"You Couldn't Have a Set of 7's"

This one is about a good night at BSC, at the end of the first weekend of March Madness.  When I first got to the table, I found it was pretty much the softest 1/2 game I can remember being at in a long time.  How soft?  Well, if I had just played my normal game, I would have been the most aggressive player there. 

But I had been having a good trip until then, and it wasn’t just from my getting good cards.  I could tell I was playing better than usual, it seemed like my game was advancing.  I was getting better and better at reacting to situations and playing the table and the players.   So as I realized how soft this table was, I started making moves, making steals, raising with hands I don’t usually raise with.  Early on, almost none of this met with any resistance.  I kept winning a lot of small pots, but it was adding up.

At first, I was doing this in position, but then I got bolder.  A couple of times in limped pots, when I was first to bet, I’d lead out with a bet on a flop that looked like it probably missed everyone.  It had missed me too, but I bet anyway.  And I won a number of pots doing that.  In the first hour, I’d probably won as many pots with air at that table than I had in my entire NL career combined.  There was no one at this table to challenge me.  Eventually some better players replaced the weakest ones, and I had back off, but it was fun while it lasted. 

One time my move didn’t pay off was when I didn’t pay enough attention to a short stack.  In a hand with many limpers, including the short-stack, I had Queen-Jack offsuit on the button.  Looked like a good place to raise there, and I did.  It folded back to the short-stack, who shoved.  Damn, if I had called, he wouldn’t have had the chance to try his limp-shove move.  Of course, I hadn’t seen him do that before.  Still, I probably should have been more alert to his stack.  He had about $45-$50 and I wasn’t interested in risking that much with such a mediocre hand, so I let it go.

By the time my pal Heather came to deal, things had changed a bit and a few of my moves had been thwarted.  A seat opened up immediately to the dealer’s right, so I asked to move there.  Heather commented, “Oh, you wanted to be closer to me, huh?”  I laughed but that was just one more good reason for the seat change.

At one point, I had won about 3 out of 4 pots (mostly small) with her dealing, prompting me to say to her, “You know, if I you weren’t spoken for, I’d ask you to marry me.”  I know Heather’s boyfriend quite well.  She laughed and said, “You say that now, but as soon as you lose a hand, it’ll be all over.”

I agreed.  “Yeah, it would be short-lived.”

By now there were some loose aggressive players at the table.  One of them raised to $12 in middle position.  Another player called, so I decided to call with Ace-10 offsuit since I was on the button. That’s not a move I would normally make.   The flop came A-A-x.  Both players checked including the preflop raiser.   Hmm, he either didn’t like the Aces, or was slow playing a big hand.  I couldn’t not bet trip Aces.  I bet out $30.  Preflop raiser called, the other guy folded.

Seeming blank on the turn.  I bet out $50 and the guy called again.  What was he calling with?  When the river blanked too, he checked and I decided to play it safe (or chicken?) and just show my hand.  I thought he might have better Ace and/or was just waiting to check-raise me.  Probably not the way this guy would have played a better hand than mine, but…..well, one of the parts of my game I need to work on is value-betting the river.

As soon as he saw my hand, he mucked.  So either a weak Ace or perhaps a big pocket pair?  Whatever, I was happy to take it down.

I won a small pot with real dumb-ass luck when Heather accidentally flipped my card, a 6 of diamonds.  It was replaced with an Ace, giving me Ace-Jack. Nobody called my preflop raise, but there was a straddle and a bunch of limpers.  Had the 6 not been exposed, I would have insta-folded Jack-6, so that felt like ill-gotten gain.  I kept the chips anyway.

In one of the blinds I was dealt pocket Jacks.  Someone raised to $11, so, out of position, I just called, as did one other player.   The flop was low, and since I was first to act, I decided to bet out and see if the preflop raiser still liked his hand.  This is a move I would never had made even a month earlier.  Anyway, he apparently didn’t like it very much, and the flop bet won the pot for me.

As the evening was winding down, I somehow managed to accidentally piss off the guy to my right.  He was the small blind and just as I put out my big blind, the dealer sent him his first card, which hit my hand and flipped over.  It was an Ace.  So the dealer had to reshuffle and start over.  It took a second for the guy to realize what happened.  But then he said, “That was my Ace?  That was my card and you did that to me?”  I apologized of course.  I said the obvious, that I didn’t mean to do it.  He wouldn’t let it go.  “That was my Ace.”  He mucked the replacement hand in disgust, almost throwing his cards in.  “That would have been my Ace, instead I get 7-deuce!”

I apologized again but it was very odd.  The guy had been decent all night.  Surely he had seen enough poker to have seen this before, many times.  But I could tell by his behavior he wasn’t cooling off.  I could sense his hostility.  At this point, I was nearly finished with my session, so I strongly considered leaving and not playing for the couple of more orbits I intended to.  But then a seat opened up on the other side of the table, and before I could ask for it, he did.  I’m pretty sure he moved solely to get away from me, so I wouldn’t accidentally flip over any more of Aces!  Yeesh.

After a few more orbits, I was just about ready to call it a night.  I had been up at most about $140, but drip, drip, drip, I had lost most of the $40 part of that.  I still could leave up the $100, and there seems to be something “magical” about that—a triple digit profit.  Somehow, being able to book a $100 win is so much nicer than booking a $95 win.

Anyway, up just barely over $100, with a stack of $300, I decided the current orbit would be my last.  I threw away garbage hand after garbage hand until, on what was to be my second to last hand, I looked at pocket 6’s.  I limped in with them from under-the-gun plus one.  Two callers, then the small blind made it $10.

Ugh.  The two bucks I limped in with kept my profit over $100.  But to call, I’d have to dip below it.  Oh well, facing the likely prospect of a $40 preflop pot, I had to call.  So much for my triple-digit profit.

The other two other limpers called.  One was a British player, who was fairly new to the table, but he had shown signs of being the stereotypical aggro Euro.  He had about $200 in front of him.  The other caller was also European, Norwegian, I think.  I’d played with him for hours and he was a bit aggressive, but not in the extreme.  Seemed like a solid player.  He had about $275 in front of him. 

The flop came Jack-7-6, two diamonds.  Preflop raiser checked.  I bet $30 with my bottom set.  The Brit fumbles with his chips for a bit, making me think he might be raising, but he called.  Norwegian guy makes it $75.

Yeah.

Preflop raiser folds.  What do I do there?  The other two guys seemed to really like the flop.  But I had a set.  Did anyone have a bigger set?  Were they betting draws?  Top pair?  Two pair seemed unlikely.  Set-over-set did indeed seem more likely.  Damn.

I couldn’t put the Norwegian on a set of Jacks.  He would have raised with Jacks.  But a set of 7’s was very possible.

So much for my $100 profit.  I forgot about that and tried to figure out the best move.  Calling was perhaps the safe play.  Maybe I could keep some of my money if it was indeed set-over-set.

Or was raising the safest play?  Chase away the flush and/or straight draws?  Or try to?

As I considered my move, I thought about the situation.  Screw the $100 profit, that was gone.  If I lose it all there, I’m done for the night—I was only going to play one more hand anyway—and all I would have lost, in reality, is one buy-in.  Losing one buy-in when I had a set in a set-over-set situation, well, I could live with that.  That’s poker, right?  I was prepared to do that.

Then the only question was—how to maximize value if indeed I did have the best hand?  Should I have just called there, to get more money on the turn and the river?  Or should I shove there?  If I raise big there—a shove—do only better hands than mine call me?  Was that the right move?

I don’t know, and I’d like some opinions on that.  But what I decided was—if I’m willing to put my entire stack on the line (or most of it), I might as well do it now. 

“All in,” I said.

The thing I didn’t want to hear from either of the other two was a snap call.  The Brit took a long, long time to decide.  That was relief #1.  It looked like he was gonna call (I had him covered, so it would be his entire stack), but he folded.

As soon as he sent his cards forward, I waited for the Norwegian to say “call.”  But he didn’t.  Pretty sure that even if he has “only” middle set there, he snap calls.  Relief #2.  I figured I must be ahead.

He started talking to me.  “What do you have?  What could you have?......You don’t have a set of 7’s do you?  You couldn’t have a set of 7’s”

No, I didn’t, but of course I said nothing and hoped I had on my best poker face, as I stared off in the distance.  But it sure sounded like he didn’t have a set of 7’s either.  He kept talking, kept thinking, kept talking about a set of 7’s.  He must have either asked me if I had a set of 7’s, or said I didn’t have a set of 7’s, at least five times.  He played with his chips the whole while.  He was clearly in agony over this decision.  I became convinced he was gonna fold, which was ok by me.  The pot was around $175 and I would have been happy to take it down there.

But no, the guy finally called.  We didn’t show.   The turn was a black 10.  The river was a red Ace, but not the Ace of diamonds.

I flip over my hand and the dealer says, “set of 6’s……he didn’t have a set of 7’s, he had a set of 6’s.”  

The guy stared at my cards for a few seconds and mucked without showing.  It was well over a $550 pot, with about $300 of it being profit for me.  The dealer, one of my buddies, got a nice tip!

I asked the guy what he had, which I suppose was rude of me.  He was not happy, to say the least.  “What do you think I had?”

I said, “You didn’t just have top pair, did you?”  That got him more upset, and he said he no, somehow implying that he had 2 pair.  I kind of wondered what he was doing with 2 pair on that flop, why he would have called a raise.  Maybe 6-7 suited?

Anyway, the Brit expressed surprise at my hand, and was very surprised at my shove on the flop.  He said he was surprised I played it like that.  I guess he meant I wasn’t getting good value for my set with the shove? That’s why I’m looking for feedback on the hand.

Then he said that he had the nuts on the turn!  He said he was gonna call if I had just called, but he couldn’t call my shove.  And he would have hit it and won the huge pot if I had just called.  That doesn’t mean I made the right move, only that it worked out in this particular situation.  I later found out that he had the open ended straight draw (not a flush draw) and the turn gave him the straight.  He had 9-8, so he folded an open-ender.  He also told me the guy I stacked told him he had Jack-7.

If that’s true, well, that’s what you get for calling a raise with Jack-7. 

I decided to avoid the “hit-and-run” and play one more orbit.  I didn’t get any cards to play, which I was ok with.  I cashed out with a nearly $400 profit from the session, 3/4’s of that came on that one hand. 

It was after I cashed out and I was hanging around the room, kind of enjoying myself, that I saw the Norwegian guy leave (he re-bought immediately after he lost to me) that I got the info I did from the British guy.  Nice guy.  I was hoping I’d see him again later in the trip, but I never did.

Didn’t see the Norwegian guy again either.  I wonder if he’s thinking, “Well, at least I was right that he didn’t have a set of 7’s”?

((Note, I posted the big hand as a topic of discussion on the AVP forums, and most of the responses thought I played it right.  You can check it out here.  Feel free to comment there, or below, or both))