Are You Paying Off Too Much?

Whenever I have a bad session, I spend the next hour or two doing a postmortem in my head. What went wrong? Could I have done something different to play better and (presumably) lose less money? I go through all of the significant hands and analyze my play. Should I have raised there instead of called? Did I lose more on that hand than I had to?

I think it’s natural to go through this process, and I would bet that most players do something similar. It’s tempting to focus most on the biggest pots. After all, if that one huge pot had gone a different way, the result at the end of the session would have been much more palatable. Focusing on the big pots isn’t always best, though, because oftentimes we are doomed to failure by all of the little things we do wrong here and there.

But it’s certainly smart to review all of the big pots for any obvious mistakes. One mistake that I see players make frequently in big pots is, they pay off too much. It’s a tricky problem to solve, since just because you lost a pot, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you should have folded. To distinguish a bad call from a good call that didn’t work out, you have to think about the particulars of the hand.

Most bad calls fall into two rough categories. First, people call to try to catch a bluff when a bluff is very unlikely. Second, people call with a hand that looks good, but is almost always worse than the hands their opponents might be betting. (These categories are not rigid, and can overlap a lot.) Here’s an example of a bad call in the first category:

It’s a $2-$5 no-limit hold’em game. A loose-aggressive player opens for $20 from second position. Everyone folds to the button, a tough player, who calls. Both players have roughly $500.

The flop comes Q 6 3. The loose-aggressive player bets $40, and the button raises to $90. The loose-aggressive player calls.

The turn is the 10. The loose-aggressive player checks, and calls a $150 bet.

The river is the 4. The loose-aggressive player checks, and calls an all-in $240 bet with the Q J.

This is a bad call. The button has shown immense strength throughout the hand, raising the flop and continuing to bet on all streets. Almost no one in the button’s position would be so foolish as to bet this strongly with a hand that’s beat by Q-J. The most reasonable chance that Q-J might be good is if the button is on a stone-cold bluff. While not impossible, it’s a long shot. The flop is dry, so the button couldn’t have flopped a draw that he elected to play hard. It’s not clear exactly what the button might have, but it’s clear enough that Q-J isn’t strong enough to pay off correctly.

Here’s an example of a bad call in the second category:

Once again, it’s a $2-$5 game. A player four off the button opens for $20, two players call behind him, and the big blind calls. The flop comes A 9 7. The big blind checks, and the preflop raiser bets $60. Only the button calls.

The turn is the 3. The preflop raiser bets $100, and the button calls. Both players started the hand with about $1,000.

The river is the 10. The preflop raiser bets $100 again, and the button raises, making it $400 to go. The preflop raiser calls with the A Q.

While it can be tempting to pay off with the second-best flush, this is likely a bad call. The button has played the entire hand in a way that’s consistent with holding the K, and most players at the $2-$5 level would not make this river raise (particularly with money still behind) without the nut card.

Few players would raise the river for value with a weaker flush, so we’re counting on the button to be either crazy or bluffing to justify a call. Since there’s no evidence to support either possibility, folding is the right play.

If you were to make a big call like one of these examples and lose, you’d be right to blame your bad session on that one hand. Making big bad calls like these, even occasionally, is a very expensive habit. But it can be easy to beat yourself up after the fact about “bad” calls that weren’t in fact really bad. A call isn’t bad just because you lost the pot. It’s bad because you had little hope of winning, and you could have known that from the information available to you at the time.

Here’s an example of another big river call:

Again, it’s a $2-$5 game. A player opens from five off the button for $20. Two players call, and both blinds call. The flop comes J 10 6. The blinds check, and so does the preflop raiser. The next player bets $100. Everyone folds but the small blind, who calls. Both players have about $900 remaining.

The turn is the 4. The small blind checks, and calls $250.

The river is the A. The small blind bets $300, and his opponent thinks for a while and calls.

The small blind shows the K Q for the nuts, and his opponent complains about losing with a set of sixes.

Even though he lost, the player with the set made a good call. Yes, he should know that K-Q is a real possibility when his opponent bets the river ace. But, there are plenty of other reasonable hands that his set can beat. J-10 is an example, a flopped top two pair. Or, the small blind could have a hand like the A 6, a flopped nut-flush draw and bottom pair. The small blind also could be bluffing. Perhaps he holds a hand like the Q 9 or 9 8. His once-promising draw didn’t hit, so he decides to take one last shot at winning the pot. In this example, the player with the set knows that he could be beat, but he also holds out justifiable hope that his set is still tops.

The trick to becoming a better player is to be able to look back on your bad sessions and figure out correctly if you made a big mistake, or played fine and the breaks just didn’t go your way. You may be paying off too much. But, don’t jump to conclusions. Thinking clearly about the big pots that you lost will make you a better player.

Ed’s brand-new book, Small Stakes No-Limit Hold’em, is available for purchase at smallstakesnolimitholdem.com. He is a featured coach at stoxpoker.com, and you can also check out his online poker advice column, notedpokerauthority.com.