POTD #259 A Failed Check-Raise Bluff that Leaves me Fuming
"He shouldn't have even bet and he somehow bet-called"
At 37, I am officially middle-aged, and as a soon-to-be father of two, that means I am literally, but also spiritually, a dad. There is no more dad-coded behaviour than telling the same stories over and over again to impart a lesson to their children, and POTD has prepared me to give the same advice over and over again in the hopes that readers of POTD will learn from my mistakes. I’m reminded of a story1 I read about Richard Nixon’s presidential campaign. A strategist on the campaign was asked why Nixon keeps repeating the same talking points and the strategist responded that the average voter doesn’t really understand what is being said until the 10th time they hear it. So given this week is Idiot Week, I’ll assume the average POTD reader is as smart as the average voter (my apologies) and repeat a version of something I’ve written every day this week. If you are frustrated that your opponent is playing their hand like an idiot, you are the one acting like an idiot. You should be grateful they are playing their hand like an idiot, not mad that they aren’t.
I try to curb that behaviour, but there is one area when I find it hard to let it go: watching streamed poker. I am watching Triton streams to gather intel on my opponents, get content for POTD, study and sharpen my own poker game, and for my own entertainment. [I’m watching because I’m one of those nutjob insomniacs. -ed] If you are watching something for entertainment, you’re allowed to play armchair QB and claim you’d never punt off in such horrible fashion, or that you’d master this complex turn strategy that players on stream are botching. It’s part of the fun and it is just fun, until it carries over into your actual poker game, and you start giving players too little credit or develop overconfident habits, and you punt on stream and provide schadenfreude for the viewing public.
An area where I find the most small technical mistakes that fill me with a smug sense of superiority that allows me to question the poker skills of others is blind vs. blind play. Blind vs. blind play is very technical and tricky, but it is also fertile ground to play exploitative poker. When I watch top players play blind vs. blind I often see technical errors, but of course it’s possible that every technical error is a conscious exploit; without getting into the heads of the players on stream, I’ll never know. So today we will look at a blind vs. blind hand I played where I thought I was playing solid technical poker and ran into an idiot who didn’t respect my river check-raise, but perhaps he just exploited me and won the max.
Triton X WSOP Paradise Event #7 $100K NLH Main Event
(1.5k/3k/3k) (SB/BB/BBA) Starting Stack 250k. Registration is Open
It folds to me (376k/123BBs) in the SB with T♠️4♣️, I call, Tamas Adamszki (244k/81bbs) checks.
Flop (9k) Q♦️J♠️4♠️: I bet 3k, Tamas calls.
Turn (15k) 8♦️: I check, Tamas checks.
River (15k) 3♠️: I check, Tamas bets 7.5k, I make it 60k, he calls with T♦️8♣️.
