Paying Attention Part Two

Last time, I wrote about a situation in a H.O.R.S.E. tournament where a hand that was played would have been very different if either one of the players were paying attention. They both missed that one of them had to have a very narrow range due to the dead cards in the hand.

As a result, they played a much bigger pot than they really needed to and that made one of them win a few extra bets and the other lose a few extra bets. That doesn’t sound like much, but a few bets deep in a tournament are really important.

Today, I’m writing about a situation that probably comes up more often for you, the readers. I was playing at my local casino in the $5-$5 no-limit game when a really interesting spot came up. The guy who had been the catalyst of most of the action was, unfortunately, on my left. He had his $900 in three stacks, two of all red $5 chips, and one of white $100 chips. Fortunately, in this hand, I had position on him because I was the button. Hooray for the button!

A good but fairly predictable player made it $20 from the hijack. I called on the button with K 10 off of a stack of $2,000. The fun player in the small blind called, as did the big blind. The flop came 10-7-4 rainbow, with no diamonds. The blinds checked and the preflop raiser bet $50 into the $80 pot.

I called, wanting to see what developed behind me. The small blind then grabbed two chips from the rightmost stack in front of him and puts them out. The dealer announced a raise to $200. The player then looked down at the chips, made a surprised look/sound, and looked back at the dealer. The big blind thinks for a while before folding, and the preflop raiser folds as well. The action is on me and this is where paying attention comes into play.

I know a few things for certain. First, when I showed up in the game, the player on my left had what amounted to roughly the max buy-in for the game, $1,500 on the table in a mixture of red $5 chips, green $25 chips, and white $100 chips, all separated. Second, he proceeded to lose many of these over the course of a few hands and rebought for some more white chips while still having some green as well. Finally, these green and white chips he had together in a stack, the green on top of the white. Why does this matter? Well, in the previous hand, our opponent used the last of his green chips and the white chips in his big chip stack were now on top. To me, this meant that his surprise was most likely genuine. I decided that having one more bit of information would really seal the deal and called to see the turn instead of jamming right there.

He shoved all in before seeing the turn card for around $650. This was a really good indication to me that he absolutely did not mean to raise to $200. I definitely wanted to look at the turn card before deciding on what to do and, unfortunately, it was one of the best cards in the deck for someone who raised by accident on the flop, the 8. This completed 6-5, J-9, 8-7, 10-8, and 8-8. It also gave many extra outs to 10-9, 9-9, 9-8, and 9-7. It didn’t do much for A-7, A-4, 5-5, 6-6, 3-3, 2-2, and random garbage. I think this last group is more likely to be the hands he would jam with dark as the other ones have more reason to want to see the turn card before deciding what to do than these. In addition, the first two groups of hands are more likely to be interested in raising in the first place. Not correctly in my eyes, but perhaps he wouldn’t have acted so surprised/out of sorts when he raised on the flop.

I was getting roughly 1.8:1 on my call and was mostly certain I would do so, but wanted to have one more bit of information. I asked my opponent if he meant to raise the flop and he didn’t respond verbally. His reaction to the question, though, seemed to me as if he did not mean to do so. I called after a few more seconds, and the river blanked off. He paused before turning over his cards so I fast-rolled (I almost always try to save my opponents the embarrassment of turning over a bluff if it seems like they don’t want to show) and he mucked his cards.

I can definitely be as guilty as the next person of not paying that much attention at the poker table at times. I happened to notice in this one, a small difference in the way my opponent’s stack was before this hand and during it. As a result, I won a nice-sized pot that I might not have otherwise. It’s certainly possible that I would have called down with my K-10 in this spot anyway due to my opponent’s erratic tendencies, but having that extra bit of information because I paid attention made it much easier to call in a marginal spot. ♠

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