Till now, most of the hands I posted here were profitable to me. This time I’ll show you two hands from tournaments were I didn’t end up as the winner and lost a fair amount of chips. I did nonetheless make some kind of profit with these hands, by not losing more and controlling the damage.

There are some moments in poker where you have such a beautiful hand that it’s almost impossible to give it up, just because it looks so good. Than the poker player still has one weapon to get away from it: his read on his opponent and the awareness that he or she almost certainly must have a better hand. This weapon is obviously much more powerful in live games than online: you can observe his attitude and behaviour (for more information about tells you should watch Annie Duke’s Advanced Texas Hold’em Secrets). It’s nevertheless also possible in online poker to figure out what you opponent has, by observing how many hands (s)he plays, which amounts (s)he bets, if (s)he slowplays hands, if (s)he pays high prices for draws,… I used this info alltogether in the following two hands I played, let’s watch:

The first hand originates from a 5$ multi-table tournament on FTP, where I already had a LOT of chips during the early blind levels. The other players still had about the stack they begun with, except for the two players surrounding me. The player to my right had doubled up through a donk who payed off his KK which he played very tight aggressive and won another nice pot with a flush over flush. Than I woke up with AK off on the cut-off:

As you can see, I was able to get away from my toppair topkicker and my opponent showed me his cards (I like that ) so I knew I was right. The first hint I received preflop, when he just raised four times the BB, with three (!) callers in front of him. On the flop I got my second hint when he betted less than half the pot. So I made a small reraise which confirmed my presumption when he shoved all-in. The next situation comes from a 5$ sng on Ultimate Bet, where I had two Kings UTG. The player on the BB had already collected some chips by playing very loose aggressive. He was my only taker:

As you see I was unlucky there, but aware of my opponent’s strength. The preflop call wasn’t a big surprise: he played loose and even a loose aggressive player wouldn’t reraise an early position raiser there a lot of times. His call on the flop on the other hand was unusual as he normally reduced his game to raising or folding. So I also checked the turn after which he made a nice value bet on the river which I had to call (maybe it was the AQ he was trying to slowplay).

To conclude I want to say something about (in my opinion) one of the best albums of 2008 (together with Consolers of the Lonely from the Raconteurs and Foals’ Antidotes), to which I listen a lot during online poker: Fleet Foxes from the band of the same name. I really recommend this album to all music lovers in general and in specific to fans of the so-called WestCoast music (Beach Boys, Byrds, CSNY). Songs like Your Protector, Oliver James and White Winter Hymnal are really enriching for today’s music, I hope you’ll like it .

Tags: Annie Duke's Advanced Texas Hold'em Secrets, damage control, feeler bet, fleet foxes, read your opponent, value bet, very loose aggressive, very tight aggressive play, westcoast music

This entry was posted on maandag, november 10th, 2008 at 20:25 and is filed under Online Poker, Poker Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.