Mind Over Poker

I received an e-mail from a friend who was having a string of tough luck, and he outlined all of the coolers he had been dealt. One hand, however, caught my attention, as I thought it deserved a lot more attention than just being attributed to bad luck. Here’s a summary of the situation:

Our hero has pocket tens in the cutoff. The blinds are $100-$200 with a $25 ante. There are three limpers before the action gets to our friend. He raises to $600. Both the small blind and an early-position limper call. The three of them see the flop, which comes 9-4-3 rainbow. After two checks, our hard-luck player bets $1,200. The small blind calls, and the other opponent goes all in. He has about $1,300 on top. Our friend calls the $1,300 more, and now the small blind goes all in behind him for another $2,500. If our hero calls, he’ll have only $1,700 behind; he makes the call with his overpair. The small blind has 6-5 for the open-end straight draw, and the early-position limper has 9-4 for two pair. Our hero needs help to win the main pot, but needs only to dodge the straight to win the side pot and salvage the hand. The turn is a blank, but the river is a 7, making the small blind’s straight and allowing him to scoop both pots.

Now, I could tell from the context of my friend’s e-mail that he could not believe the poor play of his opponents. I won’t disagree with him. I’m not sure what the early-position player was doing limping with 9-4 offsuit out of position. Once in the hand, however, I don’t have any problem with his play. As for the small blind, his preflop call is questionable but not crazy. There was a lot of money in the pot by the time the action got to him, and he had to figure he had live cards. The problem, however, is that there were three players left to act behind him who could have reraised and forced him out of the hand, leaving his dead money in the pot.

The real issue that I have with the small blind’s play, however, is his all-in semibluff into a dry side pot. That’s a horrible move. A semibluff works if you can either chase your opponent out or hit your hand. Here, if he chases our friend out — which he didn’t — he doesn’t gain anything because he still has to win the hand against the other player. And if he does hit his hand, he wants to keep our friend in the pot.

Our friend doesn’t get off without criticism here, though. Just because his opponents made mistakes, it doesn’t mean that his play was without error. A common mistake that I think a lot of us make is to let the poor play of others overshadow our own mistakes. The biggest mistake our friend made was his initial bet, which could have changed the entire sequence of events. He made a bet of three times the big blind with pocket tens. That’s not a bad bet if he were opening the betting. However, with three limpers in front of him, it was a woefully inadequate bet. When it came time to measure the size of his raise, he should have been thinking in terms of the pot size, not the blinds. With 10 players at the table, there was $1,150 in the pot when the action got to our friend. A $600 bet just doesn’t cut it here. That makes the pot $1,750, and it’s only $400 more for those already in the pot to call. That’s fairly attractive odds, and a huge incentive for players to call with just about anything. I’m actually quite surprised that the other two original limpers folded preflop. If our friend had raised to $1,200 instead of $600, the hand would have played quite differently. It’s highly likely that he would have won the pot right there, and I never would have received his e-mail. Our worst beats often come from hands that we misplayed, providing the opportunity for our opponents to chase cards. Remember that the next time you are sizing up the right amount to bet or raise.

David Apostolico is the author of Compete, Play, Win: Finding Your Best Competitive Self. You can contact him at [email protected].