A Tale of Two Laydowns

The G-Vegas medium game was on last night, this time at casa de G-Rob.  I imagine at this point, G-Rob is hastily writing a post documenting the curse of hosting a poker game and how it’s impossible to post a winning session when everyone is at your house.

This post is aimed mainly at looking at a couple of different laydowns that I made during the night.  Each was different in that the action and thought processes that made me fold came from different points in the hand.  Basically, one laydown was made on past action and one made on future actions.

We’ll go to the past first.

I was dealt pocket K’s in MP and raised the $1 blind to $6 since two people had limped in prior to me acting.  Sadly, there were 4 callers and about $25 in the pot.  The flop appeared to be a reasonable one:  T72, rainbow.  Checked to me, I threw out a $20 continuation bet, hoping to get some weak Aces to fold.  Everyone folded back to the Rocket who went on to checkraise me to $40.  At this point, my decision space was two-fold:  either I was already beat, or the Rocket was putting me on overcards and felt that the flop missed me.  I called his $20 raise.  The turn was another rag, yet another undercard to my Kings.  The Rocket pushed all in for about $90 more.  It was at this point that my decision space was narrowed down to one thing; I was beat.  Either Rocket made a very speculative call pre-flop with T7 and flopped two-pair, or most likely, limped with a pocket pair and caught his set.  It was upon reviewing the pre-flop action that I determined it was a set and folded my K’s face up.  Easy laydown?  Maybe.  But it was truly the review of the action to that point that got me to fold.

Back to the future.

I was in a multi-way limped pot with KQo.  The flop came Q35 rainbow and Rankster bet out his consistent $3 probe bet into a $6 pot.  MattyC called without much delay and I knew I had to find out where I was in this hand.  Calling doesn’t do that, so I raised the $3 bet to $13.  FranktheTank, acting behind me, smooth called.  It was at that point that I suspected something was up.  What hands smooth call right there?  Rankster folded and MattyC called.  Now there was close to $50 in the pot.  The turn came and paired the 3.  MattyC checked.  I checked too determining that I was going to see how Frank played his hand.  He bet out $20 and MattyC reluctantly folded claiming he was making a tough laydown.  I looked over at Frank’s stack and figured he had about $50 behind.  With the pot at $70, I didn’t have much room to outplay him since his $50 behind wasn’t all that much compared to the pot, especially if I were to call.  It was his smooth call of my post-flop raise that sold me on the fact that he had a better hand.  I just couldn’t fathom calling off an additional $50 that he was sure to bet on the river with top pair, King kicker.  The pot was unraised pre-flop and the only hand I could put him on was a set that had just boated up.  So I folded, again face up.  Frank was surprised at my laydown and claimed to have a pocket pair lower than Queens.  He said he simply did not believe that I had a Queen, even though I represented one via my post-flop raise.  I chose to fold mainly based on the thought of potentially having to call his all-in bet that I predicted he’d make.  Again, it was the future, anticipated action that cemented my decision.  Even though it turned out to be the incorrect one, I’m satisfied with the fold on that hand.

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Upon coming home from that game, I received a pleasantly surprising email that said my chips were due to arrive on 2/28.  That’s next Tuesday.  I had to change my pants immediately upon closing out of my email client.