Shawn's Turn: Play of the Day

Not every hand is a winner. 

Far from it, actually – in Texas Hold ‘em, you should only be getting involved in roughly 20% of the hands you get dealt. That said, having Pocket Rockets is no guarantee that you’ll win after the flop, turn, and river hit the board. Sometimes, you get a bad beat put on you.

Play of the Day not only captures great victories, but every so often it also picks up on those hands where your very good hand is beaten by an even better hand. Sometimes you get trounced on the river when your opponent hits that one-outer. Sometimes you were behind from the start but never knew it.  That’s poker, and telling the story of poker would be incomplete without showing those bad beats.

PRE-FLOP: It’s early in a $1,000,000 Sit-N-Go, and I don’t have much information on anyone yet.  One person has been booted already who decided that going all in pre-flop with J-3 offsuit was a good call.  I love playing against bingo players like that, but unfortunately I didn’t have the hand needed to make a stand.  Blinds are 10/20, and I’m two off the button.

I have 2-2 – a pair of ducks!  Honestly, two deuces aren’t that stellar here.  Sure, I’m leading against hands that are not a pair, but it’s a very slim lead.  In fact, I’m a very slight underdog heads-up against A-K suited if I don’t hold any of my opponent’s suits.

Still, I want to see a flop on the cheap, looking for my set.  UTG (Under the Gun – the first player to act) limps in for 20, as does the player to my right.  For me, that’s a fair price to see what happens next, so I call.  If the raises start flying, I’m going to back out.

No one calls ahead of me, and the blinds bring in the action.  I’ll actually be last to act after the flop, which is great position to make some moves if I can.

FLOP: It’s the Flop of the Beast: 6-6-6! I have a full house, but it’s the weakest of all the full houses possible.  If I am going to win this hand, I need to win it right now.  All four players behind me check, and this lets me make a bit of a move here.  I jam 80 into a pot of 100, which is a good-sized bet.  Any pocket pair beats me, but my bet is hopefully selling the story that I have a bigger piece of the board than I actually have.

Everyone folds until the player to my right pushes all in for 100 (call of 80 and 20 more to put him in).  That was a great move on his part, and I was lucky he didn’t have more chips.  He check-raised me, and that is a powerful move when you are out of position like my opponent was.  If he shoves all in before I act, it gives me a chance to fold and get out of the way.  Unfortunately for him, he was low on chips.  It’s a very easy call of 20 into a pot of 280 to see how badly I’m beat.

Quads beat a full house the last time I checked – so much so that I’m actually dead. 

The TURN and RIVER are irrelevant… though the T on the river is an especially poignant poke in the eye.  I have the third best hand with just two people playing.

In my opinion, he should not have limped in pre-flop with a horrible hand like that, but he hit his board and he gets paid.  It’s easy to say after the fact that I would have folded facing a check-raise of more than 20, but again that check-raise says a lot.  He wanted to set a trap for me, and he sprang it. If I don’t respect that kind of move when it is played, there’s a great chance I’ll be losing more than what I did.

Capture your awesome hands with Play of the Day. I'll see you at the tables!