Poker: Bad Fold

[sooner333]

So, usually people will post their poker stories either lamenting a bad beat. I, on the other hand, will take my opportunity to post about a bad fold. Not the one where you fold your 72o pre-flop and get pissed when the flop comes 772. This is one where one's first reaction would be to fold and until you get your card after you fold, you don't realize it was such a bad decision.

I was playing a 1/2 NL game with a $100 max buy-in at the local Indian Casino. I'm playing for a few hours and I've been hovering around the 70-130 range. I'm up a bit at this point and I recieve KK. My normal raise is to $10 preflop, and that is what I do at this point. I am against two or three players on the flop and a King comes out, but all three cards are also spades. I go ahead and bet $20 to see where I'm at. I get two callers on that bet. So, the next card comes out a spade. I check in first position and the next to act bets $20 and the other player raises 2 more dollars all-in. At this point, I find myself knowing that at least one of the other two have a spade (and in fact, both did...the Ace and the Queen). And I am rather upset, knowing my trip Kings, are losing. So, I reluctantly fold, showing a player next to me my cards. Of course, the board pairs up on the river, giving me the full house after I fold.

So, then another player points out that I had 10 outs and he would have def. called. I guess in all of the dissapointment that I was losing to the flush with my great hand, I forgot that I had outs to the remaining K, and the nine other cards that would pair the board...which is even stronger than a flush draw. Not normally thinking about having a "full-house draw", I wasn't thinking of pot odds, and instead conceded defeat. The situation just doesn't seem to come up often enough like a flush draw or open-ended straight draw would. In reality, while I would have lost more than I would win, I would still win more money than I would lose over time given the situation.

So, the moral: don't forget your full-house draws.

[dixieflatline]

I was playing a 1/2 NL game with a $100 max buy-in at the local Indian Casino. I'm playing for a few hours and I've been hovering around the 70-130 range. I'm up a bit at this point and I recieve KK. My normal raise is to $10 preflop, and that is what I do at this point.

Is that the normal pf raise at that casino? 5xBB seems a bit high to me. But you got two callers so that worked out. NL isn't my game but I'll point out another quick tidbit. On the flop there was about $30 in the pot. When you bet $20 on the flop you were giving your opponents ok odds to hit there flush(with implied odds). Again I don't play the game all that much but I think this is the right place to put in a pot sized bet or maybe a bit more. Then if your opponents call they will clearly be making a mistake. If someone already has the flush then you have 7 outs on the turn and 10 outs on the river to fill up so that isn't so bad.

One last thing. From your desciption about how the table was playing this sounds like the perfect table to employ Ed Miller's small stack strategy. He talks about it in his latest book Getting Started in Hold Em. Basically, you buy in short and play ultra tight. Then you pick up a good hand get all the chips in. This works great for tables were you can raise 5xBB and get two callers. I know that some people who have played hold em for a while will not want to read a book with this title but it's pretty short and cheap and this section alone is worth it.

BTW, were you at one of the new poker rooms in OK? How are they in general?

[sooner333]

That is a good point...I probably could have played the flop a little bit better, but I think I also might have left out that one of my opponents had the ace of spades and mid pair (8's). So, that pair may have been enough to make him call no matter what...even though, in reality that pair was of almost no help to him because of my set. The other guy had the queen, and he was probably just on that flush draw. However, on the turn, I had the 10 outs, so not calling the $20 was a wrong play...I just got caught up in the fact I knew I was beat at the time. It wasn't a *terrible* mistake...it wasn't like I was ahead the whole time. I'm actually glad the card came out because now I've thought about it. If the card didn't come out, I probably would be patting myself on the back for a "great" laydown.

As for the poker rooms in OK, they are okay, however, the rakes are a bit high. At Thunderbird in Norman, they take 10% up to $5. I've heard some other places take a max rake of $4 (10% of their rakes go to the state for education). There are a lot of bad players out there...but there are some pros at the 2/5 no-limit who go out there every day to take money from those wanting to test their luck.

The 1/2 game is new there this weekend, so I was trying to get a feel for that game. I found that a $3 raise to $5 isn't taken very seriously and it's almost like not raising at all. I never really tried between $5 and $10, just because it seemed like an odd-sized bet that would get attention. I saw some $20 bets with callers, and sometimes it got pretty large before the flop with raisers. Even though 5x big blind is large, it seemed pretty normal for at least one or two players to call one. I did get the blinds with the $10 bet as well one time.