How a Poker Player Thinks

I’ve been spending this week playing at the Ameristar in St. Louis. I’ve been playing nearly all of the Heartland Poker Tour events (including the Main Event), but also plenty of cash games. These games are among the juiciest I’ve ever seen. Outside of Aruba and the Florida rooms, I can’t recall anyplace I’ve played where the chips came so easy. Here’s one hand as an example:

This was a 1/3 game. Having started with $300, I’d been able to grind it up to around $400 after a half-hour ($395 to be precise – see below to learn how I came to know that).  Lots of limping taking place; it wasn’t at all uncommon for six players to see a flop. This isn’t to say there wasn’t ANY preflop raising; on two occasions someone raised $100 into a pot with a few limpers. Both times, after everyone folded, they tabled pocket Kings face-up. Everybody respectfully and solemnly congratulated the winner on their immense skill and judgment for how they avoided a potentially dangerous flop. I felt like congratulating them on winning the absolute smallest amount of money humanly possible with poker’s second-best starting hand.

The following hand happened while I was in middle position. By the time action got to me, we’d seen two limpers (including the older player on my right). I looked down to see pocket nines, and raised to $15. I’d been raising every pot I entered regardless of the number of limpers, which threw some of the other players off since it was so unusual. Not that it made that much difference; my preflop raises didn’t get much respect, and I knew I’d have to trust my post-flop game to be successful in this room.

My raise got cold-called in two spots behind me. The small blind folded; big blind called; and the first limper also called. Now action was on the player to my right. To recap: Four players plus me, with one left to act.

Suddenly, this player shoved all-in; nearly a $400 re-raise.

My first instinct was to fold. After all, pocket nines generally don’t play well in a hand that’s been three-bet preflop. But I decided to give the matter a bit more thought. I asked myself, what hand would someone limp/shove with … that could beat pocket nines?

We’ve already established that folks will raise preflop with premium hands at this table. This means that my opponent probably didn’t have Aces, Kings, Queens, or Jacks, because he would have raised with them himself. Maybe even Tens. So what hand would he reraise-shove with? Let’s say Tens, Nines, Eights, Sevens, and maybe Sixes. Against this range, 99 is a 65/35 winner. So I should call.

Let’s add a few more hands to his range. Assuming he’d also raise AK and AQ, that removes those hands from his range. So maybe AJs and ATs … KQs, QJs, and JTs. I can’t think of any other reasonable possibilities, and even these might be stretching it. But even so, I’m still 60/40 against this range.

Again, the key for me was his limp/shove, and what preflop raises tended to mean at this table. If he’d raised a reasonable amount himself preflop, I’d have just called (and given the exact flop, bluffed if checked to or folded to a bet). If he’d three-bet a smaller amount, I might have folded. But his shove, paradoxically, just looked too weak, and WAY too polarizing.

I called.

Everyone else folded, so it was heads up. The board cards were KKQJ4 rainbow. I showed my 99; he showed 77; and since I had him outchipped by around $5 (that’s how I knew exactly how much I had above), he was completely felted. I stacked towers of chips, while he rebought.