The Phantom Draw and the bipolar fish
Posted by montanapokerplayer on November 1, 2006
John (ALL names are changed to protect the innocent!) is a fish that you will be hearing plenty about; in fact he is the reason this blog was started. He is one of my favorite fish! He plays way too many hands and is unwilling to lay down even the weakest of hands to moderate bets. While occasionally he will lay down a hand on the flop if he makes it to the turn, he will call all the way now! You can read his hands as if he has them turned up the entire hand. He telegraphs his monster preflop hand (even though he LIMPS every hand preflop) with obvious tells and his hand selection is obviously sub par. He is the classic calling station!
The one problem with our fish John is that he plays very slow. He takes at least 15 seconds to make the simplest of decisions. You would think he was doing advanced calculus or quantum physics at the table.
Towards the end of the night, John had a classic moment. He is playing from MP and has an Overs No Limit chip. He follows 3 limpers; everyone folds to the blind who checks her option. The game is still in 2-8 spread due to blind having no chip.
FLOP:
Qc 7s 2h
BB leads for 8. Folds to John. He calls.
TURN:
Jc
BB leads for 8. John calls.
River:
Xc (random club)
BB checks. John checks.
After checking and flipping over his cards John says “I didn’t get there, anything you have is good here.’ What did he flip over 4c 5c for a baby flush.
A STUNNED big blind flips over QJo. For a solid two pair. Only to find that this guy rivered a runner runner flush.
The big blind asks him “Exactly what did you miss a double gutshot straight draw?”
John: Yeah, I put you the same draw.
At this point I can’t stifle a large giggle. Chases a double gutshot (also runner runner) AND puts a relatively solid player on a long shot draw out of position. THEN he misreads his own hand being saved by the dealer!
Up next we have the bipolar fish. For the most part I had ignored this shaved head talker all evening. He has continually talked about how great of player he was. Granted he never came right out and said “I am great a player” it was always that we must be so bad to allow him to have a profit (of a whopping 23 bucks). At one point, I point out his small profit and tell him that in a 1/4th of the time, I had triple what his profit was. He smiles and shuts up for a few minutes.
Then BOOM bipolar fish changes gears. Now he is talking about how bad the games in Billings are. That the tables are just FULL of fish! Then spouts off how good he is at Omaha and how EASY of game it is. This is followed no more than five minutes later with a speech about how terrible a player he is. Someone please get this guy some medicine.
Just to highlight his fishiness we have two hands to discuss. The first is pretty simple. There is no action on his blind and he is PISSED. He flips over AJo and told everyone he was going to raise (unless myself and one other solid player had limped…gotta love respect I guess!) because AJ is a monster. There is ZERO sarcasm in his voice. When I point out that AJ is a marginal hand especially OOP, he looks like I just told him that I slept his girl.
The best is ANOTHER hand I was not in. The player to our fishes right is a pretty solid, tight player who has amassed a pretty good stack. At this point, everyone has a No Limit chip. The tight solid player in the cutoff limps, our fish min. raises to four dollars. The blind calls. The tight player makes a good sized raise of 15. Both call.
FLOP:
Qs 9s 3h
BB – check
CO (tight player) – All in (NO hesitation)
Fish – INSTA CALL
BB – Thinks and calls.
CO shows – KK (Of COURSE he had an over pair)
Fish shows – QJo (WTF?!?!)
BB shows – QK (WTF?!?!)
KK holds up. The whole table does a collective WHAT THE FUCK on the Fish hand. Why call QJ to a HUGE raise to your initial raise. The QK hand is a marginal call to the preflop action.
What a night!
Till next time I hope your bait lures in all the big fish!
