| - Deep Analysis Required -
Scenario for the Poker - Math wizards:
House game, no rake.
Main event: 7pm start time. $40 CDN dollar buy-in. Freezeout. Top three pay ( 50% / 30% / 20 % ).
( I could care less about the money - from my perspective, I'm playing in my first "real money" cash game, I'm playing for experience and I'm paying for a 40 dollar poker lesson ).
[ I'm lucky to have played in a 5$ preliminary let's-play-while-waiting-for-the-main-event (6pm-7pm). ]
So I already have a read on all but four of the players ( the new arrivals basically ).
9 Live players ( including myself )
1,000 in chips.
Blinds starting at Low: 20, High: 40. Doubling every ( 20 minutes - give or take a few minutes lol).
After about nearly one circuit of the table ( 8 hands ? ), I end up on on Big Blind, I pay my obligatory 40 in chips and pull 9, 8 ( unsuited ).
Everyone pays their big blind. Options to me: I check ( thinking what a crappy hand that I have to pay for ).
The flop comes down:
rainbow: 10, Jack, Queen
hmmm... flopped a low straight on a hand that I was obligated to pay / play - very amusing.
The dealer 3 seats-ish to the right of me checks, nobody touches the possible straight, I throw in a couple of feeler chips: 50.
Fold, fold, fold, fold etc. until it gets to Mr. T.H.M sitting across from me who throws in 50 + a raise of 300 ( who is this guy? ). The three people to the left of Mr. T.H.M fold with a speed that reminds me of people abandoning the Titanic.
1) What should I do?
My gut read is that he is buying blinds with a hand lesser than a straight.
I laugh and throw in 300 right off the bat, calling him.
The turn card comes down:
Jack
( the flop is pure rainbow so flushes fly out the window ).
! potential full house ! immediately flys into my mind.
2) What should I do?
For some reason, I lost track of the dealer and after 30 seconds of thinking about the hand, started asking this non-player girl about the Tenassee Willams book that she's reading. The dealer laughs. Mr. T.H.M. sitting opposite me, stares at me and says to the dealer, "it's his call...". I say, " oh sorry...." and stop reading the cover of the book.
I check.
He says "All-In".
I start thinking very deeply about the hand:
10, Jack, Queen, Jack, rainbow
I start thinking, "maybe I'm wrong, maybe he does have Ace King high straight".
I start replaying the play in my head. A blur of math flies through my head.
I look at him - he looks at me, he suddenly has: faint blush, slightly tense, cramped up posture.
He has a Full House, I think.
3) What should I do?
I figure, I have half of my stack in the pot. I seem pot-committed. I think about whether it is more prudent to fold in the face of a full house and become a half-stacked, short-stack with blinds going up to 40 / 80. How will the end-game play out?
I ask him how many chips he has. He gives a rough count. I start counting my chips, I give him an accurate count - pretty simple ( mine is in a chip rack ). I ask him again how many chips he has, his count looks slightly off and it is by 40 ish after the dealer's recount. Another player jokes with me that I will have a big blind's worth after the hand. I'm joking around with him. I turn to Mr. T.H.M and say so I have 25 extra. He looks a little worried for the first time. I push my chip rack into the centre.
The crowd cheers.
A King comes down.
4) What the hell am I doing? I have no clue, it's off the map.
I check, he checks.
I lay down my 8, 9 King-High straight.
He lays down Jack , Queen making jacks full of queens.
Fill the blanks for 1) through 4).
My retrospective is that instead of calling the initial 300, I should have re-raised all-in but that seems like an incredible stretch of the imagination.
If I had all-ined prior to the turn card what was the probability of him getting a full house on the turn / river. Compare that to my low-straight.
I'm guessing that my odds of winning dropped when the second Jack appeared but it was impossible to read the guy with the non-fluctuating bets ( ie. he either had nothing, or he had everything when the turn card came down ). After the Jack came down, I think that the only thing that worried him would be overcards on the river.
| 
