Poker Diaries #2: “Don’t Throw Rocks at the Fish.”
It would be nice to do this once a week, but if you know anything about me, you know I’m not known for my skills of keeping a schedule. In fact, it seems like the only thing I can do regularly is play poker. It’s become almost a compulsion again, but this time I’m aware of it and how dangerous it can be for me, so I spend a good amount of energy committed to making sure I do healthy things like exercise, socialize, and eat well. Every night I come home from a night of playing, I have the urge to write it all down, but so often I’m so tired that I don’t. This makes it tough to remember hand histories, but I don’t want this thing to be solely dedicated to that anyway.
I’ll start with a weird spot, the reason for the title:
In the big blind I have Jack-5 of diamonds. The fish on the button limps and the small-blind folds. I don’t recommend this, but I raise to 4x and he calls. Flop is Q24 with one diamond. I bet half, and he calls. Turn is the Ace of diamonds, a card I could continue on, but I think after his call on the flop there’s sort of no reason to. He’s the type of old-man fish who will only call if he has a pair or a massive draw, but he was also drinking so who knows. Then I see a strange thing, he checks out of turn. I think to myself that this is extreme weakness, if he thinks I checked to him on this Ace, maybe I should just run a bluff. So I do. I bet again and he quickly calls. I don’t remember the river, but I know that I checked and he overbet the pot by a lot, so I insta-mucked. He showed Ace-Queen face up. I was pissed, so I say, “Did you mean to check out of turn?” and he gives me this look like I’m crazy, so I repeat the question. He eventually says, “I don’t know what you mean.” So I say, “Where I’m from that’s called an angle.” He again looks dumbfounded, so I say, “That’s a fucking angle. Watch it with that shit.” He starts getting mad like I was in the wrong or something and starts talking loudly like he wants to take me outside. I put my headphones in and ignore him. A few hours later he was broke.
Admittedly, it was sort of dumb. There was a mid-stakes reg at the table (only $1/$3 was running at the time) and I even apologized to him because the fish was sort of the main mark at the table. It reminds me when this exact thing happened a few months ago (probably the best game I’ve ever been to) and the guy flipped out again on me. The dealer, my good friend, turned to me after the other guy settled down and said, “Don’t throw rocks at the fish.” He was right, I didn’t want to risk getting kicked out of the best game in town. I never heard back from that game, so we probably did something wrong, but that’s not the point. The point is that sometimes I forget that people are playing this game just for fun. I forget that the entire point of games is to have fun, and everyone has it in their own way. Some guys want to run huge bluffs in order to forget about how their wife hates them, and some guys just want to pass the time folding 90% of hands just to get away from their kids. But then there’s players like me and the rest of the winning regs that have fun in games by figuring them out. We don’t care about how boring it is to fold most of the time, we take pleasure with the accomplishment of winning. Or better put, the figuring out of winning. Some great advice was given to me by a high-stakes player I know, when I told him how I hate playing the low-stakes because we already know how to beat it. He said, “Then the new game for you isn’t figuring it out, it’s how long can you be here and continue doing it.”
Before I end this I’ll give another quick hand history. And before I do that I want to say that I’ll be going to Washington D.C. next week to mainly play poker but to also see the sights. I’m sure I’ll have some cool stories to tell. Tonight was the NFL draft in Cleveland so there were a lot of people around and a $5/$10 game went off. Most of the players in the game were not fish, but it looked good enough to give it my first shot at these stakes.
Early on, I got into a hand where the main fish donked into me on an Ace-high wheel type of flop when I was holding Ace-Ten in position. I raised him, he called. Turn was a nine, he donked again and I raised again, but this time he tanked for like seven hours and called. River was a Jack, so I’m basically beating nothing, so he checked and I checked back, to which he showed Ace-Five, two pair. I was baffled. The fish are just as good at this level than anywhere. In fact, the game is almost exactly the same at all stakes. Know this: don’t put a mental block in your head about anything, the people better than you at whatever it is you want to be good at, are probably not even better than you.
A few hands later, I flopped Broadway with King-Queen and a redraw to the nut-flush. I made about a thousand bucks on that hand, which took me in the positive. Eventually I went on a mini tear. I played ultra-aggressive because I knew it was the only way I was going to beat all these nits. My aggression has been amped up lately because I’ve realized how wide people are calling pre and post flop, but tightening up on turns and rivers. It’s been increasing my win-rate immensely. The session went well, and I ended up making about a thousand dollars in only a few hours.
There was one hand I wanted to mention because I lost about $700 on it and it could have been avoidable.
Pocket tens in the small blind. There was a straddle, so button (a weak player, but not a super-fish) makes it $60. I raise to $225 and he calls. Flop is 554 rainbow. In the current metagame of the last few years, it is extremely common to bet one-third pot here and then bomb a turn that connects with your range. The reason for this small bet size (and I’m simplifying here) is because in order for your opponent to not get exploited by not maintaining the minimum defense frequency (or the pot divided by the pot plus bet), he has to call with so many hands that your range crushes. With a bigger bet size, he can just fold his trash, so you miss value. But I know my opponent will float me overly light here — too light given his preflop range — so by only betting a third of the pot, you are missing value again. So I size up and bet $250 (roughly half-pot). He calls, and the turn is a King. Now, a pattern that I have noticed here is that a large bet confuses a lot of opponents. They usually over-fold in this spot. I’ve almost conditioned myself to bet close to pot on turned Kings in a three-bet pot. And that’s exactly what I do. I bet $700 (actually less than pot, but big nevertheless). He calls. The river is a blank, we check, and he shows King-Queen.
The reason I bring up this hand is because this is a perfect spot to just give up on the turn. He’s simply not exploiting you here when he bets. Let me repeat that: You Are Not Being Exploited Period. Of course I can run this through a solver to see what it says, but even if it wants you to bet your entire range the size of the pot (or like, two-thirds), I will make the argument that your opponent is veering so far away from GTO that it doesn’t matter. And here’s why: I know this particular player will only call a preflop three-bet with Broadway type hands. The weaker the hand, the more it will be weighted toward suited hands, which makes for less combos of those. Since we heavily block Ace-Ten, this means his range is weighted toward Ace-Jack, King-Queen and King-Jack. Any turned King or Queen are bad for us, and if it’s an Ace, we can certainly bet it like half the time, then jam any non-King/Queen river for value (and balance). Therefore, I should have given up. It would have saved me $700. Just because you don’t bluff in a certain spot 100% of the time, doesn’t mean that’s exploitable. In fact, by not betting there, I would have exploited him.
More poker adventures lay ahead, and more nights worrying about going back to school in the fall. At least I know with certainty that school will be good for me. And regarding the fish: listen, this is not my first rode-o. Obviously I know not to fuck with the fish, but I’m human too. It’s not like I’m teaching him how to get better at the game, I’m just defending myself from someone whom I think is trying to gain an advantage by playing an angle. It’s simply bad etiquette. People don’t see that there is fish privilege in some games, and it’s sad. Just because you’re a massive fish doesn’t mean you have a free pass to do whatever you want. Be a decent person. Remember, at the end of the day, it’s just money.
