Did I Donk this One?

Poker is a game of decisions with some of them getting mighty tricky. Concepts often conflict and weighing which play is best can be a mind boggling exercise. But never forget that just because a decision didn’t work out doesn’t mean you made an error. Judging your decisions in hindsight by if they worked or not is the wrong way to judge them, and it’ll drive you to the asylum.

Playing $40-$80 limit hold’em at the Bellagio, I posted the big blind. An aggressive tourist open raised in second position and was called by four opponents. The small blind folded and I peered down at the K Q. It’s a pretty good hand, though not a great one. With this holding, I often play aggressively in position. But without position and many callers it loses some of its value. Offsuit high cards play better in situations in which one pair is more apt to win. Against six opponents you’re generally going to have to make a big mitt to take the pot down. Nonetheless, the hand was definitely worth a call. I tossed in the extra $40.
The dealer flopped the Q 10 9 providing me with top pair and a community gutter. In spite of my holding’s strengths, this was a dangerous flop for my hand. Multiple threats existed with all the straight and flush draws. Additionally, that texture of flop would hit a lot of raising and raise-calling hands, many of which would already have me beat.

In all previous situations the preflop raising tourist had continuation bet, both the flop and again on the turn assuming he hadn’t been raised. I checked, believing that Mr. Tourist would fire and I could get a read on all my opponents who would have to act before the action got back to me. One advantage of playing my hand in this manner is that my decision would be based on a higher level of information, hopefully making my verdict a better one.

As expected, Mr. Tourist fired and was called by all four preflop callers. What should I do? Was my hand good? Even if it was there were many potentially precarious cards. And if I raised and a treacherous card came on the turn came I’d be in a tough spot out of position with a marginal holding on a uniform board with many opponents. I chose to flat call, see what the turn brought and decide how to play my hand forward from there.

The turn was the ugliest card in the deck for me, the K, filling both the straight and the flush draws, but providing me with top two pair. I knuckled, almost certain I was beat, but unsure how the hand would play out. Once again, Mr. Tourist fired a wager. This time he was called by only one player, and the others folded.

Where was I with my two pair? I had no clue! Was Mr. Tourist just continuation firing into this super strong board? He was certainly capable of it. And what about the caller? Did he just call with a flush? A straight? The pot was laying me $900-to-$80 on the call. Over 11-to-1 currently and virtually the right price to draw to the full house, assuming it would be good. Additionally, the pot would get bigger if I made it. There was also some possibility my hand was good, a probability hard to quantify, but some chance definitely existed. I called the $80.

My hand just kept getting worse; the river was the 7, putting four spades on the board of which I had none. I knuckled once more, and Mr. Tourist continued his betting barrage. The other caller folded and I was the only one left.
When you’re closing out the action with an opponent who is capable of bluffing, and all you can beat is a bluff, you need to compare the size of the pot against the cost of a call versus the probability of the bettor bluffing. Could my hand be good? Were there any hands in Mr. Tourist’s range which he would play in the manner in which he played that I could beat? I didn’t have to be able to think of too many, the pot was laying me $1060-to-$80, over 13-to-1 on a call.

I thought about the hands he might hold I could currently beat, A-A without a spade, a spadeless small wired pair or a spadeless A-Q or A-T. Maybe an A-x suited, not in spades. Of course, he would have had to continuation bet throughout the hand as well as possess one of those holdings. The fact that he was of the texture to continuation bet until raised strengthened my call. I paid him off.

He showed me 8 8, having made the spade flush with the fourth spade on the river. “Damn,” I muttered to myself, thinking that there might have been an alternate way of playing my hand that would have won me the pot.

I reviewed my decisions, and found them all reasonable. I had played my hand passively and had I played it aggressively I may have been able to take this pot down. However, that fact didn’t mean that my decisions were wrong. All poker decisions are risk versus reward equations. It’s inevitable that some of your decisions will be effectively wrong in the current scenario, though that doesn’t make them conceptually wrong.

Since pots often give you a long price, decisions that are wrong more often than they are right are frequently correct. It works out to a positive expected (EV) overlay due to the amount you win when you are right being much more than the amount you lose when you are wrong. With my decision to call on the river, my hand had to be good only around 7.5 percent of the time in order for my call to be correct.
In poker, the player who makes the best overall decisions is going to win the money over time. That said, poker decisions aren’t made in a perfect world; all of us make errors and even the best decisions often don’t work out. What is important is to make sound logical decisions over and over. And over time, it’ll bring you the chips! ♠

Roy Cooke played poker professionally for 16 years prior to becoming a successful Las Vegas Real Estate Broker/Salesman in 1989. Should you wish to any information about Real Estate matters-including purchase, sale or mortgage his office number is 702-396-6575 or Roy’s e-mail is [email protected]. His website is www.roycooke.com. You can also find him on Facebook or Twitter @RealRoyCooke