My wife rocks the casbah and an interesting hand with timing tells...

So last night I'm surfing the net and my wife asks what I'm looking at. I tell her some poker blogs and then proceed to show her my blog, a few other CR members blogs, high roller blogs where Brian Townsend and CTS talk about winning and losing hundreds of thousands a night, etc. Then I show her Ryan Daut's blog. She laughs at most of his MS Paint stuff, the story about him dropping out of school, and so on. But if you're wondering if your woman is a keeper, just consider whether or not she'll let you show her not only a video of Tony G berating Ralph Perry ("come on Russian, on your bike), but the version Daut posted with Tony G as a Mangalore from the Fifth Element berating Ralph Perry and finds them funny...this, I believe, shows that my wife is awesome. She's very supportive of whatever I try to do, and so if you're reading this I love you! Also, she finds Tuff Fish hilarious, so that's another good sign right there.

Anyways, some poker content. Yesterday I played an hour and lost a little over a buyin on Bodog. I was up about half a buyin and then lost a stupid hand and then crumbled from there. I didn't play well and none of my draws got there, nobody had anything when I flopped a set, etc. But the first big hand I lost was interesting so I thought I'd post about it. (I don't have pokertracker since I'm here at work so I have to recap from memory)

I raise AKo UTG+1 to 0.90 and get three callers. $3.70 is in the pot going to the flop, which comes AQ6 with two diamonds. It's checked to me, and I fire out $3.30. Only the BB calls.

The turn is an offsuit J. The BB checks, and I check behind, wanting to keep the pot small with only one pair, plus the J isn't the greatest card I could see as AJ is very much in his range.

On the river (offsuit 2) he immediately, and I mean IMMEDIATELY fires out for pot, which is $10.30 if my math and memory are correct. I hem and haw and think about what to do. Obviously AJ and 66 are both possible here, but missed diamonds could be as well, and he bet so much on the river it seemed more like trying to get me off then actually having a hand, so I convinced myself to call. He flips over QJo and I feel stupid about playing a big hand with TPTK.

Later I thought about this hand and not only is it a bad call because of the ugly board (sure, his flop call is terrible but that's not the point), but the timing tell of his bet on the river should have gotten me to lay it down. He IMMEDIATELY bet on the river. If he had diamonds and was drawing, it would take a second to evaluate whether or not you hit your hand, and then decide what to do (whether to just give up the hand or make a big bluff). It might not take too long but it would at least take SOME time. When he fires that quickly on the river I have to know that he had a hand he thought was worth betting on the turn, but didn't. That shows that regardless of the river he knew his hand was worth betting. He wasn't looking to improve it or whatever. Really, I'm surprised he only had QJ here, a set would make a lot of sense in that situation as well, or even AQ/AJ.

I hope in the future I can take more advantage of timing tells. I had a hand the other day where I raised button and BB called, flop came 852 rainbow or something (I had junk), it was checked to me, I bet, he check raised me, I folded. The thing is, I knew he had something because there was the delay after the flop that wasn't usually there in these situations. It was as if he was thinking "okay, I hit this flop, should I bet it out or check raise it? That delayed check in these blind vs button situations is something I've been getting more of a feel of lately, and if it can help me check behind on flops that my opponent has hit, it's going to save me a lot of money.

Pete