I had taken a break from poker, but I've recently started playing again at the $100 buy-in NL tables at Bodog ($0.50/$1 blinds). I played a hand tonight that I think illustrates a couple of good points.
I opened for 3 times the big blind with my KK, and got two callers. Player A was in the small blind. He was a pretty bad player who had moved in both preflop and on the flop in previous hands when it wasn't necessary. Player B, the big blind, was fairly new to the table, but he had seen at least one of Player A's all ins.
The flop came 34T, two spades. Player A quickly moved all in for $36. That did not surprise me, but what happened next did. Player B moved all in as well for $94, almost a full buy-in.
I thought about this for a bit, and I was puzzled. The all in move preflop to isolate a player is not uncommon in tournaments, but that's a much different situation than a cash game. You can't rebuy in a tournament (unless it's a rebuy tourney), and the blinds are going up as the play progresses. In a cash game neither of those are true, and you generally don't want to get all of your money in unless you have a very strong hand.
The best guess I could make was that Player B had a somewhat strong hand, better than he put Player A on, but that he was afraid of me coming in. I might very well have the best hand. With only my preflop raise invested in the pot, though, and holding only an overpair, I couldn't call a bet there for almost my entire stack. I folded.
The cards were turned over. Player A had 99. Player B had 33, he had flopped a set.
Player B would have had me in serious trouble had I called. In fact, heads up for the side pot he was a 92% favorite with two cards to come. With a big overpair I might have gotten all my money in on the flop if he moved more gradually. Instead, he gave me a move that made my scratch my head briefly, but gave me a relatively easy fold.
Why did he do it? We can't be sure, but I have a couple of guesses. The first is the isolation play I mentioned. He is likely someone who has watched a lot of poker on tv, and has seen people make this move at the final table of big tournaments. He might not have played a lot of cash games, and may not understand the differences between them.
The second guess is that he was simply focused on Player A and wanted to bust him. He saw Player A's reckless play, caught a big hand, and wanted to crush him.
As he played it he made a profit of less than $50 on the hand. Not bad, but it could have been more like $150, one and a half buy-ins. Anyone who has played NL cash games and tracked their results knows that big pots like that make a real difference in your hourly win rate. You don't want to miss a 92% chance to double up.
The big lesson to be learned here is don't take the play of one other player personally, and don't get too focused on the play of one other player. There might be a bad or superagressive player in the hand, but if there are also other players you need to take them into consideration. It really hurts when you make a play at a bad player that even turns out to be right, but that same play cripples you against another player in the hand.
Ted
p.s. I have no explanation for Player A moving in on the flop, beyond my previous observations about the reasons people play badly. With 99 in his hand and a ten high flop, there was no reason to move in. Needless to say, he didn't last long at the table.
Posted by Ted Williams at July 30, 2007 11:29 PM