Player's Stories

3 Betting with 9T Suited and Tilt
By Steve Ruddock

After an hour and a half of mucking cards in a very loose, very passive $4/$8 Texas Hold Em game, I finally picked up a chance to get involved in one of these big pots that kept me from moving up to a higher limit game despite my cold cards. I knew that winning only a few pots in this game would be a more lucrative night than sitting in the $10/$20 game.

The hand in question also got me berated by another player at the table, as well as getting me congratulated by a different player for a well-played hand. I'll let you make the decision as to whether my play was foolhardy, brought on by my lack of cards, or if it was indeed a well-executed play.

Here is how the hand played out; the under the gun player limped into the pot, this being the standard operating procedure at the table, followed by 2 folds. The 4th player to act raised, this was the 6th raise I witnessed from this player in the hour and a half I was at the table, I also have seen him 3 bet or cap the pot with QQ and KK. The next 3 players smooth call the raise and I see the big blind and the under the gun reaching for their chips to call. Now it is up to me, I'm on the button holding 9 T , one of the nicer holdings you can possess with 7 players seeing the flop. My first decision in this hand is to call, raise, or fold. Folding seems out of the question, and this article would be very short if I did! So it comes down to calling or raising, now I'm not a big fan of smooth calling 2 bets on the button in any situation, like you have heard a million times, if you can't raise, FOLD, but here it doesn't seem like a bad idea. On the other hand a raise will get even more money in the pot, I'm positive the under the gun player will call 2 bets cold here, and I believe the big blind will as well. I opt for option #2 and raise, and like clockwork everyone calls. I also opted for raising here because in my experience playing in low-limit Hold Em people tend to have a hard time laying down mediocre hands when the pot is big where I will have no problem laying this hand down if the flop doesn't hit me, I'm also varying my play which is very important, the next time I 3 bet pre-flop the other players won't know if I have pocket Aces or 7 8 , and it may get me a free card since I'm on the button so if I pick up an inside straight draw or runner, runner to a flush I may be able to see the turn for free.

Getting back to the hand, the flop comes down T K 9 rainbow, a very nice flop for my hand, the 2 hands I'm concerned about here are JQ and TT, anyone holding KK at this table would more than likely have capped the betting pre-flop. The big blind checks as does the UTG player and the 4th player bets. Players 5, 6, and 7 all call and I raise, and to my complete surprise everyone calls the 2 bets cold including player 4 who does so while grumbling to himself.

The turn is a very nice looking 9, filling me up. The big blind and UTG again check and player 4 bets out again. Now my initial thinking is he has TT or KK, or he just doesn't believe I have anything. Players 5, 6, and 7 once again call and I raise, if he does re-raise me here I will most likely check and call his river bet, the big blind folds and the rest just call, now I'm sure I have the best hand since he most assuredly would have re-raised with kings full or tens full.

The river comes down and it's also a nice site, the 3 , as any card under a 9 would all but lock this hand up for me. It gets checked to me, now I'm totally confident I have the best hand, I bet and get paid off by 3 people including player 4 who shows his K Q . The total pot for this hand was $268, $44 coming from my pile, so after $2 went to the dealer I made a nice profit of $222 on this hand. As a side note I only tip a dealer $2 if the pot equals a rack of the chips used in the game, a very rare occurrence, otherwise it's strictly $1.

While I'm stacking my chips into a few new piles player 4 starts into a tirade on how I could possibly re-raise with a lower suited connecter than he had, and how lucky I was to win the pot. When a situation like this comes up I don't explain a play I made that may have gone over another players head, I try my best to just laugh it off, so I give him most sincere smile and shrug my shoulders. Unfortunately it seems my smile is not so sincere since he continues his whining about how he doesn't mind losing, but cannot stand losing when a bad player makes a bad play and gets soooo lucky against him. Now in all my sessions of poker this is the first time someone has ever called me a bad player, while I know it isn't true for some reason it bothers me and I make eye contact with him and laugh.

Now we are into the next hand and he still hasn't stopped talking about the previous hand when the player to his left says, "I didn't see one mistake he made in that hand." Then looking at me says, "good hand." While this should have ended things, it made me feel like this player was coming to my defense which I didn't need, and I let my emotions get the better of me when I critiqued player 4s play of the hand by saying, " the real bad plays were when you stayed in with your KQ calling off your money when you knew you were beat." And "let's take a poll of everyone at the table and see who they think the bad player is." I also went into a very short explanation on why I played the hand the way I did, something I never do.

I realized I let player 4 get to me and fortunately I was in a frame of mind to shrug it off and continue to play solid poker for the rest of the night. I cannot say the same for player 4 who went on one of the worst cases of tilt I have ever seen and lost over $300 in the next hour, especially after my A K lost to 7 8 and I jokingly said "how can you play a smaller suited connecter than me?" this got a good chuckle from the whole table, even the dealer, while player 4 turned as red as the A !

By the title of the article you would assume that anyone 3 betting with 9T suited was probably on tilt, when in reality by playing it properly I put another player in the game on tilt. By looking at all the factors of the game I was able to play this hand and get maximum profit when it hit.