Compounding Mistakes
This year at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure I suffered an experience that every poker player goes through at least once. I was playing in the $5k No Limit event after busting out of the Main Event. Normally I’m very astute at the table but in this particular instance I was talking to the player on my right about something or other and wasn’t paying 100% attention to the action before me. I’m in the cutoff and when it gets to me I look down and see Q-J off-suit. The blinds are 100/200 so I toss out a 500 chip and a 100 chip, intending to raise to 600. The dealer quickly pushes the 100 chip back to me and I’m instantly confused until I realize that the player under the gun has already raised to 500. Fortunately I hadn’t said raise, but I’m sure to anyone paying attention at the table it was fairly obvious I hadn’t realized that the other player had initially raised. No problem though, at this point the damage is limited to 500 chips and I have over 14,000 in my stack. I certainly don’t want to be giving it away, but I can play cautiously and only put a lot of chips in if I really nail the fl op. Everyone else folds but the big blind, who calls.
So the fl op is 9-8-2 rainbow. Decent fl op for me with two overcards and a straight draw, fi gured I might call a reasonable size bet if I felt I could win a big pot. The big blind checks and to my surprise the original under the gun raiser checks as well. At this point I fi gure I might as well take a stab at the pot. I can easily represent 9-9, 8-8, 2-2, A-9 off-suit, or 9-8 suited here. I bet 1,000 into the 1,600 chip pot. The big blind calls and the original raiser folds. At this point I fi gure I can two-barrel most scary cards on the turn and check behind anything else and give myself a free chance to get there. The turn is the Ks putting two spades on the board and to my surprise the big blind comes out fi ring 2,100 into the 3,600 chip pot. I think for a second and canft really imagine any way the king would really help a player who checked then called the fl op. If he fl opped a huge hand it seems like he would check to me again. In my line of thought, the only types of hands that made sense were ones making blocking bets here like 10-9 or something that didnft want to have to face a second and possibly third barrel with second pair with a weak kicker. I decide that itfs not very likely hefs strong and I think I can take the pot away from him here. I raise to 5,600 and without much deliberation he goes all in. OOPS! I have three outs to the nuts (one of the tens makes a fl ush) and canft really call off my remaining 6,500 even with the pot the size it is unless I can make a case that my Q or J are good sometimes. I disgustedly muck my hand.The moral of the story here? My initial mistake of calling pre-fl op because I was distracted led me down a road to making many more (and much larger) mistakes. If I had just paused and taken a few seconds to study the table and the action before me (or even just asked the dealer what the action was to me) I could have saved a lot of pain and agony, not to mention chips. I’ve managed to get to a point where I make mistakes like this few and far between, but almost without fail when I mis-click online or misread the action live I will compound that mistake by then trying to win the hand post-fl op anyways. I can count the number of times in my life that’s actually worked in my favor on one hand. Most of the time I would have been better off just cutting my losses and getting out of the hand. Think about that the next time you make a bad call on the fl op and suddenly fi nd yourself calling turn and river bets because you’re “priced in,” or any other numerous seemingly small mistakes we make at the tables that quickly compound themselves into beasts of their own. Small mistakes, when made infrequently, are okay. It’s the times you let small mistakes become huge disasters that will eat into your bankroll and profi ts!
