Secrets of the Amateurs

I had a day to recover on Sunday, thinking that Tunica was nice but now it was behind me and it was time to get back to work. After playing a few $200 SNGs last week, I didn't fancy them so much, because it felt like my play was out of synch after a spell of MTTs. The differences in play can be so subtle that it's very easy to play in the wrong "mode" and only realise afterwards. I think the best thing to do is stick to one or the other for a month or two, basically until you need a break and then you switch back.

So I fire up a few, bust out of most of them incompetently, but stick around in the Mansion $100K, catch a few cards, and long story short finish second for $15,000. When you're hot :-). The added money is huge here. Obviously I won a few coin flips and knocked AA off with KK all in pre-flop in the final, but the point is I had to win significantly fewer hands than you would normally need to to win 150x your buyin.

There was one moderately interesting hand. Shortly after the KK v AA coup I was chip leader 6-handed, blinds 4K-8K/400. I made it 24K UTG with AQ, and the button called. Now, the button was by far the most active player at this point. Three tables out I had seen him reraise allin with 53, get called by AQ and win. So my kind of player :-). Flop came Axx, I bet 35K he called. The turn was a J, he had about 220K left and I had him covered by 100 or so. This is the key decision point in the hand.

Now, I don't like passing big hands in pots like these so I figured I was in for the duration. Once I've made this decision, check-calling is clearly the way forward. If I'm winning, I'm miles in front, and if I'm losing, I'm fucked. I might as well extract the maximum from a bluffer, with the added bonus that check-calling might save me some chips if I'm beat. On top of that, betting the flop and checking the turn looks so like a standard "one continutation bet then give up" that it almost has to extract at least one more bet from a bluffer. So I check, he bet 60K and I called. River K, a good card because I was already losing to AK anyway. I checked, he bet 100 leaving himself 60 and I called. He showed J9 and I scooped it.

Many people are so obsessed with "protecting their hand" that they wouldn't even consider playing it this way. Look at the actual situation - he needed runner-runner on the flop and had 5 outs on the turn. "Protecting" yourself against the remote possibility of being outdrawn is nowhere near as important as losing the minimum if you're beat and winning the maximum if you're ahead, and both these goals are expedited by check-calling.

So that coup gave me enough chips to survive running into AA, AA and QQ in quick succession, although following those coups and with everyone else flinging their chips at one other player, I was outchipped 3-1 heads up. It all went in and he won with AQ v KJ, fair enough. All I have to do now is cash out ; can you believe they need photo ID for me to cash out back to Neteller ? And then I have to push it through Neteller itself ! Oh well, good job there's no rush ...