Redirecting

Friday, June 09, 2006

$300 Bad Beat Umbrella

I woke up at 2am and realized I'd left my umbrella at the poker club. Fuck. Insta-TILT sets in, as I lie awake sweating. I just won $260, but I'm fucking furious that I forgot my umbrella, even after asking the guy next to me to remind me to grab it on my way out... Oh well, I'll just stop by on the way home from work to play a little and pick it up. Yes - like a well crafted sitcom, you KNOW where this is going...

No one likes to hear bad beat stories, so I'll save you the gory details, but suffice it to say that it cost me $300 to get my umbrella back, and one Friday Afternoon Tilt Inducing beat in a $700 pot.

And it didn't even rain.

Aiyahhh!

Here's a further analysis/discussion of the most interesting hand I played (LIKE A TOTAL PUSSY) last night: I was UTG + 1. UTG limped, and I raised to $10 with A-K. I had $750 in my stack, and was the shortest stack at the table.

Dave, a maniac, re-raised to $55 - ok great. However, Joe, immediately to Dave's left, min-re-re-raised to $110. Hmmm.. I've played several hours with Joe, and haven't known him to get out of line. I get a seriously bad feeling about his hand here. Mandy in the BB cold calls the $110, and Mark, the limper, calls as well. It's back to me, the initial raiser, in the middle of the action, with Dave still to act behind me.

I hated Joe's re-re-raise, so I considered folding. However, this game is probably way WAY too loose for me to muck A-K there. I thought "Hey KD, you're a stud - don't overplay A-K here - you're drawing slim," but still didn't think folding was right.

My next thought of course, as was the initial plan, was to move all-in. However, I figured to either

a) catch everyone out of line, which was a possibility, scooping nearly $400 in the pot.
b) get called by Joe's AA or KK and be up shit's creek
c) get called by Joe's QQ or worse, but have another problem because Mandy/Mark or Dave were holding some of my "outs," which was highly likely considering that they were all in the hand.

If I call, however, I can get stacked when I flop an ace or a king against a small set or two pair, but I can double up if one of my opponents holds a hand I dominate. Obviously, If one of my opponents has a hand like A-T, it makes it even harder for me to actually flop an ace...

So, what's your play here? Raise, Call, Fold???

The bottom line is that, sitting happily to Dave's right, where I don't mind letting him do the raising, trapping callers in between, and then re-raising to take down pots, THIS was the situation I was looking for. Of course, Joe got in the middle, fucked up my read and my vibe, and fucked up my plan, which caused me to abort my mission and simply CALL. Dave called as well, and we saw a Q-x-x flop, which was checked around (?!?!?)

When a seven came on the turn, Joe doubled up through Dave, with 7-7 vs K-Q. Nice trap Dave.

So, in retrospect, an all-in move would have been best preflop, had I put Joe on 7-7. I HATE his preflop play with that hand there, as it's not really a great hand to attempt to isolate Dave with there, with two very loose callers behind you in the form of Mark and Mandy, and the possibility that I decide to NOT play like a pussy and push MY premium hand as well.

Anyway, I played it cautious and Joe took down a monster pot.

In a game like this, with me in the 2 seat, maniac Dave in the 4 seat, loose wild Zeke in the 7 seat, uber-loose Mandy in the 10 seat, and calling station Mark in the 1 seat, I actually really like my position to the maniac's RIGHT. One school of thought is to sit to the maniac's left and re-raise isolate him, but I prefer to sit to his right, let him do my betting for me, and trap the field for large pots. Of course, if I'm going to use this strategy, it helps to actually EXECUTE it when the situation presents itself.

Until next time,
KD

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey, just stumbled upon your page through Wicked Poker... would you mind giving me some info regarding this game in the city? I'm a long time NYC player desperately looking for a game! Thanks

Anonymous said...

Common, spill your guts, I want to hear about the $300 umbrella!

-Bones

Kid Dynamite said...

sorry - i can't post info about the game here, due to the Stalinist regime in NYC with the crackdowns