Hand of The Week- Pushing Without The Nuts
I was playing 5/10 NL Hold’em at the Venetian in Las Vegas, and there was one guy at the table, named Paul who was really spicing the game up. He was obviously there for a good time and he had endless pockets. He would make blind raises of $180 preflop, and at one point he was playing his entire hands blind. There were also a few tourists at the table, so they were viable targets as well. The game was great for anyone who could hit a hand. For some reason when I sit down at games like these that are so juicy and some donk is just giving their money away I can never get a piece of it. I was sitting at around $2,000 and started calling $180 six way pots preflop with hands like 6s7s because I knew I was live and if I hit I was going to get paid off big. It didn’t take long of not hitting to dwindle my stack away.
When my stack reached $1,200 I began to tighten my game quite a bit. I was only playing hands where I could be the aggressor. I sat at even for several hours, and then around 7 a.m. Paul said he was going to have to go to bed soon. He started racking up his chips, and a few of us locals knew that the game was going to die as soon as he left. I only had a few hands to make my night profitable. Then he said it, “This is my last hand.”
Paul made it $80 without looking at his hand. I called on the button with pocket 9s. Billy, a local cash game player, looks down at his cards and makes it $380 to go. Billy is a smart aggressive player. I knew that he was just trying to isolate Paul being that it was his last hand so he could make some money for the night. It was hard to put him on a hand because he could be doing this with any two cards. Surprisingly, one of the tourists called. I put him on a hand like AQ or AJ. Paul looks at his hand and then calls. I figured he had a decent hand because when he looked at his hands and made a call he usually had pretty good hands. I made the call with my pocket 9s. In this position I probably should have pushed the rest of my stack, but I was uncertain what kind of hand Billy had. If he had woken up with a big hand, I wanted to try to outplay him postflop and capitalize on my position.
The flop came K 8 Q rainbow. Billy thought about it for awhile and then checked. Everyone else checked behind him. When it came around to me to act, I was going to push but I thought it was really strange that Billy thought for so long and then checked. Normally he would continuation bet with so much in the pot. I decided to check in case he was trapping. The turn was a 6. Again it checked around to me, and I pushed all in for $790 more. Everyone folded and I scooped the pot. After the hand I found out that Billy had pocket 10s, the tourist had AQ, and Paul had AJ. The only way I could have won the hand is if I pushed my stack, but a smarter play would have been to push preflop or on the flop.
Now, I would like to state that it is never a good idea to play a hand big just because it is the last hand of the night. Cash game should be waged over the long term of the game, and making big cashes every session shouldn’t be the goal. However, I’m a poker player just like anyone else I sometimes have a hard time listening even to my own advice.
