Not sure what to do at this point.
I’m not sure if I should have posted this in hand plays or in the home tourney section, so move if necessary. This is kind of a two part post. Most importantly I am looking for advice on how to play against this group of guys, but I am also going to explain the hand that knocked me out last week to help illustrate my point and seek some insight to my play. This has been eating me up and I have been invited back to play after the OSU game and I don’t know if I want too.
To make a long story short, I occasionally play in this 9 handed home SNG at my buddy’s fight night gatherings. For the most part it’s a really easy game but lately there have been a few new players and there so bad, that it’s hard to play against them. My strategy with the select few donks is to simply play tight and pick my spots, if they flop a big pair and I hit my set, then its highly likely that I will take their stack in that hand. But those are blue sky situations and at the pace of these games, you can be waiting a loooong time for that to happen.
Villain in the hand below is your typical donk, overplays any pair, I’m not even sure that he knows the hierarchy of poker hands because he had a set against someone’s flush and still thought he had it. And you will see in the hand below that he made a questionable call with a flush on the flop (IMO).
Villain is BB, Hero is button, blinds are 50/100, game is 9 handed.
Pre-Flop: :10s: :10c: dealt to hero (BTN)
Everyone single player limped, so hero raised it to $1000 and to my surprise all but one player called my raise.
Flop: ($9800) :Kc: :6c: :2c:
Action checks around to the button, I had a little over $9000 in chips left so I shoved and villain (BB) is the only caller and doesn’t hesitate to make the call. At this point I was expecting to see him turnover the nut flush but it didn’t happen.
Villain shows : :Kd: :3s:
Turn: :8d:
River: :Qh:
My logic for playing the hand:
Pre Flop: I had been raising 3x and 4x BB pre flop all night and everyone was still calling. At this point in the night I was running really cold and didn’t want to play pocket 10’s 9 handed. I thought raising it $1000 would have done the job, I was willing to end that hand right there but somehow 8 of these guys thought they had hands to call a raise that big.
Post Flop: I wasn’t thrilled to see the flush hit the flop with 8 hands, and this is probably the only questionable part of my play. But at this point I felt that I had to make a move given my draw, it was fairly safe to assume one of the 8 players were holding a king so I knew my 10’s were beat so I had to hit the flush or the set, or even better take the pot with an all in hoping no one had a big flush. I wouldn’t have shoved with moderate players at the table but with this group it seemed reasonable.
When he shows the K3 off suit I pretty much shit myself in a Phil Helmuth fashion and asked him how he called that. I’m replaying the hand in my head and I think how could someone raise 10x BB and be viewed as weak? What did he put me on? I would have a hard time calling that with anything but Ac Kx or a made flush. To be honest, I was pretty happy once I saw his hand. Not knowing my odds, I kind of felt like it was a coin flip if not in my favor by a little.
Obviously I didn’t get there on a set or flush and I wasn’t even really mad either. I was just so shocked that he not only called the pre-flop raise but he also called an all in with a rag kicker and a flush on the board. I just kept re-running it in my head thinking “How could I have played that any differently? More important how do I play against this guy?” I don’t really want to play a game where whoever is the hottest wins, if the pace was faster and we got more hands in, it would be different and my strategy might work better. Do you guys have any suggestions on a strategy moving forward or should I just abandon the game? I’m not hard up for live games, I have 2 casinos within 5 minutes of me.
Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks for reading my novel.
