The ninth hand begins and I'm right behind the button. I'm dealt Q6(offsuit). An erratic player, second to act, loud, looking starved and wearing an over-sized red hoody, who has also been playing every hand and whose raises I've been regularly re-raising, makes a bet for two hundred. Three callers, then I re-raise to four hundred. My raise is met by an angry exclamation from erratic Red, who, after the button and blinds fold, re-raises me to three thousand. "You don't just get to re-raise me!" he challenges, the 2 players to his left call, and I call. The Flop come T(spades) J(clubs) 7(diamonds). Everyone checks to me, and I'm not eager to invest more into a no hit hand with an unconditional re-raiser to my left, so I check. The turn is a 3(spades). We all check again to see the River. A 2(hearts) comes and Red bets a thousand. The other players fold, and without a second's hesitation I raise to four thousand. Red's bet stinks of an attempt to steal the pot, and never in a million years am I going to let him get away with it, no matter what I've got. Almost as soon as my four hits the pot Red goes all in. He has my 3,000 remaining chips covered, barely. After a minute of thought, I make the fold and he flips over 64(offsuit). The table gasps. "I see...all you gotta do is re-raise his raise and he folds" somebody says.
Getting bluffed into a big lay down sucks. I went on to finish 14th (which got me points in the league for top 20) while Red got called three hands later on another all in bluff, but I still drove home thinking of where, when, or even if I went wrong in that hand I folded to him. Here are the conclusions I came to:
- My experimentation with loose play and aggressive re-raising was interesting, but its better suited to tighter tables later in the tournament when people are trying to conserve chips and survive. Also, my initial success , getting the nuts twice in the first 8 hands, was mostly luck, but that's a whole discussion to itself. If I had been paying close enough attention to get a good initial read on this guy, I should have realized there was little to gain by reraising him, he was going to call or reraise me anyway so I was just investing myself more heavily into a weak pair of cards.
- Calling his first three thousand was actually a good decision I knew he was a loose player who was there for a good gamble. He was more than likely playing junk, and my queen junk beats average junk. The callers to his left were friends of his as well. They knew how he played and they called amid jokes at his past hands. This was an opportunity to relieve him of some chips if I hit the flop. The reality of the moment however was that while I was focused more on Red, it was actually the two tighter callers that I needed to be more focused on. I didn't ignore them at the time, my thought was that they were probably calling with mediocre hands as well, they didn't need much to go up against this guy, but I probably should have been paying closer attention to them then I was.
- Red's checks on the flop and turn fit the narrative of him getting three callers on an emotionally charged bluff. The check from his friends fit them calling with mediocre hands and either missing or counting on trapping the raises they were expecting from me. Red had already put his pride on the line so there was no sense in investing more into my nothing hand.
- Red's bet was actually a good one, whereas my subsequent re-raise was my biggest mistake. There was less of a chance of getting this guy to fold now than on the Turn or the River. By allowing my own pride to play a part in my decision, holding fast to my new trademark re-raise, I threw away four thousand more chips than I had to. There are two other vastly superior moves I could have made:
1. Fold. A decent option at this point and much better than the one I took, this guy's manhood was on the line and at that point his junk beats my junk 7 out of 10 times. Just looking at the information I had then, and I still stick to it now, Red had about a 70 percent chance of having a small pair. Since he expected me to have made something decent, and the hand was more about showing me up than actually winning the pot, he probably would have acted no differently with a pair than without, he had no doubt he was beat either way.
2. All In. That's right, I should have shoved first. This was the genius move that alluded me at the time. He would have folded, even if he had a pair, not because he thought I had a better hand than his (because from my read, he was already certain of that and hadn't folded) He would have folded because my All In move would take away his ability to get what he really wanted. My fold. The whole hand was about him showing that he could make me, the bully in control of the table, fold my hand. Even if he had decided to call, which would just have been strange and pointless, I had a 30 percent chance of winning a huge pot, a gamble I now know I would have won.
- Many people might jump to the conclusion that I should have called Red on his All-In shove, however that fold was actually one of my better as well as more clear cut decisions in the hand. It just took me a minute or two to realize it, swallow my pride, and give my Queen High to the muck.
There is an important general rule of human psychology that is very well illustrated in this hand, and that I fell into, leading to my final erroneous raise. That is the general rule that people assume that others think like they do. Call it the Law of The Assumption of Similarity. We are vain creatures, and it is our habit to assume that our ways are the best ways, and that people are always thinking about the same things we are. A self-conscious and insecure person thinks everyone is judging and watching them because they are judging and watching themselves. A compulsive liar will be continually suspicious that other people are lying as well. Guys regularly assume a statement or action that if directed at them would make them happy, will also make their girlfriends happy. Ya, I hit a nerve on that one (though I'm just as guilty).
When we are confronted with people who have different goals than us, different interests, different ways of thinking, we often get defensive, irritated, judgmental, or even play dumb and try to ignore them. We feel awkward and pressured in groups of people we feel are different from us, and ostracize the black sheep when we are in the majority. In social settings we can get away with avoiding having to account for people's difference's, and doing so is often necessary when the goal is just to have a good time, however when we find ourselves in a competitive environment, where having fun is no longer the matter at hand, we are often clueless and uncomfortable as a consequence, incapable of making the proper adjustments because we never had to make them before.
I had a feeling that was uncomfortably forming in the back of my head through the whole hand as I played. It seemed like a distraction, so I tried to block it out. It was the feeling that the red-hooded character that was staring me down across the table was a radically different kind of person than I was, not better or worse, just different, and that what he wanted most at that moment was something very counter and opposite to what I wanted and not in the usual "I want to win this pile of chips" kind of way. I was sitting at that table to win poker chips, I was not, or was trying not to get emotionally involved in the decisions I was making at the table, each decision was about which path would lead me to winning chips and losing as few as possible in the process.
Because I blocked out that feeling that this guy was different, I fell to the Law of the Assumption of Similarity. I assumed that Red was in the hand to win chips. Yes he had gotten angry at me, yes he had re-raised with what was certainly junk, yes he did regularly play junk, but I assumed these were all strategic acts, ploys to win chips, just as my experimental aggressiveness was a strategic act. When it came time for me to respond to his one thousand bet after the river, I threw four thousand chips into the pot because If I had checked down a hand to the river, after all that Pre Flop betting action had swollon the pot, in Red's position I would have done as he did and put in a thousand or so, to hopefully take the pot and/or see what kinda position my opponent thinks he's in. If I was in Red's shoes and had a small pair like I thought he might, and my opponent, who I already believed had a better hand, responded with a four thousand raise, I very likely would have folded. If my opponent had gone overboard and raised ten thousand, or all in, I might have seen that as desperate and called.
If I had listened a little closer to my gut instead of blocking it out, and very consciously understood from the moment Red stood up and yelled, that he was after my head, he wanted to put me to shame, the hand could have gone much differently. I could have tripled my stack size, eliminated a dangerous and loose player, maintained a control of the table, and gained a formidable reputation that would make other players think twice before trying to bluff me. Good strategies in life account for other people's goals and strategies, not just our own. We should always be focused on accomplishing our goals, but if we don't pay attention to other people and their goals, realizing that they often contrast, rather than mirror our own, we will often see what we think is certain victory slip rapidly into defeat.
When we are confronted with people who have different goals than us, different interests, different ways of thinking, we often get defensive, irritated, judgmental, or even play dumb and try to ignore them. We feel awkward and pressured in groups of people we feel are different from us, and ostracize the black sheep when we are in the majority. In social settings we can get away with avoiding having to account for people's difference's, and doing so is often necessary when the goal is just to have a good time, however when we find ourselves in a competitive environment, where having fun is no longer the matter at hand, we are often clueless and uncomfortable as a consequence, incapable of making the proper adjustments because we never had to make them before.
I had a feeling that was uncomfortably forming in the back of my head through the whole hand as I played. It seemed like a distraction, so I tried to block it out. It was the feeling that the red-hooded character that was staring me down across the table was a radically different kind of person than I was, not better or worse, just different, and that what he wanted most at that moment was something very counter and opposite to what I wanted and not in the usual "I want to win this pile of chips" kind of way. I was sitting at that table to win poker chips, I was not, or was trying not to get emotionally involved in the decisions I was making at the table, each decision was about which path would lead me to winning chips and losing as few as possible in the process.
Because I blocked out that feeling that this guy was different, I fell to the Law of the Assumption of Similarity. I assumed that Red was in the hand to win chips. Yes he had gotten angry at me, yes he had re-raised with what was certainly junk, yes he did regularly play junk, but I assumed these were all strategic acts, ploys to win chips, just as my experimental aggressiveness was a strategic act. When it came time for me to respond to his one thousand bet after the river, I threw four thousand chips into the pot because If I had checked down a hand to the river, after all that Pre Flop betting action had swollon the pot, in Red's position I would have done as he did and put in a thousand or so, to hopefully take the pot and/or see what kinda position my opponent thinks he's in. If I was in Red's shoes and had a small pair like I thought he might, and my opponent, who I already believed had a better hand, responded with a four thousand raise, I very likely would have folded. If my opponent had gone overboard and raised ten thousand, or all in, I might have seen that as desperate and called.
If I had listened a little closer to my gut instead of blocking it out, and very consciously understood from the moment Red stood up and yelled, that he was after my head, he wanted to put me to shame, the hand could have gone much differently. I could have tripled my stack size, eliminated a dangerous and loose player, maintained a control of the table, and gained a formidable reputation that would make other players think twice before trying to bluff me. Good strategies in life account for other people's goals and strategies, not just our own. We should always be focused on accomplishing our goals, but if we don't pay attention to other people and their goals, realizing that they often contrast, rather than mirror our own, we will often see what we think is certain victory slip rapidly into defeat.
