{"id":8,"date":"2004-08-24T01:15:47","date_gmt":"2004-08-24T06:15:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/dtrdev\/2004\/08\/24\/damning-the-river-day-1\/"},"modified":"2004-08-24T01:15:47","modified_gmt":"2004-08-24T06:15:47","slug":"damning-the-river-day-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dtr\/2004\/08\/24\/damning-the-river-day-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Damning the River, Day 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

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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.<\/P>
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“Folding the best hand on the river in a large pot is the single worst mistake you can make.”<\/A>  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.  <\/P>
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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.<\/P>
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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.<\/P>
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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.<\/P>
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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.  <\/P>
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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.<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1037,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1356],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dtrstories"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dtr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dtr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dtr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dtr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1037"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dtr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dtr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dtr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dtr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dtr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}