Texas Hold’em Loose Play in Tahoe

I made it through Carson City unscathed and arrived in Tahoe. I
parked in the Mont Bleu casino parking lot and walked up the strip to
Harvey’s casino where the best poker room lay. Harvey’s is run by
Harrah’s entertainment and is run with Harrah’s usual inefficiency. I
had grabbed a Starbuck’s coffee on my way to the casino as I figured
that I would still be required to wait a while to get on a table and I
was right. I had called ahead to get on the poker room list and it still
took a while to acquire a seat. I eventually had to point out that
there was an empty seat in order to be placed.

Once I was seated
at the table I noticed very quickly that the game was at least as wild
as my friend had mentioned. On the very first hand I looked down to see
that I had been dealt pocket 5’s. There had been a fairly large raise by
the first person to act (don’t worry, I won’t go too much in depth but I
cannot leave this hand out.) and had subsequently been called by nearly
everyone at the table. I was priced in to see the flop so I called the
raise as I was last to act being in the big blind. (there was no one
left to act before the person who had raised, therefore it could not be
raised further unless I did so and I was not about to do so until I had
seen some cards on the board).

As the flop (the first three shared
cards to be revealed) came out I watched my opponents for reactions
instead of looking at the cards as they came out. This is a very good
strategy and one that every poker player ought to observe. Curiously I
saw no reactions. I did not see how it could have been possible that
they all had missed the flop. There were 7 people in the hand and three
cards had been revealed. The odds that the flop had missed everyone were
very slim. Either my opponents were very good at hiding their reactions
or they had all completely missed the flop. They were glancing around
the table belatedly to see if anyone had reacted to the flop. I knew
better than to look at the cards that had come up at this time. Even
though I am very good at hiding my reactions, there was already a lot of
money in the pot and if it had hit me, it would be very hard to hide
the fact. That’s when I noted they all were looking at me and I
remembered that I was first to act. I checked without looking at the
flop hoping that they would then focus on the original raiser giving me a
chance to view the board unobserved. I could always exercise the option
to re-raise after someone else had bet if the flop had indeed hit me.
There was too much money in the pot at this point for someone to resist
taking a stab at it as their turn to act came along. Someone was going
to bet. It was just a matter of who that would be.

It worked, they
all focused on the person to my left and I stole a glance at the board.
The board was 5, 5, 8. That explained a lot. I had hit four of a kind
on the flop and that is why no one else had shown a reaction when the
cards came out. For someone else to have hit that flop hard enough to
show a reaction they would have had to been holding pocket eights and
that was unlikely but even if it were so, their hand was nowhere near as
strong as mine. The person who had originally bet out put in a bet of
about ½ the size of the pot which was still a lot of money. One person
called and everyone else folded as it came to me. There was not enough
money in the pot for them to stay if I put in a re-raise now so I just
called.

The turn came out (the fourth shared card to be revealed)
and I checked again. The original raiser followed up with a bet of $100.
The other person who had called him folded and the bet came to me.
There was now nearly $400 in the pot and I had about $233 left in front
of me as I had bought in for $300. If I moved all in now, the original
raiser could not fold as he was already pot committed and it would only
be another $133 for him to call. I pushed all-in. He called almost
immediately. He had hit two pair over the pair of 5’s on the board. The
hand ran out and I scraped in a pot holding about $760. Not a bad way to
start the day.