Money Hater

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MHOTW has been neglected by me. I have no excuse. I will be the first to admit that the main cause of this is pure laziness. That said, I see people treat their money with such disregard that all these horribly played hands start to look the same after a while. When they all look the same, it becomes difficult to pick one. How can you pick the cutest puppy out of hundreds? It is tough.

People often approach me with hands that they feel are worthy of MHOTW honors. A few days ago, a nice guy who I regularly play with suggested to me a hand where two guys went 37 bets on the flop. The board was J94 with 2 spades. One player had JJ and got all-in on the flop. The other had 44. Clearly the guy with 44 screwed up massively. We’ll get back to this in a moment.

While we were chatting about this hand, I explained that it is tough for me to choose hands for MHOTW because people play hands terribly all the time. No sooner had I said this than the following hand transpired: Bad player raises, worse player calls with T6 of diamonds, I call on the button with 76 of clubs. Flop is J85r. The bad player bets, the player with T6 now calls. This player does not have ANYTHING, yet he has called this flop bet.

The guy with 44 went way too many bets it the eyes of most people, and I would agree, but I think the guy with T6 is infinitely worse. Allow me to explain. In poker, there are many levels of thinking that can go on. The first level is “what do I have?”. The second level is “what does he have?”. Many players cannot get to the second level, and the guy with 44 clearly didn’t. That said, he got the first level correct. “I have a pair, I can call this raise.” When a 4 comes on the flop, he likely thought “I have a set. A set sure is good. Time to put in some bets.” Both of these thoughts are on the first level, but they are correct.

The guy with T6, however, got even the first level wrong. He decided for some reason that calling two bets cold with this thing was a good idea, and then even managed to call a flop bet when he had NOTHING. What is he thinking? I have no idea. I wish I could answer, but I cannot. This is equivalent to someone asking me, “What is it like to be a tree?” I cannot answer, for I have never been a tree, nor have I ever been dumb enough to play T6 in this fashion, thus I am unable to speak intelligently on either subject.

The most puzzling part is that Mr. T6 seems to understand some things. For example, he can count how many outs he has, and will often make complaints like “I had a gutshot and a flush draw and I couldn’t hit one of those 12 outs”, but he will then turn around and call a raise with K4 of diamonds, and then 4bet it when someone behind 3bets, peel a T62r flop, watch the turn check through when a 2 hits, and then check when a 4 comes to beat AQ and AK. It is like watching someone who seems to be in complete control ride their bike down the street, but then for some reason which defies all logic they turn and run squarely into a parked car.