It's been a while since I've done that!

[shipitfish]

The short version: PL O/8 tourney. I'm all in on the turn. Flipped over my four cards. Truly amazed to see that I'm drawing nearly dead. Busted out first, and on the first hand, even.

I played a $50+$10 O/8 tournament last night. I was already discombobulated by the fact that the cards were in the air before it was clear that it was a Pot-Limit O/8 tourney. I have never seen a PL O/8 game anywhere but online -- ever! I had assumed it was a limit O/8 game. Of all the poker games played, I like PL O/8 the least, because I feel that the amount of game theory one must employ to understand how to build scoop situations is very difficult to work out (at least compared to relatively simple way this calculation works in limit O/8). Had I known it was PL O/8, I probably wouldn't have gone.

Of course, I have only myself to blame -- I should asked the "stupid question" about what the structure of the tournament was before entering. But, I didn't. That was my first mistake. My second mistake made me the first one out on the first hand.

In the small blind (which was the same price as the big blind on the first round), I thought I had picked up A 3 7 T. Actually, of course, my hand was A 7 T 3. I called a small raise from someone in early position who was trivial to read and clearly had a an A-2 with a big pair. Four of us saw the flop of 8 9 5.

I decided to call Ace-Duece's pot-sized bet on the flop, thinking I was drawing to four outs to the nut straight and probably 7 outs (given that someone else with an obvious flush draw had called ahead of me) to the nuts, and likely a double-through if we both hit. The turn fell Q and I moved in (I now held less than the pot) immediately. Ace-Duece rolled his eyes in disgust and folded (I was glad he didn't hit a set there), and I begged for a call from the obvious small flush (remember, I thought I was betting the nut high!). He shouted: "What?!? You got the Ace-high flush?" as I thought "give off no tells." But, this obvious loose player wasn't the type to fold any flush in that spot, and he called me with the J 4 2 8 (note he's blocking his own outs in his hand!). I looked in disgust as the first card to flip over from my hand was the A, and I knew in an instant that I'd misread. I spread my cards, only interested to find out if I had just bet the 7-high or T-high flush (as if it mattered; I'd seen his J by now).

I only momentarily thought about the fact that I had at least a dozen or so outs to a chop as the fateful river was dealt. Yet, it took the rest of my inexperienced opponents (and the dealer) a full minute to figure out that my opponent was scooping when the 3 fell. They continued to argue about it as I was collecting my coat and repeating to them, "He scoops! He scoops! I have to play the 7 for the low!" "Man", I thought, "if they all read hands this badly maybe (stupid mistake aside) I was a favorite despite the PL structure".

This isn't the first time I've misread my hand. The last time I did it was in an unraised big blind early in 2004 at River Street, when I thought I'd flopped Kings up with a K3o, when in fact it was a K-2 on the board. These were the days when I was afraid to glance back at the board for fear I'd give off a "tell". Mark and his KQo won about $250 from me on that mistake.

Truth is, better to give off a tell, which likely isn't even an accurate tell, than to make a mistake because you saw the wrong thing. There was really no reason not to look back at that hand before I called the flop bet in my O/8 tourney. Heck, people might be more likely to think I didn't have the nuts on the turn if I had to check back at my spades on the flop before calling with the draw. I should have also remember that while I've played lots of online Omaha, where you see your cards the whole time, I've played at most 500 live hands of any form of Omaha in my life. I should have just looked back. So, last night gave me some new rules:

• At the moment when uncertainty about your own holding would impact a decision, always just look back at your cards or the board if you aren't sure, regardless of the tells it might give off. The tell-EV you give back is not as bad as the negative hand-misread-EV.
• Always ask dumb questions of the management about the structure of the games or the rules, even if it makes you look stupid for not knowing. Making your opponents think you're stupid is always to your advantage, anyway, and the answer to the "dumb" question may reveal that the question wasn't so dumb after all.
• Never play at that club again. (This is for almost wholly different reasons not addressed in the post, but I'll likely get to them in a later post.)