way to maximize your expectation.

Rolf Slotboom is a longtime professional, specializing in limit hold'em, pot-limit Omaha, and, more recently, no-limit hold'em ring games. He is the co-author of Hold'em on the Come, the author of the upcoming book Pot-Limit Omaha My Way, the commentator for the Eurosport EPT broadcasts, and the Card Player Europe bureau chief. He is the semiofficial 2005 Dutch champion, and maintains his own site at www.rolfslotboom.com.