You hold pocket aces in late position, put in a raise at the first
op****tunity, and find yourself against a small enough field to feel
like your aces have a chance. The flop comes 8-4-2, a safe enough
flop, you figure, since your foes are unlikely to be in there with
8-4, 8-2 or 4-2, and while small sets are a possibility, you judge
that to be a remote possibility -- especially when it's checked around
to you and then just one subsequent player calls your bet. You put him
on a good eight or an overpair; you're not scared, nor should you be.
But here comes the turn, an offsuit 7. He checks. You bet. He raises .
Now you have that familiar sinking feeling: You've been trapped by a
slow-played superior hand. Could he really have been lucky enough to
hit his set or second pair? Could he have been boneheaded enough to
call your initial raise with two disconnected low cards? Maybe he
played a 5-6, drew to an inside straight and got there. In any case,
you are now in the midst of a familiar situation: You're stuck on the
hand and there's no way out. You're going to call his raise on the
turn because, hey, you might pair up or ace up on the river to beat
him -- unless your pair gives him a boat, or unless he's already on a
made straight. In any case, you're committed... committed to losing
two more big bets because you feel, fatalistically, that there's no
way out.
Is this true? Is it really true that you can't escape further damage?
After all, why not fold? Why not save those two bets for a time when
they'll do you more good.
Sure, you reckon, he might be bluffing. But for the sake of this
example, let's assume that you know he's not. You've never seen him
check-raise bluff, but you have seen him check-raise trap many times.
Nor is he the kind of player who might put you on overcards and think
that his ragged eight is the best hand. No, he's just another
straightforward, unimaginative player who just barely knows how to
check-call the flop and check-raise the turn. For the sake of this
example, let's assume that you're 100% certain he has you beat. Yet
you call. Why is that?
Could it be that you feel you're owed? We all know how rarely pocket
aces come around. When they come our way, we naturally anticipate
winning with them. Why not? They're the best possible hand, and we're
good people. We deserve to win. Thus burdened by this feeling of
entitlement, we tend to underestimate the strength of our foe's hand,
and overestimate the chances of beating him on the redraw. Our
thinking is skewed by the emotional attachment we have to those
beautiful bullets. We want them to win. We need them to win. If they
don't win, it's a tragedy and a shame, but not so big a tragedy and a
shame as folding now. That would be just unfair...
You see this sad rationalization in at least one other cir***stance:
when a player holds pocket kings and there's an ace on the flop. He
raised pre-flop, driving off (he assumes) all hands except premium
ones. Well, what's a premium non-pair hand? A hand with an ace, of
course. But when that ace hits the flop, our holder of king-king
suddenly loses all perspective. He puts his foes on underpairs or
draws, even when his foes start raising like flags. Why? Because
pocket kings come along as rarely as pocket aces, and he feels like
he's owed!
My friend, discipline in poker means more than having rigorous
starting requirements. It also means getting away from hands when
you're beat. If you can't fold aces when you know, with every fiber of
your being, that they're just going to cost you bets upon bets, then
you don't have discipline. If pocket kings leave you vulnerable to the
stealth ace, you don't have common sense.
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