Evaluating Your Play: Part IV

This is the fourth in a series of columns devoted to evaluating your play. As I have already discussed, it is only by evaluating your play that you can uncover errors. As you uncover an error you have made, especially errors that seem to be repeated, you can take steps to correct them. You may also notice some good things you have done, and vow to do them more frequently. You will also find that the process of recording the details of a specific hand and then analyzing it is a valuable procedure in itself. The analysis is something you can do away from the table, and it is great to do informal evaluations while waiting in line at the bank or while driving. In this and the next few columns, I will illustrate the procedure by giving you a hand I have recently played, and letting you evaluate it. Then adding my thinking, and letting you reevaluate it. Lastly I will reveal the actual result. Note that in some ways the result is the least important thing. Emphasis must be placed on evaluation of the specific actions taken, and whether they were correct. I play a variety of games, but I generally pick cash no-limit hold’em games for analysis, since that is the most popular game.

The following hand occurred in a $2-$5 game at the Venetian. I am the button with A 10. A middle position player limps The cutoff limps. The first limper has $650, the second $250, and I have them both covered. I raise to $20, the blinds fold, but both limpers call.

Flop: Q J 4 Both limpers check and I bet $40 into the $65 pot. The first limper starts thinking. The second limper folds out of turn (this is very common in small stake games and never seems to upset anyone). I feel it is extremely bad to act out of turn, and certainly more deserving of punishment than many of the other things that dealers, floormen or tournament directors get upset about, such as speaking a foreign language, talking or cursing, exposing cards or whatever. He eventually calls.

Turn: 8 He checks and I bet $80 into a pot that now has around $150.

River: 9 He checks. I bet $150, which is approximately half the pot. He raises $200. I call.

I took five actions on this hand. They were preflop raise, flop bet, turn bet, river bet, and river call. To make it simple, score each play from 0 (horrendous) to 9 (great or at least automatic).

Now that you have evaluated my plays, I will try to describe my thinking on each one:
Preflop raise seems fairly automatic. I have position, might have the best hand or two overcards versus a pair, and I’d like to eliminate the blinds.

Continuation bet on flop is fairly normal. Small pairs should fold, so I only have to worry about someone calling with a queen or jack. Otherwise I still have the best hand and a draw to the nut straight.

Turn bet seems a little questionable, but the reasons for making it include the fact that my opponent is probably a weak player (first in limp) with a weak hand (reluctant to call on flop and only called after next player folded out of turn). He may have decided to take off one card with a jack, like J-T or J-9. Lastly, I have picked up some more draws — now either a king and a nine give me a straight. An ace will also beat a lot of the hands he might call with.

I have made a straight (Q-J-9-8 on board) plus my ten. My opponent has checked and called the whole way. I want to bet an amount he’ll call with a queen or jack. If I bet too much, he may get away from his hand.

I am shocked by his check-raise. He may have been calling with a straight draw like K-10 and now have made the nuts. He might also have a hand like Q-10 or J-10 and have made the same straight that I have (if he had 10-9, he might have raised on the turn, but he might also be trying to trick me into betting the river). It is also possible that he has made two pair or a set and thinks that it is good. A check-raise bluff is a very remote possibility. If he were going to bluff on the river, I’d expect him to bet out, representing a ten. I’m not happy about it, but I call.

Does my thinking change your evaluations? Unfortunately for me, he had K-10. I spent a lot of time thinking about my river bet and call. I have just lost $350 on a hand I could have showed down for free. Still, I feel that it is fairly clear to make a value bet on the river when I hit the second nuts. Maybe I should have bet more or less? If I bet more, he may fold a lot of hands I have beaten. If I bet less, I could be leaving money on the table. If I knew him better, I might be able to fold to the check-raise. Versus an unknown player there are a lot of hands that I beat or tie, and only one hand that beats me. I can’t really fault myself too much for the way I played the river even though it turned out disastrously. ♠

Steve “Zee” Zolotow, aka The Bald Eagle, is a successful games player. He currently devotes most of his time to poker. When escaping from poker, he hangs out in his bars on Avenue A — Nice Guy Eddie’s at Houston and Doc Holliday’s at 9th Street — in New York City.