Posted by Johnnymac 8:42 PM
Beware of 2nd place

One of the new players at the club is a nice fellow named “Jason.” I first encountered him about two months ago as we were both waiting one night for seats in the game. As is usual for me, I was watching the Astros game on television and keeping to myself, but Jason was chatting with the other folks sitting around and making conversation about his newly found pastime of playing cards in the club. Jason was a new player and was not ashamed to talk about how much fun he was having and all of the different books he had read or was planning to read.

That night as I watched Jason play, it was very clear that he needed to read a few more books. He saw a quite a few more flops than his hands seemed to demand, and he quickly blew through $200 in just a couple of hours. But it was also clear that he was learning and wanted to be a better player. Since then, I’ve played with him quite a few times and I’ve noticed that his hand selection is obviously improving, as is his ability to recognize when he’s beat and his willingness to fold when circumstances dictate. Jason is becoming a better player, but there is still a glaring weakness to his game: he often draws to 2nd place.

Tuesday night I was playing with Jason and saw a prime example of this tendency. Two spades had come on the flop for four players. The turn was blank and the river caught the third spade. Two players checked to Jason, who bet and was then raised by the player on the button. The first two players folded and Jason called the raise cold. The raiser turned over the Ace (and a smaller spade) and Jason turned over the suited Jack. He wasn’t quite broke after that hand, but futilely threw the rest of his chips at the very next flop and then stormed out of the club upset over his “bad beat”.

A lot of lessons can be learned here. First, in choosing to play a suited Jack and small card from middle position, Jason was setting himself up to fail. While any suited face card often has the possibility of making a strong hand, the hand is weak and dangerous in three ways: 1.) flopping a middle pair may have a big kicker, but is vulnerable to straight draws and overcards, 2.) flopping top pair means you have no kicker, and 3.) should you make your flush, you’re likely going to be up against someone with a bigger pair of suited cards. In all three of these situations, while the dealt cards have multiple chances to make complete hands relative to two random cards being dealt, any of the hands that may be made are not as good as the hands that will likely be made by someone playing cards that are better suited for that particular board. Accordingly, in any of these situations, your made hand is likely 2nd best, and even worse, because you made a hand you feel compelled to go to the end with it in hopes of winning the pot. Jason’s troubles all started when he decided to call the blinds and were only magnified when two spades came on the flop – just about the only way he could have won the hand would have been to hope for other players to fold before the river, and as soon as it was obvious that the player behind him was on a spade draw too, he should have surrendered and girded up for the next hand instead.

Drawing to a weak flush is just one example of playing for 2nd place. It’s also quite common in this game to see players drawing to the “ignorant” end of a straight or showing down a small two pair against a paired board that clearly helps someone with a big pocket pair.

One final thought – drawing to 2nd place is not in and of itself a bad thing – nor is it necessarily the purpose of this post. If any lessons are taken away here, it should be the importance of position and the interplay of position with hand selection. Players who don’t appreciate position, or are loose with their choice of hands, or both, are usually the guys who end up in second place. It’s not always wrong to play a suited Jack or other suited cards or even unsuited connectors – they have value in certain situations, but usually should be thrown away. One of the keys to consistently winning at poker is to recognize when you’re in 2nd place and to throw those cards away for cheap. Recognizing those situations starts with an meaningful appreciation of the importance of position and hand selection, and until those skills are mastered, 2nd place can be very expensive.

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