I won the hand. I still tagged it misplayed.

A six came on the river and I won the pot. Then I opened the app, logged the hand, and tagged it misplayed?

That is not modesty. Winning a hand is the easiest way there is to learn the wrong thing from it, and I wanted the question written down before the win had a chance to answer it for me.

What happened

The big blind had the shorter stack, and I was first to act after the flop. The flop came ace, ace, eight, and I had the ace and six. I bet $25, he raised to $50, and I called.

The turn was the five of spades. I bet $100. He had $121 left and moved all of it in, so it cost me $21 more to call, into a pot of about $550. I called, and he turned over ace-king straight away, the way you do when you are sure. I left mine face down, the way you do when you are not.

The river was the six. Aces full of sixes, and his trip aces with the best kicker in the deck were no good.

There was one ace he could have

Count the aces. I had the ace of spades. The board had the ace of hearts and the ace of clubs. That leaves one ace anywhere in the deck, the ace of diamonds, and for him to have trips he needed exactly that card.

That feels like it should make me comfortable. It is the opposite. When he raised the flop, the question was not "does he have an ace", it was "does he have the ace, with a kicker above a six". And most kickers are above a six: the seven through the king beat me, and an eight made him a full house.

On the flop, against the hand he actually held, I was winning outright about one time in nine and splitting it nearly one time in five. That is 20% of the pot, for a hand that felt like trips.

Did he raise too small?

This is the question I asked first. I bet $25 and he made it $50, which is the smallest raise the rules allow.

It gave me a price, but it did not cost him anything. After the flop there was about $330 in the middle and he had $121 left. With that little behind and that much in the pot, the rest of his money was going in on the turn whatever either of us did. A shove on the flop would have put me all in with two cards to come and 20%. His line put me all in with one card to come and 13.6%. That is a better deal for him, not a worse one.

A player who is an 80% favorite wants you to keep going, and a small raise is how you ask. He did not raise too small. Then a six came.

So did I misplay it?

I was ready to say the turn bet. Betting $100 into a man who has just raised you, with a hand that only beats his bluffs, is the sort of thing I would circle on anybody else's hand.

The numbers say otherwise. With $121 behind in a $330 pot, nothing on the turn was really a decision. If I check, he moves in and I am calling $121 into $450 with the same cards. If I bet, he moves in and I call $21. Either way the same money ends up in the middle, and the river is still coming. My $100 just went in a few seconds earlier.

So the only real decision was the flop, and there the question is whether to call $25 more knowing the rest was coming. That is $146 to win a pot that ends up around $570, so I needed about 26%.

Against ace-king I had 20%, and calling would lose me about $30 on average. But I did not know it was ace-king. A short stack who min-raises that flop does it with the last ace and any kicker, and with eights full. That is 49 hands, 16 of them worse than mine, and against all of them together I had 35%. Against the hand I was actually facing, I was behind. Against the hands I could have been facing, the call was right.

The answer to the question mark is no. I played it fine, I was behind, and I got lucky.

The numbers I skipped

The app has a line for the pot swing, and it tells you to skip it unless the number is the point of the hand. I skipped it. The $25, the $50, the $100 and the $121 only came back to me afterwards, when somebody asked.

Without them, I had this hand down as a bad turn bet that got bailed out. With them, the turn was never a decision at all. The numbers were the whole answer, and I was one question away from not having them.

Why the question mark

He will remember this hand as a bad beat, and he is right. I will remember it as a win, and that is right too. Neither of those tells me anything about how I played it.

The tag is there because the result and the decision are different objects, and the result shouts. A question mark keeps the decision open long enough to count it. This time the count came back clean, which is worth knowing as well: the next time I have top trips with a weak kicker and a short stack raises me, I call, and I do not let one six convince me it was clever.

Log is free, all of it, and works offline with no account. Tag the hands you won as well as the ones you lost, put a question mark on the ones where you are not sure, and write the numbers in while you still have them.