I was going to fold, until…

This hand occurred two nights ago playing $1-2 no limit hold’em online.

I am on the button with Qc Jc.  Great spot for suited, connecting Broadway cards.

Stack sizes are:

Villain 1 in middle position:  $74

Villain 2 in cutoff:   $252

Hero (me) on button :  $195

V1 limps in and V2 raises to $8.  Liking both my cards and my position, I call.  Note that in recent posts and readings on poker forums, I’ve become increasingly aware of the importance of position.  It is the numero uno factor!  Nevertheless, there is no need to bloat the pot with a 3-bet here.

Now V1 3-bets to $18.  This strongly suggests a hand like AA or KK, with an outside possibility of AK suited.  There aren’t many other options unless he is a very tricky player, which has not been demonstrated in the short time I’ve been at this table (less than a full orbit).

V2 calls, making the pot $47 and $10 more for me to call.  I’ll be last to act and these are awfully good pot odds, so I call.

(Pot = $57 before rake.)  The flop is Kc Ts 6h.  I have an open ended straight draw.

V1 quickly ships in his remaining $56.  Now I am nearly 100% sure he has AA.  This is a typical move by weaker players at this level, trying to slow play AA, then not sure how much to raise pre-flop and making it really too small because they don’t want to scare everyone away, then hitting the panic button on the flop.

I decide to fold, but it’s not my turn yet.

After tanking awhile, V2 calls.  Now the pot is $169 and it would cost $56 to call.  V1 is all-in so I would not be facing any more action from him.  V2 has me covered, with an effective amount of $125 more behind.  Hmmm… there are some implied odds here with V2.  IF I hit my straight and IF I got the rest of his chips in there, my $56 call here would actually win me a total of $169 + 125 more = $294. That is 5.25 : 1 in implied odds.

But I correctly note that V1’s AA blocks two of my outs for making a straight.  I really have just 6 outs, with 45 unknown cards.  That reduces to 6.5 : 1, clearly making a call a big mistake.

On the other hand, it sure would be nice to win that money sitting out there.

Don’t Call.   Don’t Call.   Don’t Call!   DON’T CALL YOU STUPID

          ASSHOLE!

I call.

The turn and river cards are blanks for me and V2 and I both check on each street.

V1 shows AA, and V2 shows QJ offsuit.  Dang, I never had any implied odds anyway, and never gave any thought to the possibility of him having the same draw that I had, despite his long pause before calling V1’s flop shove.

A side note:  yesterday I attended a 3/4 day long seminar on leadership and emotional intelligence.  In preparation I took an emotional intelligence assessment test, which provides scores on several scales for self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management.

Want to guess where my score was the lowest?  Self-management.

In this case, poor self-management cost my $56 bucks.

Year-to-date online results:  + $9,230

Month-to-date online results:  $311