This is a defining example of one way to make money in poker

***** Hand History for Game 1683380638 *****
$50 NL Hold'em - Friday, March 04, 11:36:35 EDT 2005
Table Table 37138 (Real Money)
Seat 4 is the button
Total number of players : 10
Seat 1: stressball10 ( $101.65 )
Seat 4: smoothmaniac ( $48.3 )
Seat 5: Kozmo711 ( $52.6 )
Seat 7: jhayjunior ( $30.93 )
Seat 8: pkrtommy ( $85.6 )
Seat 9: kietle ( $46.75 )
Seat 10: drunk2night ( $62.85 )
Seat 3: MattCL05 ( $4.75 )
Seat 2: scbobbyb ( $52.25 )
Seat 6: binouse ( $53.35 )
Kozmo711 posts small blind [$0.25].
binouse posts big blind [$0.5].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to stressball10 [ Ah Ks ]
jhayjunior calls [$0.5].
drunk2night folds.
stressball10 raises [$2].
scbobbyb folds.
MattCL05 folds.
smoothmaniac calls [$2].
Kozmo711 folds.
binouse folds.
jhayjunior folds.
** Dealing Flop ** [ Js, 2d, 8h ]
stressball10 bets [$4].
smoothmaniac calls [$4].
** Dealing Turn ** [ 3c ]
stressball10 checks.
smoothmaniac checks.
** Dealing River ** [ 2h ]
stressball10 checks.
smoothmaniac bets [$6].
stressball10 calls [$6].
smoothmaniac shows [ Qd, Ad ] a pair of twos.
stressball10 shows [ Ah, Ks ] a pair of twos.
stressball10 wins $24 from the main pot with a pair of twos with king kicker.

What's very interesting to me here, and what I think I did well this time, was reading my opponent's play correctly and figuring out exactly what he was likely to hold (AK or AQ). I won a pot 1/3 the size of this one earlier today with quad 8s - a much more powerful hand. But this illustrates perfectly how you can sometimes make more money by calling in the right place with A high, or a weak pair. You just have to know when to do it and when not to.

Hell yeah. I finally figured out that thin calls are a good way to profit off a game of fairly-aggressive hobbyists.

This bet-out turning into a check pretty much tells him what you've got, and he tries to outplay you. Very nice

Originally Posted by LeFou

This bet-out turning into a check pretty much tells him what you've got, and he tries to outplay you.

Yep. But for that to have a remote chance of working, he would have had to bet on the turn. The call on the flop, check on the turn tells me quite clearly that he's either drawing or just has overcards - and since the board was so unlikely to connect with any kind of drawing hand (rainbow flop, completed rainbow on the turn, and no obvious straight draws that would make sense in a raised pot), I put him on the overcards. So I figured, at worst it's a split. The only other thing I could possibly put him on was a middle pair - tens or nines - which would explain all his behavior as well. But it seems a lot more likely to me that he's on AK, AQ, or maybe even KQ.

You don't think he could have AJ and is just willing to call your bets since you bet preflop and are leading the betting postflop?

Originally Posted by r8ed

You don't think he could have AJ and is just willing to call your bets since you bet preflop and are leading the betting postflop?

No - I think if he was on AJ, my check on the turn is an open invitation for him to bet back into me. Put it this way: there are passive players who would play AJ exactly like that, but those players are maybe 20% (at most) of the players you run into; I'll take the 80% chance on that last bet that he's a regular guy with a regular hand like mine.

I have to work on putting people on hands more. Sometimes I don't give them enough credit and others too much credit. I think it's great you can do that at those blinds - they are harder to peg at that level (I play that level too). I actually saw you at a table earland said hi but I think you were multi tabling...unless you are a stupidfacemeeniejerkhead.

Ha! sorry, I missed it completely. Not paying attention I guess.