All Things Poker

My self confidence had returned. I was primed and ready to get my money in the middle. Early on in the evening I noticed a player who had about $600 in front of him. He was playing almost every hand and calling almost every flop and turn bet. If the board got scary or the initial bettors slowed down he would bet the river a hefty amount and most of the time he would win the pot. As I am trying to decipher if he is good or exceptionally lucky, I get AK suited in the small blind and raise it to $10. I get two callers of which the floater is naturally one (he is in the cut off seat). The flop comes all low and rainbow. I c-bet for 3/4 pot or about $20. The middle caller folds and the floater calls. the turn completes a possible straight and gives me the possibility of a backdoor flush. I bet $50 into the $70 pot. The floater calls. The river makes 4 to a straight and doesn’t complete my flush. I check. He bets $50 and I have no choice but to fold. The floater wins again. Considering he calls 80% of the time preflop he certainly could have hit that board. I know he didn’t have the straight, but any pair has me beat. More importantly he knows I don’t have the straight and that I couldn’t make that $50 call on the river.

Not too much later I end up flopping a set against the floater. He checks the flop, I bet, he calls. The turn is unimportant, he checks, I bet, he calls. The river is unimportant, he checks, I bet, he folds. Now I am up to a little less than my initial buyin. All the while I am watching this guy go from $600 to $350, up to $700, down to $500. His method of poker is very high in variance but I come to the conclusion that he knows that he is doing. He knows his style well and he seems to play very well after the flop and especially on the river. It is obvious that most of the time when he bets close to pot on the river he doesn’t have it and is trying to steal the pot, which succeeds most of the time at this table.

And then my AK comes again, only this time I have position on him. I raise to $10, and get two callers, and the floater is one of them. Again, a low board comes. The first caller checks, the floater checks, I bet $20. The first caller folds, he calls. The turn is a queen, the floater checks, I bet, he calls. The river is a two and pairs the board. He reaches for his chips and puts out $50. I know what he is doing. I know that he could have any hand here and touched the board in any way. I also know his $50 river bet is a sign of weakness not strength. The question I have to ask myself is “did he touch the board?”. I sit and contemplate that for a while, and while I am thinking he seems uncomfortable with the idea that I might call. So, I do. “Nice call” he says. “Seven high, that’s all I’ve got”, and then he mucks. As the dealer is pushing the pot to me I flip over AK showing that I missed the board as well. I don’t normally show cards when I don’t have to, but I did as a future “tilt device” against the floater. I wanted him to stop playing his game against me. I wanted him to believe I knew what he held in his hands, and I figured since I got a lucky read on him one time, maybe I could exploit the advantage I had into future hands if I made him nervous.

That call was an epiphany for me. It substantiated for me that I could put $50 into a pot on pure intuition. It also solidified for me, that yes, I can actually read people sometimes, and that my guesses have some substance. As the night progressed, I began to realize that most, if not all of the money I was winning was coming from the floater and that no one else at the table was really playing all that poorly. This concerned me as an ideal table is going to have at least 4 bad players and because I just seemed to tangling with with Mr. Floater, I was probably in at the wrong table. Despite this thought, I played on until midnight when I finally called it quits. So even though it was a winning session monetarily and I made some decent reads and plays, I still made a bad quitting decision by playing so long at a table with only one “ATM”.

Stats:
P/L: $274
Hourly Rate: $39.14

Tags:   Made MoneyNo Comments