Pause Button

Aside from last week's tilting-while-on-biz-travel debacle, I feel like I've been playing fairly solid poker the last couple of months. My Omaha game has actually shown some (small) profit. Similarly, although I'm down a bit lately in SnGs, I feel like my losses have been dominated by simply running poorly, with lots of AK's going down against AX and other undercards. Not much you can do about that, so the trick is to embrace the whole RDM (results don't matter) approach and keep playing. In my cash games I'm also playing fairly solidly, with my latest focus of attention on the art of maximizing profit when I hit a big hand. One of tricks I've been playing with lately is something I've dubbed the Pause Button. Here's how it works:

Say I'm dealt Q9 in the big blind and get to see a free flop against a MP limper. The flop comes 9-9-2, which, to the villain, looks like as dry as the Atacama desert, but to me is a veritable rain forest. I check, the opp cbets, and I.... wait. Yes, I pause and use up a lot of seconds before just calling. The turn brings another blank, say a 5. Again I check. The villain bets, and again I pause a long time before calling. Finally, on the river another blank comes. Again, a check, and the villain bets half pot or so. The pause is used again, but this time I hit the Time button and let it count way down. Toward the end, I shove, which looks like a poorly executed bluff to the opp. Nine times out of ten, the villain will snap call with two pair and I'll drag a nice pot.

The trick to doing this is make the play look like a) you're calling down with a weak hand on 3rd and 4th street; and b) trying a lame bluff shove on the river. Now, of course, the danger to this play is that it dances perilously close to violating one of the fundamental tenets of poker-- namely, bet when you're ahead. Said another way: you don't want to allow the opp to see free or cheap cards unless you have a very good reason to do so. This is why using this technique IP is actually not as preferable as when you're OOP. In the aforementioned example, we were OOP with our Q9 in the big blind, and we allowed the opp to do the betting for us. If we were IP in this example, and the opp checked to us, we'd have to take our chances and bet, hoping that he either thought we were full  of it, or had a relatively strong hand himself. Imagine being IP and the opp had fives and we we let him see the turn for free....

The trick to making money at poker is to minimize our losses and maximize our gains. Sounds simple, right? Like the old Buy-Low/Sell-High strategy of stock trading, it's simple in theory but surprisingly hard in practice. Having little techniques like this in our tool box can help increase the bottom line.

[Edit: After reading this post, Mr. Multi wrote to me with: "You'd better stick a note on the player you hollywood'ed, cause he sure the hell stuck one on you. Next time you can do it again on a bluff or not do it with a real hand. Of course, how often do we ever run into the same player with the same situation..."  This is a good point. Hitting the Pause Button in a regular cash game can usually be done only once, as the table will be likely paying attention to this kind of all-in action. On the other hand, at a Rush table, I believe you can do this over and over again, as long as it's not against the same player. In Rush games, once everyone else has folded out of a hand, they've moved on to the next table and the next hand; i.e., only the one villain remains. Now, as MM points out, this player is probably taking a note on your play, but you can counter it to some extent by taking a note on him that says something like: 'Opp saw me PB with monster. Don't repeat again.' or something similar. Good catch, MM.]

All-in for now...
-Bug