Some players wait until it is their turn to act to look at their cards, some players look at them right away, and some look somewhere in between. I tend to look immediately. I find that I can picture how the hand is going to play out better if I am watching everyone else while at the same time already knowing what I am going to do. I don't think I can process information quick enough to wait until it is my turn to look at my cards.
I played a hand during the
World Series of Poker in which looking at my hand immediately caused me to change my mind several times before the action got to me. During one of the $1,500 no-limit hold'em events, I looked down at the A
K
in the big blind. There were about 140 players remaining out of more than 2,600. I had approximately $50,000 in chips, with the blinds at $1,000-$2,000 and a $300 ante. A fast, aggressive player named Primo, with a large stack, raised from early position to $8,000. Everyone at the table was playing pretty tight, and the odds were that everyone would fold around to me. I decided that if that happened, I would raise all in. The worst-case scenario was that he would call with a pair and it would be a coin flip. The best-case scenario was that Primo had a hand that I had dominated. The ideal situation was that he would fold and I would pick up the $14,000 in the pot.
The next player to act did not throw his hand away immediately. He began to debate his move, and I realized right away that he was going to either call or raise. I had played with this player (Ronnie) before; he is a solid player and was not going to put himself in a precarious position against another big stack. I decided that if he reraised, I would fold. I was looking for fold equity with my big slick, and if he reraised, he was definitely going to call if I moved all in. On the other hand, if he decided to just call, I would have another decision to make. With one player already having put $8,000 in, combined with the antes and blinds, his call would be making the pot an attractive call for either player. Eventually, he called, and I immediately put him on a middle pair (nines through jacks). As the other players folded around to the small blind, I decided to go with my original decision and move all in. I was very confident that Primo was going to fold, and having played with me before, I thought Ronnie would fold a middle pair, so I was getting huge fold equity on an all-in bet.
The small blind was a tight player whom I had been playing next to for several hours. She didn't put her chips in unless she had a real hand, and didn't get overly creative at all. Previously, she had mucked her hand pretty quickly when she wasn't calling, so when she started counting her chips and debating her move, I wasn't too happy. I had thought I was in the perfect situation, and that was all going to change if she called or reraised.
If she called, she would be putting about 20 percent of her chips into the pot, and there was no way that she was going to fold to my raise. And the other two players knew that, so they could call my all-in bet while knowing they would be getting a good price on their call. Of course, they both would have to deal with each other, as well, which helped my situation. I decided that if she called, I would just call and hope to flop an ace or a king. If she reraised, I was going to fold. Eventually, she folded, which is what I wanted, and I moved all in.
Primo folded immediately, which I expected him to do, and the decision was now on Ronnie. He started to run everything through his mind, and took his time deciding what to do. At that point, I still thought my read was accurate, that he had a middle pair, but the more he thought, the more I questioned my read. He had to put me on a big hand, and a middle pair was a huge dog to a larger pair. I thought he would fold a pair quicker, but he had by now taken three or four minutes. At one point, Ronnie said to me, "Do you really have aces?" That was the first time that I was nervous. Did he have kings? Or, maybe he had A-K, as well. I thought about the betting and wondered why he wouldn't reraise with A-K, and realized that he would have been reraising the other big stack.
Eventually, someone else at the table called the clock on Ronnie, and he finally folded his hand. I asked him if he had jacks, and he told me later that he had A-K. I started out looking down at A-K and making a decision to move all in, and in the course of the other players acting, I changed my mind several times. In the end, I made the same decision I started with, picked up a nice-size pot, and got the best possible outcome.
Mike O'Malley is a consultant for www.PartyGaming.com, and can be reached at [email protected]. His website is updated regularly at www.rzitup.com.
