Tonight I got beat at hold-em, with aces full of jacks by aces full of kings. It really annoyed me (as well as costing me some money), and in retrospect it works like this:
- I had my hand on the flop
- There was no possible better hand using the flop
- I bet vigorously to protect my hand and drive out those who might have had an ace with a king or queen.
- I continued to protect the hand, making it expensive to chase
- There was only one caller to the first bet
- The king came up on the last card
The conclusion I reach is that the pain of losing is relative to how good
your hand is, and how unlikely it is that it can be beat. I think the size of the loss is less important than the feeling that you were cheated by fate. Losing the same amount betting on a lesser hand, particularly if there are over cards and some indication that a better hand is possible, seems to be just a normal statistical risk. Playing well and having someone play poorly and stay in looking for a low probability card, and then be rewarded by a win is far worse than being beaten by good play. I can only assume that he didn't believe that I had the full house and that his three aces king high would be good
Note: after my first bet there were only two of us in the pot, so there was no large pot relative to the bets.
No comments:
Post a Comment
What do you think?