Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Donk Hand

It's early (first 5 hands) in a 10 player sit'n'go. You've got 22 and limp in with about 5 other players.
Your Chips: 1980
Player X: 1480
Player Y: 1560

Flop: 4,2,7 rainbow.
Pot = $180

You microbet ($40), and Player X bets $200, Player Y calls, you call.
pot = $780

Turn: A

You check, Player X all-in, Player Y calls

Should you go all in?

A boat or quads would be the sure nuts, so you've got 10 outs with 1 card to play, 36 to 10 or 3.6 to 1 against you hitting the nuts. Trips isn't a bad hand, but there is a straight possibility on the board. Pot odds are roughly 2 to 1 if you make the call, so it's not technically a good bet.

It was on-line and I didn't immediately see the straight, so I figure my opponents were betting two pair or worse. (At the showdown, player X had the wheel, and player Y had a pair of aces.)

A two hits, and I put in the last few chips to clean out player Y.

Not my brightest hour, but it's still fun to hit every now and then.

Though I usually place in the money in these sit n goes, I fail to place in this one. One could argue I got what I deserved for sloppy play.

Thursday, October 20, 2005

Hello from Tegucigalpa

I´m in Honduras through the weekend. Not expecting to post any poker updates.

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Payouts at an on-line tourney

Entrants 468 at $5 plus .5 rake
Total prize pool 2365
Payout top 40

Me - 10th $30 (3 hours of play -(I'll keep the day job for now.)
7th - $70
6th - $95
5th - $118
4th - $ 189
3rd - $237
2nd - $355
1st - $591
1st

On-line tourney 10/18/05

I had a 3 hour marathon at a cheapo re-buy tourney. It was advertised as guaranteed $1000 in payouts, and it only had 50 entries with an initial buy-in of $2.25. The site I go to looks pretty shady, and they don't clarify the exact payouts anywhere on the site, but I'll take it on faith they deliver as promised.

My first rebuy was when I had my pocket Aces cracked by pocket Queens in a five-way (!) all-in battle in the first hour. I had been playing well in the conservative mode and was up in chips at that point, but wanted more so that if I doubled up from some idiot, the pot would be worthwhile. I was able to grow this re-buy to an acceptable size by the time of the cut-off, at which time I bought the optional rebuy for good measure.

A total investment of $6.75, while I witnessed others re-buying willy nilly and going all-in as fast as they could catch any kind of starters at all. (This lead to some ridiculously big stacks.) I'm sure many players spent $40 or more for a $2.25 tourney.

I survived to the final table almost without incident. I played very few hands, but was able to use controlled agression to take a few pots with no showdowns, and I took more than 50% of the showdowns, so I never got below 10M.

Payout was to top 10 spots, so I naturally blew a gasket once I made the final table, going all-in with pocket 8's in response to a 3BB raise. Naturally, the raiser had a higher pair (KK) and statistics held true, failing to give me a suck-out. I got what I deserved for losing patience after 3 hours of careful, tedious play.

If I had folded my 88's or at worst called....

My payout for 10th prize? $20, or slightly worse than first prize at a 10 player sit'n'go. Whoo-hoo!

Thursday, October 13, 2005

On-line play

I finally broke down and started playing on-line for money about 3 weeks ago. My observations so far.

1) NLHE Cash games are too wild for my taste. By the time you've figured out who you're dealing with, it's too late. They've either bluffed you to death, or made an all-in with the nuts and taken your cash.

2) Sit'n'go tourneys are my game of choice precisely because you do have some time to figure out who's full of baloney and who bets the nuts and act accordingly.

3) The quality of play varies wildly, but I've found some good resourceful opponents even in the cheap games.

Edna Kansas?

I appear to have a regular reader in Kansas. If you have your own blog, send me the link?

Tuesday, October 11, 2005

FonZ's Birthday Tourney Oct 8, 2005

I haven't been blogging much lately, but I must document this Donk maneuver in the hopes of never repeating it.

I played two hours of tight poker at FonZ's, catching maybe four reasonable starters and missing three flops and folding instead of bleeding extra. We go from 13 players down to 1 table, and there are 7 of us left. I pulled a poker 101 Donk maneuver as follows.

Me: Limp with K8s (after having had two all ins with no callers)

Big stack limps, and big blind Checks

Flop: A,2,2 - Check, Check, Check

Turn: A

Me: All-in.
BS: Calls and has the ace.

First of all, I had no business limping with that hand with the big stack yet to act. Second of all, my chip stack was only about 8 BB, so I should have either gone all in or folded. Third of all, to try to bluff the big stack, who easily had 6 times as many chips as me is also stupid. This was compounded stupidity of the worst kind, which is especially painful after having survived so long without any ridiculous plays on my part.

In retrospect, I'll call that a tilt for the sake of calling it something. What possible result could I have been expecting?

Saturday, October 01, 2005

Tourney Sep 30, 2005

I made it to third place. The hand that killed me was this one:

me: tc9c

Board: QcJcQd

My opponent goes all. I call. I've got him covered. He shows Qx.

Next card is J, and my straight and flush draws are now moot.

Cardplayer.com puts me at 42.1%. At the time I thought I was closer to 50%. Still, there was enough in the pot that I was getting correct odds to call.