Gotta Love Those Whingers

By Jeff Israel

9 Mar 2007

In the right situation a cheap investment with these hands may yield a big return by cracking a big hand like A-A or K-K

Jeff Israel has some advice for the guys who like to donk off their chips with hands that are easily dominated...

It often seems to me when I’m playing live poker that all my opponents are convinced they are good players who will win over time. Obviously this is mathematically impossible but there is no accounting for ego and so even the worse-than-average players convince themselves that they can beat the game. When they regularly fail to do so, they delude themselves by whingeing that it’s all down to bad luck.

The beauty of this is that losing players always come back for more and because they believe that the only reason they lose is due to bad luck rather than bad play the whingers rarely improve.

In a recent live poker session, I was playing an average size NL holdem cash game with blinds of £2-£5. I had about £350 in front of me which was slightly below the average of around £500. In the big blind I found Td-8d, quite pretty for a blind hand, when four people limped (unusual in this game) and the button raised it £25. The small blind called pretty quickly and I reasoned that, given I had a hand that can play well in a multi-way pot, it was worth calling the raise, particularly as my call may tempt the others to climb in. Sure enough, they all called and we went into the flop seven handed with £210 in the pot.

The flop was the rather attractive looking Qs-Js-9d. Checked to me I felt I should bet. My reasoning was that although I had connected in a big way, the flop was also fraught with danger and I did not want drawing hands like two spades, two pair or a paired 10 to get a cheap draw at the turn card. I bet £200, effectively sending a message that I was pot committed. Everyone folded around to the original raiser on the button who moved all in on me in a flash. Obviously I called. He turned over Qc-Jc and my hand stood up for a nice pot.

It was at this point that my opponent graciously said: “F***ing 8-10 suited! What you doing playing hands like that?” I, of course, smiled and said nothing until I could bear it no longer when he continued to whinge about me to all the others around the table. I broke a rule of mine not to try and educate others at the table and pointed out that, “You only had Q-J suited.” Big mistake. This was his cue to ridicule me by helpfully pointing out that his hand was a favourite over mine and he’d rather have his any day etc.

The point that I managed to restrain myself from making was that while heads-up his hand is a better one, when the two are compared in a seven-handed pot that has been raised, he is far more likely to go broke than I am. Even if he hits a big flop, his hand could easily be dominated by a number of hands (eg A-Q, A-J, K-Q, J-J, Q-Q,) that could get him into serious trouble. By contrast, my hand is only likely to get played if I hit a big flop whereby I could well crack any of the above hands.

In similar situations, this rationale is also true of even smaller suited connecters for which I have a fondness if the situation is right, such as 6-4 or 8-7 and other such ‘trash’. If you think your multiple opponents have got all the big cards between them, these hands have much more profit potential than the likes of J-10 or Q-J, provided you can slip in relatively cheaply. In the right situation a cheap investment with these hands may yield a big return by cracking a big hand like A-A or K-K (or even such monsters as Q-J suited!) and if you don’t connect with the flop it’s easy enough to get away.

If you wish to be a winning player you need to apply this type of logic and you also need to be ruthlessly critical of poorly reasoned, bad plays. If not you’ll end up like my whingeing adversary and before you know it you will soon be bemoaning your luck…again.

Until next time,

Jeff Israel aka Lord Neil

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