Recently I haven’t been running well and it’s easy to get discouraged and stop working on your game because you might think something along the lines of “What’s the point? Just going to run bad anyway.”
But I recently played a hand of Ace to Five triple draw where I won the pot because I knew some important fundamentals and my opponent did not.
We were in a 1/1 spot heading into the second draw. My opponent checked and I bet because I had made an 23568 and I know from study that an eight is around a 67-80% favorite over a drawing hand. The end result was that my opponent called, drew one, and was angry when he saw my winning hand at showdown.
He had broken a better eight and had drawn a king. Had he bet and stood pat he would have won the pot regardless of what I had done because the king would have been my card. Obviously we can’t be results oriented and he is at a disadvantage because being out of position he has no information on the result of our second draw. But fundamentally he made an error because an eight low in Ace is essentially equivalent to a nine low in Deuce and he should have bet.
Instead of making me a 0% – 20% dog, his play allowed me to become an 80% in the hand. Big swing.