Turning a Laydown Into a Confidence-Builder

I was catching terrible cards and playing them badly, and was stuck a grand in the $30-$60 limit hold’em game.

I’m a perfectionist, and when I’m donking off chips, I know I’ve likely made some mental errors that in hindsight caused me to leave money on the table. Oftentimes, the decisions were close and the expectation lost was negligible. Nonetheless, the money leaving my stack was real.

When I feel I’ve made a mental error, I run the situation through my mind several times and make sure that it was not a perspective problem. Just because a play didn’t work, it doesn’t mean that it was an error. But sometimes such situations can leave you looking and feeling pretty stupid. It’s an error only if the thinking was unclear in retrospect. Of course, when the mental errors happen to win you the pot, they give the impression of being much less severe.

Holding 7-7, I opened the pot with a raise from middle position. An aggressive player immediately to my left, who generally reads me for stealing any chance that I get, three-bet me, and was four-bet by a tight, passive woman in the cutoff position. Both the button and the small blind folded. The big blind — a solid, tight player — thought for a while and called the four bets cold. I knew that for him to make the call, he had to have a monster hand. It was two bets to me. I called, and prayed to the poker gods to plant a 7 on the flop. But sometimes in life, you have to be careful of what you ask for.

Swish! It was four-handed for four bets, and the flop came K Q 7. I’d flopped bottom set. Mr. Solid-Tight in the big blind led into the field. I knew that he held a big hand to lead into Ms. Tight-Passive. He was a good enough hand-reader to know that she held a huge mitt in that spot.

But I held a big mitt myself, and I raised, folding the aggressive player behind me. Then, Ms. Tight-Passive — who had four-bet preflop — reraised. Mr. Solid-Tight called, as did I. Three solid players were in for three more bets.
K-K and Q-Q were high-likelihood holdings for my opponents, although I felt that if Mr. Solid-Tight held K-K, he probably would have five-bet preflop. Both of my opponents were tight preflop players. For my set of sevens to be good, both of them had to hold A-A or A-K rather than K-K or Q-Q, and I knew the likelihood of that was not good.

The turn card was the 4, putting a three-flush on the board. Mr. Solid-Tight checked. I checked behind him. Ms. Tight-Passive tossed in a wager, and was check-raised by Mr. Solid-Tight. Intuitively, I thought about throwing my hand away, but because my confidence in my decision-making was down, and this pot was large and I didn’t want to make a mistake in a pot of this size, I went into my “think tank huddle.”

Mr. Solid-Tight knew that Ms. Tight-Passive held either A-A, K-K, Q-Q, or A-K, and his raise signified that he could beat most of that range. I felt that his only possible holdings were the A K for the flush, Q-Q, or, less likely, K-K. He knew enough not to raise with anything else, and there was no way that he was bluffing. There was only one combination of the A K and three combinations of Q-Q, so if I excluded K-K, I was 75 percent to have one out and 25 percent to have nine outs against him if we were heads up. Ms. Tight-Passive could easily have a set, too, negating those outs that would give me a full house.

The pot currently contained $950, it was $120 to me, and there was some (though small) potential for it to get raised again. Ms. Tight-Passive wouldn’t reraise a flush board without the nuts herself. Plus, calling here would cause me to call some bets on the river, worsening my implied price even more. A call wasn’t a positive one even without including the possibility of Ms. Tight-Passive having me drawing to one out. I mucked my set.

The 6 hit on the river, and Mr. Solid-Tight bet. Ms. Tight-Passive called. Mr. Solid-Tight turned over the K K; he had flopped top set and then caught runner-runner for the second-nut flush. Ms. Tight-Passive threw her hand away without showing it.

Even though my stack had shrunk further, I was pleased that I had read the situation well and not married my set, as so many of us are so often wont to do. Emotionally, it’s hard to pay the price of hitting your set and then throwing it away, but sometimes you must.

When I get off to a poor start from a performance standpoint, I sometimes fail to maintain adequate mental levels of focus and energy throughout my session. During bad starts, you must make the effort to put yourself into a mental state that enables you to make high-quality decisions. It is part of the human condition to be emotionally affected by adversity in ways that diminish your performance. You must always overcome that tendency. When I find myself failing to cowboy up mentally, I accept the fact that there are days when I don’t have it, and I quit, in order to put up a better fight another day.

In spite of the fact that I was off to a slow start in both the card-catching and clearness-of-decision departments, I felt that in that hand, I reasserted myself, and took the time to focus my mind so that I could make a sound decision. I managed to struggle through the session, eking out a few chips here and there to minimize my loss. Even though I lost the pot, making that good play bolstered my confidence and helped me focus throughout the rest of my session.

Longtime poker pro and author Roy Cooke’s Card Player column has appeared since 1992. A successful Las Vegas real estate broker since 1990, his website is www.roycooke.com. Should you wish to inquire regarding real-estate matters — including purchase, sale, or mortgage — his phone number is (702) 396-6575. Roy’s longtime collaborator John Bond’s website is www.johnbondwriting.com. Find John and Roy on Facebook.