Friday Night Lights

This weekend wasn’t a total bust... Go VOLS!!! :)

If it is any consolation from a Vol to a Dawg, I don't think that we actually intercepted that final pass. Under pressure, Greene passed into a cul-de-sac of three White and Orange jerseys, but Mitchell never gained possession. So - it was more of an incomplete pass than an interception.

Josiah - Tough break for Mesh. I kind of had a similar beat this weekend, too. Tell me your opinion of this. I had pocket 9, and the flop was JJ4. I checked, and the other guy raised $100 (which in our world is a dollar, and which this person tends to do everytime, making me believe he did not have a Jack), so I went all-in. He had 84. An 8 comes on the turn, then a 4 on the river, beating me with a full house. It was pretty nice for him, and stunk for me.

I keep going over it. Is it a mistake to go all-in before the turn with that kind of board? I wanted to chase him out, because I was pretty sure he didn't have a Jack, and believed he had at best a small pair (which he did), but I was worried he might hit trips on the turn or the river (which he did). Still, I'd do that again, every time, and figure my expected wins would far exceed Friday's loss on that hand, but I'm not quite sure.

Scott, I'm a firm believer in protecting your better hand and the pot against newbie players who would try to stick around to catch something.

I built up a monster stack on Friday night (before I lost of course) because I made a point, sitting at a table with a few newbies, of when I had the better had (top pair, 2 pair) and there was a flush draw on the table, of pushing as absolutely hard as I could so they didn't stick around to try to catch a flush or a straight or something ridiculously like the full house you experienced.

Think of it like this: if your friend, with the 8-4, was an experienced player, he would have folded to your all in bet! I most certainly have with a bottom pair of 4's! the ONLY hands he could beat at that time was a pocket pair of 3's, 4's, or a bluff. Now he MAY have put you on a bluff, which would be wrong because you weren't really bluffing with your 9's, but that's still an insane call to make putting a huge portion of your chips at risk with only a pair of 4's and the possibility of trip jacks a the table.

Now here's the thing: you had pocket 9's, did you raise the preflop? What was a guy doing in the hand with 8-4 to begin with? Now again, if he's a newbie, they'll sometimes pay to see the flop, which is stupid, and is why you'll take the occasional bad beat, but win in the longrun.

Again, go over it: the ONLY outs that he had to beat your hand was another 4. That's 2 outs. Even if an 8 came it didn't matter because your 9's had him beat. Only 2 outs. It was a dumb call on his part, and I think the right move on your part.

Sometimes you just take a bad beat.

He raised pre-flop $100, and I called, not wanting to chase him out.

I think we're all rather new to this, but my friend plays fairly loose and fairly aggressive. He plays way more hands than I ever would touch, actually, and usually takes some bad beats. I've mentioned to him that I don't understand why he plays so much of that stuff. We both had a rather large stack of chips, and were the last two guys left, and so he was raising pre-flop I think to partially obscure his hand. When the flop came and he paired his 4, plus got that pair on the board, he decided to chase.

Also, FYI, we decided this weekend to allow people to cash-in, rather than play tournament style, and I don't know if I recommend it. A guy got there at 9:30, won several big hands, then went home at 11:00 with most of the table. He wasn't a good player, and the pots he took were a bit random, but he managed to knock out one new guy and another person. The whole purpose of having the cash-in, from our perspective, was to spare a person the trouble of having to go all-in if it was 2 in the morning and they were tired. Most in our group our doctoral students with families and kids, or our pastor (also kids). But when this guy left, it really defeated the entire purpose of the policy - he had, in economic parlance, imposed a negative externality on us by doing that, and it really sucked. So, I think what we're going to do is have a cash-in policy but with a regressive tax structure. If you leave before midnight, you 50% of your wealth goes back into the pot on the hand you're exiting. If you leave between midnight and one o'clock, 25%. And after that, 10%. We'll see how that works. It seems like that's the better compromise for our given demographic, but we'll see. It really sucked, though, let me tell you. Because only five guys came, when he knocked out two guys then left, I wanted to beat him senseless.

Ah Scott, you were playing headsup, that definately changes things a bit, because in headsup you play a helluva lot more hands than usual. In this situation it wasn't completely insane that he called your all in call, just marginally insane and still a stupid move. Again, the ONLY hands he could beat were lower pockets or a pair of fours if you had a lower kicker, plus a bluff. Now he COULD have figured you for a bluff, but dangit, thats' a risky bluff to call. I might have been obliged, given that its the end of the night and you didn't reraise the preflop presenting you had pockets, but your all in call would be a gutsy, gutsy bluff on your part.

Still, anyway you slice it, it was a bad beat. You were monster in that hand, a total monster, you had him beat by a massive margin, something like a 92% to 8% favorite or something ridiculous like that. You did the right move, he did the bad move. The only thing you could have done differently would have been to call his bet and then get outta there when another 4 showed up. But again, you want to protect the pot, but you ALSO WANTED him to call you so you could get all his money. Which you got, but got bad cards in the end.