Tournament Poker and Cash Game mistake part II

Continued from previous post about Texas Hold'em poker cash game hand.

The friend of Tiki Barber lookalike was saying... "Now why you going do that it was just a small little pot." Then, like before, he starts going through the hands. “Do you have this?” “Did you flop the nuts?” “Could you have this?” He’s back into his actor mode. In fact, it was an exact recreation of the previous hand. I try to look weak and then he eyes me up and down, the shoves for almost my entire stack. A huge overbet, again.

Gulp. Sometimes you get exactly what you want and then go, did I really want that?

Now, I have the second nuts here. What could possibly be the egregious mistake that I could make? Calling? Is it ever an egregious mistake to call with second nuts? Okay, maybe in a five way pot, but the rest of the players had gotten out of dodge and it was just us. So unless I need to learn poker again I gotta call.

As I always do I thought it out, and of course unfortunately, I nit roll some people. I make hero calls and hero folds and make a good bit of money making hero calls. I lose some money by making hero folds but rarely. Usually they’ll show a huge hand and all the physical tells, conversation tells, and betting patterns add up for me to make a good decision.

Recently, playing online poker I’ve found that just seeing the hand for what it relieves me of a lot of over-thinking. Live players, like myself get too caught up in minutia. Okay, maybe not live players maybe just me. In online it's, betting pattern, this is the guys range (I think) and I have a hand that I can’t fold or I have to fold. If, I had that mindset live, that’s an insta-call.

Yeah, to be honest I’m pretty embarrassed sharing this hand, but I can’t learn from my mistakes if I don’t track ‘em, and put some thought into them. The real purpose of this blog. So, I’m sharing what a dumb ass I was. I’ve talked with Parfait recently about scared money effecting other players in cash games and how dangerous it can be. If I’m being honest I have to think scared money factored into my decision here. I had plenty of chips that I could still be profitable if I folded and I didn’t want to double the guy up and reach into my pocket for another buy-in, especially after flaming out in the tournament.

Wanted too much to be careful I wasn’t tilting away money in a cash game mad at myself for busting the tournament.

Sure, I know the guy thought he had the nuts, and he had a very strong hand, but at some point, the hand is all the information you need. I told that to guy once who was rationalizing why he got involved with a NIT three betting him huge preflop. Talking about table dynamics who else was in the hand and recent history to anyone listening. I told him what was easier to see from the outside, “Sometimes a hand is exactly what it appears to be.” Meaning, a nit three bet you. First time he three bet all night. He’s on Kings or Aces, there is no four bet steal that will work on that guy.

In my situation, I had second nuts. I have to call. He has the nuts I say nice hand and that’s a wrap.

BTW, he showed his hand, he rivered two pair and thought he was good or maybe he saw I was scared money and just put enough pressure on me to find a fold (but based on our conversation afterward he wasn’t making some sort of above the rim move).
I fell victim to over-utilizing other pieces of information. The hand I held was way too strong to fold. Didn’t matter if I could fold and still have a profitable stack, didn’t matter he was indicating in a 100 different ways he was sitting on what he thought was the winner, the hand simply was too strong to fold.

Told you mistake was almost too embarrassing to write about. I think if 2+2 or pocket fives read this they try to get me banned for being an imbecile.