Texas Calculatem and Poker Office Blog

I was on a good roll at Laddies, playing a nice "Tight Passive (pre flop) - Passive (post flop)" game, according to Poker Office. And I'm going to try to analyse this hand by using its replay feature. Here we go...

I'm dealt KJo from early position (see screenshot), and decide to limp in. The action is limped around to the big blind, who checks.

There is $1.70 in the pot.

The flop is Ks3cJc.

That's excellent for me. As I have two pair. However, there are both straight and flush possibilities developing. The action is checked to me. And being the idiot that I am, I put $2.50 into the pot. Giving the first caller 1.47:1 to call. What a fool. It was obvious that anyone with a flush would call. And that subsequent callers would have draws for other hands. Anyway, there are two calls, before the dealer goes all in (a re-raise of $1.14). So myself and the two callers are forced to call t see the next hand.

There is $16.26 in the pot. And the turn is a Queen.

Oh no! I'm thinking. Anyone with AT has just hit a straight. And the pot is getting big. Fuck! So I check. The flop caller checks. And Jungeldyr bets $8.13. Half the pot. So I have 2:1 to call. What should I do?

Well, having commited so much to the pot. I called the $8.13 bet. What I should have done was analysed my outs. With 4 cards improving my hand to a full house, and 10.7:1 odds to hit, in hindsight it's clear that I should have folded. I'd only invested $3.84 in the pot so far. But was blinded by the greed of the $24.39 staring me in the face.

Anyway, Abbes called, and so we hit the river with $40.65 in the pot.

The river was an Ace. Damn. So now, anyone with a Ten has a straight, and there are two other contenders out there. I check, Abbes checks, and Jungeldyer goes all in for $5.94. Despite getting 7.9:1 odds on the call, I really felt that I was beat. And made the difficult fold.

Abbes called and so Jungeldyr was forced to show his 9cTc clubs.

AHHHHH!!!! What's almost as bad as losing this hand, is the fact that I didn't notice that 9T had also hit a straight on the turn. I really should get my glasses fixed.

Also, he was about 2.91:1 to improve to a straight or flush on the flop, and by calling his turn bet, I semi-fell into the fallacy of paying off players for their loose calls. He received an extra $8.13 from me, after his initial $2.50 call. So if we ignore the extra cash from the all-in calls, he got 4.25:1 payout from me, on a 2.91:1 proposition.

So how can I improve my play in the future? Well, I'm going to throw conventional stupidity out of the window, and try to play more passively in these situations. Players like Phil Gordon might be able to push peopel off these hands. But monkeys like me need to realise that they have no chance of protecting their hands, and should therefore try to wait for a safe card before proceeding.