My Old Notebook — Part III

This piece continues my series of articles based on hands from a notebook I found in my old room at my parents’ house during a trip home this summer. Times have changed and it’s an interesting look at how they have changed. We are looking at hands played by a winning player over a pretty large sample size. My 2004 self would not be a winning player in the games I play in today. Here’s an example of a hand from my notebook that would have gone differently if I played it today:

Middle position and late position players call, I raise on the button with A 5. Both blinds fold and we take the flop three ways.

This is a standard situation I see in the game I play in now, after a few middle position or late position players limp, I have a suited ace on the button. I always raise in this spot because I most likely have the best hand, I have the button, and it gives me the lead in the pot.

The flop is J 7 6. They check to me, I bet, the first limper calls.

Seems pretty OK to me, this isn’t the greatest flop for my range, but their limping range is so wide that it’s not necessarily the best for their range either. I think villain’s range looks something like this: 8-9, 10-9, 5-4 suited, K-Q (questionable since he didn’t raise preflop), pair of sevens, pair of sixes and pocket pairs lower than sixes.

Turn is the Q. Limper checks, I bet, he calls.

I’ve picked up a flush draw, still have one overcard, and sometimes I have the best hand. I think it’s pretty close on whether I should bet or not with a slight lean towards checking. I can call the river with ace-high unimproved since villain probably wouldn’t value bet with a pair lower than a jack, making his range much more weighted towards bluffs than value bets on the river. If he actually has something and bets when a diamond hits, I can get my two bets in anyways.

River is unrecorded in my notebook, but it seems as though it’s a blank or an ace. He checks, I bet, he calls with A 4 and we split the pot.

Given my previous tendency towards betting the river with ace-high in situations where a check would be appropriate given the opponent’s most likely range, I think it’s equally likely that the river was a blank or an ace. I also can’t discern from his hand which was the case since he called the turn on a J-7-6-Q board with only one spade with A 4. It seems unlikely that he would fold the river. Either I have a genius read on my opponent’s hand (unlikely since it’s hard to get an idea what someone has when they don’t seem to have a real idea themselves) or I’m spewing again. I feel as though the first three streets are played fine, with a small nod towards checking the turn as the best play. I seem to have had a strong tendency towards turning value hands into bluffs on a pretty regular basis. Something I have since fixed, I think.

The more I think about it now, the less I think the river was an ace since I think my opponent in the hand would have led the river when an ace hit. Clearly against an opponent like this, I should check the river since I beat literally all of his draws and he’s obviously not folding any hands that are better than mine. Hopefully I at least learned something in the process of this hand and began to “bluff” the river less often against this opponent and value bet him relentlessly in the future.

I’m not sure if there will be more articles from my old notebook in the future. There are probably one or two more hands that are interesting enough to talk about in a future article. I do love finding new material to learn from and to help me evaluate myself as a poker player. We tend to remember the good things about how we were 10 years ago and not many of the bad things. If the opposite were true, we would probably all go insane. As it is, it’s good to occasionally look back and see how much we have improved and how things have changed in the world around us. I look back at these hands and think about how badly I used to play, but it’s clear that everyone else was worse since I was a winning player over a very large sample at the time. Knowledge is the key to moving forward and it’s perfectly fine to make mistakes if we learn from them and refuse to repeat them.

Now, if you’ll give me a moment to be a little self-indulgent. I’m writing this article a few weeks in advance of the deadline because my life will be changing dramatically tonight and tomorrow. After a long and difficult two years for my wife and me, she will be giving birth to our son sometime in the next few days. I want to thank all of you for the support I’ve received on Twitter and through emails. We have finally come to the end of a very long road that looked like a dead end at times. At different times we’ve propped each other up to get through what has been the most difficult time of our lives. We can’t wait to help each other down the wonderful road that is parenthood. Wish me luck! ♠

Gavin Griffin was the first poker player to capture a World Series of Poker, European Poker Tour and World Poker Tour title and has amassed nearly $5 million in lifetime tournament winnings. Griffin is sponsored by HeroPoker.com. You can follow him on Twitter @NHGG