The past week has blasted by me in record time, and it feels like this is the first time I've had to actually sit down and reflect on what's happened. I've played poker every night except Monday this week, and I think I've played squash every night as well. That's a good thing, those are both important things that I really want to continue improving, and the only way to effectively improve is to keep practicing. On another positive note, I've had first place finishes at least three of the four times I've played this week, so I must be doing some things right (and had some luck swinging my way).
Last night I managed to squeeze in time for one game of poker over at my friend Brad's house, and I want to write about the hand that led me to the final heads up play. I didn't really play this hand as I had planned. Graham had already put in his big blind, and it was up to me whether I was going to meet his bet. I looked down at my cards and saw 10-5, both clubs. Definitely not a very strong hand, but, in heads up play, your opponent isn't usually holding much better. I had decided that I was going to call Graham's initial blind bet, and raise the pot 300 in order to try and get a read on what he was holding. I chose 300 because I figured that it left him with enough money to call my bet and then get out if he didn't connect with the flop. I didn't want to make a really large bet, such that his only option would be either to push all in, or fold - I really wanted to see the flop, without him shoving all his chips towards the center of the table.
So far so good. Graham thought for a couple of seconds, and what do you know, he shoves all his chips into the center. Now, at this point, I should have respected the fact that I had made a raise to get a read on Graham, and he was sending me a pretty strong one. His all-in reraise pushed the amount to call to around 700. I had more than enough chips to call and see what he had, and so I did exactly that, but I really should have been playing smarter. My initial bet had two goals:
- Ideally, take him out of the pot right there, and steal the blinds.
- If Graham didn't fold right then, at least get some kind of idea for what he's holding.
Graham's a smart player, and doesn't play with rags. If he didn't have anything, I was hoping he'd fold his cards, and let me take the blinds. Again, I wasn't holding a lot, but by the same token, I didn't think he was either.
After Graham reraised, I basically totally disregarded my intial purpose for betting, and called him. Granted, I didn't really think he had much, but the likelihood of him holding at least one face card was pretty good at this point. When he flipped over his cards, I was staring at A-K. Pretty gruesome. Fortunately, my luck held out, and I hit a 10 on the flop, and neither of us connected with the rest of the cards dealt on the board. Lucky, yes, but next time, I want to make more of a concerted effort to avoid these kind of risky plays.
In retrospect, I think my bet was probably the right amount. It was enough that it represented a respectful portion of Graham's chips, but not so much that it made him pot committed if he didn't hit anything on the flop. Additionally, if I had only bet 200, I think it would have been too little, and given him too much incentive to call, thus negating the first purpose of my bet.
I guess the thing I want to work on the most in my game right now is heads up play. There's really no way to do this save for stopping myself from splitting every pot I end up vying for in order to maximize the odds of coming out at the end with a profit from playing. Heads up play is tricky, and the only way to improve at it is to keep doing it. Hopefully by next weekend, I'll have a few more experiences gained from doing exactly that, and we'll see what needs to be tweaked.
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