#168: “Karma Police, Part II: This Is What You Get When You Mess With Suited Connectors Out Of Position”
My good friend/business partner/primary antagonist Dara O’Kearney is always telling me that people like to hear about when you fuck up. He says people are drawn to human failure. (That’s probably why his blog is so popular!) He also likes to warn me about the danger in some of the more high-wire lines that I often take in live tourneys. He questions whether they are +EV and doubts whether it is even possible to quantify the merit of such moves. Most of the time, however, he is saying it just after they have worked so I call him a nit and tell him to be quiet. His preferred line then is to patronisingly shake his head – a gesture so oozing with ‘father knows best’ superiority that my rational brain completely shuts down and I unleash upon him the full wrath of my Oedipus complex. At this point, he knows that he has won so he just says nothing, smugly content in the knowledge that the day would come when such a line would cause me to unnecessarily spazz-donk my tourney. Well that day came last Thursday at the EMOP Barcelona.
In the second level, I got a bad case of fancy play syndrome and read a situation completely wrong. Having been uncharacteristically tight in Level 1 (choosing not to get funky with all those off-suit 7-gappers), I opened for just the third time and was 3betted for the second consecutive time by the same villain in position. With 910h, I elected to call. The flop came Jd6h7d, he bet 725 into 1400 and I called. Now I realise that an out of position float/call with a gutshot and backdoor flush draw is not a standard line but I felt like there were a lot of turn cards which would allow me to begin telling a convincing story. Obviously, a non-diamond 8 was my nut card but this texture of board would also allow me to continue in the hand with over half the deck on the turn (any 10, 9, Q, K, 3, diamond or heart).
The turn was the Ace of Hearts, I checked and the villain bet 1425. I took my time before making it 3600. My logic here was that this is a great card for him to barrel if he was 3betting me wide pre-flop. It almost certainly ruled out Jx hands except AJ as it did QQ and KK. At this point, I figured his range for AA/JJ/AK/AQ/AJ and a collection of air hands, some of which have equity. It was also possible that he had 77/66/A7/A6 but based on the pre-flop action, these all seemed way less likely. My raise was designed to be the first of a two-street bluff to get him off AK, AQ and his (presumably better) air. AK and AQ formed 24 of the 39 hand combos (62%) of the likely value range so I liked the chances of it working.
To my utter surprise, he tank-clicked it back to 5900. I took a moment to digest this new information and to be honest, I was totally baffled. Wouldn’t he bet more to protect a set or top 2 on such a draw heavy board? It was one of those bets that didn’t just polarise his range – from my POV, it actually made no sense. I thought to myself ‘he must have air’ and since I couldn’t beat air, I’d have to shove. I made it 8800 more and he snapped with 66. A black Queen hit the river and I was one of the first players eliminated.
While I don’t entirely hate the logic of my thought process, I feel pretty stupid about making such a high variance play so early in a soft €1K buy-in. I think that one of the key edges that good players have is their ability to play their opponent’s hand/hand range and not necessarily their own holding in deep-stack situations. On this occasion, however, all I did was level myself, giving my opponent credit for thinking the way I would about a click-back on that board-texture on the turn.
I wandered over to Dara to let him know what I had done (we share 10% in live tourneys) and to his credit, he didn’t give me a hard time. He wasn’t even that critical. I shrugged disconsolately – “That’s what I get for messing with suited connectors out of position”. He nodded and I slunk away to put my name down for the cash game. It seemed the karma police had finally caught up with me.