the deep stack poker hand
so i won a tough $700 pot a couple of hours ago, and i'm not convinced i played it right.
I had $850 in front of me - a recovery of being stuck for a good four hours, so profit was only $50. I was probably about the fifth biggest stack on the table, which says something about the $1/$2 games at Harrah's.
a black guy i had never seen before sat down and bought in for roughly $1200. He was in the big blind. Someone in mid position raised to $15 and got two callers. When it got around to him, he reraised to $45. Two people called him, so there was about $150ish in the pot. I don't remember what the flop was exactly, but i know that an ace hit. first to act, he bet out $45 and the other two people folded. He turned his hand over and showed he had garbage - something like 6 10 offsuit, didn't catch any pair.
next hand, he's in the small blind. I'm in mid-position and someone limp called before me. I have KhQc and raised to $15. I got three callers, and then it got to him. He raised to $45 again. I called, and one other person called. Flop comes Ks10d7d. He bet out $45. I thought about it momentarily and then raised to $150. It folded around to him, and he called.
turn card came 2h. He lead out and bet $150. This is the second hand that i've ever seen him play. He was pseudo-aggressive in the previous hand (although the $45 flop bet was a little weird), and my effort to take the aggression away from him clearly didn't work. I tried to get a read on him, and he ended up smiling and laughing a little, and i laughed too because i try to be friendly at the table, but my brain was still churning. A part of me felt like he was still trying to make a move, but he could have been the sort to have run into a strange two pair and used the same betting pattern of the previous hand to get an opponent to make loose calls on larger bets.
I decided that folding wasn't an option. The question was whether or not raising was appropriate, and after thinking about i decided that it wasn't a good idea because i wasn't ready to commit the rest of my stack on this hand in the event that he did run into a monster. So i called.
River came 4. i think it was 4s. He immediately led out $200. I thought about it again for a long time. Again there was that strong instinct that he flopped a weird two pair, but the $200 bet is really strange for the size of the pot. Again the idea of raising all in came into my head, but that felt wrong again because if he has air he's not going to call an additional $400, and if he has a monster then he nails me. Given the behavior of the previous hand and the fact that his general aura was sort of willy nilly about the money he had in front of him, i called. He said, "what'd you take so long to call for?" and flips over Q10. I flipped over KQ and won the pot.
if that hand had been played ten to fifteen hands later, i would have shoved all-in on the turn with no hesitation because he pretty much donked the rest of his chips in a similar fashion in the next few hands. The fact that it was the second hand and therefore i couldn't establish a pattern made the hand really weird, and kind of forced me into a position i normally try to avoid - passive and having to make the tough decisions. I think a part of me was hoping that since i called the $150 on the turn, he would give up on trying to steal the pot on the river being out of position and because it was clear that i had a hand, but i don't think i planned it out to the end in the right way, and it was fortunate that he chose not to put any real pressure on me by only betting $200. Not that passive and slowing down is always bad - raising on the turn with the strong possibility that he had a monster would have been throwing money away, but a part of me wonders if folding was actually the right thing to do there if i wouldn't be willing to call an all-in bet on the river.