Damning the River

Back in Vegas, so it was back to the Palms.  And what a day – my worst yet, by a landslide.  Sounds like a good day for a first post.  For the first part of the day, the cards were running me over, and I was getting unlucky, both in the sense that when I was in front they called with terrible odds and won and called with sufficient odds and won.  Then the cards went dead, and it was a long six hours.  Which is not to say that I didn’t make any mistakes – I still made my fair share, I’d estimate between 3-5 big bets worth.  I want to focus on one problem area, very fitting to this blog’s title: playing the river.

“Folding the best hand on the river in a large pot is the single worst mistake you can make.”  I’ve drilled that into my head so hard.  SSHE has also helped me differentiate between small and big pots.  But I feel like I still don’t have a good sense of when it is actually right to fold.  For instance, today, the board ended up showing something like 3 clubs, along with a straight to anyone with one J.  The river was the 10c, pairing my kicker and giving me aces and tens.  I think I was getting either 8, 9, or 10 to 1 on my river call, not sure which.  There were six in before the flop, and I had two with me all the way to the river – up until that point, my aces ten kicker was seemingly leading. 

The question is, regarding any of those fairly similar odds, and one player left to act behind me, does that call make sense?  With that board, will I win between 10-12.5% of the time?  I know that reads matter in this situation, but the don’t fold in big pots mantra eschews excessive reliance on reads.  Or did reads not even matter here? Was 10-12.5% simply not enough? Given how scary that board was, it seems quite possible.  Many of Ed Miller’s examples include 11-14 to 1 odds, so perhaps I am misreading his suggestions.  Given that LLH is often about pushing small edges, the small percentage differences may matter.

I feel like I run into the above a lot.  Times when I am somewhat sure that my overpair is no longer good, and so on.  I feel like I call way too liberally.  For a beginner, that seems somewhat appropriate given that folding in a large pot with the best hand is such a disaster.  But to take it to the next level, I’ll have to adjust.

Slightly different, here’s another tricky river situation for me: 4 diamonds by the river, including the K, and I’ve got QJ of diamonds.  If I check into my one opponent in this fairly large pot, I maybe lose a bet.  But with three diamonds on the turn, would she have called with anything less than the ace draw?  Particularly when I know I have the second and third nut locked up, and there are no other draws or scariness on the board?  In this case, I bet, she raised, have to call and there’s the ace.  That seems like an error, but couldn’t I have been called with worse hands? Given that I was betting all the way, she could have assumed I had an overpair and that a weaker, maybe even the 10d flush, was good.  But I question my play here.

There were a few other mistakes today too. A time when I pushed too hard with pair of tens ace kicker and a draw, when other completed draws became more likely – that was just plain silly, and a silly bet on the river when I felt high cards might be best.  Other leaks from the small blind considering who was in and whether it was worth calling. 

These mistakes, compounded with the lack of luck, made for a humbling day.  But that’s alright, I suppose – I need these lessons to get better in the long run.

Filed by at 1:15 am under dtrStories
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