When I sit down at a poker game, I feel like there’s a story to be told in every session… We take a seat that day we play the hands we’re dealt the best we can, a bunch of hands happen and then... a lot of money is exchanged. (And Andy calls!) There’s going to be some big winners and some big losers. (Wow! Right off the bat... $118,900!) And even though poker advice will tell you to not let previous hands affect the way you play future hands, the fact is we’re still humans and not robots. Sometimes one thing leads to another and things end very badly. So let’s look back at an example of where this happened to me from that same session at High Stakes Friday, Live at the Bike. (Bill up $68,000.) (Garrett up $58,000.) (Jacky up about $40,000.) (Andy down $145,600.) So I was just getting absolutely wrecked in this game. I had already lost a few big pots including that one against Bill Klein in the beginning. I was already down about $145,000 which was crazy since at that point, there was nobody in the game that was even down more than $10,000. We also added the straddle this round so the game was now $100/$100/$200 $200 big blind ante and a $400 under the gun straddle. So it folded around to me... I was in the cutoff with Q10 offsuit, raised it up to $1,300, just trying to make something happen. Garrett to my left on the button, reraised to $4,800. It got back to Jacky, and he thought about it for a good while before just calling By the way, I had added on just in time for this hand and was sitting just under $200k. Everyone else folded. It got back to me, and this was where I made big mistake number one. (You can see how deep these guys are.) (Andy's also going to call.) I definitely could have just dumped this garbage right here. This hand plays terribly against the type of hands I'm likely up against given the action but... I got stubborn... I got stubborn... I was playing way too many hands already at this point. I was obviously steamed up and just blamed pot odds. (So $15,300 here, three ways.) The flop came down 96Q, two diamonds. (Q96, set of nines for Jacky... Andy with top pair.) When it got back to Garrett, he checked it back as well. This is actually pretty interesting because when Garrett checked it back here, it actually made it more confusing for me later on to try to make sense of what was going on. (The queen would be a disaster card for Andy.) (Oh, the turn's a queen!) The turn came another queen. I was already trying to figure out how to get some chips in the middle. (Three queens here for Andy and a full house for Jacky!) Little did I know what was coming. Jacky led out for about $8,000, about half pot and here’s where I think every poker video that has done any analysis on this hand analyzes how badly I played this turn. ($8,000 from Jacky.) I decided to raise here to $19,300. (And Andy is going to raise!) (Andy is going to raise here with three queens.) I did realize I had a 10 kicker with my queens in a reraised pot. I agree with people who have broken down this hand. Usually raising here wasn't going to do much for me whether I was ahead or behind. But I thought that my image was quite spewy at that time, and when facing this particular opponent I was hoping that I could make some thinner raises and still get called by some hands I’m ahead of like 1010 or JJ. When looking at that board, there were very few hands that he could comfortably raise back with given how deep we were. But then he put in another raise to $55,000. (And a bet, 3bet here by Jacky) After he put in that raise, it was pretty clear in my mind that my initial guesses about his hand were wrong and I was beat. ($8,000 to $19,300, 3bet to $55,000.) (Can Andy get it away from it here?) It’s just so unlikely for him to be bluffing with some type of combo draw. But I was just in a mental state where I wasn’t folding trips no matter how badly it was looking for me. (I was even a little surprised that he raised the turn with Q10.) (He's not having a good night.) (Wow, he's going to make the call!) (Andy's got... $156,000 left.) ($125,300 to the river.) (Let's see if we see a clean river.) (The river's a 9!) (Oh! Quad nines versus top full house!) The river came down another 9. He checked it over. (And Jacky has checked at the end here!) (You can't make this stuff up, double paired board!) Out of reflex, I just piled in a bunch of 5K chips, completely dead. (How is Andy not going to get stacked here?!) I thought about this hand a lot and realized how pointless it was to bet if he was just doing something weird on the turn but with my clouded state of mind, I wasn’t able to see that logic in that moment and check back top full house. So I ended up betting $70,000, with about $55,000 or so behind I did very much appreciate however, that he didn’t put me through the unnecessary agony of any theatrics before going all in. He knew what I had. I knew what I had. We both knew that I wasn’t folding. ($70,000) (And there's the all in!) (And Andy calls!) (This is unbelievable!) (Jacky is going to win it with quad nines over queens full of nines!) (That is one of the most unbelievable hands) (I've ever seen on Live at the Bike!) When that last 9 came, I was going to lose my whole stack regardless of if he checked or moved in first. It was just going to be one of those hands where I was going to lose all my money in that moment. (The total pot...) (Is $438,900!) (That I believe is the biggest pot in the history of Live at the Bike.) Another day at the office for Jacky. Ideally, we all want to be able to identify and make the right decisions under pressure, but I think it’s a big challenge for players to do that consistently when you’re in the hand vs watching the hand. That definitely applied to me here. It’s ironic that usually every player on the table can sense what’s going on except for the players that are actually in the hand. Psychologically, it’s way easier to identify and accept the possibility of being behind when we’re not already fighting uphill mentally, chasing losses. Much easier said than done, but I think the moral of the story is as poker players, we got to do everything we can to remain as level headed as possible even when everything is going wrong. Unfortunately, the session did not end there...
I wish he would go into more detail on every street
Such a beast. And his table etiquette is bar none.