A-10 Hits Pundit Like a Different Kind of Blackjack

I'm big on fairness, and one of my fundamental rules of fairness is, "If you're going to dish it out, you have to be willing to take it." The rule's application in life is practically endless, but it has more than a few poker applications, too. If you tell bad-beat stories, you'd better be ready to listen to some. If you criticize someone else's play, you'd better be willing to accept criticism of your own play.

Then there's the old, "If you brag on how well you played while winning two tournaments, you'd better be willing to fess up on how you blew a third one." You've read me discuss my two wins in Australia (although I did confess to sucking out once at a key heads-up moment in the first win), and now it's time to review matters in the $10,000 championship event, because I learned an important lesson there that will probably benefit you, and fair's fair: I wrote about the good stuff, so I'll write about the bad.

Day One of the three-day championship event could hardly have gone better. I got ahead early and kept increasing my stack. I was never all in in a hand where I could have gone broke, in part because I became one of the chip leaders rather early and in part because I rarely moved all in. I didn't waste chips with questionable small blind calls. I paid attention to opponents' styles and found one tell that I used to bust a guy out. I didn't play J-J like it was A-A, and I didn't get too proud of A-Q. I threw some pretty big hands away to reraises that smelled dangerous, I stayed away from big stacks, and I hardly ever called unless I was setting a trap. I was selectively aggressive, but not insane.

Day One All Fun

In short, I played about as well as I can play, and even through I didn't have lots of big hands, I did a fair job of collecting when I did get them. Sometimes that was pure luck – nut flushes against second-nut flushes, that sort of thing – but mostly I collected because very few of my good hands went to the river. When I had the goods, I didn't screw around, and if an opponent wanted to try to draw out, he was going to have to pay a serious price to try. I did my stealing with small bets, so if someone woke up with something, I could get away from a hand inexpensively. I stood fourth in chips at the day's end, out of 40-odd players who remained.

It was a little hard to sleep, but after my just-off-the-plane performance in the pot-limit hold'em tournament, that didn't bother me. I'd played three tournaments and won two of them, and here I was a chip leader again. Heck, I was ready to move to Australia .

On Day Two, Hollywood started looking good again, because if my play on Day One was a 9 on a scale of 1 to 10, on Day Two it was about -42.

The problems started, as they so often do, with no cooperation from the cards. For the three or four hours that I lasted on Day Two, I had two pocket pairs: eights, which won the blinds with a raise from the button, and fives, with which I limped into a multiway pot and cleared out of the way when the customary three overcards hit. I never had A-K or A-Q, and didn't have A-J, either, although A-J is such a troublesome hand that I don't complain about not getting it.

Poor starting hands shouldn't have been a big problem. I had enough chips to wait, and I hear it's also legal to try to steal a hand now and then in no-limit. Unfortunately, every time I tried a steal, someone else either had the goods or decided I didn't, because I faced a reraise I couldn't call, and I had no desire to go crazy with a re-reraise on the hope that my reraiser was on a resteal.

With J-2, Bid Chips Adieu

Still, the stack damage was minimal until problem hand No. 1, when I got dealt the J 2 in the big blind. A middle-position player had limped in. Why couldn't he have just raised, so I could have folded? Alas, a limp it was, and I checked to look at the flop: 4 3 2.

Even though I'd hit a pair, I should have been conservative here. Someone limping in from middle position will often have a small or medium pair, and if so could easily love this flop. Yes, he could be limping in with something like Q-J, but you don't play poker basing every play on "he could have the worst possible hand for the situation" thinking.

I bet out, hoping to end things then and there if my opponent had been limping in with Q-J, J-10, or the like, but I got called. Danger, Wil Robinson! A call here probably means a flush, a set, an overpair, or at worst a draw to the nut flush or something close thereto. There's no question in my mind that I should have shut it down here unless I were to catch a deuce or an offsuit jack on the turn.

A black queen hit, and my mind went from Australia to the Bahamas . "$15,000," I found myself saying, reasoning that I had to shut out a flush draw, and $15,000 was enough to do it, especially since my opponent only had about $22,000 left.

Yeah, I was probably shutting out a flush draw, but that wasn't exactly the only consideration. I'd accumulated chips for a day and a half by making big bets when I was either eager for or indifferent to action. A two-hour card drought didn't require a change of plans.

My opponent fiddled and diddled for a little while, and then said, "All in," which sure wasn't what I wanted to hear. It was one of those bets where I was "virtually" forced to call for the size of the pot, figuring that outs to a deuce or a jack might add enough value to the rather small long shot that my opponent, by making a raise so small I "had" to call it, was making a fancy semibluff play designed to make me lay down a good but not great hand, with outs to his flush if I called. Although I have heard of worse plans from short stacks, that was far too optimistic here, and I think I should have saved the $7,000: It would have meant the difference between a $50,000 stack and a $43,000 stack.

I called, and my opponent turned over … Q-J! My bet on the flop should have been big enough to get rid of him, but it hadn't, and Fate had hit him with the half of his hand that left me drawing almost dead, instead of the half that would have left him almost completely dead (if he'd hit his jack instead of his queen, he'd have made the same play, unless it was the J, which would have changed the whole hand's dynamic).

One Bad Play, and it's a Brand-New Day

Fate had given me just what I deserved, and suddenly instead of being a chip leader – a status I'd had for more than a full day – I had an average stack.

That there are better ways to play a J-2 in such situations isn't exactly big news, although probably a few of you thought, "Ah, good point" when I mentioned that a limper might have had a medium pair.

No, the great tip is psychological. My chip lead was then . This was now . I had to forget that I'd been a chip leader (that pokernetwork.com was sending hourly reports out to the Internet wasn't making that any easier) and play what I had in front of me. More to the point, I had to look at that $43,000 in an entirely different way.

I had to pretend that I'd been limping along in trouble with maybe $15,000 in front of me, and in one great pot I'd just jumped all the way back into firm contention with $43,000.

Same stack, entirely different attitude. Thinking about what I had foolishly thrown away, I was depressed on two levels. If instead I'd have had that "back in the hunt" feeling, I'd have been patient and looking for the right time to strike, now that I had time to wait.

It makes a big difference, doesn't it? We all convince ourselves of so many things that aren't true, why not one more?

Let's fast-forward through another few rounds of worthless cards. The cards were so bad that even my "gotta get them back" feeling wasn't going to encourage me to play. I wasn't on tilt, I just wasn't sharp. Unfortunately, I finally picked up just enough of a hand to get me in trouble.

I had a big problem at my table. Two seats to my right was the tournament chip leader, David Hatzis, a local who had been having one dreamy day. Underpair against overpair? No problem. Have all your leading hands hold up? A snap. Get paid off when you have aces? Easy when someone else has kings and the aces hold up. Now he had so many chips he could barely see out from under them, and he was overbetting pot after pot, sticking $10,000 in when the blinds were $600-$1,200 (with $100 antes).

A Problem, but a Manageable One

Fortunately, because my "problem" was on my right, I didn't have to worry about him every hand. I could wait until he was out of a pot and then play. But Hatzis was in "run over" mode, and I was in "get 'em back" mode, and I did what you're not supposed to do in situations like that: I messed not just with a big stack, but with a player who was probably feeling invulnerable.

Hatzis said "$10,000" again, I looked down and saw A-10, and instantly said, "I'm all in," the first time in two days that I had moved in when a loss could have eliminated me. It doesn't matter that it wasn't more than a second later that I was wishing I could suck the words back into my mouth. It doesn't matter that it wasn't more than two seconds later that I was realizing what a ridiculously dumb play I had just made, even if I wound up getting away with it. The words had been spoken, and I was going to have to live with the result. If I survived it, the bad play would snap me to attention – if I survived it.

I know better than to make a play like that. For that matter, you know better than to make a play like that. Everyone goes through card droughts. Sometimes after a long one, A-10 can look not just like A-A, but like a royal flush. Good players remember it's still A-10, a hand chock-full of weaknesses, not chock-full of the nuts.

Meanwhile, over on the other side of the table, the short-stacked button thought for a relatively long while and decided to push his $16,000 all in with what turned out to be the A K. This was bad news in more than one way. Hatzis (the original raiser) could consider the chance his opponents held each other's cards (and he hadn't been needing much of an excuse to play, anyway), and there was also the chance that he could lose to the button but still make money on the hand by beating me.

Unlike me, Hatzis took plenty of time to think the whole situation through, and once he figured out the part about needing only to beat me to make money, the button's fairly easy short-stacked decision created a preflop disaster for me. Hatzis called with pocket tens.

When we turned the cards over, my chances were so small I had to laugh: A-10 against A-K and 10-10! I could scoop with a straight or a flush (although an ace would give me a slightly profitable side pot) only. Just to make it interesting, the flop brought all spades (including the K) and I held the A. I'd jumped from just under 5 percent equity in the pot (including the value of splits and side pots) to about 38 percent, but I neither deserved a miracle nor caught one, and I was out.

Slow Down, Andrew

Actually, the most idiotic part of my play was how quickly I said, "I'm all in," because this was the second time in a year that I'd made that mistake in a big tournament, and while once might be forgivable, twice isn't. If I'd just taken a moment to think, I would have realized this was the wrong hand to select to attack a chip-heavy player who had been both overplaying his hands and calling too much, and who had been watching his leading hands hold up and his trailing hands draw out.

It just didn't matter if I'd been "right" about his hand being vulnerable (if, let's say, he held only 5-5): If I know I'm going to get called by a little pair, why on earth would I want to risk my whole stack on a coin flip? For that matter, I'd actually be a slight underdog in the coin flip, at that!

Hatzis had been running too well to lay down A-J or A-Q, let alone A-K, so I could easily wind up on the wrong side of a dominated hand. I was in middle position, so someone behind me could still wake up with a hand (and did). It was just an absolutely, totally indefensible brain freeze, on several levels. I wouldn't have made the play if I hadn't made the earlier dual mistakes with the J-2, but that doesn't exactly excuse it!

I'm not into the tattooing thing, but after this I'm really tempted to get the words, "Two seconds of thinking are free" tattooed onto my left hand, because two seconds are much more than I would have needed to realize this was the wrong situation in which to move in, and like I said, this is the second time I've made that mistake in a year. I'm giving myself a partial "Get Out of Jail Free Card" because I played very little in 2002-2003, for a variety of reasons that don't matter here, but I just can't make that mistake again.

Meanwhile, I learned something about recovering from losing a big chip lead, and it's something that will probably help you, should you find yourself in such a position. It's hard to admit mistakes, especially in print, but doing so helps one improve, and I want both to improve and to have credibility when I say I played well!

If you make that same commitment to improving, you might just find yourself beating games you can't beat right now. The world is many things. Static isn't one of them.

Andrew N.S. Glazer, "The Poker Pundit," is Card Player's tournament editor, and he writes a weekly gambling column for The Detroit Free Press. He is the author of Casino Gambling the Smart Way (Career Press, 1999), The Complete Idiot's Guide to Poker (Alpha Books, fall 2004), and Tournament Poker With the Champions (Huntington Press, spring 2005). He is a consultant to www.PartyPoker.com, and welcomes your questions.