If you cover part of a horse’s sight, allowing it to see only what you choose, you can make it gallop to anywhere you want, including into a wall of spears.
In only an hour, everything in Joey’s game flipped upside down. When the tourist first sat down, the piranhas ground their teeth as a seed of greed found root in their hearts. They smelled fresh food! Yet, there was only so much money in front of the drunk fish. If someone else got it first, then what about them? They wouldn’t have a chance to eat. Fear clouded their judgment, so they took risks. They played more hands. They loosened up. Consumed by greed and fear, their downfall began.
Each hand the tourist played sent a message; He showed he was gambling, playing garbage cards at his whim. When he won, he put a bad beat on someone, then the loser started steaming, becoming emotional because they had gotten so unlucky! This happened many times. A few rounds of this and a pattern emerged. The wheels came off the truck! Everyone tilted and played like loose fish!
The tourist was no longer the fish but the fisherman. No one had noticed yet but he had tightened up, playing a more reasonable selection of hands. The only one to smell it was Joey. That food was chum. It was lure, bait. And oh boy, did the tourist get a good haul.
Joey knew what was happening—the tourist was advertising! Every loose hand he showed was a calculated investment to develop a wild image, one that gave the impression he didn’t care about money. Even when he lost, he kept his losses small, but still gained the benefit of manipulating his image. He might call, he might raise, he might do anything he felt like. He was unpredictable! Except that was only an image!
The tourist hid the truth well. The key was he kept those advertising investments small. Whenever big money went in, he would have a strong hand, but how would the opponents know that? All they saw was a drunk fish splashing around!
Once the tourist spent his advertising budget and hooked the customers, his authentic game emerged. Only now, the tables had turned. Everyone else was now losing, tilted, and desperate to get even! They became the fish! What’s worse is they failed to realize the most important thing—their target was a shark!
Joey observed all this as he kept his distance, not falling into the trap. The reason he discovered the truth was simple. The tourist tipped him off. He wobbled, slurred, and was a mess to anyone who looked at him, but Joey did more than look at him, he peered through him. The tourist wasn’t drunk at all!
He stumbled to his chair, but sat on it dead center, finding a comfortable position. He slurred to a staff member to get him 1000 chips, but counted out ten 100 dollar bills in one go. No error or hesitation. His head swayed back and forth, but his eyes betrayed the intelligence of a hunter as he analyzed his prey. Also, when Joey simulated the man’s emotions and thoughts, there was nothing drunk about them! He was sharp! This man was an actor and he engrossed everyone in his movie!
In the brief space of an hour, the tourist had quadrupled his stack to 4000. It was his table, but he didn’t know there was a glitch in his Matrix—Joey was awake. As far as the tourist could tell, Joey was another one of the lost lambs at the table. Only, Joey had yet to be sheared. Joey’s advantage was the tourist didn’t know that Joey saw the real him, that Joey had the drop.
At the moment, Joey was sitting a level above the tourist. It was the position of the assassin. From there, he could swing down his scythe, and behead the target in one strike. The only issue was if Joey would get the chance to perform the execution.
They say luck only comes to those who watch for opportunities and capture them at the mere hint of their arrival. Joey and the tourist found themselves heads up in a hand. They were the two biggest stacks at the table. So there was tension in the air. The other players quieted down, shifting to observers of this impending duel between the heavyweights.
Joey raised preflop to 40 and the tourist reraised to 150 from late position. Joey was holding [4♠ 4♣], a low pocket pair. This hand was like suited connectors in that you could call it a drawing hand. It was almost worthless if it didn’t hit a 4, making three of a kind, but if it hit, it would become a monster, and often take down an enormous pot. Joey’s hand was good enough to see a flop for 110 more so he called. The pot was 315.
The flop came [4♦ 8♠ 9♠]. Bullseye! This was a beautiful flop for him. The drawing hand made its draw and he hit his set of three 4s. The first thing Joey thought about was whether he could be behind. A set of 4s was a monster but it wasn’t the absolute nuts. He could still lose to 8s or 9s, but Joey believed the tourist wouldn't have raised with those. Otherwise, Joey could have reraised and forced him to fold. With 8s, 9s, and even tens, Joey thought the tourist would have preferred seeing a flop to try to hit his own set. Since that was the case, Joey held the current nuts!
Then Joey studied the texture of the flop, which refers to how many and what types of hands can have something playable. This [4♦ 8♠ 9♠] board has a spade flush draw and many possible straight draws. The flop cards are not high so any overpair would be strong. This kind of board texture is a wet or busy board. A dry board would be one without many draws such as [6♦ 6♥ Q♠]. On a dry board like that, few preflop hands would connect, so the resulting action would be boring on most occasions.
A wet board is an action board. There’s a high chance of an opponent liking some part of it and getting involved. Another implication of a wet board is that due to the many possibilities for draws, when a player bets or raises, they have a higher chance of being on a draw semi-bluff. This creates even more action because people don't believe each other!
Joey had already analyzed the tourist’s range. He judged the tourist was playing tight now so his hand range should have comprised of strong hands: pocket pairs JJ-AA, AK, AQ, and a few more suited high card hands like TJ, JQ, and QK. Compared to him, Joey's range was much wider. Although Joey also had more nut equity because he could have 4s, 8s, or 9s, he also had many more possible draws. That would make his bets and raises look weaker.
Joey acted first. He considered all these things as he pondered his decision to bet or check. He didn’t think the tourist had a high continuation bet percentage. That meant checking to bait a check/raise was not as useful versus him compared to others.
Joey also felt that if the tourist had a flush draw or straight draw with TJ/QT/JQ, he would check back most of the time. With the tourist's wild image, a semi-bluff from him wouldn't be effective; He's shown too much trash so one would believe him. He could also expect his opponents to try to trap him, waiting for the maniac to bet so they could check/raise. If that happened, he might have to fold his draw, so checking and seeing the turn for free was preferable. Since the tourist would often check, a check/raise from Joey made less sense.
Joey developed an interesting hunch. He had a feeling that if he did a certain tricky thing, the tourist might raise right away, building the pot and trapping himself!
Joey remembered a hand he played not long ago in Pocket Rockets. It was during his first 5-10 game against Andy. In that hand, Joey flopped a draw but decided he couldn’t bet because it would look weak and Andy would raise. Betting into the aggressor like that was often done by fish, also know as donkeys, hence the name of the move--donk bet.
Donkeys would donk bet with middling or weak hands. They weren’t comfortable calling large bets with marginal hands, so they instead donk bet smaller themselves. It's a defensive maneuver, but has one big problem--strong hands don't need to defend. Good players knew that when most people had strong hands, they would slowplay by checking the flop. That weighed donk bets to weak and marginal hands. That’s why back then, Joey was confident Andy would’ve felt a donk bet was weak.
What about in this situation? Joey visualized it. If he bet, he believed the tourist would also read it as weak. It would look like Joey had a weak to middling hand or draw and was taking a stab at the pot. Those were the kind of hands that would have to bow out of raised. So what would the tourist do in that situation? Tourist’s best hand was an overpaid of aces, a strong hand but one that had to be wary of a draw. If he had that, he wouldn’t want Joey to see the turn with a draw. He would prefer for Joey to fold those draws on the flop or make bad calls of very large bets. So he had to raise!
Meanwhile, if the tourist had a draw himself, he would raise and semi-bluff Joey off his middling hand. If he had nothing like KQ or AQ, he might also turn it into a bluff raise! If Joey instead checked, the tourist would often check back which would be very bad. Joey wanted to build the pot now and for good reason.
On a wet board, if you slowplay, there’s a decent chance a scare card will arrive, such as a card completing a flush or straight draw. If that happened, it would make the tourist slow down with his overpairs because he would worry about losing to those flushes and straights. Then Joey might not get paid off. That would be a disaster! Joey had to get action now! He knew he wanted to bet, but if he did, was he certain the tourist would take the bait and raise?
Joey thought about his image in the tourist’s mind. The tourist understood nothing about Joey, but Joey recognized the tourist had to be an experienced shark to set up today’s complicated arrangement. What does an experienced shark do versus an unknown player? They refer to their experience. So what if Joey donk bet here?
Since that meant weakness for the vast majority of opponents, the tourist would also have to treat the unknown Joey as a default player, putting him on a marginal hand or draw. That’s why a donk bet from Joey was setting an unusual but beautiful trap! Joey would donk bet, feigning weakness, to lure out a raise!
“I bet,” Joey announced. “150.”
Now it was time for the decision of the “drunk” tourist, the great actor. Would this be another successful show or would it be the end of his performance?
His head swung side to side, telegraphing a lack of control. Yet his eyes glared at Joey with expert steadiness, attempting to pierce through the veil of his thoughts.
He was the boss of this table, pushing and pulling every player at his whim, but Joey wasn’t like the others. Would the hidden master claim another victim or had Joey hidden even deeper?
Thanks for the chapter ?