Teriyaki House

Well, this week was a bit worse. Opened with A/J off suit from medium position, guy called with 5/6 suited and flopped a straight. Fair enough.

Also got called by Q/8off and 3/9 off that rivered straights after I was betting all the way.

So got down on chips early. Picked up A/10 off in big blind. About 5 people called, the flop was something like 10/5/4 rainbow. Pot had about what I had left so I shoved since my M was about 7 at that point. Got called by K/10...which promptly hit the King to knock me out.

The irony is most of the damage was done not by the two reasonable hands...I have no issue with a 5/6 suited call and as I told the guy who put me out, if I know he has K/10 and is drawing to 3 outs I am begging him to call. I got it in good, just got drawn out on. It happens.

No, the irony is most of the damage was done by really, really bad calls. Calling pre-flop and flop with 3/9 is pretty bad. I guess someone with lots of chips might call the pre-flop planning on making a move...but I can count on one hand the number of people there capable of making that move. This was not one of them.

It was someone playing to get extremely lucky and doing so. I guess the good part is I saw them hit the straights 3 of the 4 straights I ran into and did not get felted earlier than I did.

The bad side is I am frankly embarrassed to be at a table where I knew which people NOT to play hands with and which ones to play hands with, which means even at a table with 2 or 3 players whose games i respect I am pretty much just playing with really bad players since I play when the good players are not in the hand but not when they are...and I busted out on the last hand of the second level.

*Sigh*.

But now I want to talk about a hand I played online.

I was sitting behind just over 100 big blinds. Middle position with about 85 bb opens, gets calls from the next two seats and I have j/10 off on the button. I am already getting about 3-1/2 to one and it figures to go to 4-1 or even 5-1 because I expect one or both of the blinds to call just because they usually do when the pre-flop pot builds like that so I call.

The flop has 2 spades, a Q, J and some brick. The pre-flop raiser makes the fish raise of like 2 bb into a pot of 13ish blinds. He gets a call and a fold. I have a marginal hand and do not want to play a big pot. I consider raising, putting him on a Spade flush draw as his most likely hand, but...two other players, I have some showdown equity, no point to running into a big re-raise and being driven off my hand. I call.

The turn is another brick, he now raises 3 bb. Call, same thought process, I call. Arguably I should raise here, but really...what can I beat? Any Queen has me, J/K and J/A have me drawing thin, and if he is not on the flush draw then he is reeling us in with a line I see a lot of people take with a set.

The river brings the third spade and he insta-shoves about 70 bb into a pot of maybe 25. Big overbet. Other guy folds.

Problem is...that third spade was a second jack on the board, giving me trips. I go into the tank for a long time. He could have J/9 or worse, he could have an overpair or something like A/Q, all hands I can beat.

But...I put him on the flush draw from the beginning. It just felt like a defensive bet to protect his draw and had there not been two and then one other players, I would have raised him off that draw before the river.

Now it just feels like he hit the flush. I show discipline and lay it down.

I need to show that discipline more often. I had a read, when I hit a big hand tried to talk myself off the read. Why? just lay. it. down.