Special Guest Post from Reader "Grouse"

I’m delighted to present a guest blog post.  Avid blog reader “grouse” has contributed his tale of woe from a very recent Vegas trip.  You’ve no doubt seen grouse post comments on various poker blogs, although he’s more of a reader than a commenter.  Take it away, grouse! 

I played a few sessions out there, but only two of them were note worthy. The first was at the Palms. I played there from about 10 P.M. on Wednesday night to 2 Thursday morning. I lost my first buy-in in about 20 minutes when my set lost to a higher set.  After that, it pretty much stayed stagnant and I lost half of my second buy in on a hand that I got thoroughly outplayed. I honestly cannot remember the last time I got out played that bad. I had a little over $200 in front of me with Jacks in the hole. The guy to my right, who was very tight for the hour and a half I had played with him, open raised to 12 bucks. I raised to $25 to see where I was at. Some new guy a few to my left called as did the initial raiser. Flop was all non-suited low cards. The guy to my right checked, which I found odd. I bet $50. Random guy folds and the guy to my right pushes for $160 more which had me covered. I thought about it for a long time. Much longer than I normally do.

Eventually I folded with a little less than half of my stack in the pot. After I folded the guy to my right asked how big my pair was. I told him I forgot, to which he then showed me Ace-King. He was a good player and he knew exactly what he was doing by showing me the bluff and it worked. I went on tilt, which is pretty rare for me, and left 20 minutes later because I couldn't stop thinking about that hand. 

The next day, I played for a little over three hours at the Flamingo and came out +$360. Nothing much for extraordinary hands. Pretty much caught some cards in good spots and didn't make any costly mistakes.

I will be back out there some time in September, so if you happen to be out there then, we will try to find some time to play if we can. Take care, and know that I will be lurking out there on the web reading your enjoyable posts.

Rob’s Comments: 

I want to thank grouse very much for his guest post.  I will get to his hand in a minute.  But I should explain that grouse emailed me when he read that I was in Vegas a couple of weeks ago and suggested a possible meeting.  I was eager to do that, but I totally messed up the timing of when he was going to be in town and by the time I suggested a session together, he was already back home!  My bad. 

It’s a shame, I always like to meet my readers.  It always surprises me the varied group of people who are entertained by my meanderings.  Oh well, as grouse suggested, perhaps in September.  Thanks for the kudos, grouse, and also for the guest blog post, which I suggested in part as sort of a “make good” for missing out on the chance to play some cards with him.

As for the hand, I actually want to open up a discussion….what is worse, making a bad call and losing a lot of chips, or folding to a bluff and knowing you had the best hand when you laid it down?  Recall I had a similar situation last year when Grump totally outplayed me and bluffed me off my dreaded pocket Kings (see here).  If I had called and it turned out he had the monster I feared and lost all my chips, wouldn’t I have even felt worse?  No matter how good you are, you’re not going to make the right play every time.

In this case, you said the guy was very tight the whole time you played with him.  In that case, I don’t think you made a bad laydown.  It would have been real easy to put him a bigger pair there (less easy to put him on a set or two pair, but possible).  Personally, I wouldn’t have played a bigger pair the way he did, I would have repopped you with Kings or Aces for sure, and would have been scared of a bigger pair after the flop if I had Queens, but I’ve seen a lot of players do it that way.  So while I understand your angst, I think you have to just shrug and say “well played” and try to let it go.  Tough to do, believe me, I know. 

Another question:  Would you have preferred he not show his bluff and let you think you made a good laydown?

But if it was really eating you, good move to get up and take a break.  Congrats on the nice recovery the next day!