And with a Click of the Mouse - an
Online Poker Story
written by BeatTheFish.com
...Fishy says, "You can wind up in the
fishiest of situations..."
If you’ve read many of my strategy
articles, you may notice a common theme: pay attention to your table
situation and opponents while playing online. Not only will you
improve your decision-making if you focus on only one table, but
you’ll begin to pick up valuable reads on your opponents’ playing
styles. Also, if you’ve read my article on playing multiple tables,
you know that it’s important to properly organize your extra tables
to ensure that you always make the move that you intend to. Perhaps
I should follow my own advice…
It was early in the evening and I sat down at a $1/2 no-limit table
– one of my favorite starting stakes to settle down with. I bought
in for an average stack of $100 and simply wasn’t getting any cards
for the first few rounds of play. Knowing myself and my (more than)
occasional lack of patience with online poker stagnation, I decided
to open up a $5 Sit ‘n Go in the background. As I usually do, I
moved the Sit ‘n Go window to the right side of the screen in order
to avoid any misclicks. When it is your turn to act, most online
poker sites will automatically bring the window forward to prompt
you. By moving the window to the side, I try to avoid overlapping
buttons.
I still hadn’t played a hand in the ring game, and at least the
tournament kept me from playing hands I shouldn’t out of impatience.
I was keeping an eye on the tournament window and clicked the “Fold”
button to get rid of a garbage holding. Unfortunately for me, the
ring game popped up at that instant and, apparently, the “Raise”
button for that window was in the exact same spot! Shoot! After I
had already put in the money, I looked at my digital cards:
 
Worse yet, I had reraised an early position raiser to $16 – doubling
his $8 bet. Everyone else folded around to the original raiser, who
just called my raise. Unless I hit a monster flop, this was a small
disaster that cost me a few bucks due to my own carelessness and
misplacing of windows. Still, it doesn’t matter how you get into a
certain situation. All that matters is that you’re in it, and you
need to play out the hand as best as you can from your intuition,
reads on your opponent, and, of course, the cards themselves. The
flop came out:
  
While there were two overcards to my pair, I felt good about this
flop. I put my opponent on A-K due to his early position raise and
subsequent call of my modest reraise. Of course, he could have
pocket Queens or Jacks, but I didn’t get that feeling. When he
checked on the flop, I felt even more confident that he held two big
cards. I fired out another $20 into the pot, hoping that my one pair
was good but, more importantly, hoping that he would just go away at
this point. Instead of him cooperating with my brilliant plan, he
chose to call. I assumed that I was behind in the hand at this
point. The turn brought the beautiful,
Now, I was positive that I had the best hand. My opponent acted weak
on the flop and I wasn’t really worried about pocket Nines or Jacks,
the only reasonable hand that would beat me here. The other player
checked to me on the turn again, and I bet out $25 hoping to get
called. Instead, he raised me $25 more, which was all that I had
left. Of course, I called. The river brought an inconsequential:
For a board of:
I took the decent-sized pot of $175 and although he mucked the hand,
I checked the hand history to reveal that he had pocket Aces! I love
cracking pocket Aces against people who misplay them so badly. Not
only can they not let go of the hand, but they put themselves in an
awful position and set themselves up for losing. Besides, I’ve been
on the other end of this situation so often… and I get all the money
in on the flop when I’m still ahead! Let’s review the mistakes my
opponent made on this hand:
1. Not reraising preflop. His raise of 4x the big
blind from early position before the flop was fine, but I don’t
understand him just calling the reraise preflop. If he suspects that
I have pocket Kings, he should continue to push as we’re likely to
get all of our money in the pot while he is still a big favorite. If
he believes that I have any other hand, he is giving me a free shot
to make two pair or better. This method of slowplaying often works
if your opponent flops top pair only, but this is especially
dangerous online where players will call raises with extremely
mediocre holdings and sometimes hit a monster flop. Go ahead and
make a reraise here, especially if your opponent has shown that he
likes his hand (as I mistakenly did preflop).
2. Checking and calling on the flop. Could he have
made a weaker move here? Why not protect against a hand such as
mine? If you’re going to check and try to induce a bet, you should
be ready to reraise.
3. Finally reraising after the board paired. Perhaps
my opponent realized that he had been playing too softly and decided
to make a stand here. Unfortunately for him, he couldn’t have chosen
the worst time: when he had lost the lead in hand.
Most of the time, you won’t have the sort of luck that I did on this
misclick, but the lesson here is always focus on your situation and
the hand in play regardless of your cards or how far behind you
believe you may be. Once you’re in the hand, you should play it out
instead of looking for an opportunity to correct your mistake. As
you have read here, your opponents will give you plenty of chances
to capitalize on their poor play.
Back to General Poker
Strategy
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