Saturday, May 26, 2007

Don't be a donk

After thinking 15 days was a long time in between games, I recently went 21 ... and hardly noticed. The spring gets busy when you have two sons that play summer league baseball, and you coach one of them.
Needless to say, I still believe I'm playing some decent poker this year. I did, however, donk off all my chips last game out, and man was it stupid.
With about eight people left in a game that featured 240,000 chips in play, I was second with a little more than 40k. I got in a pissing match with chip leader holding A-Q off in the small blind. He made a moderate raise of 2.25 the big blind (1,600, raise to 3,600) so I called, as did two others. With a flop of 9-3-7 rainbow, I raised 6,000 post-flop. The other two guys folded, and after some consideration, he called. The turn was another 9, and I fired out 10,000, leaving me with little more than the starting chip count of 20,000. Again, he thought a long time, and called.
The river was a Q. I checked, not really thinking I would trap, but hoping he would too so I did not have to commit any more chips to the pot. He went all in.
Here's a dilemma I seem to often have: I quick call, or at least call without proper evaluation. I could have cut my losses, fought back with what I had left, and would have if anything else had hit on the river. I should have know he was super strong.
He was; pocket kings. I could have at least asked for a chip count. He had me covered by a couple of thousand, and I was toast, left to deal at my own house for more than an hour.
The good news is, we're playing again tomorrow, and I just learned a valuable lesson. The quick call has often been something I've known I need work on (even though usually it works). I also realize I should have sniffed out the monster hand.
I really wasn't upset, because I knew how bad of a play it was. Sometimes lessons are expensive, but can pay off mucho-grande down the road. I can only hope.

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