Returning the Favor and other Slices of Life

Returning the Favor
Returning the Favor
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Saturday, August 27, 2005

Friday night tilt game

So I discovered a bit of frustration last night that cost me a bit in winnings. Occassionally, when we have our little home game, Jim "Dad" E. will amass a pile of chips through a bunch of lucky catches and some pretty solid play, then shift into uber-calling statio mode. That's what happened last night. I had gotten frustrated because I had been unable to push Dad off a pot ALL NIGHT, without just a ridiculous bet, and he ended up catching his garbage more often than not. I know, long term that's the kind of play I want across the table, but in the heat of the moment it get's frustrating as shit.

Hand example - It's late in the evening and we're stopping play in about 15 minutes. I look down a two red Jacks. I raise to $2, 4x the BB, and Dad calls. Flop come xQ9, and I'm a little nervous. Dad checks, I bet out with $10. I put him on AK here, because he loves to play his unpaired overcards and sticks around with the a lot. He goes into the tank for a minutes and calls. Turn is another 9, and he checks. I check, wanting a free card to fill me up on the river. River is a 10, no flush draws, no good straight draws out there, esp. since I'm holding Jacks. Dad checks, I bet out another $10. He goes into the tank for about 4 minutes and finally calls, turning up Q4 off-suit! I try to hide the fact that I'm steaming, but manage to donk off another $20 to Uncle Phil a couple hands later when he rivers a flush after raising all-in to $16 on a $10 bet into a $6 pot. The all-in move I think was okay by Phil since it was the last hand of the night, but to go all-in on an obvious overbet was a little reckless.

So I ended up tilting off about $40 of my profit on two hands. The one to Phil was a bad move on his part mathematically - he had no pair, one overcard to the board, and a straight draw and flush draw. He had a outs (18, actually) but I thought by betting almost twice the pot I made the odds really wrong to call, much less raise an amount that would almost certainly get called, since his raise was less than my bet. So long-term, I want folks to make that call all day long. But the other one bugs me - did I play it wrong? Should I have bet the turn? I certainly didn't expect Dad to check-call with top pair. Maybe when I have vulnerable pairs like JJ I should up the preflop raise to clear out real junk hands. Advice is welcome, those two hands are gonna bug me for a while.

Otherwise I played pretty well, doubled my buy-in, but I'm frustrated because right there at the end I gave up two more buy-ins plus a little change.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

With JJ I would have rasied preflop to get rid of the junk hands. You're asking for trouble when you let others buy a card/see flop for cheap. Hit the pot hard and more times than not you won't lose to Q-4 when you have Jacks.