If You Can't Spot the Fish
When I go trout fi shing, before I start casting a fl y around, I’ll spend some time looking at the stream. Okay, when I’m playing my fl y-fi shing Agame, that’s what I do. “Where are the fi sh?” In that riffl e? Deep pool where the stream bends? Under the tree roots over there? “What am I looking for?” A glint of white belly as the salmonoid slurps a nymph off the bottom. Upstream movement, which rocks rarely do. A light encircled shadow on the stream bottom, giving away the presence of something in mid-water.
Poker is no different – you need to fi nd the fi sh before you know the source of your profi t. And how do you fi nd the fi sh in a poker game? Mistakes, grasshopper, mistakes. If you sit down in a game and can’t spot mistakes happening, then you need to fi nd a different game. Either the players aren’t making mistakes or you can’t see the mistakes they’re making. Neither of those situations is good for your bankroll. Here’s a four-pack of errors that I recently spotted in a Limit Hold’em game. I think it’s important for poker players to develop the skill of recognizing errors, and I’ll probably do this for other forms of poker in upcoming columns.
Check-calling heads up with a big draw and no showdown value
I was actually the aggressor in this pot. Playing in a 6-max Limit game online, I open-raised with Ah Ks in the cutoff and just the big blind called. The fl op came Js 9d 3c. The BB checked, I bet, he called. The turn was the 6c He checked, I bet, he called. The river was a complete blank, the 2s, and he checked again. I couldnft see how I could get a call from a worse hand, so I checked as well. I won the pot . he had Tc 8c! He was actually a favorite on the fl op, and only a 48:52 underdog on the turn. But more importantly, he fl opped a monster draw that improved on the turn. Had he check-raised the fl op and bet the turn, or check-raised the turn and bet the river, he would have almost certainly won the pot; it was a big mistake not investing an extra bet somewhere to move me off some random unpaired ace, king, or queen. Note that had the pot been multi-way, it would have made much more sense to play passively since the presence of a third player would have given his draw even better value. And hefd have more diffi culty winning the pot without showing his hand down.
Overcalling on the river with a middling pair
With three players in a ten big-bet pot, and a board of Td 8c 5h 4h 3s, the pre-fl op aggressor, who had been betting the whole way, bet again, and was called. Now the third player in the pot called as well. The bettor had pocket kings, and the caller had 9s 8s. I donft mind either play there. But the overcaller had As 5s. Had the overcaller been the only guy between the bettor and the pot, Ifd say calling was a no-brainer. But the call in front of him drove his calling requirements up substantially. Calling with an 8 (giving him second pair on the board) would be marginally defensible. Overcalling with the third pair was not. Sure, every once in a while hefll have the best hand, but not the 8% or so he needs to make it a profi table call. Note that this is partially because of his very presence in the pot. The bettor will have stronger betting requirements with two opponents, and the middle caller will have stronger calling requirements with a player to act behind him.
Thinking that you can bully your way through a handful of opponents
I suppose the protagonist of this tale must play more No Limit Hold’em than Limit. I recall, back in the ’80s, watching veterans of the Las Vegas (and the deeply lamented Cameo Club in Palo Alto, California) No Limit games trying to adapt to the newly popular Limit Hold’em. They had made lots of money simply “barreling” (though it wasn’t called that then) through an entire hand, putting ever-increasing pressure on people, who would ultimately fold on the turn or the river to the monster bet. Some of these hyper-aggressive guys never seemed to fi gure out that when the opponent was calling one bet in a pot of ten or fi fteen bets, it was hard to bluff him off much of anything. I just watched a guy do that online (yes, in a Limit game), raising 70% of the pots pre-fl op, and then trying to muscle his way through the hand. Usually he could get one or two people out, and often he got it heads up – between him and the guy with the best hand. He dumped off fi fty big bets or so and then disappeared. I hope he went to watch StellarWind’s videos on CardRunners.
Calling 2-3 bets cold in the blinds
Whenever I see this, I lick my chops. There is virtually no circumstance where this is correct, unless you have a premium hand (A-A to Q-Q, A-K suited) and can either count on somebody to do the capping for you, or the cap is already on. Furthermore, some players seem virtually unable to surrender pre-fl op when they’ve got a forced investment in the pot. I sat last night and happily noted half a dozen such generous folks at my tables. When you fi nd those people, your statistics program will almost always confi rm that they are seeing 70% or more of the fl ops – they seem to think that the pre-fl op investment is “required,” rather like blackjack, and the “poker” part begins on the fl op. Such players are invaluable to your bankroll.
That’s it – I’m sure you can fi nd some mistakes in your own games. Try an experiment – before you click the “Deal me in” button, watch. Find the trout fi sh in your stream game. And only when you spot them do you make your fi rst cast. Lee Jones is the Chief Operating Offi cer of CardRunners.com. He has worked in the poker industry for fi ve years and been associated with professional poker for almost twenty years.
