Lessons from Jun's Home Game

What a session! There were so many elements to yesterday's game that I'm still trying to piece them all together. However, I'm willing to sacrifice making sense in order to get out the details before they get too hazy.

Last night was like a journey for me. One decision affected the next, which affected the next, and so on. The swings in my temperament were directly reflected by the size of my chip stack. I think last night could have been taken as a microcosm of my entire poker career.

I think what I'll do is tell the story through a series of lessons that I learned last night. These are not brand new lessons to me. They are just things I had forgotten during my poker layoff, and of which I was brutally reminded yesterday evening.

Lesson One) You can't play the same way against every single player.

This is the kind of statement typically followed by a "Duh," right? You would think that I would know better. But making this initial mistake affected my results for the rest of the session.

See, I had played in Jun's home game before. And I knew the game was full of tricky players who were not afraid to make a re-raise with bottom pair or a gutshot straight draw. And I knew that Caro advises that against such players, check-calling more often than you normally would is the way to go (article). So I did this last night. But the problem was that I over-simplified the issue, and applied this strategy on virtually every hand early on. I played too passively, and paid off too many bets that were clearly for value. I lost my first buy-in fairly quickly. The problem was that I didn't take the time to identify the bluffers. I just called down everyone early on whenever I got a decent piece of the board.

Lesson Two) When you become aware of your mistakes, don't overcompensate.

This is exactly what I did. One I realized how passively I was playing, I went into hyper-aggressive mode whenever I hit a flop, and basically didn't allow myself to get paid off. I was steaming, and I knew it. The table knew it too, so basically all I could hope for was to get my preflop raise called, because if I bet again it was obviously I had connected. And I didn't let anyone stick around to catch on me. I tilted myself out of some nice-sized pots.

Still, even though the pots were small I was still winning them. So I managed to climb out of my hole a little bit. The hyper-aggression helped my table-image in a way, or so I thought. Turns out that my opponents were just waiting for the right hand to come along ...

Lesson Three) Sheng owns me.

As an appetizer, he hit runner 2s when we both hit the Ace on the flop, giving him the boat and giving me Aces up with a kicker. I recognized he was value-betting me the whole way, but I just sat there and paid him off. Just couldn't lay the hand down, though I suspected I was beat. I think this goes back to Lesson One. I had incorrectly typed Sheng as a big-time bluffer, but last night he played his poker straight-forward enough to make even Billy proud. He was making what looked, smelled, and felt like value bets against me and I just would not give him credit for anything.

But like I said, these were just warm-up hands. The killer was the sickest hand I have ever seen in my life, much less been involved in. I can't claim it was a bad beat. Just an insane hand.

I was in the small blind with pocket Jacks. Blinds were $.05 and $.10, and it was raised to $.30. Sheng re-raised to $1. The players between us folded, and I pushed for about $15. This was done for three reasons. First, I was still steaming because I felt I was being pushed around by the table. I felt like they saw me as a sucker, and I was sick of it. I wanted to make a statement, and frankly, I was pissed. The second reason I make this ridonkulous raise was that I didn't want to have a tough decision on the flop. I had been bluffed out of enough pots already that I didn't want to have to play the guessing game if the flop came with an Ace, King, or Queen. I wanted that pressure to be on the raisers. Third, I wanted the original raiser out of the pot. I wanted to make it impossible for him to call, being sandwiched between two re-raises.

Well, the original raiser (Chung, I think his name was) thought about it for a while, and Sheng did everything he could to keep him in the pot. He talked him up, made a joke or two. He didn't dare to call the clock. These actions made it apparent that I was up against it -- nothing else was possible but Aces or Kings. At this point I seriously regretted making the push, but at you'll see in a moment, I would have ended up all-in at some point in the hand anyway. Eventually Chung folded, Sheng called and showed me the rockets. It was time for me to start praying.

Before Jun could fully turn the cards over, Sheng announced that he had seen a Jack in the flop. Prayers answered ... sort of. Once the flop was fully revealed, to my horror I saw that it contained a Jack all right ... along with an Ace. I felt crushed. Down to one out. I didn't dare to hope anymore.

But evidently, miracles do happen. I hit my one-outer case Jack on the turn, and the entire room erupted. It was quad Jacks vs. Aces-full, and I had a huge pot coming my way. This would have been a jackpot at the casino. The stuff of legends. Naturally, I felt a whole lot better about getting all my money in. In the midst of my euphoria, I actually felt just a little bad for Sheng. What a sick beat this was for him. But I figured he would make it back soon enough playing online tourneys. He'd be okay.

"But wait," Jun said, calming everyone down for a moment. "There's still one more Ace in the deck. It's not over! There's still another Ace."

No way. Could the poker gods be that cruel? I was a 98% favorite at that point. I didn't think it was possible. I promised myself I would play better if I survived this river. Just one more card to come, and there was only one card in the deck that could help Sheng. After the flop, the odds of me hitting my case card and then him hitting his were over 1000:1. There was no way my luck was that terrible, right?

'Fraid so. If you haven't already guessed, the river was the case Ace, and I couldn't help but smile. I jumped up and down in my friend's home, but I didn't care. Everyone was screaming. No one could believe what we had just seen. I confirmed with Jun that he had burned a card before dealing the river, and he assured me he had. No way out of this one. The Aces, though it seemed impossible, had somehow held up. It was four-of-a-kind over four-of-a-kind -- the kind of hand that makes Maverick, The Cincinnati Kid, and Casino Royale seem just a little less preposterous.

But more importantly, it had just become official. Sheng really does own me

Lesson Four) I have really grown as a player.

Anyone who knows me knows that a hand like that would typically set me off. Shoot, I imagine it would set anyone off. A roller-coaster ride like that is usually taken as a sign that it's just not your day. Give it up, go home. You're probably going to play like crap after that. Don't let yourself drop another three buy-ins -- just get out to stop the bleeding.

Not this time. I bought back in for the last five bucks in my wallet, and proceeded to play the best poker I had all night. Not perfect poker, but much more solid. Like I said, in the past that kind of hand would have spelled disaster for me. But last night, it bolstered me. It made me feel invincible. It couldn't get much worse than losing quads over quads, right? If I could survive a freak hand like that with a smile, then I could hang with the best of them.

This is why I feel last night was a microcosm of my poker career. Early on in the night, just like early in my career, I would invariably proceed to steam and play like crap if I took the worse of a big hand. But as the night went on, I became numb to the beats, but in a good way. I could smile, and just feel more determined to play even better. I started trusting the odds more. By the end of last night, instead of crying about how bad my luck was, I remembered all the times in my career I had hit that miracle card on the river and raked in the huge pot. It couldn't get any worse. So why not play my best and, to use a cliche, let the chips fall where they may?

So I ended up doubling my last buy-in. The game was broken as guys went to do other things. But instead of feeling down about that $30 pot (just think, that was equivalent to 300 BBs in this game! That's like a $600 pot playing $1-2 at the Hustler.), I felt elated. I had gotten the crap beaten out of me, but gotten back up. I recognize that I'm not impervious to tilt, but I've gotten much better at managing it than I've ever been before.

So I'm smiling today.

And finally,

Lesson Five) If you're going to take a sick beat like that, make sure it's at a casino.

The jackpot on that hand would have been ridiculous. :-)