Every day that I play poker, I’m going to try to post at least one interesting hand here along with my thought process. I hope some of you will respond with questions or criticism.
The first one will be a quick one that probably did not matter at all in the grand scheme of things but illustrates an important concept, which is that you should always be thinking about how to get your opponent to make a mistake, because that is where your money comes from.
I had just lost most of chips in the Full Tilt $150 daily tournament, and on the next hand I had to post the big blind of 1000. After posting, I had fewer than 1500 chips left. The action folded around to the small blind, who just completed for 500 more. At this point, including the antes, there were nearly 3000 chips in the pot. I felt like my opponent could have absolutely anything. Actually, the fact that he didn’t put me all in suggests that he didn’t have certain medium strength hands like A5 or 33, but it doesn’t exclude them, and it’s largely irrelevant anyway. The point is that the K5 I was holding was certainly ahead of his range.
However, I was not greater than a 3:1 favorite, and I did not expect him to fold anything. Regardless, I moved all in for the last of my chips, and he called, correctly, with his T7s. Even though I got it in with the best hand, I didn’t really make money, since my opponent had not made a mistake. Pot odds dictated that he call, and he did.
I should have just checked and then moved all in on any flop if he checked to me, or call any flop if he put me all in first. Although the end result probably would have been the same (he rivered a 7 to eliminate me), there is some chance he would have mistakenly folded the flop with a hand that did have 25% equity in the pot, a mistake I did not expect him to make pre-flop.
I know that David Sklansky considers a problem nearly identical to this one in one of his books, but I can’t recall exactly where at the moment.