The Joys of a Misclick

So, most successful online poker players play multiple tables at the same time. This maximizes the number of hands they play, thus maximizing their profits. It's normal for a player to play 10, 14, or even 24 tables at once. (I fluctuate between 16 and 20 myself.) The online poker rooms have excellent software for so called multi-tablers where the tables will come to the forefront (there's surely a technical term for this, but it escapes me) one at a time, but even the best of us will occasionally misclick (the fold, call, and raise buttons are close together) in the flurry of negotiating our 20 or so tables. This is aggravating, of course, because you can accidentally fold AA or raise with rags. I'm pretty good about not misclicking, but I have definitely folded a few big hands due to the dreaded misclick and I once made a raise to $42 or something preflop with complete garbage (and lost the hand, of course). Goodbye, nice dinner!

Anyways, the following hand demonstrates how an opponent's serendipitous misclick can pay off big for you. There's little strategy involved here, so just sit back and enjoy the ride.


To set the scene, I'm at a table with 6 other "regulars"--guys who play tons of hands and likely make a living from online poker--and 1 fish. This is less than ideal, but sometimes when games are slow you have to make due. At the least, it's better than quitting and doing hw, haha. Even though there's only one guy here who's undeniably worse than I am--all of us Regulars are pretty much the same in terms of talent--it's still a good spot for me because I have position on the one fish. I act immediately after him on almost every hand, so I can wait for him to enter a hand, then reraise to isolate the fish from the sharks who, like me, smell blood and are circling. Moreover, this guy was the best type of fish--he was aggressive and would put lots of money in with marginal hands.

Oh, I obviously multiplied the actual dollar amounts by a factor to keep camouflaged how little/much I actually play for. Plus, with all this money out there, it ramps up the drama! The scale is the same, though, and that's all that matters.


Seat 1: Regular1 ($20,000 in chips)
Seat 2: Fish ($21,760 in chips)
Seat 3: Billy ($20,546.70 in chips)
Seat 4: Regular2 ($20,550 in chips)
Seat 6: Regular3 ($27592 in chips)
Seat 7: Regular4 ($27,591 in chips)
Seat 8: Regular5 ($29,470 in chips)
Seat 9: Regular6 ($23297 in chips)
Regular5: posts small blind $100
Regular6: posts big blind $200
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Billy [Ah As]
Regular1: folds
Fish: raises $800 to $1000

What a dream scenario: Fish has a hand he likes and we have the best hand in the game. Let's raise small to get everyone else out of the hand so I can go one-on-one with Fish.

Billy: raises $1000 to $2000
Regular2: folds
Regular3: raises $1000 to $3000

Okay, this play makes no sense. It's a minraise (raising the absolute minimum allowed) by a competent player. The minraise here would never be performed by someone competent, so this guy is either (1) way drunk or (2) the victim of a misclick. Either way, we're ecstatic.


Regular4: folds
Regular5: folds
Regular6: folds
Fish: calls $2000

Sweet, Fish is sticking around. I was a bit concerned that my raise and Regular3's reraise would scare him away, but since the raises (both of 'em) were small, he's gonna stick around. If he put $2k in, he'll probably put more in, so let's re-raise to get Regular3 out of the way and to get Fish to put in more money preflop. The more money he puts in to see a flop, the more committed he is to putting the rest in if he catches a piece of the flop. We don't wanna raise too big, though, lest we scare him away.

Billy: raises $7400 to $10400
Regular3: folds
Regular3 said, "fn misklick"

Misclick confirmed. Thanks for the extra $3k, Regular3.

Fish: calls $7400

Beautiful. Fish has about half of his stack invested--he's gonna have a hard time folding.

*** FLOP *** [Td Ks 9s]
Fish: bets $11,360 and is all-in

Yup, here he goes. This isn't a great board for AA, but there is no way we ever fold to such a reckless, loose player with so much money already invested.

Billy: calls $10,147 and is all-in
Uncalled bet ($1213) returned to Fish (Since Fish has us covered, he gets a slight refund on his bet.)
*** TURN *** [Td Ks 9s] [Qs]
*** RIVER *** [Td Ks 9s Qs] [6d]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Fish: shows [9h 8h] (a pair of Nines)
Billy: shows [Ah As] (a pair of Aces)
Billy collected $44,293 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $44,296 | Rake $3
Board [Td Ks 9s Qs 6d]
Seat 2: Fish showed [9h 8h] and lost with a pair of Nines
Seat 3: Billy showed [Ah As] and won ($44,293) with a pair of Aces



Now, just how clutch was that misclick? Well, in addition to the $3k of dead money, it gave us a chance to put in another preflop raise. If Regular3 had folded, like he intended, Fish would have just called our bet and he'd have most of his stack left. On that flop, he'd be more cautious with so little money in the pot and so much money still in his stack. He'd probably check the flop (instead of shoving all in) and maybe call a flop bet from us; however, he'd probably fold after the turn, given our showing of strength throughout the hand and his relatively scant holdings (unless his hand improved, in which case we'd be losing). So, we'd miss out on about $15k in value by having him fold. That misclick made us $18k richer (Fish's $15k + Regular3's $3k).