Poker News

Tom ‘Time’ Leonard

The Improving Performance series focuses on limit Hold’em and is directed, for the most part, to intermediate players Players who know how to play but may well have collected a few bad habits along the way which prevent them from reaching a higher level of success. These bad habits, or leaks, are not the end of the world individually but when a player has several, their accumulated effect can really hold him back. Today I want to tell you about a hand that a friend of mine played some time ago and in discussion afterward tried to defend his play with all kinds of implied odds mumbo jumbo that in retrospect he now agrees was in fact, mumbo jumbo. See if this kind of loosey, goosey play resonates in your game.

My friend Jon was on the button in a ten handed game with Queen/Jack–offsuit and five players limped in and the cutoff seat raised. Jon now figured that the cutoff seat was just trying to close out the button and blinds so he called. However, the small blind re-raised as did one of the original limpers. He called two more bets feeling that he had great pot odds for a multi-way drawing hand and also because he believed that the betting had been capped. The small blind then took the last raise (four raises in the ten handed Las Vegas games vs. a three raise maximum in the nine handed California games) which, even though he didn’t like, rationalized that he was in this far so, “What the hay” OK, just to make sure we keep count, how many mistakes were made to see this flop for five bets? I count three. First, I wouldn’t have called two bets with this hand against six players in front of me and two behind when I had nothing invested as yet. Second, I wouldn’t have calledthe additional two raises which had to say that Queen/Jack–offsuit was going to need a miracle flop to prevail Third, I would make it my business to know the rules of the cardroom in which I’m playing so I would have realized that there would, in all likelihood, be an additional raise behind me to cap it. Calling the last capped bet I would not consider a mistake. Hell, in for four bets already, maybe a miracle flop will come up. I just wouldn’t have been in the position of having called four bets to then make that easy decision to call one more bet. The flop missed Jon completely and the bettors and raisers started all over again. Well, the light bulb went on in my friend’s attic and he folded. Five bets to take a flyer on a weak hand! Pick which formula you like best relative to earning a bet or two per hour over the long pull and if you’re a winning player then it becomes obvious that you just cost yourself as much as five hours by playing “Wish Poker” A losing player just accelerated his time frame to be on the rail looking for a new buy-in.

The good news relative to the state of my friend’s game is that he now can’t believe how poorly he played this hand back then. Why? Because he continues to work on his game through reading, studying, playing and analyzing his sessions through discussion to become a stronger, more profitable player. Our goal for this session is to emulate my friend Jon. No, not his play of Queen/Jack–offsuit but his tenacity relative to working on and therefore improving the caliber of his play. By the way, I stole the phrase “Wish Poker” from him which he recently used to describe his once loose play. See you next “TIME”

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