River Hero Call

So like I was talking about in my last entry, an interesting spot came up Thursday night where I really had to tank a river to figure out wtf I should do. Now some backstory on the table, a couple of guys were really gambling, but the rest of the players were mostly your typical live LPP calling stations.

I can't remember too much about pre-flop except that I was in seat six, and it was limped in about five spots pre and I checked my option witb 95 of hearts. So six players to a flop of 954 with two spades.

Top two in a limped pot, wet board, let's see what happens. The SB bets into me, I raise, and it gets called by seat eight (no real reads), seat one (definitely came off as laggy, and one play made him look borderline maniacal). SB called one more bet and the four of us saw an eight on the turn.

SB checks to me, I bet, called by seat seven, now seat one raises, SB calls yet again, I just call, putting seat one on an OESD (67) that got there on the turn, seat seven folds, maybe figuring he was drawing dead? I dunno, I thought it was odd he would fold for one more after getting 7:1 on his money just on the turn. So I'm assuming I'm behind to a straight, but based on seat one's earlier plays I knew that it wasn't even close to a guarantee I was behind, there was a good shot I was still ahead and planned on showing the hand down.

I'm thining to myself "pair my freaking hand" when I see a seven on the river. Oh sonofabitch if I wasn't dead before I almost certainly am now. The board is 98754, but at least the flush didn't get there. SB checks, I check, and seat one quickly bets yet again. SB takes a second and calls, and now I really start going into the tank. I don't think I've tanked longer about a hand than I did this one, and in my mind about three seconds into the tank I was almost positive I was folding. I wasn't worried too much about SB, I put him on something more like TP with a flush draw combo, maybe bottom two pair, not likely a flopped set because I'm sure he 3-bets the flop...I think I have his hand beat, it's the lagtard in seat one I'm worried about.

I started thinking about seat one playing kinda funky a couple orbits before this, so just because the only hand I personally could possibly have in his position was 67 did not mean that he in fact had to have 67. I see a lot of good young players do this with their hand reading skills...and actually this reminds me, in training for my job working with autistic kids a few weeks ago, a certain lecture slide came up that gave me an idea for a good analogy.

Autistic children, especially at a young age, are usually unable to see things from another's point of view and will answer questions based on their own PoV. For example, if a child is holding a green crayon and their mom is holding a yellow crayon, and I ask them what color crayon their mom is holding, almost all of them will say "green." Hopefully I didn't butcher that analogy, but what I'm saying is good players assign some incorrect ranges sometimes because they can't get into the heads of their lesser skilled opponents. I see players say "well shit he can't have a goofy two pair here because look at that flop, no way he calls with only midpair for two bets..." when in fact, hey, some people just like to gambooool. A lot of their plays and ranges don't make sense because they're not there to make 2BBs/hour, they're there to have fun, hit the jackpot, spew some chips, or whatever.

So back to the hand, I'm tanking, counting the bets in my head, 6sbs pre (3BB), 8sbs flop (4BB), 7BBs on the turn, 2BBs on the river equal something like 15 or 16 to one on my call...dammit Nik how sure are you he has a six? Will you go on supreme monkey tilt if you fold and see you laid down the winner? I call, uttering something like "ugh I dunno why I'm calling" and finally seat one turns over 84 for a turned two pair.

Omg sick, SB quickly turns over his cards and says "I can beat that" and shows 87 for a rivered two pair. Holy shit hero calling is awesome. I quickly grab my cards from underneath the orange $1 chip that was protecting them and say something to the extent of "oh hey my flopped two pair held" and rake in an absolute sea of red chips. Sweet, guess I can hero call 15 times based on this pot I just won :-P There are a lot of great feelings that come with playing poker, but calling down on a hand you think you lost and seeing that you in fact won is pretty hard to top. Not so much because "hey I caught you trying to bluff me" but more for the fact that "this sucks, I flopped two pair and now I'm gonna los- holy shit I'm good?!" Heh, emotional swongs.

Welcome to live low-limit LHE I guess, thanks for reading.