Shame on me

Just got home from another cash session. I had alot of swings and when all was said and done I was up an insignificant 60 bucks.

I'm glad I didn't do something really stupid since my cards went dead for a couple of hours and in the past when that's occurred I've managed to talk myself into playing some crap hands trying to get lucky. If anything the opposite occurred where I folded hands I should fold to raises but then watched in horror as my mucked hands flopped quads. This happened twice. Yep it was that kind of night.

So like I said I'm just happy I didn't do anything out of frustration to cost myself my entire stack. But there's one hand I gotta talk about before I go to sleep. One hand where I just wasn't thinking.

I'm in the big blind with 8,10 offsuit and get to see the flop in an unraised pot.

Flop is queen, 8, 2. Rainbow.

Small blind (a loose player) leads out for 12 bucks. I call him with my middle pair. I've seen him makes alot of moves with nothing and I don't mind calling him in this spot. Everyone else folds.

Turn is the 8 of diamonds.

This time he bets out 25. Now if I thought he was on a draw I'd reraise here. But since he also bet the flop I put him on a queen. Like I said he's loose so he could also still just be trying to steal the pot. I have position on him and I want him to bet out again on the river. So I don't reraise. I just smooth call the $25.

The river comes and it's a rag diamond. He checks to me.

There are no straight possibilities. But the rag diamond does put a flush possibility out there.

Here's where I got stupid. I bet $25.

Looking back on this now it's a complete asinine bet on my part. I should have just checked it down. This is one of those cases where I'm probably only getting called if I'm beat. But worse than getting called, he reraises me $75 more to make it $100 total.

So now I either have to lay down my trips (which staring at the board could easily be beat) or else I'm paying him off an extra $75 to see his cards.

Gross. And it's not even about the money. $100 makes no difference in the long term. It's about playing a hand so poorly on the river. Before I bet the river the best case scenario for me to get paid off was that he has a queen and calls me and so I make $25 more. That's really not so great of a best case scenario. The other possibility is that he's on a draw in which case he's just gonna fold so I'm not even gonna make any more money from him. However the worse case scenarios are plenty. He could have a flush. He could have an 8 with a better kicker. He could even have hit a full house.

All that my betting $25 did was open the door for me getting reraised. Sure his reraise could be him making a move. But I don't want to be a position where I have to call a big bet on the river with this hand. And that's exactly what I did to myself.

Now of course I could still fold at this point. But I accepted the additional $75 loss as tuition. Lets learn from this hand. So I call and he turns over 3,5 of diamonds for the flush.

Looking back on how he played the hand...he bet 12 on the flop with nothing. 5 high. And then $25 more on the turn when his flush became a long shot 1 in 6 possibility. Basically he was donating to me. He's exactly the kind of bad player I want to be playing with. My mistake though was giving him the chance to make any additional money when he actually hit his card on the river. Because if the flush misses on the river he's not putting any more money into the pot anyway. He's checking and then folding

I wasn't pissed about the "bad beat" of a runner runner flush coming out of the deck to beat me. That I can't control. But it was just plain silly for me to reopen the betting for such a small value bet on the river. Even if I couldn't put him on a flush draw. And of course if I really wanted to put more money into the pot I should have reraised him on the turn.

Shame on me.