I'm SOOOOOOO stupid. HELP

larsjones · #1 05-07-2006, 10:37 PM

My wife and I had the weekend alone, so we decided to go to a casino nearby. I sat down in a good low-limit game. My table had two ultimate-rocks, 2 nutcases, and some others I never did define, except that they were not shy. I SHOULD have left up roughly 200 BB, but instead left -7BB.

Why?

There is one indelible instance in my mind. I was sitting in the SB with 7-8 spades. The action came to me with maniac raising, of course. I called. The BB reraised, and maniac capped. I sat there with a buzzeer going off in my head so loudly I could barely think. "CALL!!!!! CALL!!! CALL!!" Everything I know of poker says that my position is terrible, but that calling here is probably not a bad move, since I could dump the hand WHEN the flop missed. Instead of making the good play, your old pak Dumby Mcdumbdumbdumb folds. The flop comes 7-8-2.

No need to post the rest. In any event, every single round of betting got capped. Every single one. It was a freakin MASSIVE pot. In the end, my hand turned out to be 8's full o' sevens, but it was sitting piled neatly in the muck. Later down the line, I folded 47 of clubs in the BB, when faced with one raise. Again, it was a amily pot. Again, my hand was 7's full of fours.

It was the most frustrating night of my life. I learned last night that I, too, am probably a rock. I thought multiple times about SheridanCat, and the advice he's given me about playing cards. Now, the piece that's missing in my game needs to be fit into place. How, in the name of all that is holy, do I pull the trigger?

ANY help is appreciated.

bweiser8311962 · #2 05-07-2006, 11:53 PM

there aren't many hands i'd fold for 1 bet in the BB. and once you've called a raise, you might as well call the cap with 7s8s. It's a great multi-way hand in a raised pot.

all that said, you can't look at what happened. you have to play your game and if you traditionally fold in these instances, you are probably saving yourself money. it's just unfortunate that this pot got huge with the 7s8s.

Pov · #3 05-08-2006, 12:46 AM

You have totally fallen off the cliff of results-oriented thinking. Ten lashes.

I'd be worried about the call before the fold. You called a raise OoP with 87s and an aggressive big blind? Were there a bunch of limpers you didn't mention?

In any event your fold was a pretty small error considering you're behind even to a maniac the majority of the time. Your hand needs to hit hard and it won't do that very often. Depending upon the limit and the number of players in the pot I doubt your mistake cost you more than a few dollars in expectation. When you fold 72 UTG and the flop comes 772 do you kick yourself for making a stupid play?

We deal in expectation. Results are beyond your control.

The 74s fold sounds like a fairly small mistake as well. While you'd normally want to make this call your table seems likely to have had a problem with limpers deciding to re-raise and cap. Folding a low suited two-gap can't be *that* big of a mistake. It just would have worked out well this time.

So what, you're going to play suited cards for a raise from now on? I think you know better than that. That's like the guy who always plays 54 because the players with the big cards never see it coming and he won a giant pot with it one time.

A play either makes money in the long run or it doesn't. Make plays that make money in the long run and don't worry about the rest.

smbruin22 · #4 05-08-2006, 01:22 AM

i've be playing in some loose/aggressive games recently with pretty poor results... it is very frustrating. and i see the same guy winning capped pre-flop pots with T5s and the like.

it seems when anyone talks about loose-aggressive, they get into 6-7 players capped, but i think 3-4 capped is more likely these days, and i've never seen specific advice for that... sort of in between tight and loose aggressive, or games with 4-5 action junkies, 3 rocks and 1 loose-passive. it gets very wierd.

AKQJ10 · #5 05-08-2006, 03:03 AM

[ QUOTE ]
it seems when anyone talks about loose-aggressive, they get into 6-7 players capped, but i think 3-4 capped is more likely these days,

[/ QUOTE ]

Are you talking about online specifically?

pzhon · #6 05-08-2006, 07:05 AM

[ QUOTE ]
there aren't many hands i'd fold for 1 bet in the BB.

[/ QUOTE ]
There should be, particularly if the raise is from early position or is called in front of you. Defending the blinds too much is a common large leak.

larsjones · #7 05-08-2006, 12:08 PM

After further thought, I can see laying down the two gapped 4-7 suited. That made sense, and it hiting for the boat was just odd luck. UT, I still say that dumping that 7-8 was a horrible mistake. It was a family pot. I waas already in halfway as I'd called the one raise. Suddenly, I get spooked because of two reraises to cap? It's obvious I was content to playt from behind since I called theraise with 7-8 to begin with. In that spot, I'm looking to flop a beast. I've got 9 other opponents, all with 2 small bets in. So, preflop there were 20 bets until the reraise and cap. After the cap, there were around 40 small bets in the pot. My hand hasn't changed. Neither has their's. Why fold? I'm making a mental note of this. I did not post early after sitting down. I waited for my blind so I copuld kinda get an idea of what was happening at this table. This hand happened 2 orbits in or so. It's over though.....gotta let it go.

AKQJ10 · #8 05-08-2006, 03:15 PM

Dumping the 87s for two more bets was possibly a marginal mistake, not a horrible one. The fact that it hit big made it feel like a horrible mistake. A final board of

A [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] J [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] 3 [img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] - T [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] - J [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]

would not have made folding 8 [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] 7 [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] preflop any less of a mistake, if indeed it was a mistake. That's what people mean by avoiding results-oriented thinking. But let's be honest -- it's hard not to watch the board and think what might have been. On the actual board in the hand, you would have won a gigantic pot -- but that doesn't make the fold a bigger mistake.

I'm almost sure that playing 87s knowing you'd have to pay 4 bets would be a mistake, even in that huge pot. But playing it for two bets after 26 or whatever have already gone in seems fine.

AKQJ10 · #9 05-08-2006, 03:28 PM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
there aren't many hands i'd fold for 1 bet in the BB.

[/ QUOTE ]
There should be, particularly if the raise is from early position or is called in front of you. Defending the blinds too much is a common large leak.

[/ QUOTE ]

Definitely! Good catch.

That said, 87s isn't one of those, presuming plenty of people are in the pot.

smbruin22 · #10 05-08-2006, 03:45 PM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
it seems when anyone talks about loose-aggressive, they get into 6-7 players capped, but i think 3-4 capped is more likely these days,

[/ QUOTE ]

Are you talking about online specifically?

[/ QUOTE ]

no, i'm talking about bricks'n'mortar in vancouver, canada.... i won't get into details, but good demographic makeup of the game......

i just know gary carson and others talk about 6-8 players capping it pre-flop, not sure that happens anywhere anymore.... 3-4 players capping it is pretty common in my recent B&M experience, and it's the same 5-6 people who are in their capping (but not all 5-6 each hand).