Hey,
I was wondering what peoples thoughts are on leaving a cash game after a bad beat?
Basically, I had managed to increase my starting stack quite a bit, but ended up losing quarter of it on one hand (was out played by someone who had TTT on the flop against my two pair Q3’s, but limped through the flop and turn).
Either way, I was still up on my starting stack and I left the table. Did I maybe jump the gun on leaving?
As I understand it, the flop was QT3, and Hero had Q3 for top and bottom pair, but unfortunately someone else had TT for middle set. First of all I hope, it was a limped pot, and that Hero got a free play or a cheap complete from the blinds, because otherwise its a pretty substantial mistake to play Q3.
The action then got checked on the flop and turn, meaning Hero and Villain were both trying to slowplay their big hands. But then all hell broke loose on the river, and Hero ended up losing a big pot. Now first of all slowplaying is a pretty substantial mistake, even though this time Hero was at the bad end of a cooler, so it could actually have saved him money in the exact situation.
But Hero did not know, his opponent had TT until showdown, and if this was indeed a limped pot, then I would simply lead out for value on the flop and bet again on the turn if called. Plenty of worse hands can continue on this board, and we cant rely on someone else to build the pot for us, when we have a very strong hand, especially not in a limped pot.
On the river however it sounds like a ton of money went in, and this might also be a mistake. The river is not the time, we can make up for lost value after misplaying the earlier streets. The flopped top and bottom pair is simply not strong enough, because if the river action gets to heavy, we are pretty much always going to be against a better hand like a set, a straight, a flush or maybe just a better two pair.
So most likely all 3 streets were misplayed by Hero, and the feeling of getting "outplayed" is probably spot on. And when we lose a big pot after playing poorly, that is definitely a good time to call it quits rather than staying and perhaps continue to make more mistakes in future hands. Instead its time to do some off the table study and review that hand and perhaps some other hands as well, so that we dont repeat the same mistakes next time.