Secrets of the Amateurs

I'm slightly annoyed with myself for making a few mistakes in recent single tables. Check this one out. With about 1500, blinds 100-200, middle position, I moved in with 76s. This is a perfectly legitimate play provided the big blind isn't committed. When the next player said "talk about protection", I realised that the big blind did indeed have half his chips in the pot. He called me blind, turned over Queens, and I made a straight :-). This was rank careless play on my part because you should always check whether either blind is committed before launching a steal.

Now, the problem here isn't just the fact that I have no fold equity in this pot, with a hand that's better than most against a real holding but below average against any two. That's bad enough, but an additional effect is that my image is blown. Normally, if I'm caught with my fingers in the till, then I'm either busted, crippled, or I suck out and double up. Whatever happens, I'm not in the steal zone any more and my busted image isn't going to hurt so much. If I double up I usually have a level to calm down before I start pushing again, so I can rebuild a tighter image. And if I push with a bigger stack, I'm going to have the goods, and my new loose image might buy me a call that I want.

In the event, "the truth was out" as another player commented. Everyone thinks they're Vince Van fucking Patten, can't you just shut up and play ? On the next level I made an auto-push in the small blind, and the big called me with K2. There's no way he would have called me without seeing that 76s. Small mistakes, even when you win the hand where you made the mistake, often have larger knock-on effects.