By
Green Plastic
Taylor Caby, A.K.A. Green Plastic, is the founder of cardrunners.com, as well as an instructor on the site.
I’d like to share with you a situation that came up this past week during a short-handed $25-$50 no limit cash game session I played. The situation itself will probably never happen to me (or anyone who reads this) again, but I think there is a lesson to be learned.
I was playing my typical game in two 3-handed cash games. My image was very loose-aggressive (LAG), even for me. I had about $18,000 on one table and $7,000 on another table. The seating arrangements were identical on both tables, with me being to the left of a LAG player ($6,800, $13,000) and to the right of an even more LAG player ($9,000, $6,000). Whenever the player to my left folded the button (when I was in the big blind), the player to my right was raising from the small blind very frequently. I noticed this and started to re-raise him (because I had position in the big blind vs. small blind battle) with moderate to solid hands. I was picking up some good hands and also pushing him around a little, so I could sense that if I picked up real hand I might be able to break him.
Eventually a great situation came up. I had AA in the big blind on one of my tables, and the player to my right had raised from the small blind. I saw on the other table the same situation, except on this table I had 38 off-suit (38o). Immediately I had an idea. I thought, “why don’t I first re-raise with the 38o hand, and then raise the AA.” My thought process was that if he raised both spots he probably didn’t have a great hand in both, if he had a great hand at all. Assuming he was going to make a loose call against me, he would be more likely to fold to the first raise, then call the second raise figuring I was starting to get out of line and was pushing him around. I raised the 38o, then immediately raised the AA on the other table. He thought and eventually called both my raises.
This was a great situation for me. I had position against him on both tables and he was a player that was calling with what seemed likely to be weak hands. Furthermore, on one table I had pocket aces! The flops really didn’t matter because I was going to bet out regardless with my 38o first (hopefully he folds, and if he does he is more likely to make a marginal call again on the other table if he hit any piece of the flop – same logic as pre-flop) and then bet my AA. I made no pair on the 38o table but took the pot down with a pot sized bet. I made the same bet on the other table with my AA (flop QJ2) and got called immediately. The turn came an 8 which wasn’t the best card for me (he could have had 9T or maybe something like Q8, the only hand on the flop I was really worried about was QJ – which was unlikely at best). I figured I still had the best hand and I knew that with my loose image a lot of hands I could beat would still call a bet on the turn. I fired out another pot sized bet and immediately got raised all in. I had to call about $3,500 (about the size of the pot) more with this bet and I really started to wonder if I had the best hand.
I thought for a little while, and then the player typed into the chat room – “you can’t have a hand on both tables.” Now normally I don’t pay too much attention to chat in games as I have a tendency to over think things, but this stood out as something he probably wouldn’t say if he had a cinch hand. I think he genuinely thought his hand was the best but knew if I called I definitely had outs. It just seemed to me he was exasperated with the way I was pushing him around and it was likely he would make this move with enough hands that I could beat to make it the right call.
I eventually called and he flipped over Q6s for top pair. I scooped the pot when the board didn’t help him on the river, and raked in a nice $13,000.
Now, this type of situation is unlikely to ever come up again. But I think it illustrates an important point. In order to earn the most money possible from playing poker, you need to look for every edge you can. In the long-run, it is the small edges that you have over other players that will add up in the form of profit. Staying out of trouble situations like playing AQ out of position, not tilting, noticing which players are playing too many tables and won’t notice all the details of each table are all examples of small edges that I push that I think many players don’t realize.
These days it isn’t too hard to be a winning poker player due to the influx of new poker players. Playing good, solid fundamental poker is all it takes to win at the lower levels. However, if you want to be a great player, you need to do more than just play solid poker. One step to becoming a great player is to push as many of these small edges as you can.