Black Deuces - Poker Blog

The last few weeks I got the bankroll to stabilize around 260$. So, I thought: “Why not try a multi-table tournament for about 10% of my total bankroll?” Baaaad decision.

I played 3 of them and never managed to get in the money. Why? Quite simply: because I suck at multi-table tournament play. I just do. Judge for yourself in this “wonderful” hand:

Although I think he played it even worse than me, this hand illustrates perfectly why I’m just not ready for tournaments with a 26$ buy-in. I’m motivated though to get better at it, but first I’ll try to stabilize my bankroll around 300$ again (by playing cashgames), then maybe I’ll give it shot again at some lower limits.

(BTW: feel free to berate me about the above hand.)

Although is this mainly a poker blog about online poker I have to admit something: I love live poker far more then online games. Why? I feel limited in online poker. One big advantage I feel I have in live games is reading people by their physical demeanour. Ofcourse my biggest tool in reading players is studying their betting pattern, but sometimes your opponents bodylanguage tells you story that allows you to make a call that would be impossible to make in online poker.

For example, this a hand I played a couple of days ago in a weekly live cashgame. I left the cards closed untill the river for cheer amusant value and for you all to guess what cards we were holding. The key players are ofcourse myself (me - cutoff) and Harry (button).

That’s right. I called with J high. Pretty sick huh? I’m not going to analyze the whole hand, but there are two reasons I made this call.

First there is his betting pattern. His call on the turn tells me he either has a T or slowplaying an A, I don’t put him on a flushdraw ‘caus the board is paired. But he seemed VERY uncomfortable when he made that called. The river being a blank I decided to take one more shot at it, hoping to make him laydown a T (he’s a good player, so he’s certainly capable of laying a T down in that spot). I made a bet like I was value betting my Ax. But then, he reraised me! My first thoughts were: “Damn, I ran into an A here.” But then I noticed his body language: he was leaning back in his chair, looking VERY tense. So that’s the second reason I made the call: his demeanour convinced me he didn’t have an A. So that got me to thinking: if he had a T he wouldn’t reraise me even if he thinks I have air. Same works with K en Q high. So I figured he must think I have nothing (which he later told me, so his read was right), but if HIS nothing was better then my nothing, he would have just called me and hoped his T, K or Q high was good. He would only reraise me if he had J high or worse.

And so I said: “I’m gonna make a sick call here” and called his raise. He said “Good call” and turned over his missed 9 high flussed. He was stunned when I turned over my missed J high flush.

It’s good being right in poker, especially when you’re only holding J high.