Marcus Bateman / Marcus Bateman / 24 November 2008 / Leave a comment

I was recently playing heads up $3/$6 no limit hold'em with a player online. He seemd to be tilting hard, having dropped two buy ins to me making badly timed (and badly executed) bluffs, both of which I called with very marginal holdings.

He rebought for a third time, and quickly an interesting hand developed. He raised to $24 on the button - this was odd in itself, as his standard raise up to this point had just been 2x - to $12. This is typical of players tilt behaviour - they often start trying to build much larger pots in a desperate attempt to recoup their losses. As a result of this, I defended with Kd9c.

The flop came out jack high with two diamonds. I checked and my opponent bet $48 - the size of the pot. Again, his standard continuation bet had only been half the pot up to this point, and the whole hand reeked of him desperately bluffing to try and just win a pot. As a result, I called, intending to get some money out of him and take him off the hand on the turn or river. The turn came out another diamond (giving me the second nut flush dra w), and I checked, intending to call a bet and then shove any river. To my surprise he checked behind.

The river was the ace of diamonds - giving me the nut flush. I led out for around half the pot, and he instantly shoved and I instantly called. To my total surprise, he turned over three jacks (no diamond), for a flopped top set that had been cracked by my runner runner nut flush.

This hand is a classic example of what frustration and tilt can do to a player. The only logic running through his head at this point of the hand has to be something along the lines of:'Well I flopped top set and now the board has gone horrible but I'm not folding because I flopped such a big hand'. The most this player should ever be doing without cast iron reads on me is to call my river bet - shoving is just an excuse to lose the rest of his buy in - he gets no value from me if I have nothing, but gets called all the time by hands that beat his.

Do not let this type of logic invade your thoughts when playing. It does not matter what hand you started with or flopped, if you are not beating anything by the river. Frustration and anger are not reasons to call - they are reasons to quit, and if you can force yourself to quit when feeling this way you will save yourself huge sums of money in the long run.

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