I was a small winner after struggling in my previous several sessions, and was pretty happy about it. Often, when I have not been running well, I leave a game in order to ensure a win. This puts me in more of a psychologically positive frame of mind for my next session. Also, the game had just lost several weak players who were replaced by players with whom I was unfamiliar. When games change and you are unfamiliar with your opponents, it takes a while to acquire a feel and adjust to the changed situation. Mentally and physically, I was prepared to go home, but a little voice told me to check out the new situation, to make sure that I was not making a decision to leave a game that was going to be great. If you want winning numbers at the end of the year, you have to put yourself in winning situations as often as possible. And inasmuch as I didn't know the fellows who had joined the game, I didn't know if there was one action player who could get the whole table going and create a big positive-edge situation. You don't want to be walking away from those situations.
I turned to my friend Jade, sitting next to me, and told him that I was going to play one last lap. I'm not sure if I have won over the course of my poker career on my last laps. I have written before that "ready to go" is a state of mind that affects play, and that is as true of me as anybody else. Psychologically, we approach our last lap differently, whether we intend to or not. One reason may be that if the lap goes well, it motivates us to play one more last lap until we have a negative experience and leave. Also, when I'm mentally prepared to leave, I tend to be slightly more tentative, which affects my edge in a negative way.
I didn't pick up a playable hand until I was two positions in front of the big blind. The player in front of me limped in and I looked down to see the A
J
. I thought about whether I wanted to limp or raise, and chose to limp. I like volume with nut-suited hands, plus there was the variable of my lack of familiarity with the new players. When I am unfamiliar with my opponents or find them hard to control or read, I tend to play my marginal hands on the tighter side. I don't want to put myself in a situation of having to deal with difficult decisions in a large pot, thereby increasing my propensity to make mistakes. And my last-lap mentality also probably weighed on my mind subconsciously.
A couple of players called behind me and a player new to the game raised. When he raised, he was visibly shaking badly. As a rule, I read shaking to mean a strong holding. However, sometimes the tell is invalid if the player has physical or mental issues that cause him to shake. I knew little about this opponent. When you play in a venue such as Las Vegas, you are constantly faced with new opponents, and your ability to quickly size them up has a great impact on your results. He had played his unraised big blind and folded on the flop, folded his small blind to a raise, and also folded his button to a raise. He had a baseball cap on and looked pretty solid, so I was confident he had a big hand.
The button called the raise, as did both of the blinds and all of the limpers, including me. The flop came A
7
6
, giving me top pair, fair kicker against a board with straight draws and possible made flushes. My kicker might or might not have been the best; not only was the preflop raiser's hand an issue, but so were the hands of the players who had called the two bets. Any of them might have A-Q. It was checked to me, and I chose to bet into the preflop raiser, believing there was a chance that I had the best hand, not wanting to give an opponent who held a draw a free card, and wanting to see the reaction of the shaking-hand player to my bet.
Mr. Shaky Hand not only raised me, but he was shaking far more with this raise than his preflop raise. In addition, the three players in between Mr. Shaky Hand and me called the raise cold.
I was not sure of where I was in the hand, but intuitively I thought I was in trouble. I thought Mr. Shaky Hand had me beat. There was some possibility that he had two kings with the K♥, but because of his shakiness, I thought it unlikely that he held that hand. If he held an ace with a better kicker, I was drawing to only two outs to beat his hand, and even then, what did all of the other callers have that I also would have to beat?
There are, after all, only four aces in the deck, and one was on the board and one was in my hand. It seemed likely that someone held a flush. Not only was I likely beat, but with two cards yet to come, there were lots of cards in the deck that would leave me drawing dead. Too many people were in the pot for my hand to win. I mucked, not even wanting to take one off and risk the possibility of making a strong second-best hand. Confident of my fold, I turned to my friend Jade and told him that I laid down the A
J
. He paused in thought, thinking about my fold!
It was like the poker gods wanted to add suspense to my fold. The turn card was the J
, giving me aces over jacks had I not folded, which would have bested Mr. Shaky Hand if he held A-Q or A-K. Jade looked at me with a wry smile, and I sensed his brain churning. Surprisingly, the whole field checked around. Now I thought Mr. Shaky Hand did in fact have K-K with the K
. The likelihood of my having folded the best hand went up dramatically. I anxiously awaited the river.
The river was the 4
. The big blind tossed $60 into the pot. To my surprise, Mr. Shaky Hand now raised. I had no idea what to read either player for. The other players folded and the big blind called. Mr. Shaky Hand turned over the A
5
, aces with a 5 kicker. The big blind tossed his hand into the muck. I was flabbergasted by the hand - not only by Shaky's holding, but also that the big blind could not beat it! I had the best hand at all times and would have won the pot, which was of pretty good size.
Sometimes you do the right thing for the wrong reason. Sometimes you make the wrong decision and the results of the decision turn out right. Sometimes you make the right decision and the results turn out wrong. Sometimes things are a puzzle and you are totally confused - as I was here! Feeling like I had egg on my face, I turned to my friend Jade in anticipation of a comforting word from friend. He burst out laughing at me! Boy, that made me feel better!
Throughout my poker career, I have misread hands. It is inevitable that these things happen in the course of battle, even to the best of players. When these things happen, I try to put the emotions of the situation behind me and learn from it. In some cases, I made a mistake in judgment in the play of my hand; in others, it was just an unusual situation that presented itself and my reasoning was sound. If you never fold a winner - and there certainly are some people who never do - you're paying off way, way, way too much.
Did I make a mistake in this situation? It sure seemed like it after the hand concluded. But, my reasoning seemed sound. Possibly, I needed to lean more to the cautious side in my thinking because I was unfamiliar with the play of my opponents, and make the play that protected the rather large pot. And then there's that last-lap mentality. But, that said, how often would I win in a situation such as this? In a hundred or a thousand trials, would the fold be positive or negative? Intuitively, I still believe I made the right decision, even if it was not the right fold then. And as long as in hindsight I think I made the right decision, I don't beat myself up even if the results were not to my liking. Just catalog what you learned about the tendencies of your opponents and play the next hand!
Roy Cooke has played more than 60,000 hours of pro poker and has been part of the I-poker industry since its beginnings. His longtime collaborator, John Bond, is a freelance writer in South Florida.
