The Tale of Tighty McTight

You’re playing solid poker at a 1-2 NL ring game. It’s a table of game publishers at an empty table of the Hyatt restaurant, which is closed. A couple of players, including the host, play a lot of poker. A few of the others are simply there to lose money. I figured I was in the former category (as I was the previous year), but this year I was in the later category.

Were these good players any better than I was? Well, no not really. So then why did I lose all that money. Oh yeah, I could ramble off the usual excuses:

1. I got rotten cards
2. There were a couple of bad beat
And the every popular...
3. Who the fuck are you?

Anyway, I have been running pretty poor in 1-2 NL ring play and I have been wracking my brains to figure out why. A friend of mine had told me, but I did not believe him. As if to prove his point, he busted the entire table and won $1200 bucks.

First off, let me review my losses. I have KT on the button and its folded to me. I pop the blinds for 3x and the BB calls. The flop is K65 and he bets out. I raise and he goes all-in. I was sure he had Kx, but figured him for a push. When I called, he flipped K6.

I had 99 on the button. UTG raised to $10 (as he was prone to do). I called and the flop was T62 rainbow. Pretty good for me. Or so I thought. Turns out to be very bad for me because now I think I am ahead. He has AT.

Again, the UTG (same guy) raises to $10. 2 others call, so I decide to call in position with TT and see what flops. The flop is J76. The UTG bets $20 and its folded to me. If I call here, I am a fish. So, I raise here to see where I am at. He reraises me $50 and after much deliberation realize he has AA. I fold. He flips the AA. I get accolades from the table for my escape. Yeah, great, a $40 escape.

I had QQ cracked too, and AK and all sorts of losses. But where were the wins. Sure I had a couple of similar wins, but I never won a huge hand. (I won one $60 hand when some idiot get calling my bets with a board of 99Q. I had A9.) But for the most part, I was folding. A lot. After all, it was a full ring and you are supposed to be Tighty-McTight, right? But it was Lucy-McCall that had all the chips. WHY?!

Then I realized what was going on. Lucy-McCall was not afraid to play any multi-way pot with any suited gap. Even 3 gaps. Especially with under cards. He would play 64s for $12 as long as he had or expected to have 3-4 players seeing a flop. He liked those odds and he was not afraid to INVEST money in those flops…

On the OTHER hand, I folded QTs from late position BECAUSE 3-4 players called a $12 raise. Foolish? He thought so.

I did not like playing in big raised pots. And there was my downfall. I was being a mouse. I never realized it before, because earlier in my poker journeys, I would build up a stack, then unleash it on the unsuspecting table. But now that players are better, I am not building up the stack that allows me to do this comfortably. So, I was Tighty-McTight and I lost 3-5 large hands. Other that the aforementioned 5 hands, I won about 9 medium hands and lost about 3 or 4.

At the end of the night, the very very end, I decide to play 89s from the button because there were already FOUR callers of the $10 raise (once again from UTG guy). I call and figure this to be a great opportunity. The flop was A-5s-3s. There is $60 in the pot, I have $65 left and he makes a roughly pot size bet of $50. I know many of you would make this call. Lucy-McCall certainly would. But I could not stop myself from thinking, “would I ever invest $65 in anything where I only win 1 in 2.2 times?” And even though I had the exact odds I needed, I folded. And he had AJ, just as I KNEW he did. The read was easy, the $65 on a draw was HARD.

I have been thinking long and hard about this and think that I just was playing for stakes I was not comfortable with. Sure, I play $5 SnGs all day (and night) long. And I do well with them. Very well. But I still don’t play $10 SnG. Why? Because the money gets in the way. I can’t stop thinking about the money. And that’s a problem. I certainly believe in that game I lost more by trying to conserve loses.

Sure, I could justify it. Thursday night we played about 100 hands and ALL 100 HANDS I had the worst hand. I am including the 85 hands I folded. They all would have lost. The last 15 hands I the night, I would show the dealer the cards before I mucked. She excused me from tipping.

But that is simply not it. That was a VERY bad night, and nothing would have changed that. But Friday and Saturday and previous weeks all point to the same thing. You CAN’T be afraid of raised multi-way pots in low blind no limit. If you are, you need to be playing limit. Period. So now I have a choice to make… I’ll keep you in the loop.


If you are not listening to the Card Club radio show (podcast), then you are a big loser. Hurry up and redeem yourself by going to http://lordadmiral.libsyn.com/ and getting show #40. I contributed a good audio piece about playing with the Hilton Sisters when you’re out of position. -Write your own joke here-

They liked it enough to ask me to do another one. I will, of course, oblige them. They take a good 3 hours to record, because I need the Columbo bits, but they sure are fun to listen to when they are done. Well, go there. Now.