I made a pretty big laydown recently and was probably as proud of it as I was of any big pot I’ve won recently. Long ago, David Sklansky reminded us that a bet you don’t lose spends just as well as a bet you win.
This happened in a regular home game of mine; my knowledge of the players certainly helped my decision and emphasized the importance of paying attention to your opponents and learning their habits.
We were playing $1-$1 No Limit Hold’em, but that doesn’t really tell the story. As will happen in games without a buy-in cap, we had all ended up with stacks much bigger than the $100-ish that’s typical in online games with those blinds. I had over $400 and the stacks around me were of similar size or bigger.
Rory limped in for $1. Rory likes to play pots and could have just about anything. In middle position, Ben raised to $6, a fairly standard raise in this game. I looked down at J-T suited. Ben doesn’t usually open very light and big pairs made up a meaningful percentage of his pre-flop raising range. Those were exactly the hands that I was hoping to beat if I could hit a flop; I didn’t want a 4bet from Ben shutting me out of the pot early. I flat called.
Now, Steve called behind me. That made me upset. I should have looked left and thought about him. Steve likes to gamble, but he’s nobody’s fish and tends to do his gambling with position. I was stuck between Ben’s raise and Steve’s call behind me. I wished I had 3bet Ben and gotten the button; Steve would have folded anything but a premium hand to my re-raise. Now I’d made my bed and would have to lie in it.
My bed started to look like a feather mattress with silk sheets when the flop came down T-T-2 with two spades. My cards were red, but what did I care? I had just out-flopped all three of them (Rory had called the raise, saying something about pot odds). In particular, I thought I could stack Ben and his pocket queens or whatever big hand he had. Rory checked (as expected), but then Ben checked. Ruh-roh. If he had something like A-K, he wasn’t going to plow forward on a flop like that against three opponents. On the other hand, it would be very much in Steve’s idiom to pick up the $25 in the pot with a button bet and at least I could trap Steve for the probe bet he tossed out. I checked.
As he was supposed to, Steve bet $20. Then things really looked up. Rory called the $20. Rory probably suspected Steve of the same thing I did and was hoping he could get Steve to slow down. Rory would make that play with as little as A-2 for bottom pair. I mentally locked and loaded a check-raise to about $75. That would blow them off whatever they had and I’d… “I’m all in.”
What?
Ben had paused briefly and then announced he was all-in for about $250. Suddenly, my world made far less sense. Ben is a thinking, competent player. He knows that Steve, Rory, and I are thinking competent players.
“Sorry, guys. This is going to take me a minute.” For years, when you needed an extra thought to make my playing decision, you simply said, “Time.” That would freeze the action for the extra handful of seconds and then you could act. However, in this world of televised poker tournaments, people confuse that announcement with somebody “calling the clock” on another player. “Are you calling the clock on yourself?” I’ve been asked. So, I’ve become more specific in my requests.
Ben would not play a big pair that way. If he had queens, he’d fire right into that pot and plan (hope) to take it down on the flop. Check-raising like that would only play right into the hands of somebody holding a ten. Either Steve or I could hold a ten and all of us knew it.
As I was pondering the situation, I experienced one of those exquisite moments of synchronicity that make you wonder about life. The Talking Heads were on the stereo and I found myself singing out loud along with David Byrne, “And you may say to yourself, ‘Well, how did I get here?’” Everybody chuckled and I relaxed. I couldn’t put Ben on a big pair no matter how hard I tried. He wasn’t making some Nth level sophisticated play against the entire field. He had the case ten and it was bigger than mine; he didn’t raise with T-9.
“I fold.”
Now it was Steve’s turn to tank. He didn’t take as long as I did, but he was obviously struggling. Odd – I thought that he was on a stone-cold steal. He folded relatively soon and it was on Rory. Even Rory had to have a think. Finally, he showed Ben a flush draw, threw it in, and said, “I don’t want to gamble.” “You’ve got a big ten,” I told Ben. “Close,” he replied, turning up pocket deuces; he’d flopped the full house. “Wow, I had jack-ten. I had four outs.” “No,” said Steve, “One out – just like me. I had pocket jacks.” Ben stared at us. “You folded jacks and you folded jack-ten?” We nodded.
You could see the wheels turning in Ben’s head. “What if I’d flatted Steve’s bet?” I laughed – “Oh, I check-raise to $75. Steve calls because he thinks I think he’s stealing. Rory calls for pot odds. You shove and who knows what happens at that point, but if we call, you have to fade two whole outs. You probably win a $500 or $600 pot.” Ben shook his head saying, “I guess I pulled the trigger too soon.”
I honestly don’t know if I could have made that laydown in the heat of a 15-second online decision. Fortunately for me, it happened where I had the time and the graciousness of my fellow players to let me work through the possibilities and make the right decision… instead of burning down the house.
Lee Jones is the Card Room Manager of Cake Poker and has been in the online poker business for over six years. He is also the author of “Winning Low Limit Hold’em,” which is in its 15th year of publication.
