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Shut the Fuck Up!

posted by Arnold_Snyder on 07-17-2008 14:29 About five hours into a recent tournament in the Venetian Deep Stack series, I got moved to a table where the chip leader was a quiet older guy who wasn’t playing many hands. In the first forty minutes or so that I was at that table, he limped into the pot three times, only to fold each time when the pot was raised. I was wondering how he’d managed to build his stack. My take on him was that he was a typical overly-tight player who had probably caught a few very lucky hands at the right times in the first few blind levels.  A hand came up where a player in early position came in with a standard raise. The chip leader called the raise. Then, a local pro—whom I had played with before and knew to be an aggressive shot-taker—pushed all-in over the top. The initial raiser folded and the chip leader took a long time mulling over his decision. The all-in player had been playing a lot of pots, and in my opinion, had stolen a lot of them. To me, his all-in bet looked like a classic squeeze play. I guessed the all-in player had a small or medium pair—a hand he preferred not to see a flop with—but he was loose enough to race with AK if that’s what it came to. I also felt there was a possibility the all-in player had nada and simply felt he could push the wimps out of the pot. The initial raiser was not an aggressive player and he had fewer chips than the all-in player, while again, the chip leader had just called the initial raise, and probably didn’t have a hand he liked well enough to stand a big reraise.  With the amount of time it was taking the chip leader to decide on whether or not to call the all-in bet, I figured he must have a hand like AQ or AJs, or possibly a medium pair himself. Because the player who pushed was such a shot-taker, I would have called him instantly with AQ or AJ, especially if I had as many chips as the chip leader. The all-in player really couldn’t do that much damage to the chip leader even if he took down the pot.  But, to my surprise, the chip leader mucked his cards face-up—pocket queens. Now, my opinion of how tight he was and how wimpy he was went up another notch. I also thought he’d made an even bigger mistake showing the cards he folded, as the whole table reacted with shock. One player said, “Give me those queens! I’ll call that bet!” Another said, “Queens? I would call that bet with pocket fives! How could you lay that down?” Then a few other players joined in the chorus of criticisms. “I would never lay down queens, not to that guy!” “He stole that pot from you!” Then, even the guy who had made the all-in bet joined in, saying, “I’m not going to say whether or not he had a better hand, but I will say that I would definitely not have laid down those queens.” (For the first time, I thought the chip leader might actually have made a good laydown.)  The chip leader didn’t say a word, but folded his hands up over his eyes with his head bowed. He was clearly embarrassed and he now knew he’d made a big mistake showing the hand he’d folded. But the players went on with their jabs at him for a couple more minutes. I was pissed off at the players who were ragging on him. I felt like saying, “Would you guys just shut the fuck up! Here we’ve got a player at the table who’s tight as a drum and afraid of confrontation, who has done nothing since I’ve been here but limp, call, and fold, who has more chips than any two other players combined, who is for all intents and purposes the table ATM, and you morons are trying to educate him!”  The chip leader actually got up from the table and walked away for awhile just to cool down. When he returned, his game changed. The next time he entered a pot, he came in with a big raise and took the blinds and antes. The pot after that, he reraised a middle position raiser and took that pot down.   Way to go, guys. Real smart

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