Moving Up by Laying It Down
Recently, a key lay down paid off for me in an online poker tournament. I held pocket queens in middle position, the fourth time I'd seen this particular hand that day. I had managed to win all three of the previous pots, but could I really expect the ladies to hold up one more time?
I made my standard raise, four times the big blind, to $800. Both blinds called, and the three of us saw a flop of 8-9-J rainbow. This was a pretty good flop for my hand, giving me an overpair to the board and a gutshot straight draw. But it was also a coordinated flop of mid-high cards, so danger certainly lurked. I needed to protect my hand with a big bet, and fast.
The under-the-gun player checked, and the next player went all-in for his last $500 in chips, a meager bet into a pot of $2400. Perfect, I thought. He must have A-J or K-J. I quickly raised to $1500, hoping to isolate the all-in player with two cards to come.
To my dismay, the under-the-gun player check-raised all-in, or more precisely, reraised all-in, and he had me out-chipped by a significant margin. With over half my chips in the pot, I now had to ask myself: Was this a semi-bluff with a drawing hand like A-10 or J-10, or did my opponent have a straight or some other monster hand? My rosy queens began to pale as I tried to reconstruct the hand and reach a logical conclusion. As so often is the case in no-limit Texas Hold 'Em, my entire tournament was riding on this decision.
If an ace or a king had flopped, this would be a much easier laydown. Or if my opponent had put me all-in on the flop, I might have called, thinking it was a semi-bluff. But the all-in move after a check, bet, and raise smelled of certain death, and the funeral would likely be mine.
After some deliberation, I realized I was not as pot-committed as it might have seemed and still had about nine times the big blind in front of me. Yes, it would hurt to lose over half my chips without so much as a showdown, but I would still have enough chips to steal blinds, at least for a few more rounds. And if I were to catch a hand, who knows?
Discretion being the better part of valor, I folded, and never in my life have I been so happy to see my opponent turn over a set of nines. When the turn and river ragged off, the other player was eliminated with A-J, and the check-raiser congratulated me on my laydown. I wasn't jumping for joy by any means, but it felt good to have made the correct decision at such a crucial time. I re-focused on the task at hand, gather myself, and set about to rebuild my stack.
A few hours later, after clawing my way to a fifth-place finish, I reflected on the hand that made it possible. There was a measure of satisfaction in knowing the winner of that hand had long been eliminated, and I certainly liked winning over 20 times my $33 buy-in. The real joy came from knowing I could very easily have gone down with those queens, but I chose to give them up and survive. It was a struggle, but then again, it always is.