Crackhead of the Day
Tim in Plano writes in with an Oklahoma bustout story that begs the question, should it ever be possible to lay down Kings pre-flop when the Aces push on the third raise?
Oh, and he also lets us know that Choctaw (in Durant, OK) is now running some good $5/$10 Omaha (and $1/$2 NLO?):
—–Original Message—–
From: Tim B
Sent: Saturday, November 11, 2006 2:32 AM
To: danm
Subject: a sad poker tale of woefirst, let me describe the situation:
friday night, 9:30pm. jonesing for poker, i decide to meet some friends up at choctaw in durant. make the hour-ish drive, talk to the brush, and get on the board for some $1/$2 NL action. about 10 minutes later, im seated at a full table of 9 and buy in for the max ($200). about 4 short stacks (under $100) all directly to my left, 2 middling stacks ($150-$250) directly to my right, and two deep stacks ($500-ish and $600-ish) across from me. all things considered, a pretty favorable distribution.
i take my first hand from two off the button. im planning on being pretty conservative for the first several orbits while i get a feel for the opposition. i take my first hand two off the button, have crap, muck. repeat 7 more times…
then, the train-wreck:
8th hand. im on the cutoff. UTG limps, UTG-1 (with roughly $500) makes it $12 straight. this is the third hand he has raised to $12 pre-flop, nearly half of the hands ive seen so far. folds to me. i squeeze my cards and find two red kings. woo hoo! i kick it up to $35 to go. folds around to the original raiser, who announces “all in”.
so now, i feel like i have to squeeze my cards again, just to be sure… yep. still two red kings.i consider he could have two aces but wonder, would he put me all in with two aces? wouldnt he be more likely to simply call, or make a smaller raise? the pot is already heads-up, why put me all-in and give me a $200 reason to fold when a call might get me tied-on and cost me my stack?
after about 5 seconds of contemplation i decide it doesnt much matter. im only behind to 6 hands, and way ahead of everything else. i move my chips to the middle…
and like a punch to the gut, he rolls over two aces.
the board comes Q4Q44 and bang, 10 minutes after being seated, ive gone broke.
i just wanted to solicit your opinion, to re-assure myself that im not nuts for making the pre-flop call for all my chips with two kings in that situation. i ask because its the second time this EXACT thing has occurred in 6 months (the time before on my SECOND hand dealt) and naturally went broke each time. i mean, how do you ever fold two kings pre-flop? i might can see it if youve sat at the table for 3 hours and know the guy to be an absolute rock who would never make that play without two aces, but otherwise… youve pretty much got to call, right?
sigh… sometimes, i hate this game.
oh, on a brighter note, i dunno if youve heard but theyre now spreading omaha at choctaw! $5/$10 limit high, and $1/$2 NL (yes, no limit) high…
Tim, I certainly can’t fault you for calling. I think two out of three times in that same situation, the dude is making that move with QQ, JJ, TT … or even 44 or AJs. So overall it’s a profitable call. I think the only real issue is if you actually went “broke” — I mean I know you are not forced to eat ramen noodles, but this hand is the exact reason you have to go to said game with at least one more buy-in in your pocket. What if you had aces, and the other guy had two crappy cards that flopped two pair? You know you can get those chips back, but you need to make sure you can stick around long enough to take them.
DealerZach says:
November 15th, 2006 at 5:25am
I’ve played Omaha for a living once, for about a 3 month stretch. and I’ve seen ALOT of hands played 10 hours a day or more. AA@@ and KK@@ is not a train-wreck in Omaha, it’s absalutly normal. Hell I got to the point where if i don’t hit a set on the flop with those hands I just fold unless I know my opponent is betting a draw.
DanM says:
November 15th, 2006 at 5:29am
Zach, I could be wrong here, but I am pretty sure the hand he discusses was a hold’em hand, not Omaha. Sorry, bad writing on my part to not clarify the distinction.
Karridy says:
November 15th, 2006 at 10:15am
Dan makes a great point. Cloutier once told me, “Potts odds don’t mean shit if you’re putting your tournament life at stake”. While that isn’t 100% relevant to your situation, it does reinforce what Dan is saying. Sometime you lay down what you know is probably the best hand in order to ensure that you can hang around. I don’t know if you bought back in, but I would hate the drive home otherwise. Imagine you win a seat to the big show and you get Aces first hand. Statistically, you know what you should do. And you talk it through in your head, and it makes sense. But man… I fold if pushed pre-flop in that situation. If I were a career player, it would be a no-brainer. But for us mere mortals, we must always remember… There’s many a slip twixt a cup and a lip.
Karridy says:
November 15th, 2006 at 10:25am
Just noticed… I have only met Tim once (Pokerati Invitational, ’05), and can totally recognize him from the southpark avatar. Sad, honestly. Partially the recognition, but mostly the degree of resemblance.
Windbreaker says:
November 15th, 2006 at 10:28am
I’m one of the few, the proud, who can say I’ve appropriately folded KK preflop in a cash game. The circumstances were somewhat different to where it was a more obvious fold (I raised in LP, loose SB re-raised, and MP limper re-raises all-in on his first hand at the table, leaving me and the SB still to act…so I muck…MP had AA and hit a set on the turn, SB didn’t show), but to know you should get away from them and to actually let them go are two entirely different things. However, I’m no hero, I’m just weak like that. 😉
Sorry about the bad luck, Tim B. Hang in there.
TommyTwoToes says:
November 15th, 2006 at 1:51pm
only time that i have ever folded KK preflop is when there was an all in and then a quick a call of that all in.
DanM says:
November 15th, 2006 at 1:52pm
i’m a big believer in the phil gordon mantra that “the fourth raise always means aces.” just not sure how to interpret it if you get that hunch on the third raise.
anonymous asshole says:
November 19th, 2006 at 11:32am
I have folded kk two times pre-flop (once to ak and another to AA). I probably wouldn’t do that of late (playing horribly) but, both times I had great reads on the other opponent after some time (which u noted u didn’t have time 7 hands in.) I then go back to my next form of logic. If I just got there I better have the nuts if I don’t have cash because the “drive of shame” back to big D without some jack isn’t exactly fun.
“You can’t lose what u don’t put in the pot” is what comes to mind…
Thanks,
Dan
eightfive says:
December 16th, 2006 at 5:56am
I don’t think you made a bad lay down. I think you got into a pot with a bad player who happened to get lucky. Ask any good player around what they do with Aces in that situation and they might call, the might re-raise, but they are not going all in like that. Obviously the player is a fish and just got lucky. I myself have layed down KK only once pre-flop and it turned out I shouldn’t have. I was playing a loose 5-5 game and raised from middle position to 35, the button raise to 135 and everyone else folded. This player had only been at the table for about 20 minutes and had shown down about 5 winners, all good hands. I had about 800 in front of me and decided to reraise to 335. He immediatly goes all in and has me covered. After what seemed like forever I showed the kings and folded, he flipped over JJ. The dealer laid out the board, T6J on the flop AQ turn and river, he would have hit his set and I would have hit a runner runner straight. Looking back at it now I’m not sorry I laid the hand down, KK wasn’t worth risking 500 more to me that day and still isn’t today.