by Aisthesis » Thu Jul 21, 2005 4:14 pm
Well, not meaning to hijack, a few hands of recently:
1) I have 22 in EP and the flop comes AA2. I lose my stack of $600 after heavy betting when MP turns over A2. I'm not at all sure that I shouldn't have laid down given the betting sequence--it's a lot of hand to lay down, I know, and the good players with whom I discussed the hand were rather divided there. But the one clearly great play I made was not tilting. I was actually pretty relaxed about the whole thing. A2 played her hand very well in any case, so what can I say. And, believe it or not, I finished up over $200 for the night in large part due to a KK in the spirit of ice's power play (I couldn't resist moving up to the 5/10 when the 2/5 broke up and felt like I was still on my game).
2) I have KK and the flop comes all spades where I have no spades. I make no continuation bet at all into a pot of $125 after my raise, so the flop is checked around. Turn a blank, and we get a bet of $25 or so, which I just call. River another blank, and I call a bet of $50, winning the hand against QQ. This was simply the result of playing the hand defensively in this situation. The board is simply too scary (check out Brunson's recommendations on these coordinated boards).
3) At last night's 5/10, a very loose raiser makes it $25 to go (he'll raise any A, any pair, and this is just a glorified minimum raise at 5/10), and I decide to play JT on the button. Flop comes 789. A very good player in MP bets $100 into a pot of $125. I raise to $400 and he lays down, showing me an As (there were 2 spades on the board). I'm pretty sure he had AA here and made an excellent laydown (he was not the initial raiser).
I do think a great play of yours is quite simply laughing about the whole thing!! That's absolutely the best attitude. This is also a game where you want to have fun! At the same time, substantively, you just do really have to play your big pairs very softly on coordinated boards. It's not at all a mistake laying down the best hand if you have to get in truly deep on a board where you have zero outs to beat the obvious made hand.