Snapping a Bluffer in Half

August 27, 2007

Here’s why you should always pay attention to your opponents in a poker game.

So I’m sitting under the gun (seat 5) in my usual $2-$5 no limit Texas Holdem poker game at the Bellagio with about $550 or so in front of me. The game is fairly aggressive, but loose at the same time, a good poker game to make money in really.

The dealer shuffles the cards, tosses them out, and I’m dealt a pair of nines. I glance around the table, and didn’t pick up on much from the other players. I called the $5 blind, seeing what the aggressive players at the table do.

A few players fold, seat 8 and 9 call, then seat 1, a cocky player who has been at the table for about 30 minutes, raises to $20. Seat 3, the small blind, calls as does seat 4, the big blind. The action is now on me, and there’s about $75 in the pot right now. At this point in time, I’m considering two options: raise or call.

If I was going to raise, it probably would have been to $60. Rather, I decided that I’d rather have a multiway pot with my pair, so I just called the $20. Seat 8 folded and seat 9 completed the round by calling too.

Now there’s five players in the pot, each in for $20, along with the $5 extra from seat 8’s preflop fold, minus the rake of course. Pot size: $101.

Flop comes out 7h 5d 2c

This flop certainly looks favorable in a regular hand, but this hand was different. This hand had five players who called a $20 raise preflop. Seat 3 and seat 4 checked, and it’s my action. I didn’t take long to think, and I decided to see what seat 1’s action was going to be so I checked through as well. With the table as aggressive as it was, no other move would have been right.

Seat 9 checked and it was now up to seat 1, who almost immediately slides a stack into the pot. It’s now $100 to go, and it’s now up to seat 3, who takes his time deciding what he wanted to do. After careful consideration, and me commenting to him that he “already knows his move, so make it.” He finally folded, after slapping his hand in agony, and seat 4 folded too.

Now, it was up to me, me and my pocket nines. “$100 to go huh?” I pronounced. “Boy, that seems like an awfully big bet for a $101 pot. I have to be right about you about half of the time to even make a call, don’t I?” I thought about this player for a little longer, bringing up his past shown hands in my head, 72 offsuit being the most interesting preflop raise that I had seen.

After about a minute, I decided that his hand was most likely an Ace with a medium kicker, possibly even A7 suited. I glanced over to seat 9 to see what he was planning, which was an obvious fold, then back over to seat 1 to look at his chip stack, which was just another $140 or so, and any tells he may be presenting. I must have spent another minute or so staring this guy down, long enough where the dealer even said “This hand is gonna take 6 hours, geez.” What an asshole.

As I was looking at seat 1, I noticed how he was looking at my face, then down at my cards, then back up to my face. What a big help this was, as any typical player holding onto a big hand would have been looking down at the flop, at his chips, or even more typical, the television.

“I’m all in,” I told the dealer.

Seat 9 folded, as he had telecasted. Seat 1 took about 15 seconds and, arguably, made the call. In my head I was shocked that he called, feeling that I had made the wrong move. I said “If you can call my raise, then you probably got me licked.” He replied by saying, “no, I probably don’t actually,” and flipped over A10 offsuit.

Turn and river were both garbage cards, not bringing any draws. I took down the pot, which had reached $581. My crushed opponent exclaimed “How can you call with that?!?” to which I didn’t even have to respond. Other players at the table announced, “he didn’t he raised… and YOU called buddy.” Seat 1 became an empty seat.

When you’re involved in a pot like this, always remember to watch your opponent’s every move. Don’t let the size of a bet get in the way of your intuition. When you concentrate really hard and use your intellect, you’re right more often than you think.

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