Sleep With the Fishes, Dine on the Whales

Anytime you play Texas Hold'em poker you got to make big calls if you are going to be a winner in the session or go deep in the tournament. In the previous post, I was deliberating whether or not to make one. The worst is where you make a great call and then it turns into poker bad beat with a bad follow-up card but here there were no more cards to come. His 1500 bet didn’t make sense. I knew he had watched me find folds before so this screamed steal. I looked for tells (that’s too specific really as I more accurately tried to get a feel for his confidence as it’s not like there is a checklist I go through... even if maybe there should be). There is a less than reliable tell where the player tries to appear casual under pressure. It’s a subtle thing, but it's tricky because it’s one a lot of players will actually honestly display, or not hide, when they do have a hand. It’s not the easiest thing to look for. So you have to decide are they acting or are they really comfo...

I really enjoyed playing with Captain Tom and I think I learned a good bit from him. Though I was constantly asking myself if he was generously giving insight or allowing me to stray adrift from optimal Texas Hold'em play. One hand we discussed afterward I think I played rather badly. I was in the small blind with Q4 suited. My stack was low (five handed). It was folded to Captain Tom who put in an exactly the size of my remaining stack. I was going to get a little less than two to one to call with the blinds and antes but I still had the big blind to my left to deal with. For what it’s worth I didn’t feel like she was going to play. I talked myself out of the hand with some rather bad logic, I believe. At first I thought Captain Tom must have held a hand to bet out exactly my stack. That was a sizable raise and it would discourage the BB from playing. Then I rethought it and decided he couldn’t be super strong. His bet looks like that but he knows would, so worst case s...