Better To Be Lucky Than Good...

Here's a hand I played today where I made a terrible misread based on a faulty HUD. But it's not really the HUD's fault... I'm to blame. I played the hand correctly, too. Kind of. And then I got rewarded for the screw-up. Confused? Me too. Let me explain.


HM2 has been dropping stats and moving people randomly for the past week. It's some kind of bug in the latest release, and it's really annoying. It sucks, but in fact I knew the program was acting up this way. Because of the glitch, I have the HUD display player names along with their numbers so that I can quickly verify the stats are displayed for the correct player before making any big decisions...


...except for some reason I had a brain fart and forgot to check that the stats were correct on this hand. More importantly, I had real notes on two villains that I didn't bother to read. Notes are always better than stats. Sigh. Here's the hand:

Merge, $1/$2 No Limit Hold'em Cash, 5 Players
BTN: $324.80 (162.4 bb)
SB: $200 (100 bb)
Hero (BB): $202.25 (101.1 bb)
MP: $337.64 (168.8 bb)
CO: $167.99 (84 bb)

Preflop: Hero is BB with A♦K♦

MP folds, CO raises to $4, BTN folds, SB raises to $16....

HUD said CO was an unremarkable player. Something like 25/15 with an ATS of 70%. HUD also said that the SB was a strong-LAg at 30/25 and with a largish 3bet % of 9%. So what did I do? 4bet, of course. Nothing remarkable about this. AKs OOP PF is a definite RR against these two types of players. I even like my bet sizing:

Hero raises to $34
CO calls $30....

No problemo....

SB raises to $200 and is all-in.

Yikes. At this point, I took a longer look at the players stats (but didn't check the names, nor did I look at my notes). HUD said the SB was highly aggressive. He could be doing this with a range that includes all pairs down to eights, AJs+, and AQo+. There's plenty of dead money in the middle, and I couldn't see the CO making the overcall if I reshoved here with anything less than KK preflop. Clearly he did not have AA or KK, given his passive line, so...

Hero raises to $202.25 and is all-in
CO calls $133.99 and is all-in

Holy crap. Only at this point did I belatedly remember the HUD glitch. Before the cards had even been flipped upright I quickly checked, and... holy crap! The SB actually had my own screen name displayed above his stack, along with all my own stats! I actually made the read to reshove all-in based on an evaluation of my own session statistics! Seriously. Like I said: holy crap.

Flop: ($567.99) K♣Q♠6♦ (3 players, 3 are all-in)
Turn: ($567.99) 7♦
(3 players, 3 are all-in)
River: ($567.99) 2♦
(3 players, 3 are all-in)

Results: $567.99 pot ($2.50 rake)
Final Board: K♣Q♠6♦7♦2♦

SB showed K♠K♥ and lost (-$200 net)
Hero showed A♦K♦ and won $565.49 ($365.49 net)
CO showed J♥J♣ and lost (-$167.99 net)

In hindsight, I also saw that I had notes on both players. The CO notes said, "likes pairs and will get it in PF with 88".  For the SB, my notes said "RRRR. Solid. Doesn't Bluff?" (in my notes shorthand, RRRR= ReRaises R Real, meaning I need to respect this guy's 3- and 4bets-- something I clearly didn't do.


I guess it's better to be lucky than good.


All-in for now...
-Bug