Page 10 - August 2007 • Southern California Gaming Guide

Jim Mercurio: Poker
TIwo Words I Hear a Lot: Shut Up!
was playing the 2-5 no-limit at Hollywood Park and I picked up KK in the cuto . A middle position player raised to $30 and I raised to $120. We each had about $300 in front of us. He stared me down and said that he should re-raise. But he just called.
Well, it didn’t take a genius to gure out what he had. “I should re-raise,” is not the same as “I re-raise,” so he doesn’t have aces. Maybe he has kings, but it’s not very likely since I have two of them. So I gure he’s got queens. e op comes with some low cards and, pretty con dent about my read, I go all in for my last $180.
He thinks and thinks about it which makes me even more sure about my read. If I am right, I have him as a 10:1 dog here. I thought he was going to fold, so in a last-ditch attempt, I made a strange o er. I told him for $25 apiece he could look at my cards. He threw ve chips my way and I made sure to shu e the kings really good, so that when he picked one, he would wonder if I had AK. After he saw a king, he made a move to grab my other card and I put my hand over it. So he threw me another $25. And now 100% sure that he was making the right decision, he folded his queens face up.
Curious to know whether or not he would have won, he rabbit-hunted and saw that a queen came on the turn. He would have sucked out and won. He then asked me for his $50 back. I said,“Dude, I was trying
to save you a hundred and fty bucks,” as I threw him $10 as a friendly gesture. He was still mad. And you know what, he should have been mad. But at himself. He completely gave away his hand.
Later on, he was down to about $95 in chips. I raised with a suited king rag from the cuto trying to take down the blinds and he re-raised me all in for another $60. I was just going to throw my hand away, but then I started doing the math. I was getting a little bit better than 2:1 which means I am priced in to call anything but AA, KK or a dominating king. Considering the situation, I could have just called based on his likely range of his hands. But as a storyteller, I always look for a character’s tragic aw, so I wondered to myself if he would give away information by talking.
I asked him point blank: “Do you have a monster?” And without thinking, he calmly said, “I have you beat.” I completely believed him. But he didn’t Hollywood looking for a call and he wasn’t super
nervous or excited. So I ruled out aces or kings, which is all I really needed to know, and put him on a pocket pair between sevens and jacks. Maybe even queens. I decided to call.
He had 99 and I turned a king and took down the pot. I didn’t have to be Daniel Negreanu to gure out he had queens in the rst hand. And the only real information I needed for the second hand was “Do you have kings or aces?” And this player obliged with an honest answer.
Unless you have worked on concealing tells or know that the information you get will be worth more than what you give away, take a lesson. As my wife says to me about three times a day: Shut up!
Buy Jim’s lm Hard Scrambled at www.hardscrambled.com or if you like his column, contact him at jim@jamespmercurio.com.
Page 10
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA GAMING GUIDE
August 2007
Poker: Wired Aces and River Rats