Don't bluff calling stations

So on Friday night I forgot one of the basic lessons of poker, which is don't try to bluff calling stations. Our Friday night game was down to four players, all of whom I'm far superior to, so I was confident. Oh dear. I know a problem in my game is a propensity to tilt, but tilt works both ways. It's not just playing wrongly because you are losing. It's also playing wrongly because you are winning or expect to win. The players I was against were bad enough that all I needed to do was play solidly, wait for good hands and bet them. Even fourhanded, when you need to play looser, there's no need to go crazy with the blinds low.

But here's an example of how badly I went (and how rubbish my opponents were). Blinds are 50/100. I raise 400 preflop with Ax (I forget what the x was but it doesn't matter). Only the big blind, R, calls. We both have stacks of about 5000 chips. The flop comes KQJ rainbow. I am a bit concerned that he might have hit the flop but he checks so I figure that he will fold to a bet if he has not and probably raise if he has. He does not understand how to extract value when he is ahead. I put in 1000 chips. He calls. I interpret the call as most likely having paired the J. Okay, I'm probably behind but I know that he probably does not have a K. He would have bet out if he had. The turn is another K. He checks. I put in 1500 chips. He calls again. This is unreal. Maybe he has a K and is slowplaying? It's not like him but it has to be a possibility. I have strongly represented a K. I raised preflop and although I've c-betted a flop before and he knows that, my flop bet was bigger than pot size and I fired again, big, on the turn. The river is an 8. He makes a small bet and I make a crying call. He shows 85 of diamonds. There wasn't even a diamond on the flop. The guy has called bets on the flop and turn assuming that I was bluffing (which I was, but it's a poor assumption on his part) or had a pair and was chancing it, and he was hoping to hit a six-outer (because if I'm bluffing I must have an ace or a pair). That is terrible poker. I just couldn't believe it. Sometimes it is right to call a bet to pick off a bluff. But he called off two-thirds of his stack without a hand that could even beat a bluff, unless he thought I had raised preflop with 7 high! Oh, he said, I called the raise because I was suited. You what? I said. Being suited is not a big advantage fourhanded (and nothing like so much of an advantage in NL anyway as it is in limit), and calling with any two suited is terrible because you will pay off so many raises trying to get lucky and you have too few opponents to get paid (a good player will not pay you anyway because he will fold if he thinks you have a flush). If he had flopped a flush and bet it, I would have straight away folded. If he had slowplayed, I would have suspected he had it, and played cautiously. If he had flopped a twoflush, he would have had to pay bets to try to fill his flush with no guarantee that I would pay off if he hit (because it is generally rather obvious that you are drawing to a flush and doubly obvious when you hit it). All in all, it's a sucker play. Still, I was unlucky. His calls were terrible and three times out of four I would have beaten him even though I didn't pair. In the metagame of trying to win the tourney, it was a bad play to try to muscle him out of it but in the long term, I'm going to make a lot of money from his being in the game. He has no idea how bad his play was: that he could say "I was suited so I called the raise" with 8 high shows that he just does not get it (he should have folded without hesitation preflop, failing that on the flop, failing that on the turn: he had nothing! I at least had an overcard and a draw if I was behind: an ace or ten would have beaten him if he had paired his jack, as I had thought). Now, the question is, would I be congratulating myself on bold, good play had he not paired on the river? I'm just not sure. If I had not suspected I was behind, then maybe I would be right to. But the reason I am kicking myself is that I actually thought I was muscling him off a pair of jacks, and let's face it, a player bad enough to call down four paint cards with 8 high because he thinks you've whiffed with an ace or small pair is never folding a pair of Js if he thinks you have that.

It's difficult to analyse poker hands with hindsight. If I put him on nothing, I made a good play. And knowing what he had, I made the correct play. He made terrible mistakes PF, flop and turn. If I could have seen his cards, and he mine, I would bet and he would fold. Still, I would have been okay if the other useless guy didn't do practically the same thing a few hands later (he paired small on something like a KQ3 flop and called bets to the river -- mark me down as someone who just doesn't learn from their mistakes). For people who do not play, or rather do not understand, poker, it might seem strange that I can be considering the other players poor and myself good. After all, I crashed out and they survived! Well yes, that's true, but next time we play, and the time after, and the time after that, they'll be making the same terrible calls and won't suck out. I had a bad night and can kick myself for it, but they are having bad lifetimes at poker.