Big Social Group Tourney - August 13, 2005

48 players, WSOP blind structure.

First table, less than one hour in, I get agressive with pocket jacks, and when the flop comes in 9-6-3ish rainbow, I go all in. Of course, I'm facing pocket aces. To my great shame, I suck out with a jack on the river and double up.

Same table, I'm facing a true WSOP veteran who has made a bet which states he's got top-class holdings. I've got position and suited paint that I can't put down, and I catch lucky, much to his chagrin. Living on the edge, I guess. 　I looked it up at cp.com, and if he had what his bet seemed to imply, I was the 4 to 1 underdog, and I was being offered maybe 1.5 to 1 odds at the initial bet.

Same table, I limped with 7-8 os or some other inferior holding with four other players. A-7-x comes up. My probe bet chases 3 away, and I assume I'm facing an Ace. Turn - A, river 7. He makes a huge bet on the end, and I can't fold my second-best boat so I call. He's pulled such a stone bluff on me that he doesn't even show his cards. Sigh of relief.

Next Table, I make a raise into two very good players who are SB and BB, and they both call. I flop the nut straight, and I check from early, and I'm happy to hear a bet and a raise. My all in pushes off the probe bet, and the raiser takes my all-in offer. He explains before calling that he knows what I've got, but that he's got to go for the nut boat because he's too low-stacked to continue in the tourney otherwise. cp.com puts the odds as 82.1% in my favor. He failed to suck out, but it was not a bad play on his part, as he was very pot-committed.

Another interesting hand involved an all-in battle after the flop with K2 vs K7, except that K-2-x was already on the board. K-2 is the 74.4% favorite at that time.

Final Table Syndrome (FTS) - Losing one's focus after hours of play because one is so excited about being within reach of the prize money.

After much patience and more than a few skirmishes, I make the final table. I've got a healthy stack, and I personally take out at least two players at the final table, but then I go haywire.
My focus wanes just when I need it most, I make a couple of bad decisions and I'm desperate and looking at the bubble. I pull pocket 8's from the SB and offer an all-in to steal the blind. BB happily agrees from his pocket aces and takes 90% of my remaining stack. (Same player pulled pocket aces on me the last time we butted heads and crippled me there as well. Maybe I'll wait for pockets before I go against this guy again....)

One hand later, I accept an all-in offer from the chip leader, who has KQ to my Q9. I fail to suck out.

I didn't use the notebook this time, but I was constantly counting my chips.

I need to learn more about final table focus, or I can see repeating this behavior over and over. Getting cocky at exactly the wrong time.

Big Local Tourney August 12, 2005

Starting chips were 50 each, with a blind structure like this:
1-2, 2-4, 3-6,4-8,5-10,10-20,15-30,20-40, 40-80,80-160,100-200,200-400

The tourney ended about 6 hours in at the 80-160 level.

I got pocket q's on the second deal when I dealt them to myself. I raised from the button, and one caller went all in and I accepted. He had lost 21 chips in the first hand, so when his A-9 hit on the river, I was down to 21 chips 2 hands in. I semi-tilted and called a raise with limping starters and was down to 15 chips.

It took me the better part of 2 hours of careful play to build 15 chips into a decent stack.

I made it to the final table, or rather the final table made it to me. I didn't need to change my chair during any of the consolidations.

I offered a chop when we were down to 2 players, and I think I may have been the chip leader. The dude passed and said he preferred to play it out. Two hands later I go all in and he accepts, and he takes all my chips. Fortunately, I make sure we both do a chip count to make sure he has me covered. He didn't and I still had almost 2BB in chips left (he must have had more than 10-12BB in chips at that time.)

I plow onward and within 1 hour of that point he bluffs an all-in that I accept on A-3. He's got 2-4 suited. My 3 pairs and he doesn't pair. Game over.

It was a sweet sweet victory, especially since I had to endure 6 hours of second hand smoke. When I go back next week, there will be a bounty on me. Did I mention that I took out the champion of the prior week and got that bounty too?

Quick Poker Update

Haven't had time to blog, but have been active with poker.

Played some small stakes Pot-Limit Omaha. It's kinda fun!

Played a local tourney at a bingo parlor. A nice combo of good players and dead money. I plan to go back regularly.

Played a cash game at a condo clubhouse in Washington DC near the capitol, and came out with double my buy-in. I plan to go back regularly.

Any questions?

B & Q's Tourney July 30, 2005

24 players over 4 tables. Having 6 players instead of 8 or 10 may not seem like a huge difference, but I find it really affects the table play, The blinds hit you that much faster, and it's that much tougher to expect pot-odds with limping hands.

The notebook? As I've said, it's a TPD. I've also discovered some interesting personal numerology that I cannot reveal. I don't normally believe in this sort of thing, but it's clear to me that I have to survive X number of hands in order to have a chance, and I've got to make a move between hands Y and Z or else I can expect to be blinded out. That's as much as I can say without giving away my tournament game completely.

The cash table was reckless junior last night. LW went all-in 3 times in succession until he recovered his buy-in, and then he calmed down. After that, the rest of the table went loco, loco, loco with that All-in Fever.

Held my own at the cash table, and I walked out of B&Q's with exactly the same cash as I walked in with. I would have walked out ahead, but I had been in tilt mode for at least 20 minutes before I stopped.

Preach's July 30, 2005

There were at least 5 new faces at Preach's and all of them seemed like pretty good players. One of them in particular was obviously accustomed to playing at much higher stakes, and was playing with a very admirable emotional detachment to his chips. He would take and frequently offer all-in bets if he liked his starters at all, and he walked away with 7 bounties and first prize in a field of 13 players.

My highest lifetime hand was last night, a 7-high heart straight flush. I only knew that I had won the pot because my last standing opponent had no pair, and it was pointed out to me by others. Straight Flush blindness, I guess.

There was also an all-in battle suckout I'm particularly proud of.

Me: JdJh
Not Me: AsJs

I'm the 65.5% fave going in.

Ah, xc, xh

I'm now the 8.8% dog.

xh

Now I'm the 22.7% dog

xh!

And I get four suited hearts on the board for my jack of hearts. I'm getting so much better at sucking out! Tee hee!

Also had a nice run at the cash table. I whittle down my stack to about 35% of a buy-in, and I leave the table with 7 times buy-in!

Action Tourney July 28, 2005

24 player tourney. I got a little too frisky too early, and spent the remainder of the tourney trying to play catch up. I had one decent all-in with my QQ prevailing over KJos. (xxJ, Q,x), but I had a couple of all-in battles where I was sucked out, and so it was an evening of bleeding. It's a different blind structure and a different style of player than other tourneys I play, so I may need to adjust my play quite a bit if I wish to do well there.

Then I hit the cash table, and got my entry fee and gas money back. A free evening's entertainment.

Speert's Poker Club Atlanta July 26, 2005

http://www.thepokerclub.org/

This place gets the FNJ thumbs up. It's a little tough to find, but worth it.

Mr. Speert was in the building, but he was playing on-line and said hello as we went for a smoke. We didn't have the honor at the table.

Played two hours of cash no limit, with a rake, and came out in the black. There was one fascinating hand I was in, and this time I was actually the victor.

I'm allowed to limp in BB with KJos, 3 in the hand. One of the two players is in every single hand, and had been on a very impressive rush, but only after re-loading twice and showing all the symptoms of tilt, tilt, tilt.

Flop 3,5,T rainbow. Checks around.
Turn Q. SB checks, I bet 5, Tilty raises me to 15, I call, and I give an obvious verbal tell that I'm on a draw.
River: A.

I bet 20, and tilty puts me all in, which I obviously expect.

But he wasn't tilting at all. The Ace gave him a wheel. He stated after the hand that he didn't even see the high straight on the board.

FNJ 1, Tilty 0.
(Tilty had cleaned out at least 3 players before he faced off with me. His stack was huge.)

Hooters Free Roll July 25, 2005

You know there's that movie coming out about the 40 year old virgin? Well, I had my first hooters experience this evening, I went there for a free roll, of course.

The hosts were:

www.atlantapokerclub.com

There were 3 tables of 8, starting with 1500 in chips, and a gradual blind elevation. They had a bizarre alternate system in which every time somebody got eliminated, a new recruit was sent in with 1500 in chips. Of course, lots of newbies eliminated themselves in the first 15 minutes, so it took less than 30 minutes for all the alternates to come in.

I made final table and got to sit with some decent players who took the free roll about as seriously as I did. I stood to win some Hooters gift certificates, so after about 3 hours play with 5 players remaining, I got sloppy and careless and went out quickly. I could have played tight and held out another hour for a baseball cap.

I'm getting much better at sucking out. Check these!

1) I limp with Qtos with about 5 other players. The flop is qq2, so I make a tiny raise to see who has the other queen. BB goes in, and since BB checked, I liked my chances on the kicker. But BB has 22, so BB has a boat to my trips with two cards to play.

Runner runner pair of 3s for QQQ33. Nyah nyah nyah.

I looked up the odds, and he was 77.1% fave with two cards to play, and 84.1% fave with one card left.

2) I limp in with Ad9d, and there's 3 in the hand. The flop come 6d7d5s, and the player before me goes all in. It's a nothing board, so I put him on the same draw where I would have the nut flush. I go all in and he's got the STRAIGHT FLUSH DRAW 4567, and he's also got a pair of my 5s to no pair. Turn doesn't help, but river gives me a kd for the nut flush.

I looked up the odds, and he was 64.2% fave with 2 cards left, and 85% fave when the turn didn't help either of use.

My suck out skills are clearly improving!

Scent of final table messes with head

I had made it down to the final two tables of a 64 player tourney by playing sensible, not too fancy poker all the way down the line. I'm in the SB and it has been folded down to SB and BB. BB is the shortest stack at the table, and I had actually managed to work my way towards healthy stack for a change.

I have ATs.

I get ahead of myself and offer an all-in wager to the BB.

BB has AQs.

On the up side, I had the BB covered, but it was a crippling blow from which I was unable to recover. I finished 12th or 13th in the field of 64.

Six hours of play shot down by one bad decision.

Not a coin flip!

The hand I went out on today was my AJos vs 88.

88 is the 56% favorite. If AJ suited, then 88 is still the 53% favorite.

Those numbers don't change much for pocket 2s.

That ain't poker!

Sorry dude, but going all-in on every hand isn't poker. That's just playing the lottery, and it grows tiresome rapidly. I played with drunks last weekend, and their game was equally sophisticated.

Dude, if you want a piece of me, let's play some 3/6 limit heads-up, and I'll rip you a new one.

64 player tourney July 24, 2005

I survived 12th or 13th place down to the last 2 tables. I got impatient when we got close the final table and pushed the envelope and got shot down. I probably could have hung on my blinds for another hour if I hadn't gotten cutesy.

I finally performed a decent suck-out. I raised all-in from UTG, and somebody with two overs called. I had 76os, I paired, he didn't. Nyah nyah nyah.

Great tourney!

Tourney July 23, 2005

Took 4th place in a field of 24(+/-), which is the best I've done yet in a larger tourney. Today I'm playing a field of 64, which should be quite a marathon.

Interesting hand 1 - First table, less than 10 hands into the tourney, I make a small raise on the blinds, and a guy who likes to play wild (D)offers me an all-in proposition. I accept, and we've both got the same big slick offsuit. I get 3 to a flush and that's about as exciting as that push ever gets.

'At least we didn't have to pay a rake'....

Interesting hand 2 - Final table, I'm the big and it's getting expensive to be the big. (V) makes a 1BB raise on me, and I call with 82 suited. My 8 pairs and I offer an all in proposition, which he accepts with AQ suited. He's four to a flush, but fails to save himself with two cards remaining. He's big stack, so this is barely a dent, but it gives me enough blind money for quite a few turns around the table.

BUT, just a few hands later I offer an all-in against the two blinds, and I find myself facing pocket aces from a guy (M) who's either been running a hot streak or running lots of bluffs. Having seen the aces, I'm almost willing to believe the other 8 all-ins he had offered and nobody accepted were mostly true.

Gotta go.

Recognizing Your Own Tilt

I have finally admitted to myself that I was on tilt this past weekend. Other witnesses had already told me, but the biggest hurdle is always an egyptian river, right?

How did I recognize it? When I was in denial, I started to take notes on the big hands in which I was involved, and when I stayed or folded, and whether there were suck outs involved. It was a truculent self-argumentative maneuver, but probably the smartest move I made on the whole saturday. When I reviewed the notes on Thursday with a cool head, I noticed two big problems.

1) In a few of the 'suck-outs' that pissed me off the most, I was the 50% favorite or worse. That isn't really a suck-out.
2) In the most dramatic example, I realized that I had mucked a 'chopper', where I would have been entitled to one-half of a very healthy pot. I was so-pissed off that my nutty, nutty boat was counterfeited that I mucked. I was so tilty that I didn't even realized what I had done till I reviewed the notes.

Now that's tilt!

On the Bus? (drunks at the table)

Saturday in Laughlin I had an interesting afternoon at the 3-6 tables. Some guys who had been boating in the hot sun all day sat at the table with the intention of drinking and whooping it up. There were 3 little piggies, all drinking up the booze as quickly as the waitress would bring it.

The first little piggy bought in for $100, quickly grew his stack to nearly $300, and then bled it all away with stupid bluffs.

The second little piggy bought in twice for $100, and each time he kept bleeding it all away calling the stupid bluffs.

The third little piggy bought in twice for $100, and grew his stack to at least $500, because he was catching lucky.

The third little piggy's first question every time the action came to him was 'How much can I bet???'. He did not fold a single time, and never bet or raised less than he was allowed. As you can imagine, this grows a stack pretty quickly when you're catching, but it will bleed it all away just as fast.

But then the damn bus he came in on had to leave while he was ahead! Broke my heart and made me tilt!

As you can imagine, it's very expensive to sit with this kind when you're not catching. I think next time I'll ask for a table change, rather than hoping for statistics to catch up.

Limit Tournament - Colorado Belle - Laughlin NV

For funzies, I tried one tournament in Laughlin, at the Colorado Belle Casino. Here's the gory details.

Entry Fee: $25, of which 20 goes to the prize pool, and the house and dealers get the other 5.

Tourney Structure: 200 in Tourney Chips, blinds start at 5/10 and escalate every 15 minutes. Essentially, every time it was your BB, the next level had always started.

Fast Action: If you didn't make a move quickly, you would be bled to death by the third or fourth level. You can barely wait for S-Class 6 starters, to say nothing of pocket Aces.

This kind of tournament had very little social interaction between the players, and was deadly dull to me. I played one, and after that, decided I would stick with standard limit games where I could wait for decent starters, and fold J8os.

The Colorado Belle had a nice poker room with good dealers, and a lot of regulars. I was happy to play their limit tables for an hour before the tourney and an hour after. Since it wasn't my home casino, I eventually migrated back to my hotel to play.

Their limit game was 2-6 spread, with only one blind ($2) and a non-escalating structure. This made it easy and cheap to wait for starters, and it also lead to some very healthy pots when more than one player got excited about the flop.

Leather-Butt Weekend at Laughlin Nevada - Details to Follow

Logged in between 24 and 30 hours of playing in a 38 hour period at the Flamingo in Nevada. It felt like the Cheers bar, because by the second calendar day, I knew virtually every face and half the names.

I say 'calendar day' because it felt like one continuous day punctuated by an occasional nap.

I will write up a few hands, stories and impressions when I have a moment. Stay tuned.

Ethical Dilemma at Cardplayer.com Poker Tracker

Let's say you are playing a casino between 3 AM and 9 AM, and they are running a promotion:

Any pocket Aces sucked out in Hold'Em at the showdown will be given a $100 rack of chips.

And let's say you've been playing with off-duty dealers and other shark-like creatures and getting waxed, but you manage to land pocket Aces, and naturally you don't bet them up to get more callers, and you don't push a soul out of the pot. For an investment of 20 odd dollars, you're looking at either a 60-80 Pot or a 100 rack. The rack for you.

Now here's the tricky part. At the end of 90 minutes play, you are at exactly break even in terms of money-in and money out, and you cash out and leave after an enjoyable session with funny, friendly folks.

How do you score this on your poker analyst?

If you mark it as break-even, it makes you look like a better cardplayer than you are, and skews your statistics.

If you mark it as a $100 loss, that's not really the truth either. Plus, when the gambling auditor looks at the books, a C-Note drop is an area of concern.

A lesson cheaply learned

Darn near every book I read said the same thing, but maybe I wasn't listening:

"Find your comfort level. Don't play beyond your gulp limit."

I was happy with my performance at the 4/8 tables, so last night I tried two hours at the 6/12 table. I was clearly outside of my comfort zone, moving my style from tight-agressive to tight-weak. When I had the best hand I was not maximizing profits, and I allowed myself to be pushed out of hands several times where I would not have been pushed out at lower limits.

I was down four betting units in two hours of play, although I was actually down 25 units for a while. At the lower limit tables, I finished up 15 units on the first night, and up 4 units on the night I wasn't catching cards.

Limit Betting Sequence Details - Casino Arizona

4/8 Table:

Pre-flop and Flop, a single bet is $4.
Turn and River, a single bet is $8

Max raise in a round is four bets.
Any one player can only make one raise at a time.
Re-raising is allowed.
Check-raising is allowed.
When two players only are in the hand, unlimited re-raising is allowed.
Normally, the max possible investment on one hand without a show-down string of re-raises is:
(4*4) + (4*4) + (4*8) + (4*8)

Or a total of $96 for a bat-shit insane betting round.

Kill Round - Special Rule. When one player wins two consecutive hands worth 40 or more each, the next round is a double, kill-round. The double winner pays double blind, and the little and big blind ante as usual (2 and 4). The betting limits are doubled for that round, and 8 is the first call. The kill button gets last option on the pre-flop button.

Squirelly Casino Stuff - If a player has Aces Full or better and is beaten in a showdown by a better hand, there is a cumulative jackpot aware, which can be in the multiple thousands. When I played there was 27,000 in this fund.
50% goes to loser of the suck-out
25% goes to winner with the big hand
25% is distributed among anybody else playing at that table at that moment.

I caught Aces full on the first night, but nobody came up with four jacks to beat me. The rest of the table was most disappointed. I had a partial compensation by virtue of collecting a decent pot.