Poker isn’t all about the hero calls – good folds will contribute a lot more to your bottom line in the long run
Forum favourite Gareth ‘Chivalrousgent’ Rees talks about his best fold of all time, from a live cash game in London
This hand occurred when I was grinding out a £1/£2 cash game in Kensington in London. Play was down to heads-up – between the two of us my opponent and I had already taken out all of the other cash players, many of whom had been short-stacked. The guy I was playing leaked tells, both verbal and behavioural, and his betting patterns were pretty obvious – no range-balancing, nothing ‘creative’. He was in his late 50s, early 60s, and pretty much everyone in this age group plays in one of two ways: super fishy or super nit. He was sitting with about £500, me with just shy of £185.
Looking down at A-To, I decided to raise to £5 from the button – as I had been doing with 90% of hands, hoping to induce him to tilt from the relentless aggression (plus I was generally outplaying him post-flop). This was actually starting to work, insofar as he was getting irritable and making lots of small leaky mistakes, but not so much that he was playing awfully and making HUGE mistakes (but a small edge over volume is almost as good). He called for the extra £3 and we saw a flop of 5-5-5.
At this stage, I was almost certain I was ahead (especially as he checked), or that I could at least move him off a hand. As such, I made my standard half-pot continuation bet. Given his ability to fold even for 3-to-1 odds on missed flops, I figured this was about the optimal bet-size to conceal whether it was a value-bet or c-bet, while still gaining value for my big hands or building a nice pot to push him off by barrelling another street if he’s calling with the likes of 3-3. He called, which made me a little suspicious – he was almost never doing that without something, so his hand had to be either miraculous quads, pairs from 2-2 to 8-8 or maybe Ace-high at the bottom of his range.
The turn came a Jack, so I decided to angle for a cheeky double-barrel because I knew he’d fold all his pocket pairs and Ace-highs. I led out £12 in to the £20 pot and he called once again. This really scared me – I’d been playing with him for well over an hour, most of which was heads-up. I was fairly sure my reads on him were good (he had a bad habit of showing cards when I talked him into it, which helped to confirm my suspicions every time).
Unfortunately, the river was the one card I really didn’t want to see: an Ace. Goddamn it. Why do the poker gods taunt me so?
The guy decided to ship his entire stack over the line – massively overbetting the pot by more than a factor of ten (and about four times effective stacks). This put me in a conundrum and I tanked for a bit… Maybe I was wrong and he was spaz-betting a scare card? Possibly he really was calling down with A-Qo and thought he was massive? I dwelled for a minute, running through the possible lines he could be taking. Either my read is dead wrong or dead-on. I’m holding the fourth nuts (behind Aces full, Jacks full and the case Five), but realistically the quads are the only thing likely to be beating me here, as he three-bets J-J and A-A preflop. I wistfully made a hero-fold and, as expected, he tabled his hand in disbelief that he wasn’t getting paid, showing 5-7 offsuit.
His shove here was pretty interesting to be honest – from what he’d seen he knew I was the kind of guy who likes semi-bluffing Ace-high. He figured that if I’d led two streets and raised preflop I must be fairly strong and likely to call his overbet often enough to make it work out.
While I felt pretty good that my reads were spot on and that I’d made a good fold (something I’m getting better at in these potential cooler spots), it was counter-balanced by my irritation that this guy was continuing to card-rack while I was getting coolered hand after hand, which in heads-up is pretty galling.