Poker Goals (Monetary & Otherwise)

Listening to my recent podcast hosts, I was reminded that setting poker goals is a good way to start the year off.  Although we are in the early part of February I have only played one session of poker, so setting a goal at this point isn’t cheating too much, but it does make things a bit easier since I am $350 up without ever having made my first objective.

 

To begin with, this is not the first year I have ever set a goal for poker playing.  While not being able to remember exactly what past years I’ve attempted doing so before, poker goals are not entirely foreign to me.  I do recall that I did not meet the goals that were set forth, so actually accomplishing these ambitious endeavors could be a first in 2015.

 

The first goal I will be attempting is the amount of time I play cards.  Having 2.5 kids at home and living 90 minutes from the nearest brick-and-mortar casino limits my potential playing time (and I don’t count the time or funds won and lost in my home game because it is usually just five guys and that is too small of a game to validate in my poker accounting).  That being said, if I can play 150 hours this year I will consider that pretty good.  In the poker ledger I have at home it breaks down how many hours I have played since 2009, but off the top of my head I cannot recall whether 150 hours is too high, too low, or just right.  If I can play two times a month (I only played once in January), that averages out to 12.5 hours per session.

 

The second goal is a monetary one.  I would like to average $15 an hour playing poker this year.  Again, my hourly rate is available to me at home, but I am making this number up off the top of my head.  If I had to guess, I would say with the limited amount of time I actually get to play, making $15 an hour isn’t completely ridiculous.  After winning $350 last month, I am somewhere around $45 an hour, but a single loss of $200 would bring that amount way down.

 

If I were to accomplish both of my first two goals, I would win a minimum of $2,250 from poker for the year.  I have never won that much money, so I doubt this happens, but it will be interesting to see how things shake out this year.

As for in-game play, I want to open up my range of hands that I will three-bet (or re-raise with) pre-flop.  My range of hands I three-bet right now is very slim, so I want to open that up a bit more and be more aggressive with three-betting.  A recent tip I learned about three-betting is that the hands worth three-betting pre-flop are at the top of your folding range to a raise.

 

The final goal I am setting for myself is to read two poker strategy books.  It has been years since I read a strategy book on Texas Hold’em, so I will count re-reading the books I already own because there will certainly be lessons to take away that I have forgotten over the years.  I would like to also add something about reading a poker blog regularly, but it will be too difficult to keep track of how many I read throughout the year.  We are going to start slow and simply keep it at two books.

 

Well, that is about it for my goals this year.  Should I come up with some later, maybe I will update this post or do a new post adding any potential ambitions.  Wish me luck this year as I attempt to continue being a winning poker player.

Thinking Poker Podcasts

Today I was in the mood for poker and I have a game coming up at WinStar this Thursday that has me very nervous.  Joanna and I are going on a trip to Broken Bow in Oklahoma and on the way we are staying at WinStar.  I plan on playing once Thursday night and again Friday morning if things go well the night before, but with my history at WinStar, it isn't going to go well.  I suspect the trip without gambling is going to cost about $400 and I am attempting to break even with my poker winnings, but I have a great fear of turning this $400 trip into $700.

 

Since I have won a few home game tournaments lately, I have been wanting to hear poker discussion more among my friends, and luckily I found a website that my server at work allows me to access (because it is poker related) that has podcasts.  I listened to two posts today and took a few notes from them that I thought were worthy of talking about here.

 

The first is this tidbit of knowledge: when semi-bluffing a hand, you want to be the last one betting.  I probably instinctively knew that, but I don't actively make sure I am the last bet when involved in a semi-bluff.  I feel like I am, but when the podcast speaker mentioned that, a little light bulb in my head went off that made me think that was so obvious.

 

Because of my track record at WinStar, I am going to be playing a timid game (which I know is a bad strategy), so I'm not sure how many semi-bluffs I am going to be making.  However, when I find myself in a situation that I am making a semi-bluff bet, I am going to be sure to be the final aggressor.

 

The second thing I heard I don't think I necessarily agree with.  The host said when short-stacked (which means about 15 big blinds remaining) late in a tournament, it is better to have A-5 suited than a hand like 7-4 suited on an all-in shove.  Before I get too deep into my thinking on this I will stipulate that if the all-in hands were A-5 suited against 7-4 suited, I would obviously rather have the A-5.

 

So what do I mean when I say I'd rather have 7-4 suited (besides it being my favorite non-premium hand)?  The reason I would rather push all-in with 7-4 suited than A-5 suited is if you get called, 7-4 has a better chance of being live.  If you get called with A-5, odds are your only live card is the five since your opponent called with a higher ace.  Obviously getting called by a pocket pair higher than seven but lower than an ace is going to stink when holding a seven and a four, but I just feel more comfortable hearing "call" when I move all-in with 7-4 than I do A-5.  Probably not that much more comfortable, but I have to at least feel like my cards stand a better chance than the ace-high hand would.

 

I don't know, maybe I am alone in this thinking, but like the podcast host said, "if your opponent has Ace-big, you are getting called no matter what."  Wouldn't you rather have two live cards at that point?

Weatherford (January 17): Night Of The A-J

After finishing 2014 in the black, which I will hopefully do a review of my play from last year, I started this year off well after winning $350 in Weatherford on Saturday.  There were two hands of consequence, only one of which I was included but both involved A-J.

 

 

We will begin with the hand that I was not playing.  One of the players in the hand defends his action, but in my humble opinion the call was completely wrong and there is no defense for it.  A player in middle position, who we will call Player B, raised pre-flop to $8 and two players, players A and C, called.  Player C was behind the raiser and Player A was in early position.  The pot has $26 in it at this point (the extra two dollars were from the big blind).

 

The flop came J-7-4 rainbow.  Player A checked and the original raiser, Player B, bet $17.  Player C called, bringing the action back to Player A, who then raised an additional $60.  After the flop came out, Player B’s bet put the pot at $43, Player C’s call brought it to $60, and Player A’s $17 from the initial bet made a pot of $77.  Then if you include the $60 from Player A’s raise, the pot is at $137.

 

So to recap what has happened, there is a pre-flop raise with two calls, a bet on the flop from the original raiser, a call, and a raise from a player who initially checked.  So far everything looks on the up-and-up.  Player A could be trying to steal a pot with nothing as he believes Player B is making a continuation bet and Player C is weak or Player A could have a strong hand and is wanting to take the pot down right here and now.  But this is where it gets interesting.

 

Player B then goes all-in for an additional $18 above the $60, for $78 total.  That raise makes a pot total of $215.  Player B obviously has something pretty good because he knows he is getting called by at least Player A since the raise is so small.

 

Player C then goes all-in, which now that I look back I don’t think was legal since Player B’s all-in raise was for less than the minimum.  After $78 goes into the pot from Player C to cover Player B’s all-in, it is an additional $249.  So for Player A to call both all-ins, which he can cover and would leave him with approximately $60, it is going to cost $267.  Prior to anything Player A does, the pot now has $482.

 

Player A has now seen a pre-flop raise from Player B, a call from Player C, a continuation bet from Player B, a call from Player C, an all-in re-raise from Player B after Player A’s check-raise, and an all-in re-re-raise from Player C.  The only way I make this call is with a set, and even with a set of fours or sevens I am not thrilled.  Player A decided to call with A-J, which is top pair-top kicker.  I don’t know how you can justify making that call, but Player A attempted to do so all night long.

 

It turns out, Player A had the same hand as Player B and Player C had a set of sevens.  Nothing came that changed the outcome and Player C raked in a pot of $749.

 

I have gone through every possible scenario in my head and in no situation do Player B and C have hands worse than A-J.  I could maybe get behind the idea that had Player B with the smaller stack of money been the second one to go all-in after Player C, it might be worth calling with A-J because you would probably lose to Player B, but the large side-pot with Player C would be worth chasing, however, that is not the way the hand progressed, so that argument is moot.

 

The second hand, which I was involved in, is one in which the final decision is certainly worth debating.  The player to my immediate right straddled the blinds for $5.  This basically means there are three blind hands now and the player who is the third blind for $5 has final action pre-flop, no matter what happens with the betting.  I look down and see A-J of spades.  I raise it to $15, which is now a 3x raise because of the straddle.  The player on my immediate left calls the bet.  The small and big blinds both fold.  The player who straddled re-raises and makes it $30 to go.  It is another $15 to call, which I and the player behind me do.  The pot now has $93 in it.

 

The flop comes out A-A-3 rainbow.  The first player, who re-raised my initial raise pre-flop, bets $45.  I instantly call and the player behind me folds.  The pot now has $183.  The turn is a ten.  I don’t recall whether it now made a possible flush draw or not, but that really wasn’t much of a concern for me.  My opponent bet all of his chips, which totaled $65.  It was now my decision to call or fold $65 to win a pot of $248.

 

A-J is a very good hand at this point.  I am getting almost 4-1 odds on my money to call.  The only hands that beat me are A-K, A-Q, A-10, A-3, 10-10, or 3-3.  I either beat or tie everything else and there is another card to come.

 

Discussing this hand with my friend yesterday, he believes there was so much money to win I should have called, even if I think I am beat.  I disagreed and believe that if you think you are beat, despite what is at stake, you lay the hand down.  Obviously there are exceptions to this as there are times when the bet is such a miniscule amount compared to what you can win that it is worth calling with a weak hand.

 

Going through the possible hand scenarios, I couldn’t see where someone would be willing to put all their money in the pot without a good ace when they have to know I am holding one of them.  My friend said he might have been making that play with a high pocket pair, but after you get called on the flop, it takes a lot of guts, that most players at the level I play at, don’t have to go all-in with a pocket pair lower than aces when two are on the board.  That leaves A-x lower than my jack.  With the way the hand played out, it just didn’t seem like he was making a move with something lower than a jack as his kicker.

 

I ended up folding my hand, showing the A-J.  The player also showed A-J, meaning I would have split the pot.  While I can look back and know what would have happened, I still think folding was the correct play in that position.  It just didn’t make sense that he would push all-in with a hand worse than mine, no matter how loose of a player he may be.  Pushing all-in without an ace in that position is insane and pushing with A-9 or worse is very aggressive, especially after seeing your opponent make a pre-flop raise, call your re-raise, and instantly call your flop bet.  I’m not saying it isn’t done, but it takes a lot of guts to do so.

 

Being a good poker player means playing the odds and knowing when to call and fold.  Being a great poker player means making calls and folds other players won’t make.  I am not a great poker player by any means, but I am striving to become one.  Laying a great hand down like my A-J is not easy and sometimes it isn’t correct, like in this case, but no matter the odds, no matter the money at stake, occasionally folding a big hand is the correct play.

Weatherford (September 20)

Never needing a win more in my life because of financial situations at home, I came away from my monthly poker game in Weatherford $140 richer.

 

Saturday was a day of emotional swings, and my poker game was probably the most calming part.  The morning started out with Emery having a soccer game.  This is our third attempt at soccer with her, in only 7 years of life, and while she has gotten better it is still not a sport she shows much interest in.  She played two different positions yesterday and when in the defender spot her level of interest was about as low as you can get.  I try not to be one of those parents on the sideline that yells over the coach at their child, but Emery simply wasn’t paying attention to what was going on and I couldn’t keep the instructions to myself.  Luckily for me I only had to endure her lackadaisical attitude for about 10 minutes.

 

Following the soccer game, we went home and I started working on my wife’s car.  The lock on her door has not been working for a couple of weeks.  A quick call to my local auto repair shop resulted in an estimated price of fixing the problem at a little more than $300.  I then got on the Internet and found out that should I be able to fix the problem on my own, it would only cost $25 for the part.

 

Once I received the new part about 10 days ago I quickly tried to remove the inside door panel, but was unable to loosen the section of the car needed to get to the broken part of the locking mechanism.  I decided since I was already saving myself $275 in labor I would purchase a repair manual for Joanna’s car that could tell me how to disassemble and reassemble pretty much every single piece of the Acura.  This was an additional $60.

 

The repair manual, which is the size of a George Foreman grill, came late last week and I put to use the book immediately following the soccer game.  It turns out it was one little screw that was preventing me from getting the inside panel off the door in my first attempt.  However, I’m glad I purchased the book because it played an integral role in getting the broken part located quickly and removed without further issues.  Plus, I plan on trying to repair any minor issues that happen with Joanna’s car in the future and can use this book again to do so.

 

I did strip a screw when taking the old part out, so that was an additional hour of work to slowly twist the screw out of its hole with some wire cutters and then go to my local hardware store to purchase a replacement screw.  It was then another 15 minutes of searching for the small envelope holding the new screw when I got home because it fell between the seat and console in Joanna’s car.  I also had an issue when the car door (without an inside handle or power to the locking mechanism) closed on me and it took five minutes to figure out how to get the door open without the normal methods of doing so.

 

Finally getting the new part in and everything back as it should be, I tested the automatic lock on Joanna’s door and things had gotten … worse.  The door wouldn’t lock at all now, which beforehand it could lock all the doors if you did so in a certain way, and even the passenger door was having locking issues now.  So my attempt at saving money and fixing the car on my own had resulted in spending $85 on the new part and a book and then I would still have to send the car in to get repaired by a professional for the original $300 price tag.  Things were not looking good.

 

I took the car door apart again and gave it another go at fixing the issue.  I was able to make a change that I was hoping would fix all of the problems.  Again, I put everything back together (which if you need a car door taken apart I am your man as I have several hours of experience now under my belt at such a task) and was ready to test the lock.  But wouldn’t you believe it, after listening to the car stereo the entire time of working on the door repair, the car battery had drained and the car was completely dead.

 

This led to Joanna and me pushing the car out of the driveway so I could get street access to my car, because I certainly wasn’t going to miss my poker game.  After a bit of verbal brawling with my wife due to an injured ego and strained back from not being able to fix the initial problem, causing a new problem, and pushing an SUV around the backyard, we were able to get the car over enough so that I could back my car out.  My brother-in-law brought a charger over late Saturday night in order to hopefully get some juice back into the battery.

 

Well, after about 24 hours of charging we checked the battery and it seems that the battery is working properly.  We took the car out for a spin last night to get snow cones and the car battery was fully juiced, but the locks aren’t quite working as they should be.  Joanna has taken the car in to the Acura dealer to see whether they can make a slight adjustment to get everything working properly.

 

So that brings us to the poker game.  Unfortunately it was a bit of a boring game for me.  I won a lot of pots, but most of them were only about $10-20 in size.  I was the table bully, bluffing and betting a lot, before Phil and Brandon showed up.  Once they got there I had to change my game some because they are big bettors.

 

Brandon simply gets bored if he isn’t involved in a pot, so he sees a lot of hands.  Phil is an over-bettor and will make bets that are the size of the pot, no matter what he is holding.  If you have the fortitude to hang in there and call big bets, you can normally win out against Phil.

 

The only hand I really can recall worth mentioning was one against Phil.  He raised the pot pre-flop to $10.  I had limped in for $2 with A-3 offsuit and was the only other player in the hand after Phil’s raise.  I called the additional $8 and saw a flop.  It came out 10-7-3.  I checked in the dark, meaning I made my check prior to the flop being seen, and Phil, surprisingly, also checked.  Had he bet I was going to call because he normally makes a continuation bet no matter what comes out.  It is the turn where you can figure out if Phil actually has a hand or not.

 

The turn was a 2, making the board 10-7-3-2.  I had again checked in the dark.  This time Phil bet the pot and made it $20.  I immediately called with my pair of threes.

 

Again, I made my bet by checking before the final card was dealt.  The river was a king and the board was made up of 10-7-3-2-K with no threat of a flush.  Phil made a $30 bet and I instantly called.  I felt that if he truly had a hand worth betting he would make another pot-sized bet of something around $60.  He turned over A-2 for bottom pair and my slightly better pair won the hand.

 

I could tell the loss was a bit of a kick to the junk for Phil as he probably thought my hand wasn’t worth calling for $30.  But I have come to figure out that if you are willing to gamble at the high stakes Phil wants to play for then you will usually come out a winner.

 

With the $140 win I am now in the black for poker this year if you don’t count the winnings from last month’s tournament, which I will be counting.  My year-to-date total in winnings is $900, $830 of which was from the tournament.  Unless I play in another game at WinStar between now and the end of the year, I should only get three more games in Weatherford.  Hopefully I can continue the win streak I have been on lately and get my total winnings up to four digits.

Weatherford (August 23)

The second annual semi-free roll tournament was held this past Saturday and for the second straight year I cashed.  This year’s finish was second place and I won $830 for six-and-a-half hours of work.  There was improvement from year to year as the 2013 tournament resulted in a third-place finish.

 

I use the term semi-free roll because there is no exact buy-in to get in the tournament, but with each month we play in the Weatherford cash game we earn $1,000 in tournament chips.  At every cash game, a dollar from the small blind is taken for four hours and put in a pot that is held until the tournament.  From September 2013 to July 2014, I played eight times and started the tournament with $8,000 in chips.  The most a player could have, which three of them had the maximum amount, was $11,000.  We had a total of 17 players take part in the tournament.

 

There were a few hands memorable enough worth mentioning.  The first was the only time I was all in, not counting the final hand, that could have sent me home.  I held pocket queens in middle position.  The blinds at this point were $100-200 with a $25 ante.  The players ahead of me folded and I made it $600 to go.  The player immediately to my left, who had somewhere between $12,000-15,000 in chips, re-raised and made it $1,500.  It folded around back to me.  Following my ante of $25 at the beginning of the hand I had exactly $5,000 to work with.

 

If I think I am beat by aces or kings I could fold now, give up my $600 raise, and have $4,400, which was still enough to be dangerous.  However, at this point I really can’t be sure whether I am beat or not.  I could call and see what comes on the flop, which if I then either fold or lose a showdown without making any more bets I would have $3,500.  This is worse, but still an amount I can be selectively aggressive with.  However, with queens in this situation, I am looking to either double up by the end of the hand or find out whether my queens are best, and there are two ways of doing that.

 

The first is by throwing caution to the wind and going all in right then and there.  I don’t like this play because if I get called I am drawing to two outs as he wouldn’t call an additional $3,500 with less than kings.

 

The second option is to raise an amount somewhere between $2,400 and $3,000 that allows him to let me know whether he has me beat or not.  If I raise it to one of those amounts and he re-raises, I will know immediately that I am beat.  If he folds, I win his $1,500 and the additional $500 from blinds and antes without having to see a single community card.  If he simply calls my bet, I have a good feeling he has pocket kings and is afraid I am representing aces, we have the same hand, or, which is the most likely scenario, he has a pocket pair smaller than queens and is just hoping to hit a set on the flop.  I decided to go with this option.

 

I made it $3,000 to call, leaving myself $2,000 and a plan.  My plan was that if he called my bet, I would state I am all in prior to the flop ever being dealt.  This is called “betting in the dark.”  By making my bet without any knowledge of what has come, I am telling him that nothing that comes on the flop could possibly scare me, which is another way of saying I have aces.

 

He called the bet, which let me know I was likely in the lead at this point, and when the dealer was about to deal the flop I made my statement of all in.  The “dark” all-in bet stunned my opponent and he eventually decided to fold.  He showed jacks and I showed my queens.  During the table talk while he contemplated his decision, he told me he just couldn’t fathom how I would make the bets I did with a hand worse than his jacks.  It is a good thing he folded too, because they ran the turn and river cards and he would have ended up beating me with a flush as there were four spades out on the board and he held the jack of spades.

 

The second hand of consequence was one that I held pocket jacks.  Two players to my right made a raise that was approximately 20 percent of his stack.  I felt he would probably be trying to double-up on this hand no matter when the chips were bet.  The next player, who was to my immediate right, went all in for a little more than the original bettor’s entire chip stack.  This means the original raiser would likely call no matter how many people in between called the all-in bet.

 

I looked down for the first time to see my pocket pair.  I was immediately depressed because I knew I just couldn’t call.  It wasn’t that I necessarily thought I was beat by either player, because the initial raiser could have simply been making a raise with A-X, two face cards, or a weaker pocket pair and the second player could be making a move with similar hands trying to challenge the other short stack at the table.  The ultimate reason I knew I had to fold was because both players would be against me and trying to beat four random cards with jacks is not easy.

 

I folded my hand and the initial raiser called, putting him all in.  They flipped their cards and the second player had pocket queens, which dominated my jacks.  While my reasoning for folding wasn’t 100 percent correct, it was still the correct play.

 

Two other hands I remember were both bluffs that worked out.  In the first example I held A-K and the high card on the board was a jack.  I made a bluff on the river when all you needed was a nine for a straight and my opponent folded A-J, which was top pair, top kicker.  He was too afraid of the straight to make the call.

 

The other bluff was with Q-10 of diamonds.  On the river I missed my flush and made a large bet after my opponent checked the river, who had raised pre-flop, bet the flop, and checked the turn.  The turn check is where I knew I had a good chance of stealing the pot.  I saw an opportunity to win the hand and was right, as he folded his pocket fours.

 

The hand that gave me a safe amount of chips about midway through the tournament was pocket sevens.  A seven came out on the flop giving me a set.  I called a guy’s all-in bet when he held queens and he didn’t hit a third queen.

 

Another lucky moment for me was when with nine players left I held aces against kings and all the money went in the pot before the flop.  My aces held up and I sat on my stack until we lost three more players and made the money.

 

The only other exciting moment for me was when we had 14 players left in the tournament, a single guy held a third of the entire chip count.  Everyone was in awe of how much he had, but for all the money he held, his table had only lost two players and he didn’t even knock one of those guys out.  Knowing this guy’s reputation of making money early and then losing it all back late, I made a comment to the player on my left that I was predicting with 14 of us left the chip leader, who held $50,000 in chips and leaving $100,000 to the remaining 13 players, which is an average of $7,700, would be knocked out of the tournament prior to making any money.  My neighbor thought I was a little crazy and I wasn’t willing to put any money on my prediction, but it turned out he finished in seventh place.

 

The final standings were as follows:

1st – Mark Y.

2nd – Me

3rd – Brent

4th – Mark J.

5th – Jason

6th – J.A.

7th – Brandon H.

8th – Jack

9th – Keith

10th – Danny

11th – Joey

12th – Brandon C.

13th – Miguel

14th – Jason S.

15th – Doyle

16th – Jay

17th – Phil

Planning For The Weatherford Tournament

My buddy Joey from the Weatherford game I play each month sent me the blind schedule for the upcoming end-of-the-fiscal-year tournament in August.  The receipt of his message has stirred anticipation for the tournament and I have started working out strategy for the night.  The tournament will be held on August 23 and the blind structure is as follows:

Ante     Blinds                    Time

            $25-50                    25 min.

            $50-100                 25 min.

            $75-150                 25 min.

            $100-200              25 min.

$25      $100-200            25 min.

$25      $150-300            25 min.

     10-minute break

$50      $200-400            25 min.

$50      $250-500            25 min.

$100    $300-600           25 min.

$100    $400-800           25 min.

$200    $500-1,000       25 min.

$200    $600-1,200        25 min.

     10-minute break

$300    $700-1,400        25 min.

$300    $800-1,600        25 min.

$400    $1,000-2,000    25 min.

$500    $1,200-2,400    25 min.

$500    $1,500-3,000    25 min.

$500    $2,000-4,000   25 min.

 

There will be approximately $158,000 in chips at play and I will begin with $8,000.  The most a player can have is $11,000 and there will be about six people with the maximum amount.  Last year I finished the tournament in third and had only $9,000 to start, but the cap was set at $10,000 in chips.  I could pay $80 to have an additional $2,000 in chips, but I don’t think with this blind structure there is an urgent need for the additional amount.  If I were at $4,000 or $5,000 I might consider it.

 

I don’t know an exact amount of players who will be in the tournament yet, but I expect it to be about 18.  My strategy going into the tournament is to play tight but aggressive in the first four rounds when antes are not a factor.  However, once the antes are implemented and there is more at stake before the cards are ever dealt, I will become much more aggressive with my standards for a starting hand.  Obviously this plan could change drastically depending on how the cards are falling.

 

Should I take a big hit early on, I may have to go into lockdown mode until I get a good enough hand to start pushing.  Yet, if I get a rush of good cards in the beginning I could start pushing people around with my chip stack, no matter what the size of the pot pre-flop.

 

Once I have a clearer idea of how many players will be involved and what the exact starting chip stacks will be I can formulate a more concrete approach.

Weatherford (May 25)

We are nearly through five full months of 2014 and unfortunately I have only played three sessions of poker in that time.  The first game I won $60, the second game saw a loss of the same amount, and this most recent game resulted in a $215 profit.  After eight hours of play I logged a $26.88 hourly rate for the evening.

The game started very well for me, as I was able to build my $100 buy-in into $510 after about four hours.  I was hitting a lot of great hands and they were always slightly better than my opponent’s hand.  The sickest win of the night for me was when the river card gave me a full house while at the same time making a flush for my opponent.

There were two hands of consequence that I thought I would share.  They are a bit of bragging as I made the correct decision (folding) for both, but that partly is what this blog is about.  The first situation was when after the river I had top pair (aces) with a jack kicker.  The cards on the board were A-Q-?-10-?.  The two unknown cards were inconsequential and there was no flush available.  I had raised pre-flop with my A-J suited and by the end of the hand, with betting on the flop and a check on the turn, it was down to two of us.  I made a bet about half the size of the pot and was raised by about three times the size of my bet.  I considered that if I was beat it was likely by either A-10 for two pair or K-J for a straight.  I figured A-K or A-Q would have re-raised me pre-flop by the player I was up against.

After a few minutes of thinking the hand through, I was leaning toward the straight.  I just couldn’t fathom a hand my opponent held that was worse than mine and he would be raising me on the river, unless it was a complete bluff.  I opted to fold and showed my hand.  He was startled at what I was folding and when asked if he would show he allowed me to pick one card.  The card shown was a king.  That meant he had to hold either an ace or a jack for me to have made the correct decision.  The next day I called him and asked what he held.  He said it was the straight and I have no reason to not believe him.

The second hand in question was near the very end of the night.  I held A-5 and a player behind me made it $10 to go pre-flop.  A player on my right called and I called.  The flop was A-5-2 with two clubs.  The player on my right checked, I checked, with plans to raise after the pre-flop raiser made a continuation bet, and the pre-flop raiser obliged by making a $20 bet.  The player on my right then raised it to $100 even.

This was not part of the plan.  I had about $350 in front of me at this point and knew it was going to cost all of my chips by the end of the hand, so I had to be sure I had the best of it by the end.  With the top two pair the only hands that beat me were three aces, three fives, three twos, and a straight with 4-3.  Normally I would not rule out the player who had raised it to a hundo having 4-3, but in the last six months he has been in quite the slump and those types of speculative hands are starting to be removed from his repertoire.  That left a pocket pair that hit.

With a little out-loud discussion, but not revealing what I had as I did not want to give away anything to the player behind me, I decided I indeed was beat.  I folded, as did the pre-flop raiser behind me.  He showed K-9 of clubs, which gave him the nut flush draw.  He decided it was too expensive without me involved to draw for the flush.  I showed my top two pair and the winner of the hand showed pocket twos.

I’ve said this before, but sometimes the most memorable plays of the night are not calls, but folds.

With so little playing time this year due to Sawyer being born I decided to look back at my results since 2009.  I added up my career stats and discovered I have won nearly $5,000 in poker games over the course of 464.5 hours of play.  My hourly rate since keeping these statistics is $10.70.  Not great, but it is better than being a losing player.