Sorry for the lack of updates in the last few days – I ended up having a busy weekend that didn’t involve much playing of poker (though I did read a chapter or two of Harrington and watched some on television), and last night I was super-tired and figured that wasn’t the best time or frame of mind to be playing. I did play in one $1 SNG on Sunday night though, and was fairly unlucky not to cash.
On the third hand of play, I found 3-3 in middle position. There was one raise in front of me, but only up to $40. For just 2X BB, I’m definitely calling that. Imagine my joy to see a flop of A-Q-3. The two picture cards were both clubs, so I was resolved to either take it down right away with a big bet, or get all the chips in there and see what happened. One of the pre-flop callers raised to $200, the original raiser just called, and I popped it up to $1000. That set the first guy all-in, and he called. The original raiser was the big stack (he had tabled someone on the first hand with a full house) then went all-in himself, to which I quickly called.
- The post-flop raiser showed Q-8 off, no clubs.
- The pre-flop raiser showed A-4 off, no clubs.
Thank goodness for the stupid. As if it were a message from the poker gods, the river was the case 3 to give me quads. Of course, I wish I had gotten quads on the river in a cash game against a big stack who had the nut flush, but I’ll take them in this case too!
That brought me up to $4,050 in chips, and admittedly I didn’t play my big stack well. I could have probably bullied some people around, but I generally prefer to semi-bluff rather than straight-out bluff against loose opponents. You saw what people were raising and calling with above, so I didn’t want to get too cute raising with absolute garbage.
I didn’t seriously play another hand until Hand 21, with 10c-8c. I figured I hadn’t played in a while, so let me pop it up to 3X BB (I was the initial raiser) and see what happened. Of course, I got four customers. The flop came Qs-Js-2h. One player checked in front of me, so I put out a continuation bet of $388 (1/2 the pot). One person folds, then another went all-in for their last $920. Well, shit. I of course muck, and so did everyone else.
Six hands later, it was down to four-handed. I only played one of those hands, won about $100 with Ad-9d. So, under the gun, I call with Jh-10h. I know I should have raised or folded…that was the kind of mental error that I made because I was tired…and least I was smart enough to only play a $1 SNG rather than risk any kind of money playing a cash game. The SB folded, so it was three-handed with me, the genius who raised with A-4 from the hand where I had my set, and one other player. The flop came 5-5-2 with no hearts, and was checked around. The turn was the 10d, Mr. Genius bet $175, and I called…the other person mucked. In truth, I had no idea what he had. The river was the 6h, and Mr. Genius bet $525. It looked like a steal attempt to me, so I raised up to $1,600. He re-raised me right back to $2,675, and given how much of an idiot donkey this guy was, I should have given up the hand right there. But no, I went all-in and he of course called.
Of course, he shows J-5 and sends me to the rail. This is why I try not to play when I’m exhausted, but even if I had raised pre-flop, this guy probably would have called me anyway. I’ll call it 60% poor play on my part and 40% shit luck.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Nice session at .02/.04 last night
Last night I had a nice little session at .02/.04 - I took the advice of those who told me to play at a level more appropriate for my bankroll, and it worked. I felt a lot more comfortable and despite some large up-and-down swings, finished with more than double my buy-in.
SB Played: 13-15 (80%) - BB Played: 11-16 (69%) - Other Played: 30-100 (30%) - Total: 54-131 (41%) - SD Won: 6-14 (43%) - Other Wins: 16 - Profit: $5.02
As mentioned, I brought a lot more of my home-game aggression into this session, and played about 10-15% more hands than I normally do online. At this level, I had always followed the Sklansky advice for low-limit online tables - play tighter and just try to show down better hands. The problem with that is because these people play such a large range of hands, and there's more bodies seeing the flop than normal, those bigger hands (K-J with the Jack paired, for example) don't seem to hold up as often as they should. This particular table had a lot of limpers with almost no standards for what to limp with. My game plan once I noticed that was to limp along with lots of marginal hands and then try to out-play them after the flop. Needless to say, I also tried to mix that in with raises...sometimes limping with big hands, sometimes raising with nothing. I fired lots of continuation bets - sometimes they went away, sometimes they hung around. Although I probably lost as much as I won on those occasions, I think it gave me a nice and loose table image that got me a few big scores when I ended up with Hammer of God-type hands.
Remember when I said I always do well when I get a nice pot early? On the first hand, I saw 7-3o, and paired the 7 on the Q-8-7 flop. I called a minimum bet, then called a raise for another .04. My roommate was railbirding for a second and questioned why - I was just explaining how I had the right odds to call when a 3 came on the turn. I probably fired too much at it with .80 - I had such a disguised hand, but with two diamonds and some straight possibilities out there, I guess I just wanted to know where I stood. Anyway, .52 to kick things off isn't bad!
After losing a couple with marginal high hands (my on-going nemesis), the 10th hand gave me As-Jd in early position. My 3X BB raise had two customers, flop was J-6-5 (all spades). With TPTK and the nut flush draw, $1.12 was immediately fired in. One guy hung around (all he had was 8c-5c...once again, thank goodness for the stupid). The turn was the 7d, and I checked as a kind of information check, I suppose. I was curious to see how much he liked what was out there, and he checked as well. In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have let him see a free card, but I also didn't want to be re-raised out either if he had a made King-high flush. The river was a beautiful 9s, and I sent $1.16 out there. I wish I can say I did so in case his straight got there, but I didn't think of that at the time. He raised, putting me all in. I gleefully called, and took down $3.39 in profit.
One hand I hated - Q-9 from the big blind, I paired on the flop with A-Q-10. My .12 bet was called by two guys, and then I checked it down the whole way. I had one guy check in front of me on the harmless 3c turn, so I should have bet again to be sure of where I was with one other guy to act. Instead, the 8 on the flop gave the other guy a straight, and I called his .52 bet for a reason that I can't remember now. Let's just call it temporary stupidity and move on...
...to another monster hand won by yours truly on the very next deal. I did seem to luck out and win big pots right after losing big ones, so I didn't ever have any confidence dips. 10-10 in the SB, and my 3X BB gets two callers. The flop came A-J-10 rainbow, and it was full speed ahead from me. I guess because this was such a loose table, I just figured that if someone had K-Q or J-J, good luck to them. My .32 raise didn't knock out either guy, and a 6 came on the turn. I bet $1.38, one fold, one all-in for .56 more. No way I'm folding to that, and I was happy to see J-6 as his holding. No help on the river, thank you for your $2.63 donation...please come again.
I lost a tough one around 15 hands later or so. Ad-Jd on the button, 4X BB raise gets one caller. I had been pushing this guy around for a while, and he had started to push back. The flop was A-7-6, no diamonds. I bet .20, he raises to .40, and I call. I figured that could just have been a probe raise to see if I was stealing once again. Earlier in the session, he had re-raised me on the flop when I had nothing, and was kind enough to show his A-A when I mucked. The turn was a 3, and he fired in $1.18. Now, I had to think a bit. What did he have? He was a pretty good player at this level, so I don't think he had 7-6 or A-7 or anything. I had settled on A-10 or A-Q, but I went against my read and called. If I had more time than online gave me, I'd like to think I'd have included 7-7 and 6-6 in his range as well...I do now. The river was a Queen, and he immediately went all-in. At that point, I knew I was beat and quietly mucked my hand. If he had A-10 or A-J, well, he outplayed me...all there is to it.
Around hands 40-57, I was starting to lose more than I won with the aggression, and was down to $5.91. I got Kh-Qh and called a raise and a re-raise up to $1.20 (dumb, dumb, dumb, Sean...you know better than that). The flop was 6-5-5 with one heart, and a fairly loose player went all-in for $4.23. Maybe it was a bluff, maybe it was A-A, but I wasn't sticking around to find out - another guy did though with his A-Q, and he lucked out on Big Raiser Guy when he rivered his Ace against the other guy's J-J. That put me below $5 for the first time in ages, but I was back up to $5.21 on the next hand thanks to Anna Kournikova. Maybe she DOES win sometimes, after all!
From there, I hovered between the $5-$5.80 range...the pattern seemed to be that I lost .20-.60 with medium-high hands, and won about the same with absolute garbage thanks to aggressive betting. On Hand 98 though, I flopped a straight with 9-8 from middle position. It was the ignorant end of the straight mind you, but nothing pre-flop screamed out A-K from anyone. If they had that exact hand, good luck to them. The turn paired the Queen, and that should have made me more nervous than it did. Now, Q-10 and Q-J were ahead of me as well, and I could see people limping with that at this table. Instead, I just called a .13 bet (when a re-raise would have given me the info I needed). A harmless little 6 on the river, and someone bet .32. I doubled the raise, one fold, the original raiser called and showed Q-5o. Thank goodness for the stupid.
Four hands later, I was back up in the high-rent district. I had Ks-3s in the big blind, 3 limpers followed me into a flop of J-J-J. One guy checked, I bet .16, two folded. The checker called me for some reason. Now, he may have had a low pocket pair or maybe two high cards...I'm just not putting anyone on quads. A King appeared on the turn, and my only thought there was how to extract the money from this guy. I figured that at worst, we were chopping unless an Ace came off or something. He solves my problem by going all-in for $2.04, and I insta-call. Mr. Genius is drawing dead with Q-8o, and I accept the $2.12 donation graciously.
I reached my high point at $9.18 when my Q-Q held up against a short stack's 5d-2d (her open-ender didn't get there), then reached another at $9.40 with Q-10o when my continuation bet scared everyone off. I got up to $9.60 with K-Q when my King paired and no one wanted to play, but then I lost a series of small-to-medium pots over the next two orbits to finish at $9.02. All in all, I used this as an experiment in a more aggressive online style, and it obviously paid off for me. I know of course that doing this will result in larger swings, but I have 20 buy-ins at this level so I think I should be able to handle it mentally. I did all right in handling the ups and downs within this session, though I did also hit my cards more often than I didn't.
We'll see how this goes - I think I'm going to grind it out down here for a while until I have 20 buy-ins at .5/.10 ($200, and I'm at $80 or so now).
SB Played: 13-15 (80%) - BB Played: 11-16 (69%) - Other Played: 30-100 (30%) - Total: 54-131 (41%) - SD Won: 6-14 (43%) - Other Wins: 16 - Profit: $5.02
As mentioned, I brought a lot more of my home-game aggression into this session, and played about 10-15% more hands than I normally do online. At this level, I had always followed the Sklansky advice for low-limit online tables - play tighter and just try to show down better hands. The problem with that is because these people play such a large range of hands, and there's more bodies seeing the flop than normal, those bigger hands (K-J with the Jack paired, for example) don't seem to hold up as often as they should. This particular table had a lot of limpers with almost no standards for what to limp with. My game plan once I noticed that was to limp along with lots of marginal hands and then try to out-play them after the flop. Needless to say, I also tried to mix that in with raises...sometimes limping with big hands, sometimes raising with nothing. I fired lots of continuation bets - sometimes they went away, sometimes they hung around. Although I probably lost as much as I won on those occasions, I think it gave me a nice and loose table image that got me a few big scores when I ended up with Hammer of God-type hands.
Remember when I said I always do well when I get a nice pot early? On the first hand, I saw 7-3o, and paired the 7 on the Q-8-7 flop. I called a minimum bet, then called a raise for another .04. My roommate was railbirding for a second and questioned why - I was just explaining how I had the right odds to call when a 3 came on the turn. I probably fired too much at it with .80 - I had such a disguised hand, but with two diamonds and some straight possibilities out there, I guess I just wanted to know where I stood. Anyway, .52 to kick things off isn't bad!
After losing a couple with marginal high hands (my on-going nemesis), the 10th hand gave me As-Jd in early position. My 3X BB raise had two customers, flop was J-6-5 (all spades). With TPTK and the nut flush draw, $1.12 was immediately fired in. One guy hung around (all he had was 8c-5c...once again, thank goodness for the stupid). The turn was the 7d, and I checked as a kind of information check, I suppose. I was curious to see how much he liked what was out there, and he checked as well. In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have let him see a free card, but I also didn't want to be re-raised out either if he had a made King-high flush. The river was a beautiful 9s, and I sent $1.16 out there. I wish I can say I did so in case his straight got there, but I didn't think of that at the time. He raised, putting me all in. I gleefully called, and took down $3.39 in profit.
One hand I hated - Q-9 from the big blind, I paired on the flop with A-Q-10. My .12 bet was called by two guys, and then I checked it down the whole way. I had one guy check in front of me on the harmless 3c turn, so I should have bet again to be sure of where I was with one other guy to act. Instead, the 8 on the flop gave the other guy a straight, and I called his .52 bet for a reason that I can't remember now. Let's just call it temporary stupidity and move on...
...to another monster hand won by yours truly on the very next deal. I did seem to luck out and win big pots right after losing big ones, so I didn't ever have any confidence dips. 10-10 in the SB, and my 3X BB gets two callers. The flop came A-J-10 rainbow, and it was full speed ahead from me. I guess because this was such a loose table, I just figured that if someone had K-Q or J-J, good luck to them. My .32 raise didn't knock out either guy, and a 6 came on the turn. I bet $1.38, one fold, one all-in for .56 more. No way I'm folding to that, and I was happy to see J-6 as his holding. No help on the river, thank you for your $2.63 donation...please come again.
I lost a tough one around 15 hands later or so. Ad-Jd on the button, 4X BB raise gets one caller. I had been pushing this guy around for a while, and he had started to push back. The flop was A-7-6, no diamonds. I bet .20, he raises to .40, and I call. I figured that could just have been a probe raise to see if I was stealing once again. Earlier in the session, he had re-raised me on the flop when I had nothing, and was kind enough to show his A-A when I mucked. The turn was a 3, and he fired in $1.18. Now, I had to think a bit. What did he have? He was a pretty good player at this level, so I don't think he had 7-6 or A-7 or anything. I had settled on A-10 or A-Q, but I went against my read and called. If I had more time than online gave me, I'd like to think I'd have included 7-7 and 6-6 in his range as well...I do now. The river was a Queen, and he immediately went all-in. At that point, I knew I was beat and quietly mucked my hand. If he had A-10 or A-J, well, he outplayed me...all there is to it.
Around hands 40-57, I was starting to lose more than I won with the aggression, and was down to $5.91. I got Kh-Qh and called a raise and a re-raise up to $1.20 (dumb, dumb, dumb, Sean...you know better than that). The flop was 6-5-5 with one heart, and a fairly loose player went all-in for $4.23. Maybe it was a bluff, maybe it was A-A, but I wasn't sticking around to find out - another guy did though with his A-Q, and he lucked out on Big Raiser Guy when he rivered his Ace against the other guy's J-J. That put me below $5 for the first time in ages, but I was back up to $5.21 on the next hand thanks to Anna Kournikova. Maybe she DOES win sometimes, after all!
From there, I hovered between the $5-$5.80 range...the pattern seemed to be that I lost .20-.60 with medium-high hands, and won about the same with absolute garbage thanks to aggressive betting. On Hand 98 though, I flopped a straight with 9-8 from middle position. It was the ignorant end of the straight mind you, but nothing pre-flop screamed out A-K from anyone. If they had that exact hand, good luck to them. The turn paired the Queen, and that should have made me more nervous than it did. Now, Q-10 and Q-J were ahead of me as well, and I could see people limping with that at this table. Instead, I just called a .13 bet (when a re-raise would have given me the info I needed). A harmless little 6 on the river, and someone bet .32. I doubled the raise, one fold, the original raiser called and showed Q-5o. Thank goodness for the stupid.
Four hands later, I was back up in the high-rent district. I had Ks-3s in the big blind, 3 limpers followed me into a flop of J-J-J. One guy checked, I bet .16, two folded. The checker called me for some reason. Now, he may have had a low pocket pair or maybe two high cards...I'm just not putting anyone on quads. A King appeared on the turn, and my only thought there was how to extract the money from this guy. I figured that at worst, we were chopping unless an Ace came off or something. He solves my problem by going all-in for $2.04, and I insta-call. Mr. Genius is drawing dead with Q-8o, and I accept the $2.12 donation graciously.
I reached my high point at $9.18 when my Q-Q held up against a short stack's 5d-2d (her open-ender didn't get there), then reached another at $9.40 with Q-10o when my continuation bet scared everyone off. I got up to $9.60 with K-Q when my King paired and no one wanted to play, but then I lost a series of small-to-medium pots over the next two orbits to finish at $9.02. All in all, I used this as an experiment in a more aggressive online style, and it obviously paid off for me. I know of course that doing this will result in larger swings, but I have 20 buy-ins at this level so I think I should be able to handle it mentally. I did all right in handling the ups and downs within this session, though I did also hit my cards more often than I didn't.
We'll see how this goes - I think I'm going to grind it out down here for a while until I have 20 buy-ins at .5/.10 ($200, and I'm at $80 or so now).
Thursday, August 14, 2008
When the "maniac" ends up against REAL maniacs...
The gentleman who runs the Fish Food blog at Poker News (linky linky over there on the right) expressed his surprise a few days ago (in response to a comment I left there) that I was playing at a level where I only had 4 buy-ins. I didn’t really listen at the time, but I think I may have to drop down a level to .5/.10, even though I’ve done poorly there for the most part.
I have practically never sat a table like this – loose, insane, raises and re-raises flying in from all over the place. I lost a few cents here and there in the early action, but I didn’t have the kind of hands to play in the face of this insanity going on. There was this one guy who basically saw every flop that he could, and he ended up going from $20 to $60 or so very quickly when he won two consecutive pots that ended up with all the chips in the middle – he flopped a straight on the first hand with A-J, and got someone who had flopped two pair with K-10…the second, he called a 3X BB raise with 7-6o, and flopped a straight again. I’ve seen shit like this with this guy before too, and I can’t help but wonder if he’s a Sportsbook employee or something…I’ll put it that way (“trucker4u”, in case anyone reading plays at that room). Anyway, the other guy had J-9o, and couldn’t suck out for the higher straight.
I lost more than $10 on one hand, and that stressed me the fuck out (again, 4 buy-ins…I think that’s the problem). I got Qh-Jh in the SB…there were 5 callers in front of me, so I probably should have just folded the fucking thing. I ended up raising to .60 to get some of them out, and got three customers…including that trucker guy. The flop was K-6-2 with one heart. I don’t know why I did this with 3 people in there, but I made a continuation bet of $1.60. Two callers, one folder (hint: not the trucker guy). The turn is the 4h, and now I semi-bluff $4 with the flush draw. Shithead trucker guy re-raises to $8. With what he’s been playing (any two cards), I’m 99.9% sure that I beat him if my flush draw gets there. I’m of course 4:1 to get my flush, and a further $4 into a pot of $18.80 is 4.7:1, so I have to call. Of course, the river is a 5d. I had to check…if he was calling down this far, there was nothing about the 5 of diamonds that was going to make him go away…and with the GDP of Botswana in his stack, he’d call me if he had nothing, either. So, of course he bets $6.80 (.10 more than is in my stack), and I have to go away. Cynically, I wonder if he would have made that bet if my flush had gotten there. At this point, I’m wondering if he can see hole cards.
There was a time where I’d be so upset that I’d just leave the room immediately…I think that was a major contributor to a lot of the $200 I lost on Party a few years back. Don’t get me wrong, I was steaming and confused and doubting my ability to play at this table. Two hands later though, I got most of it back. In late position, I got Jd-10d. At this point, just about the whole table was limping on every hand and, at least 3-4 of them would call any raise out there. So, I limped in to see what happened. The flop came Jh-8d-3d. A good, solid player bet $1.20, and I immediately had her on 10-10 or Q-J or something. I call, and one guy I knew nothing about called. Stunningly, when I had top pair and a flush draw, the trucker shithead couldn’t muck his cards fast enough. The turn was a 5c, and Miss Solid bet $3. I still figured I had a good chance of being ahead with the Jacks, so I went all-in for my last $5.30 Both players call. The river was a gorgeous 10h. Miss Solid checks, and Other Guy goes all-in for his last $6.50. Solid quickly folds, and it’s off to the show-down. My two pair was quite good, as luckily Other Guy had called with Ad-6d. Now, at the turn, that was correct as he had to put in another $2.30 into a pot of $10.80…and the river bet was just to get Solid out in case for some reason his Ace-high was good. What a crushing blow for my confidence that would have been though if his flush had gotten there.
Such a narrow escape didn’t do much to help my mentality…I’ll admit it – I was intimidated by this table, and that is a very new thing for me. Practically the whole table would re-raise any time I put a bet on the flop…or, they’d call the flop (and the turn if I bet again), and then just jam a huge re-raise on the river. I don’t think I had the nuts a single time for the rest of the session, so I’d pretty much immediately fold. They had a read on me, and they were right to do so. I played another 50 hands, and ended up leaving with $15.65 of the $20 I bought in with. Considering the circumstances and how new the concept was of people not respecting my continuation bets, I’ll chalk this up to a learning experience, and a lesson in the fact that I have to control my emotions and not take one lost pot so hard.
I have practically never sat a table like this – loose, insane, raises and re-raises flying in from all over the place. I lost a few cents here and there in the early action, but I didn’t have the kind of hands to play in the face of this insanity going on. There was this one guy who basically saw every flop that he could, and he ended up going from $20 to $60 or so very quickly when he won two consecutive pots that ended up with all the chips in the middle – he flopped a straight on the first hand with A-J, and got someone who had flopped two pair with K-10…the second, he called a 3X BB raise with 7-6o, and flopped a straight again. I’ve seen shit like this with this guy before too, and I can’t help but wonder if he’s a Sportsbook employee or something…I’ll put it that way (“trucker4u”, in case anyone reading plays at that room). Anyway, the other guy had J-9o, and couldn’t suck out for the higher straight.
I lost more than $10 on one hand, and that stressed me the fuck out (again, 4 buy-ins…I think that’s the problem). I got Qh-Jh in the SB…there were 5 callers in front of me, so I probably should have just folded the fucking thing. I ended up raising to .60 to get some of them out, and got three customers…including that trucker guy. The flop was K-6-2 with one heart. I don’t know why I did this with 3 people in there, but I made a continuation bet of $1.60. Two callers, one folder (hint: not the trucker guy). The turn is the 4h, and now I semi-bluff $4 with the flush draw. Shithead trucker guy re-raises to $8. With what he’s been playing (any two cards), I’m 99.9% sure that I beat him if my flush draw gets there. I’m of course 4:1 to get my flush, and a further $4 into a pot of $18.80 is 4.7:1, so I have to call. Of course, the river is a 5d. I had to check…if he was calling down this far, there was nothing about the 5 of diamonds that was going to make him go away…and with the GDP of Botswana in his stack, he’d call me if he had nothing, either. So, of course he bets $6.80 (.10 more than is in my stack), and I have to go away. Cynically, I wonder if he would have made that bet if my flush had gotten there. At this point, I’m wondering if he can see hole cards.
There was a time where I’d be so upset that I’d just leave the room immediately…I think that was a major contributor to a lot of the $200 I lost on Party a few years back. Don’t get me wrong, I was steaming and confused and doubting my ability to play at this table. Two hands later though, I got most of it back. In late position, I got Jd-10d. At this point, just about the whole table was limping on every hand and, at least 3-4 of them would call any raise out there. So, I limped in to see what happened. The flop came Jh-8d-3d. A good, solid player bet $1.20, and I immediately had her on 10-10 or Q-J or something. I call, and one guy I knew nothing about called. Stunningly, when I had top pair and a flush draw, the trucker shithead couldn’t muck his cards fast enough. The turn was a 5c, and Miss Solid bet $3. I still figured I had a good chance of being ahead with the Jacks, so I went all-in for my last $5.30 Both players call. The river was a gorgeous 10h. Miss Solid checks, and Other Guy goes all-in for his last $6.50. Solid quickly folds, and it’s off to the show-down. My two pair was quite good, as luckily Other Guy had called with Ad-6d. Now, at the turn, that was correct as he had to put in another $2.30 into a pot of $10.80…and the river bet was just to get Solid out in case for some reason his Ace-high was good. What a crushing blow for my confidence that would have been though if his flush had gotten there.
Such a narrow escape didn’t do much to help my mentality…I’ll admit it – I was intimidated by this table, and that is a very new thing for me. Practically the whole table would re-raise any time I put a bet on the flop…or, they’d call the flop (and the turn if I bet again), and then just jam a huge re-raise on the river. I don’t think I had the nuts a single time for the rest of the session, so I’d pretty much immediately fold. They had a read on me, and they were right to do so. I played another 50 hands, and ended up leaving with $15.65 of the $20 I bought in with. Considering the circumstances and how new the concept was of people not respecting my continuation bets, I’ll chalk this up to a learning experience, and a lesson in the fact that I have to control my emotions and not take one lost pot so hard.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
$1 SNG with some friends – WE OWN IT, BABY!
My first inclination after last night’s success was to get right back on the .10/.20 horse and hope for some good hands to really get myself paid off. However, I got a text from my friend Joe right as I was about to sign on, so off to Sit-N-Go land I went. Honestly, I am a mediocre tournament player, as I mentioned yesterday. I’m not terribly comfortable with ever-escalating blinds, and most of my strategy is based on how I handle playing against a full table. I have ventured into SNGs before, and the best I’ve ever done is 3rd. Today, I went one better, but was absolutely clowned heads-up against my other friend, Josh.
Oh, and as you’ll see, I ended up being a total card rack tonight, and a run of cards like this in a ring game would have been like printing money in all likelihood. At the end of the day, though, this is supposed to be fun. And, I’d rather have some fun with friends if the opportunity is there…I think I’d be a rather sad excuse for a person if I didn’t.
On to some crucial hands:
Hand 3: Two off the button, guess what I wake up with? I haven’t held the weapons of mass destruction in ages, but here I am with Ac-Ad. The player in front of me raises to $140, and I am loving life. I call, everyone else folds, and we see a 7c-4d-3s flop. I knew right away I probably wouldn’t get donked out on with 6-5 or 7-4 or something…not with that pre-flop raise. Full speed ahead, captain! Mr. Aggressive bets $310, I call. Normally I don’t slow-play monsters, but there is absolutely nothing scary about that board. The turn is 6c, so now with two clubs out there, I’m resolved to get all the chips in. If he’s donking out on me, he’s going to pay for it. He saves me the trouble though, and bets $930. Interesting…why not all-in if that much? Typically, I consider that to be a sign of weakness as they want to at least have something if things don’t go their way. I had him on a lower pair or A-K here, so I put him all-in. He calls, and shows Qc-Qs. Awesome! He’s dead to two outs, and the 6s sends him home. On one hand, unless he put me on K-K or A-A, there was little for him to be afraid of out there. Then again, what did he think I called $310 with? I think the trouble is that a lot of donks do the all-in thing with A-A hoping that someone has a hand they like. It’s just that hand, really…any other monster is usually cause for check-calling all the way. So, I double-up nice and early...up to $3010!
Hand 5: The guy to my left, “skimwater”, calls my 60-cent raise (I had 8-8), as does Josh. Flop is A-Q-4, Josh bet $60 and skim raised to $120 on each street thereafter, with Josh calling each. My homie shows A-K, skim showed A-9. Wow. What do you think he was calling you with, bro? I pretty much had my read on this guy right there, and as I’ll explain later, he became quite the irritating little lunatic.
Hands 8-11: Skim goes nuts, betting and raising with ludicrously-high turn bets on all these hands. He’s up to $1953 for hand 11. I fold my awesome J-2, four callers to a 10s-9s-9c flop. Early-position guy pops it up to $150, skim calls, everyone else flees. The turn is 6d, the original bettor puts in $225, skim goes all-in, other guy calls. The original bettor shows 4c-4d, skim shows 10h 7c. The river is As, and the first guy is gone. I have no words…how did he not put him on A-10, K-10, Q-10 or J-10? He liked his 7 kicker that much? Really? Anyway, Skim won hand 12 as well, so he was at $3430 at that point to my $2840.
Hand 14: I didn’t win as much with them this time, but I see Ac-Ad in early position. I raise to $60, with visions of Skim raising all-in in my head. He folds, and Joe is my only customer in the BB. Let me just say that he and my friend Al are almost incapable of being trapped. Al has dodged bullets on quite a few occasions in my presence, and Joe is a survivor…his instincts (and Al’s) are almost always spot-on (especially in comparison to the author). The flop comes 5s-2s-2d. I have no idea what Joe has, as he checks. I don’t want him catching anything with random spades, so I bet $60 to see what happens. He goes away, leaving me with just a $75 profit. Every time I get a monster against those guys, I feel like a vaudeville villain trying to tie them to the railroad tracks. Curses, foiled again.
Hand 15: OK, this is almost not fair. Under the gun, I get Ah-Ks. I raise up to $90, and a previously-quiet player calls a few seats ahead of me. Everyone else bids adieu. The flop comes Jh-3s-2s. With two overcards and the potential for a runner-runner second-nut flush, against one caller, the continuation bet is automatic. Quiet Man calls. The turn is an absolutely beautiful Ad. I bet $360, he calls. What the hell is he calling me with? I have no idea, but I’m confident in my standing in the hand. The river is the Qs. I admit that I was a little cavalier here and wasn’t really thinking too much about what he had…if he had A-J, Q-J or J-J, I was just going to have to pay him off. In retrospect, I’m amazed that I wasn’t a little more frightened of the flush draw that was completed on the river…you can see how I overplay the shit out of top pair-top kicker sometimes. I bet $240 (OK, guess I was at least a little nervous), he calls and shows 5s5c. Man, thank fucking goodness for the stupid. On the next hand, the Skim All-In Special sent him to the rail when his 9-6 beat Quiet Man’s K-9 when the 6 came on the flop.
Hand 21: The guy directly to my right is knocked out by, well, Guess Who. He held J-J, the flop came J-7-2. The other guy ended up having A-J, so the result was inevitable. When another 7 hit on the turn, Skim’s ridiculous over-bet was called and that was that. That’s great, but what about the other 90% of the time when the other guy quietly deposits his hand in the muck? He and I are the big stacks, he leads $5,670 to $3,710.
Hand 22: My 10c-10s is good enough for a $150 raise (25/50 blinds), which Skim calls. The flop is Jh-8h-7s. I bet $325, he raises $650, and I insta-call. Honestly, I didn’t believe he had much other than maybe a flush draw or perhaps second or third pair. The turn comes Js, and he immediately throws in $1,625. Well, that made my decision easy, didn’t it? If he had put out a teaser bet, I almost certainly would have called (with two Jacks out there, there was less chance he had the third), and I maybe even would have raised. Instead, this was an easy fold…I’m at least tournament-savvy enough to wait for a better spot when I’m safely in second chip position with 74 BBs. I show my 10-10 to let him know I’m capable of folding it, and he was kind enough to show his J-2. Yes, he called a 3x BB raise with J-2 off-suit. No, I don’t know why either. At this point, our boy Skim is starting to royally get on my tits. It’s $6,495-$2,910 now, but I’m still in decent shape.
Hand 24: Skim raises to $100 pre-flop, Random Anonymous Guy 2 is his only customer. The flop is 9-4-4, RAG2 checks, and Skim goes all-in for $6,295. Err, OK. What exactly was he going to call you with? The inevitable fold is met with a showing of Ks-Qs. Cheers, thanks for the free information.
Hand 27: Skim wins the next two (I have to give it to him, in a crazed sort of way he’s playing his big stack pretty well), and he raises this one to $100. I re-raise to $250 with Kc-Qd, he calls. Flop is 6s-5d-3h, and he checks. Huh, that’s odd. I throw out $575, and he goes away. Well, that was uncharacteristic. At this point, I was beginning to think that he had a deliberate game plan and as much as I hate to admit it, it was working. It was hard as hell to put him on anything, that’s for sure. It’s not how I’d play because all it takes is someone waking up with a monster hand to send you packing, but he was accumulating chips like mad. The smart thing to do at that point would probably be to change gears and slow it down for a few orbits before picking up speed again. He wasn’t that smart, though.
Hand 28: Speaking of changing gears, Josh starts to pick up speed, and wins a nice pot off of Random Anonymous Guy 1. With that, he overtakes me for second place.
Hand 29: My lucky number is 29, it was my hockey number in high school, it’s my soccer number now. It also was the hand where RAG2 proved to be…a bird? A plane? No, it’s SUPERDONK! I find Qs-Qc in the BB. RAG2 calls, Joe raises to $150, I pop it up to $600 (I really, really don’t want A-x beating me). RAG2 calls, Joe (having possession of a brain) goes away. The flop comes 6c-5h-3s. While you do have to spare a thought for what this guy is calling with, this is a tournament and you do have to accumulate chips sometime. I still had $1,220 if all the chips went in, so I figured this was a good spot to go on the attack. I bet $500, and he goes all-in for $1,140. I go into the tank for just about the whole 15 seconds, and I considered using my extra time. However, at the end of the day, I was still 24.5 BBs to the good if I guessed wrong, so I couldn’t justify a fold. Good thing too, because Mr. Genius shows 2c-2h. Now, if a 4 had come off, I wouldn’t be writing this right now as I would have probably had a stress-induced heart attack. Instead, the turn and river were 9s and As, leaving me with a clean bill of health and an extremely healthy chip stack. Down to 5 players, I was second again - $6,470 to $4,775.
Hand 33: Joe was down to his last $495, but Skim doubled him up when his A-Q unluckily got beat by 10-7 when the 7 paired. Seriously, you can’t kill this guy.
Hand 34: Chip leader, baby! Still at 25/50, I get 5c-4c in the BB. Skim calls out of the SB, everyone else bolts. The flop comes Kc-7c-6c. Wunderbar! However, who the hell knows what this maniac next to me has, so let’s not start sucking each other’s dicks yet. I bet $100, he raises to $400. I was slightly concerned, but also fairly certain that he was capable of re-raising with total squadoosh. The turn was 10h, Skim bets $450 and I call. I suppose at this point, I made the decision that he didn’t have a higher flush. The river was 3s, and he bet $900. Normally sequentially-increasing bets are a fairly reliable indicator of strength, but I just didn’t buy it for some reason. I trusted my read and called (notice I didn’t re-raise, hedging against the possibility that I was being roped in). He showed Kh-7d for two pair, so my flush was good. I took down a monster pot, and now led $6,625-$4,175.
Hands 35-41: Josh changed gears brilliantly once it became four-handed, and he basically traded these with Skim. I ask him via this very public forum whether he’s also a disciple of the Harrington school, as he seems to advocate the “tight early, loose late” strategy. Skim had $4,375, but Josh was knocking on the door with $3,360. Joe was on life support with $640.
Hand 42: Speaking of Joe, he went all-in (it’s now 50/100). I had Ad-8d, and figured it was probably ahead of Random Desperate Short-Stack Hand. Well, not exactly. He had Ac-8c, and not surprisingly we chopped it. Apparently, you have to shoot the creature directly in the head, or else it keeps on shambling towards you in its quest for delicious brains.
Hand 44: Joe raises again in hand 43, and my J-2 isn’t worth a call. This time, Josh calls his all-in raise, and it was the classic race: Josh with 8-8, Joe with Q-J off-suit. A Queen hit on the flop, and Joe doubled up once again. This hand has been brought to you by the Umbrella Corporation.
Hand 47: Josh closes the gap on me with a timely all-in bet. I got 10-10 in the BB, and he raises to $300 from the SB. No one else plays, so we’re off to the flop which comes K-8-5 rainbow. I check (I don’t know why, that’s almost always continuation-bet time from me), he bets $300, and I call. I don’t know why that was worth a call if it wasn’t worth a bet in the first place. The turn is a 7 – I bet $700, and he goes all-in with his last $2,195. I’d still have $3,005 if I called and lost, but it didn’t seem like a great spot to risk relinquishing the chip lead. If I remember correctly, I figured there was a 25-30% chance he was on a total bluff, and a 70-75% chance he had 5-5, 8-8 or any King-Other Picture Card hand. Risking $2,195 into a pot of $1,900 when I could very easily be dead to two outs (or drawing dead if he had K-K, a reasonable holding in this scenario) is not something I generally look for in a hand. I gracefully made my exit, and he took over second place with over $4,000 in chips for the first time. If that was a bluff, I take my hat off to you…it was a great one. And, because it’s not every other hand like SOME people in this tourney, I’m much less likely to call if you were bluffing. Well done.
Hand 49: Josh raises first to $300, Skim calls. Flop is K-5-3 with two clubs. Skim bets $650, Josh re-raises to $1,500. I was shocked, but Skim went away. As much as I was picking on him before, I think he was really a pretty good player, and we were just all irritated by the success of his style. He smartly folded here, and Josh was now less than $500 behind me.
Hand 50: One of Josh’s few mistakes – he called a re-raise from Skim on a Q-10-10 board. Interestingly, Skim checked it down the rest of the way, and showed J-10. Josh showed 3-3, which I think were slightly over-played after the flop. That worked for me, though…I was $1,000 ahead again.
Hand 52: With 8-8 on the button, only Joe calls my $300 raise. I hit my set on the flop with a Q-8-6 rainbow board, and it went check-check. The turn was a 7, and with two hearts out there I picked up a little speed (I think I pick up too much speed on the turn in this situation…maybe?). Joe bet $400, and my re-raise to $1,200 chased him away. That would have set him all-in, and I suppose it would be hard to expect him to have A-Q or K-Q when he checked the turn.
Hand 53: With K-10 off-suit under the gun, I raise to $300. Joe goes all-in for $980, and I fold. In retrospect, that’s probably virgin-cheerleader tight before the flop. Skim calls with K-3 off-suit, and Joe’s A-J off-suit holds up when all five cards miss them both. Joe is now past normal zombie status and now resembles that fucking thing from Resident Evil 2 (or is it 3?) that shows up more often than Jason Vorhees and mumbles “Staaaaaaaaaaaars”. Ugh. Moving on…
Hand 54: I get K-10 again in the BB now, and fold it again to Joe’s $400 raise. Josh calls, but can’t stand the heat of Joe’s continuation bet (flop was J-7-3 with two spades). Don’t look now, but Joe’s in third!
Me: $5,550 – Josh: $3,695 – Joe: $2,910 – Skim: $2,845
Hand 55-57: Skim re-awakens, and wins all three hands with some solid continuation bets and re-raises. He goes from 4th to 2nd just that quick.
Hand 58: I call people donkeys pretty often here, but as much as I can dish it out, I can take it too. The name of this blog is what it is because at different points in my poker career (hell, even in one session), I feel I have been all three of those. This time, I was a lucky, lucky donkey, and the shamrock-covered horseshoe up my ass sent Skim to the rail.
I found Qs-9d in the BB, and called Skim’s raise from the SB up to $300. The flop was Ah-Qc-7d. He checks, I make the $300 information bet, and he goes all-in for his last $4,645. Now, I’d like to say that I went into the tank for ages and came up with some brilliant thought process to justify my call. As it turns out, I just felt like he had done this too often for my liking in the second quarter of hands that were played, and he had shown in the past that he was capable of doing so with bluffing. I also felt he was capable of doing so with third pair, or a tiny pocket pair. This was a hand where the math went out the window, and I went entirely on my gut about the player. As it turns out, I was dead wrong...I called damn near instantly and my heart sank when I saw his Ac-3h. With no flush or straight possibilities, I was dead to 5 outs, meaning he was an 82% favorite to win the hand. Well, for fucking once, I got to donk out on someone else for a change, as the miracle 9 spiked on the turn, and the river was a blank. I would have been down…I DESERVED to be down to my last $155, but instead Skim was out and I rejoiced in the fact that not only did I definitely cash, all three friends had survived into the money. Nice.
Hand 67: I sat on my giganto-stack for a while, resolving not to play unless I had a strong hand. Joe and Josh traded some wins, until Joe re-raised Josh’s $450 pre-flop bet (75/150 now) all-in for his last $1,860. Josh called, and showed Kc-7c against Joe’s Jd-10s. Two Kings came out on the flop, and just to add insult to injury, the last two streets both were fives to fill up Josh’s boat. Joe went to the rail, as Hogie finally found the rocket launcher to slay the zombie-demon-beast-awful metaphor-beast.
Hand 68: I won a heads-up hand! I really, really did it! All by myself, with no one else’s help! Sadly, this was the last one. I raised to $450 pre-flop with Qd-6h, Josh folds.
Hand 69: I have Jd-5c in the BB. Josh raises to $450, I decide not to be pushed around and call. The flop is A-4-4 rainbow, and I decide to check-fold and wait for a better spot. I probably should have looked into that strategy in the next hand as well.
Hand 70: I have Qh-2d in the SB. He raises to $450, I call. The flop is 10-8-5 with two clubs. He makes the $450 continuation bet, and at this point, I kind of lost my mind and decided that OMG MUST MAKE STAND. I re-raise to $1,350, and at the very least he went into the tank for a bit. Unfortunately, when he came out, he re-raised to $2,750. Dammit shit fuck motherfuck shit shit shit. I can’t take the heat, and fold. He now leads $8,855-$6,145.
Hand 71: I have 4c-3h in the BB. He raises to $450, and I muck quickly. I am getting frustrated now.
Hand 72: I call with Ac-2h in the SB. He actually does not raise, so the flop comes Qh-5c-2s. He checks, and that won him the tournament right there. I bet $150 as a kind of teaser type bet because heads-up, it’s so hard to hit flops that I was sure I was ahead (especially with no pre-flop raise and the post-flop check, I at that point eliminated any Queen holdings). Josh re-raises to $450, and I immediately double it to $900. I imagine Josh knew right here that I was hooked on the line, and not going anywhere. Yes kids, I decided to go to war with third pair despite the maxim “Never go broke with a Queen in your hand”. Don’t look at me, I never make it to heads-up so I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing here! Josh re-re-raises to $3,000, and I call. Yep, at this point, I’m pot-committed. The turn is a 5h. At this point, I eliminate any holding Josh might have that has a 5, just going by the odds. Again, I was convinced he didn’t have a Queen for the reasons already stated. Josh set me all-in, and really, at this point I should have changed my mind about the Queen, mucked this piece of shit hand, and set about trying to grind my way back into it. Instead, I called, and took it on the chin when he showed Qd-4c. Just as a big, giant middle finger to your fearless correspondent, the river was another Queen. Well fuck you too, Sportsbook.
Honestly, Josh played an almost flawless tournament and deserved to win it. I remember him posting some hands he played to the message board we all post at last year, and thinking he had a loooooooooooong way to go. Fast-forward a year, and here he is teaching me a lesson in heads-up tournament poker. I think I’m getting better at this version of the game, but I feel like a UFC fighter that has the tools but doesn’t know how to finish fights. Josh seems to be a fairly deadly finisher, and that was about as one-sided of a heads-up match as you’ll get. It had some shades of Fedor vs. Sylvia, really. Heh.
Anyway, I profited almost as much with this as I did in my 90-minute session at .10/.20 last night, so it’s not all bad. Until next time!
Oh, and as you’ll see, I ended up being a total card rack tonight, and a run of cards like this in a ring game would have been like printing money in all likelihood. At the end of the day, though, this is supposed to be fun. And, I’d rather have some fun with friends if the opportunity is there…I think I’d be a rather sad excuse for a person if I didn’t.
On to some crucial hands:
Hand 3: Two off the button, guess what I wake up with? I haven’t held the weapons of mass destruction in ages, but here I am with Ac-Ad. The player in front of me raises to $140, and I am loving life. I call, everyone else folds, and we see a 7c-4d-3s flop. I knew right away I probably wouldn’t get donked out on with 6-5 or 7-4 or something…not with that pre-flop raise. Full speed ahead, captain! Mr. Aggressive bets $310, I call. Normally I don’t slow-play monsters, but there is absolutely nothing scary about that board. The turn is 6c, so now with two clubs out there, I’m resolved to get all the chips in. If he’s donking out on me, he’s going to pay for it. He saves me the trouble though, and bets $930. Interesting…why not all-in if that much? Typically, I consider that to be a sign of weakness as they want to at least have something if things don’t go their way. I had him on a lower pair or A-K here, so I put him all-in. He calls, and shows Qc-Qs. Awesome! He’s dead to two outs, and the 6s sends him home. On one hand, unless he put me on K-K or A-A, there was little for him to be afraid of out there. Then again, what did he think I called $310 with? I think the trouble is that a lot of donks do the all-in thing with A-A hoping that someone has a hand they like. It’s just that hand, really…any other monster is usually cause for check-calling all the way. So, I double-up nice and early...up to $3010!
Hand 5: The guy to my left, “skimwater”, calls my 60-cent raise (I had 8-8), as does Josh. Flop is A-Q-4, Josh bet $60 and skim raised to $120 on each street thereafter, with Josh calling each. My homie shows A-K, skim showed A-9. Wow. What do you think he was calling you with, bro? I pretty much had my read on this guy right there, and as I’ll explain later, he became quite the irritating little lunatic.
Hands 8-11: Skim goes nuts, betting and raising with ludicrously-high turn bets on all these hands. He’s up to $1953 for hand 11. I fold my awesome J-2, four callers to a 10s-9s-9c flop. Early-position guy pops it up to $150, skim calls, everyone else flees. The turn is 6d, the original bettor puts in $225, skim goes all-in, other guy calls. The original bettor shows 4c-4d, skim shows 10h 7c. The river is As, and the first guy is gone. I have no words…how did he not put him on A-10, K-10, Q-10 or J-10? He liked his 7 kicker that much? Really? Anyway, Skim won hand 12 as well, so he was at $3430 at that point to my $2840.
Hand 14: I didn’t win as much with them this time, but I see Ac-Ad in early position. I raise to $60, with visions of Skim raising all-in in my head. He folds, and Joe is my only customer in the BB. Let me just say that he and my friend Al are almost incapable of being trapped. Al has dodged bullets on quite a few occasions in my presence, and Joe is a survivor…his instincts (and Al’s) are almost always spot-on (especially in comparison to the author). The flop comes 5s-2s-2d. I have no idea what Joe has, as he checks. I don’t want him catching anything with random spades, so I bet $60 to see what happens. He goes away, leaving me with just a $75 profit. Every time I get a monster against those guys, I feel like a vaudeville villain trying to tie them to the railroad tracks. Curses, foiled again.
Hand 15: OK, this is almost not fair. Under the gun, I get Ah-Ks. I raise up to $90, and a previously-quiet player calls a few seats ahead of me. Everyone else bids adieu. The flop comes Jh-3s-2s. With two overcards and the potential for a runner-runner second-nut flush, against one caller, the continuation bet is automatic. Quiet Man calls. The turn is an absolutely beautiful Ad. I bet $360, he calls. What the hell is he calling me with? I have no idea, but I’m confident in my standing in the hand. The river is the Qs. I admit that I was a little cavalier here and wasn’t really thinking too much about what he had…if he had A-J, Q-J or J-J, I was just going to have to pay him off. In retrospect, I’m amazed that I wasn’t a little more frightened of the flush draw that was completed on the river…you can see how I overplay the shit out of top pair-top kicker sometimes. I bet $240 (OK, guess I was at least a little nervous), he calls and shows 5s5c. Man, thank fucking goodness for the stupid. On the next hand, the Skim All-In Special sent him to the rail when his 9-6 beat Quiet Man’s K-9 when the 6 came on the flop.
Hand 21: The guy directly to my right is knocked out by, well, Guess Who. He held J-J, the flop came J-7-2. The other guy ended up having A-J, so the result was inevitable. When another 7 hit on the turn, Skim’s ridiculous over-bet was called and that was that. That’s great, but what about the other 90% of the time when the other guy quietly deposits his hand in the muck? He and I are the big stacks, he leads $5,670 to $3,710.
Hand 22: My 10c-10s is good enough for a $150 raise (25/50 blinds), which Skim calls. The flop is Jh-8h-7s. I bet $325, he raises $650, and I insta-call. Honestly, I didn’t believe he had much other than maybe a flush draw or perhaps second or third pair. The turn comes Js, and he immediately throws in $1,625. Well, that made my decision easy, didn’t it? If he had put out a teaser bet, I almost certainly would have called (with two Jacks out there, there was less chance he had the third), and I maybe even would have raised. Instead, this was an easy fold…I’m at least tournament-savvy enough to wait for a better spot when I’m safely in second chip position with 74 BBs. I show my 10-10 to let him know I’m capable of folding it, and he was kind enough to show his J-2. Yes, he called a 3x BB raise with J-2 off-suit. No, I don’t know why either. At this point, our boy Skim is starting to royally get on my tits. It’s $6,495-$2,910 now, but I’m still in decent shape.
Hand 24: Skim raises to $100 pre-flop, Random Anonymous Guy 2 is his only customer. The flop is 9-4-4, RAG2 checks, and Skim goes all-in for $6,295. Err, OK. What exactly was he going to call you with? The inevitable fold is met with a showing of Ks-Qs. Cheers, thanks for the free information.
Hand 27: Skim wins the next two (I have to give it to him, in a crazed sort of way he’s playing his big stack pretty well), and he raises this one to $100. I re-raise to $250 with Kc-Qd, he calls. Flop is 6s-5d-3h, and he checks. Huh, that’s odd. I throw out $575, and he goes away. Well, that was uncharacteristic. At this point, I was beginning to think that he had a deliberate game plan and as much as I hate to admit it, it was working. It was hard as hell to put him on anything, that’s for sure. It’s not how I’d play because all it takes is someone waking up with a monster hand to send you packing, but he was accumulating chips like mad. The smart thing to do at that point would probably be to change gears and slow it down for a few orbits before picking up speed again. He wasn’t that smart, though.
Hand 28: Speaking of changing gears, Josh starts to pick up speed, and wins a nice pot off of Random Anonymous Guy 1. With that, he overtakes me for second place.
Hand 29: My lucky number is 29, it was my hockey number in high school, it’s my soccer number now. It also was the hand where RAG2 proved to be…a bird? A plane? No, it’s SUPERDONK! I find Qs-Qc in the BB. RAG2 calls, Joe raises to $150, I pop it up to $600 (I really, really don’t want A-x beating me). RAG2 calls, Joe (having possession of a brain) goes away. The flop comes 6c-5h-3s. While you do have to spare a thought for what this guy is calling with, this is a tournament and you do have to accumulate chips sometime. I still had $1,220 if all the chips went in, so I figured this was a good spot to go on the attack. I bet $500, and he goes all-in for $1,140. I go into the tank for just about the whole 15 seconds, and I considered using my extra time. However, at the end of the day, I was still 24.5 BBs to the good if I guessed wrong, so I couldn’t justify a fold. Good thing too, because Mr. Genius shows 2c-2h. Now, if a 4 had come off, I wouldn’t be writing this right now as I would have probably had a stress-induced heart attack. Instead, the turn and river were 9s and As, leaving me with a clean bill of health and an extremely healthy chip stack. Down to 5 players, I was second again - $6,470 to $4,775.
Hand 33: Joe was down to his last $495, but Skim doubled him up when his A-Q unluckily got beat by 10-7 when the 7 paired. Seriously, you can’t kill this guy.
Hand 34: Chip leader, baby! Still at 25/50, I get 5c-4c in the BB. Skim calls out of the SB, everyone else bolts. The flop comes Kc-7c-6c. Wunderbar! However, who the hell knows what this maniac next to me has, so let’s not start sucking each other’s dicks yet. I bet $100, he raises to $400. I was slightly concerned, but also fairly certain that he was capable of re-raising with total squadoosh. The turn was 10h, Skim bets $450 and I call. I suppose at this point, I made the decision that he didn’t have a higher flush. The river was 3s, and he bet $900. Normally sequentially-increasing bets are a fairly reliable indicator of strength, but I just didn’t buy it for some reason. I trusted my read and called (notice I didn’t re-raise, hedging against the possibility that I was being roped in). He showed Kh-7d for two pair, so my flush was good. I took down a monster pot, and now led $6,625-$4,175.
Hands 35-41: Josh changed gears brilliantly once it became four-handed, and he basically traded these with Skim. I ask him via this very public forum whether he’s also a disciple of the Harrington school, as he seems to advocate the “tight early, loose late” strategy. Skim had $4,375, but Josh was knocking on the door with $3,360. Joe was on life support with $640.
Hand 42: Speaking of Joe, he went all-in (it’s now 50/100). I had Ad-8d, and figured it was probably ahead of Random Desperate Short-Stack Hand. Well, not exactly. He had Ac-8c, and not surprisingly we chopped it. Apparently, you have to shoot the creature directly in the head, or else it keeps on shambling towards you in its quest for delicious brains.
Hand 44: Joe raises again in hand 43, and my J-2 isn’t worth a call. This time, Josh calls his all-in raise, and it was the classic race: Josh with 8-8, Joe with Q-J off-suit. A Queen hit on the flop, and Joe doubled up once again. This hand has been brought to you by the Umbrella Corporation.
Hand 47: Josh closes the gap on me with a timely all-in bet. I got 10-10 in the BB, and he raises to $300 from the SB. No one else plays, so we’re off to the flop which comes K-8-5 rainbow. I check (I don’t know why, that’s almost always continuation-bet time from me), he bets $300, and I call. I don’t know why that was worth a call if it wasn’t worth a bet in the first place. The turn is a 7 – I bet $700, and he goes all-in with his last $2,195. I’d still have $3,005 if I called and lost, but it didn’t seem like a great spot to risk relinquishing the chip lead. If I remember correctly, I figured there was a 25-30% chance he was on a total bluff, and a 70-75% chance he had 5-5, 8-8 or any King-Other Picture Card hand. Risking $2,195 into a pot of $1,900 when I could very easily be dead to two outs (or drawing dead if he had K-K, a reasonable holding in this scenario) is not something I generally look for in a hand. I gracefully made my exit, and he took over second place with over $4,000 in chips for the first time. If that was a bluff, I take my hat off to you…it was a great one. And, because it’s not every other hand like SOME people in this tourney, I’m much less likely to call if you were bluffing. Well done.
Hand 49: Josh raises first to $300, Skim calls. Flop is K-5-3 with two clubs. Skim bets $650, Josh re-raises to $1,500. I was shocked, but Skim went away. As much as I was picking on him before, I think he was really a pretty good player, and we were just all irritated by the success of his style. He smartly folded here, and Josh was now less than $500 behind me.
Hand 50: One of Josh’s few mistakes – he called a re-raise from Skim on a Q-10-10 board. Interestingly, Skim checked it down the rest of the way, and showed J-10. Josh showed 3-3, which I think were slightly over-played after the flop. That worked for me, though…I was $1,000 ahead again.
Hand 52: With 8-8 on the button, only Joe calls my $300 raise. I hit my set on the flop with a Q-8-6 rainbow board, and it went check-check. The turn was a 7, and with two hearts out there I picked up a little speed (I think I pick up too much speed on the turn in this situation…maybe?). Joe bet $400, and my re-raise to $1,200 chased him away. That would have set him all-in, and I suppose it would be hard to expect him to have A-Q or K-Q when he checked the turn.
Hand 53: With K-10 off-suit under the gun, I raise to $300. Joe goes all-in for $980, and I fold. In retrospect, that’s probably virgin-cheerleader tight before the flop. Skim calls with K-3 off-suit, and Joe’s A-J off-suit holds up when all five cards miss them both. Joe is now past normal zombie status and now resembles that fucking thing from Resident Evil 2 (or is it 3?) that shows up more often than Jason Vorhees and mumbles “Staaaaaaaaaaaars”. Ugh. Moving on…
Hand 54: I get K-10 again in the BB now, and fold it again to Joe’s $400 raise. Josh calls, but can’t stand the heat of Joe’s continuation bet (flop was J-7-3 with two spades). Don’t look now, but Joe’s in third!
Me: $5,550 – Josh: $3,695 – Joe: $2,910 – Skim: $2,845
Hand 55-57: Skim re-awakens, and wins all three hands with some solid continuation bets and re-raises. He goes from 4th to 2nd just that quick.
Hand 58: I call people donkeys pretty often here, but as much as I can dish it out, I can take it too. The name of this blog is what it is because at different points in my poker career (hell, even in one session), I feel I have been all three of those. This time, I was a lucky, lucky donkey, and the shamrock-covered horseshoe up my ass sent Skim to the rail.
I found Qs-9d in the BB, and called Skim’s raise from the SB up to $300. The flop was Ah-Qc-7d. He checks, I make the $300 information bet, and he goes all-in for his last $4,645. Now, I’d like to say that I went into the tank for ages and came up with some brilliant thought process to justify my call. As it turns out, I just felt like he had done this too often for my liking in the second quarter of hands that were played, and he had shown in the past that he was capable of doing so with bluffing. I also felt he was capable of doing so with third pair, or a tiny pocket pair. This was a hand where the math went out the window, and I went entirely on my gut about the player. As it turns out, I was dead wrong...I called damn near instantly and my heart sank when I saw his Ac-3h. With no flush or straight possibilities, I was dead to 5 outs, meaning he was an 82% favorite to win the hand. Well, for fucking once, I got to donk out on someone else for a change, as the miracle 9 spiked on the turn, and the river was a blank. I would have been down…I DESERVED to be down to my last $155, but instead Skim was out and I rejoiced in the fact that not only did I definitely cash, all three friends had survived into the money. Nice.
Hand 67: I sat on my giganto-stack for a while, resolving not to play unless I had a strong hand. Joe and Josh traded some wins, until Joe re-raised Josh’s $450 pre-flop bet (75/150 now) all-in for his last $1,860. Josh called, and showed Kc-7c against Joe’s Jd-10s. Two Kings came out on the flop, and just to add insult to injury, the last two streets both were fives to fill up Josh’s boat. Joe went to the rail, as Hogie finally found the rocket launcher to slay the zombie-demon-beast-awful metaphor-beast.
Hand 68: I won a heads-up hand! I really, really did it! All by myself, with no one else’s help! Sadly, this was the last one. I raised to $450 pre-flop with Qd-6h, Josh folds.
Hand 69: I have Jd-5c in the BB. Josh raises to $450, I decide not to be pushed around and call. The flop is A-4-4 rainbow, and I decide to check-fold and wait for a better spot. I probably should have looked into that strategy in the next hand as well.
Hand 70: I have Qh-2d in the SB. He raises to $450, I call. The flop is 10-8-5 with two clubs. He makes the $450 continuation bet, and at this point, I kind of lost my mind and decided that OMG MUST MAKE STAND. I re-raise to $1,350, and at the very least he went into the tank for a bit. Unfortunately, when he came out, he re-raised to $2,750. Dammit shit fuck motherfuck shit shit shit. I can’t take the heat, and fold. He now leads $8,855-$6,145.
Hand 71: I have 4c-3h in the BB. He raises to $450, and I muck quickly. I am getting frustrated now.
Hand 72: I call with Ac-2h in the SB. He actually does not raise, so the flop comes Qh-5c-2s. He checks, and that won him the tournament right there. I bet $150 as a kind of teaser type bet because heads-up, it’s so hard to hit flops that I was sure I was ahead (especially with no pre-flop raise and the post-flop check, I at that point eliminated any Queen holdings). Josh re-raises to $450, and I immediately double it to $900. I imagine Josh knew right here that I was hooked on the line, and not going anywhere. Yes kids, I decided to go to war with third pair despite the maxim “Never go broke with a Queen in your hand”. Don’t look at me, I never make it to heads-up so I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing here! Josh re-re-raises to $3,000, and I call. Yep, at this point, I’m pot-committed. The turn is a 5h. At this point, I eliminate any holding Josh might have that has a 5, just going by the odds. Again, I was convinced he didn’t have a Queen for the reasons already stated. Josh set me all-in, and really, at this point I should have changed my mind about the Queen, mucked this piece of shit hand, and set about trying to grind my way back into it. Instead, I called, and took it on the chin when he showed Qd-4c. Just as a big, giant middle finger to your fearless correspondent, the river was another Queen. Well fuck you too, Sportsbook.
Honestly, Josh played an almost flawless tournament and deserved to win it. I remember him posting some hands he played to the message board we all post at last year, and thinking he had a loooooooooooong way to go. Fast-forward a year, and here he is teaching me a lesson in heads-up tournament poker. I think I’m getting better at this version of the game, but I feel like a UFC fighter that has the tools but doesn’t know how to finish fights. Josh seems to be a fairly deadly finisher, and that was about as one-sided of a heads-up match as you’ll get. It had some shades of Fedor vs. Sylvia, really. Heh.
Anyway, I profited almost as much with this as I did in my 90-minute session at .10/.20 last night, so it’s not all bad. Until next time!
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Great session last night! (Warning - this is long)
After this weekend’s debacle, I actually had a good session on a .10/.20 table at Sportsbook today. I struggled with the starting hands I got, with almost no pairs and no premium hands at all other than an A-Q I had to fold after an awful flop. But, I played very smart – I got away as cheaply as possible from bad hands, I stole when I could, and I correctly folded hands like Q-J and A-x suited in poor positions. The 30-cent wins I got almost entirely from continuation bets allowed me to hang around long enough to hit a miracle flop right at the end of my session (I had a hard stop of 10:30 today, which sucks…after I hit that hand I could have run this table over for a while afterwards and perhaps profited even more).
The thing is, you have to pick the right table to suit your style. The stats they show on the lobby page should be of utmost interest to the serious micro-stakes player…if you like to steal and make continuation bets, you need a table with a low percentage of players seeing the flop and a low average pot size (like this one was). If you like to see a lot of flops with suited connectors and the like and are sure that you get away from hands when someone’s donked out on you, you want the high flop-percentage tables with the large average pot sizes.
The stats didn’t lie with this table – there was more checking going on than in a Charlestown Chiefs game. I’m not kidding – I got *five* walks in this one session alone! The play was so passive as to defy belief, which is exceedingly strange at the micro level. Not only that, but the table was comprised of mainly Chinese players for most of the time I was there, so I wonder if there was some kind of communal respect thing going on or something. Actually, I have to admit at first that I was afraid of collusion because there were two groups of three people all from the same town, but in the end it didn’t seem to go down that way. Despite the fact that the table did at times spasm into a frenzy of raises and re-raises, it would quickly go back to normal. My continuation-bet strategy worked like a charm considering the crappy hands I was getting stuck with, and it was quite a nice break that when I finally did hit that miracle flop, it was against a player who had shown some loose-aggressive tendencies during the session (it’s so important to watch the action as much as you can and not get distracted with other stuff).
All of that said, here are some of the notable hands from the session. Not all will include me, but I’ve condensed the hand histories into short summaries to keep this at a readable length.
- Here’s one example of the check-calling nonsense (albeit with a crazy river) that I was talking about in previous posts. I had Qh-3h in the small blind, and I called along with five other people. Flop was Jd-8s-6s, no help to me with my hearts. One guy bets .20, he gets three callers while my cards go to the muck. Turn was 3c, three check, but one bets .65 (not the person who bet on the flop). One caller survives to see the Ah river. The guy who hadn’t raised once goes all in for $18.95, the .65 raiser calls for his last $3.40. Umm, OK. Turns out crazy river man had 8h 6c and had flopped two pair, but his stupid check-call routine allowed the other guy to catch the Ace on the river and win with his As-Js. Nice shootin’, Tex…especially because you could have lost with any spade on the river, too. So, you gave someone with a 2.28:1 shot to win two free cards to beat you. Awesome. Meanwhile, I have to say I like the .65 turn bet from that one guy. He could have taken it down right there if everyone had whiffed, and he had outs if someone hadn’t.
- I wonder if this was too tight a fold on my part. I had Qc-Js in middle position, and it’s folded around to me. I open for my standard raise to .60, one guy folds, another person in middle position (this is the crazy person who would eventually succumb to my full house, but she hadn’t exhibited those tendencies yet) raised to $1 total. I call, everyone else folds. The flop is Kh-Kd-8c. I check, she bets .20, and I fold. She hadn’t raised a whole lot previous to that, so I had A-A, A-K, A-Q and even A-10 in her range of holdings. All of those would beat me, along with the rare case that she had a King. It just smelled like a string-along bet to me, although there is to me a 50% chance that it was a post-oak bluff. While the usual donk move is to check-call all the way down, the second-most common ploy is these tiny little bets in the hope that you catch something and then bet big at it. I decided discretion was the better part of valor here, though I can’t help but wonder if a tiny re-raise to .40 or so wouldn’t have given me the information needed to be sure.
- Here’s a bit of aggression that should be a part of any serious player’s repertoire. I’m in the big blind with Kd-Js. There’s one caller, so I raise it up to .60. They call, and the flop comes 4s-4c-4h. I immediately bet .40 at it (not a crazy amount, I’ve learned from the situations I’ve mentioned in previous posts). The caller immediately folds. See, there’s almost no risk here – if they call or raise, you know you’re beat and it’s an immediate check-fold situation from there. But, if they don’t have a pocket pair or the case card, then you’ll take it down a lot more often than not…even at this donk level.
- I wasn’t in this hand, but here’s another example of how timid this table was. Pre-flop, there’s one caller and the BB checks (the SB folded, which is horrible…for half a bet, you should call with almost any two cards). Flop is Kh-Js-6s. Both guys check. Turn is Ah, both guys check. River is 7s, both guys check. The caller shows Qh-Jh to win, the BB shows Qs-7h. Wow…no one had the balls to bet on this at all? Not once? Not even with all those checks? With only one overcard to your hand, I think you have to bet on that flop with your Jack paired. This guy is a ridiculously-tight player (I recognize him from other sessions), but that is just insane…it’s like virgin-cheerleader tight. I mean, what if the BB has A-x, and the free card you allowed him to see ends up beating you? Awful, awful, awful.
- Here’s another episode of Donkerpiece Theater in a hand I wasn’t in. There’s one caller, SB folds (super-tight guy from the last hand), and Crazy Girl in the BB checks. Flop comes 6s-3s-2d. Crazy Girl checks, caller bets .20, Crazy Girl calls. The same pattern happens on the turn and river, which are 6h and Jd. Crazy Girl shows As-2h, the caller shows 10h-3h. Isn’t this amazing on about 37 different levels? First of all, you have someone calling with 10-3 (“…but it’s SOOTED!”). Next, you have someone who tenuously hits a flop but only pussy-raises at it the rest of the way. Meanwhile, you have Donk McDonkerson just smooth-calling with middle pair, which happens to be THREES. What a clusterfuck of bad play this was, eh? One raise…ONE RAISE would have won this hand either way. Wow. Moving on…
- And the hits just keep on coming! Four callers to the flop (Crazy Girl folds the SB), flop comes Jh-7s-3h. Everyone checks. Turn is 9d, everyone checks. River is Qh, one guy bets .20, one person calls, the others go away. One shows Kd-Qc, the other Ks-Qs. Considering both people hit their Queen with a nice kicker on the turn, how the holy jumping fuck was there no action on either that street or on 5th? Nimrod A and Nimrod B chop a pot that either of them at least had a chance of winning with a raise or re-raise to at least represent that they had A-Q or something. Outstanding.
- Now I’m back in a hand. While I’m not complaining, what are you calling with if a continuation bet makes you go away on this flop? I’m 3 off the button and get Qc-9c. I hadn’t played a hand in two orbits I think, so I pop it up to .40 to try and steal the blinds. I also do this at times because if I get a good hand soon after, I’ll get some action on it. I get one customer, and the flop comes As-5d-4d. I bet .60, and the caller goes away. Hmm. So, you didn’t have an Ace, or you’d check-call me all the way down. You didn’t have any kind of draw, didn’t think to represent one, and probably didn’t have any picture cards at all. What do you guys reckon they had? I’m going to go with 9-8 off-suit.
- Another one I’m in caused a bit of a conundrum for me. I think he had his flush, but what do you all think? Was he stealing? Why so much? Is it a normal donk over-betting move, expecting me to likewise donk away chips because I have a pair?
I’m in the BB with Ks-9d. Three callers come along with me (the SB folded AGAIN) for a flop of Js-7h-4s. It’s checked around for a turn of Kh. Despite my mediocre kicker, you all know me…full speed ahead with a .60 bet. Two go away, but one guy calls. The river is the 5s. I fire .60 at it again, and the guy raises all the way up to $5.50. There was only $2.60 in the pot, so doesn’t that seem strange? However, with just top pair and a middling kicker, I sure as hell wasn’t going to pay him off to find out. I think he had the absolute nuts with an Ace-high flush, but maybe he was trying to protect an A-K holding or something? Either way, I will defend this fold as the right way to go.
- Here, was it proper to draw to the flush here to begin with? At the very least, I realized the danger and got the hell out of there.
I get Kd-Jd on the button, and bump it up to .60. I get four customers to a flop of 7d-3d-3h. Nothing is scaring me there and I have the second-nut flush draw. The BB checks, one guy bets .20, the third folds, and the fourth raises to $1.90. This seems highly suspicious to me, and the BB folding means I had a tough pot-odds decision to make in 15 seconds. Specifically, I had to call $1.90 into a pot of $5.10. That’s 2.68:1, but keep in mind that you have to put the Ace-high flush draw among his holdings there. On top of that, there was still one person left to act. I ended up calling, and the other guy did as well. The turn was 2s. The non-raiser checked, and the raiser bumped it up to $2.20. Now, it’s $2.20 into a $7.30 pot, or 3.31:1. But, I know it’s 4:1 to catch your flush with one card to go, and I still felt like the guy doing the raising was on the Ace-high draw. Admittedly, I wasn’t even considering what the other guy had. However, I heard alarm bells ringing and slipped quietly out the back door with a fold. The second guy called for his last $1.90. The raiser ended up having 10h-10s, and for my money did a great job of protecting his hand against the flush draw. There were no overcards, so he played it perfectly. The guy who called ended up having Ad-10d, and lost when the river came 5c. Believe me, I felt great at having folded when I did once I saw what the other guys had!
I actually had put the guy with 10s on the A-high flush draw, but either way, I saved myself a lot of money here. This was played well by me and by the guy who won it…but was it proper for the other guy to donk off the rest of his stack?
- This was one of the few real mistakes I made. I got 3h-3d under the gun, and made the call. The SB called, the BB checked. Flop was 4s-5c-5d. Both blinds checked, so I fired a continuation bet of .60 at it (this wasn’t the mistake, though .40 would have gotten the same information). SB folds, BB calls. The turn is 10d, and it goes check-check. Should I have bet there? Honestly, I don’t think so…he called the more-than-pot-sized bet on the flop, so he had something he liked. I was a bit worried about the check-call routine, so I’ll argue that checking was the correct option. The river came 2h, he bets .90, and I called.
Here’s the thing. What could I possibly have beaten there? If he has any pocket pair other than 2-2, I’m toast. If he hit anything on the flop or turn, I’m beat. Essentially, the only thing I was ahead of was a busted diamond draw, a busted straight draw or unpaired high cards. If it was any of those, the usual donk move is to make a post-oak bluff of .20 and hope to hell that the other guy folds. In that case, I may even have raised. However, he not only ended up betting out at it (which is strange enough for these people and usually an indicator of a monster). but it was the 1/2-pot button on top of that (which we all know is another tell of strength). Calling this was poor on my part, and I deserved to lose as much as I did.
- I wonder how tight of a fold this was. I got Kd-Js in the SB, one guy calls. I raise to .60, the BB folds, and the one caller doubles my raise up to $1.20. I thought about it for 5-10 seconds, and elected to let it go. A couple of things played on my mind here. First, this was one of the lesser players at the table, and I don’t think he was capable of a re-raise without a rocket launcher of a hand. Second, my self-analysis had conclusively proven that I have a giant problem with overplaying marginal hands such as this. Third, I have a sinking feeling that the main difference between Fold and Call here was the fact that my cards weren’t SOOTED…if they were, I think I may have made the call…bad or not.
- So, I’m down to $13.40 in chips, and I get 9s-8d one off the button. This is a hand that I’d always call with in this position if it’s suited, and sometimes I’ll do it in this case when it isn’t. I kind of thought about it, but I folded it pretty quickly. What was the flop? Of fucking COURSE, it was 9c-9d-8h. If you saw my face at that moment, you wouldn’t be able to tell if I was playing poker or watching the first 15 minutes of Saving Private Ryan. It turns out one guy had Ah-Qd, the other 7c-6s. I *definitely* would have gotten action on this one, too.
- Know how I have been talking about Crazy Girl for this whole post? This was the exact hand when I determined that she was insane, and that I could extract a lot of money from her if I happened upon the right situation. I’m on the button with Ac-9d, and since I hadn’t played a hand really in 2-3 orbits, I popped it up to .60. I was just trying to steal the blinds, really. Crazy Girl calls in the BB. The flop comes 10s-3h-3c. She checks, so I am legally bound by my possession of two testicles to make the continuation bet…so, .60 goes into the pot. She takes about 2.1 nanoseconds to muck her hand. OK, so riddle me this, Batman - what could you have that you’re willing to call 6X the BB pre-flop, only to shot-put your cards into the muck the second a 10-3-3 flop comes out? I don’t even know…did she put me on A-10? A rag hand with a 3 in it? Admittedly, I did a pretty good job of raising with enough different hands to exactly .60 so that maybe there was some confusion there, but I had also been stealing blinds from the button and the BB all night. I’m pretty much mystified with this one.
- Here’s a quick one that I hope shows that I’m starting to learn about marginal high hands. I get Ad-10d two off the button, but a tight player opens for $1.10 three seats before me. Everyone, including me, mucks their hand. Sorry, I’m not calling that much for probably just my 25% or whatever chance of hitting my flush.
- Finally, the hand that finished off my night on the positive side of the ledger! My roommate was watching me play for a good portion of the session to get a sense of what .10/.20 was like, and he ended up ensuring that I didn’t do something stupid at the end.
I got Ac-4c in the BB, Crazy Girl calls, the SB folds and the BB checks. The flop comes 4s-4d-3d. To quote Vince Van Patten, “Showtunes are going off in his head, Mike! He can’t believe his luck”. I check the flop, something I had pretty much only done when my intention was to check-fold the rest of the way. I figured that would get Crazy Girl out of her shell even if she had nothing, which actually wasn’t the case (even better!). She fires out .40, and I pretend to think for about 10 seconds before calling. The turn is a Js, and I check again. Normally I wouldn’t slowplay a monster, but there is little here that I was afraid of so far. If she had J-J, I was just going to pay her off. She bets $2.10, and I fire an immediate re-raise to $4.20 using the auto-button. I hope to hell she hadn’t read that it’s usually a sign of strength, and I guess she hadn’t because she insta-called. The turn was As, and I audibly groaned and said “shit, she probably has a flush!” I guess I’m so conditioned to losing at times that I let it get into my head…I probably would have noticed in a second anyway, but I was grateful to him for pointing out that I had actually just been gifted with the absolute stone-cold nuts. Let this be a lesson to all of you – don’t get so mentally down that you just assume you’re going to lose all the time…because that shit will QUICKLY become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Anyway, what would you do now in this case? You have an unassailable position, and a lunatic in front of you who obviously has something she likes? At that moment, I had about $8.75 left, she had about $14.75 left. The way I see it, the choices are pretty much:
- Check it down, and hope she fires out a bet: No, no, no, no, no. While you could re-raise her all-in if she does bet out, there’s always the chance that she’ll check behind you and cost you the chance to extract more chips. It may have been possible that doing so would make her put me on a busted diamond or straight draw, but I don’t recall re-raising anyone once during the entire session. I put her on putting me on a big hand, so this option is out the window.
- Go all-in myself: I thought about it, but I figured that there was too much of a chance that even the Mad Hatter inside her brain would recognize that the tea party was over, and that there was no way she had me beat. For me, the only argument for this would be that a) she’s a loony and b) she had me covered. Still, I had a feeling she would fold if I went down this route.
- Bet out, and hope to get re-raised: This is what I opted for, given the above. Now, it was a lightning-quick decision about how much to bet. The intention here is obviously to entice a re-raise, and at worst to at least have her call whatever I put out there. The three sub-choices at this point are:
- Bet a very small amount relative to the pot, like $2: Enticing, but she had to have sensed just enough danger to be more than happy to show it down for such a reduced price. A re-raise was unlikely given the player and the situation. If it were me in her shoes, it would work a good amount of the time.
- Bet just a shade under all-in, like $6: Also enticing, but I feared that would be too much, and she’d maybe get just suspicious enough to muck her hand.
- Bet something in the middle: This is what I opted for, and there wasn’t much science to it. I dragged the slider over to a little past the midpoint of the bar, and hit “Bet”. It ended up being $4.80, and she called and showed down her Kd-Kh.
Again, I have to stress that all of the above only relates to how I approached this one player on this one hand, so don’t get any ideas if you happen to find yourself against me on the felt some day! Even I know enough to know that you have to approach each hand as a completely different situation and adjust your game and your patterns accordingly. Anyway, this was a great session in the end, and even though I only profited because of that one monster at the end, I think I played much better than I had in the recent past, and that I’ll make even more money if I keep it up.
The thing is, you have to pick the right table to suit your style. The stats they show on the lobby page should be of utmost interest to the serious micro-stakes player…if you like to steal and make continuation bets, you need a table with a low percentage of players seeing the flop and a low average pot size (like this one was). If you like to see a lot of flops with suited connectors and the like and are sure that you get away from hands when someone’s donked out on you, you want the high flop-percentage tables with the large average pot sizes.
The stats didn’t lie with this table – there was more checking going on than in a Charlestown Chiefs game. I’m not kidding – I got *five* walks in this one session alone! The play was so passive as to defy belief, which is exceedingly strange at the micro level. Not only that, but the table was comprised of mainly Chinese players for most of the time I was there, so I wonder if there was some kind of communal respect thing going on or something. Actually, I have to admit at first that I was afraid of collusion because there were two groups of three people all from the same town, but in the end it didn’t seem to go down that way. Despite the fact that the table did at times spasm into a frenzy of raises and re-raises, it would quickly go back to normal. My continuation-bet strategy worked like a charm considering the crappy hands I was getting stuck with, and it was quite a nice break that when I finally did hit that miracle flop, it was against a player who had shown some loose-aggressive tendencies during the session (it’s so important to watch the action as much as you can and not get distracted with other stuff).
All of that said, here are some of the notable hands from the session. Not all will include me, but I’ve condensed the hand histories into short summaries to keep this at a readable length.
- Here’s one example of the check-calling nonsense (albeit with a crazy river) that I was talking about in previous posts. I had Qh-3h in the small blind, and I called along with five other people. Flop was Jd-8s-6s, no help to me with my hearts. One guy bets .20, he gets three callers while my cards go to the muck. Turn was 3c, three check, but one bets .65 (not the person who bet on the flop). One caller survives to see the Ah river. The guy who hadn’t raised once goes all in for $18.95, the .65 raiser calls for his last $3.40. Umm, OK. Turns out crazy river man had 8h 6c and had flopped two pair, but his stupid check-call routine allowed the other guy to catch the Ace on the river and win with his As-Js. Nice shootin’, Tex…especially because you could have lost with any spade on the river, too. So, you gave someone with a 2.28:1 shot to win two free cards to beat you. Awesome. Meanwhile, I have to say I like the .65 turn bet from that one guy. He could have taken it down right there if everyone had whiffed, and he had outs if someone hadn’t.
- I wonder if this was too tight a fold on my part. I had Qc-Js in middle position, and it’s folded around to me. I open for my standard raise to .60, one guy folds, another person in middle position (this is the crazy person who would eventually succumb to my full house, but she hadn’t exhibited those tendencies yet) raised to $1 total. I call, everyone else folds. The flop is Kh-Kd-8c. I check, she bets .20, and I fold. She hadn’t raised a whole lot previous to that, so I had A-A, A-K, A-Q and even A-10 in her range of holdings. All of those would beat me, along with the rare case that she had a King. It just smelled like a string-along bet to me, although there is to me a 50% chance that it was a post-oak bluff. While the usual donk move is to check-call all the way down, the second-most common ploy is these tiny little bets in the hope that you catch something and then bet big at it. I decided discretion was the better part of valor here, though I can’t help but wonder if a tiny re-raise to .40 or so wouldn’t have given me the information needed to be sure.
- Here’s a bit of aggression that should be a part of any serious player’s repertoire. I’m in the big blind with Kd-Js. There’s one caller, so I raise it up to .60. They call, and the flop comes 4s-4c-4h. I immediately bet .40 at it (not a crazy amount, I’ve learned from the situations I’ve mentioned in previous posts). The caller immediately folds. See, there’s almost no risk here – if they call or raise, you know you’re beat and it’s an immediate check-fold situation from there. But, if they don’t have a pocket pair or the case card, then you’ll take it down a lot more often than not…even at this donk level.
- I wasn’t in this hand, but here’s another example of how timid this table was. Pre-flop, there’s one caller and the BB checks (the SB folded, which is horrible…for half a bet, you should call with almost any two cards). Flop is Kh-Js-6s. Both guys check. Turn is Ah, both guys check. River is 7s, both guys check. The caller shows Qh-Jh to win, the BB shows Qs-7h. Wow…no one had the balls to bet on this at all? Not once? Not even with all those checks? With only one overcard to your hand, I think you have to bet on that flop with your Jack paired. This guy is a ridiculously-tight player (I recognize him from other sessions), but that is just insane…it’s like virgin-cheerleader tight. I mean, what if the BB has A-x, and the free card you allowed him to see ends up beating you? Awful, awful, awful.
- Here’s another episode of Donkerpiece Theater in a hand I wasn’t in. There’s one caller, SB folds (super-tight guy from the last hand), and Crazy Girl in the BB checks. Flop comes 6s-3s-2d. Crazy Girl checks, caller bets .20, Crazy Girl calls. The same pattern happens on the turn and river, which are 6h and Jd. Crazy Girl shows As-2h, the caller shows 10h-3h. Isn’t this amazing on about 37 different levels? First of all, you have someone calling with 10-3 (“…but it’s SOOTED!”). Next, you have someone who tenuously hits a flop but only pussy-raises at it the rest of the way. Meanwhile, you have Donk McDonkerson just smooth-calling with middle pair, which happens to be THREES. What a clusterfuck of bad play this was, eh? One raise…ONE RAISE would have won this hand either way. Wow. Moving on…
- And the hits just keep on coming! Four callers to the flop (Crazy Girl folds the SB), flop comes Jh-7s-3h. Everyone checks. Turn is 9d, everyone checks. River is Qh, one guy bets .20, one person calls, the others go away. One shows Kd-Qc, the other Ks-Qs. Considering both people hit their Queen with a nice kicker on the turn, how the holy jumping fuck was there no action on either that street or on 5th? Nimrod A and Nimrod B chop a pot that either of them at least had a chance of winning with a raise or re-raise to at least represent that they had A-Q or something. Outstanding.
- Now I’m back in a hand. While I’m not complaining, what are you calling with if a continuation bet makes you go away on this flop? I’m 3 off the button and get Qc-9c. I hadn’t played a hand in two orbits I think, so I pop it up to .40 to try and steal the blinds. I also do this at times because if I get a good hand soon after, I’ll get some action on it. I get one customer, and the flop comes As-5d-4d. I bet .60, and the caller goes away. Hmm. So, you didn’t have an Ace, or you’d check-call me all the way down. You didn’t have any kind of draw, didn’t think to represent one, and probably didn’t have any picture cards at all. What do you guys reckon they had? I’m going to go with 9-8 off-suit.
- Another one I’m in caused a bit of a conundrum for me. I think he had his flush, but what do you all think? Was he stealing? Why so much? Is it a normal donk over-betting move, expecting me to likewise donk away chips because I have a pair?
I’m in the BB with Ks-9d. Three callers come along with me (the SB folded AGAIN) for a flop of Js-7h-4s. It’s checked around for a turn of Kh. Despite my mediocre kicker, you all know me…full speed ahead with a .60 bet. Two go away, but one guy calls. The river is the 5s. I fire .60 at it again, and the guy raises all the way up to $5.50. There was only $2.60 in the pot, so doesn’t that seem strange? However, with just top pair and a middling kicker, I sure as hell wasn’t going to pay him off to find out. I think he had the absolute nuts with an Ace-high flush, but maybe he was trying to protect an A-K holding or something? Either way, I will defend this fold as the right way to go.
- Here, was it proper to draw to the flush here to begin with? At the very least, I realized the danger and got the hell out of there.
I get Kd-Jd on the button, and bump it up to .60. I get four customers to a flop of 7d-3d-3h. Nothing is scaring me there and I have the second-nut flush draw. The BB checks, one guy bets .20, the third folds, and the fourth raises to $1.90. This seems highly suspicious to me, and the BB folding means I had a tough pot-odds decision to make in 15 seconds. Specifically, I had to call $1.90 into a pot of $5.10. That’s 2.68:1, but keep in mind that you have to put the Ace-high flush draw among his holdings there. On top of that, there was still one person left to act. I ended up calling, and the other guy did as well. The turn was 2s. The non-raiser checked, and the raiser bumped it up to $2.20. Now, it’s $2.20 into a $7.30 pot, or 3.31:1. But, I know it’s 4:1 to catch your flush with one card to go, and I still felt like the guy doing the raising was on the Ace-high draw. Admittedly, I wasn’t even considering what the other guy had. However, I heard alarm bells ringing and slipped quietly out the back door with a fold. The second guy called for his last $1.90. The raiser ended up having 10h-10s, and for my money did a great job of protecting his hand against the flush draw. There were no overcards, so he played it perfectly. The guy who called ended up having Ad-10d, and lost when the river came 5c. Believe me, I felt great at having folded when I did once I saw what the other guys had!
I actually had put the guy with 10s on the A-high flush draw, but either way, I saved myself a lot of money here. This was played well by me and by the guy who won it…but was it proper for the other guy to donk off the rest of his stack?
- This was one of the few real mistakes I made. I got 3h-3d under the gun, and made the call. The SB called, the BB checked. Flop was 4s-5c-5d. Both blinds checked, so I fired a continuation bet of .60 at it (this wasn’t the mistake, though .40 would have gotten the same information). SB folds, BB calls. The turn is 10d, and it goes check-check. Should I have bet there? Honestly, I don’t think so…he called the more-than-pot-sized bet on the flop, so he had something he liked. I was a bit worried about the check-call routine, so I’ll argue that checking was the correct option. The river came 2h, he bets .90, and I called.
Here’s the thing. What could I possibly have beaten there? If he has any pocket pair other than 2-2, I’m toast. If he hit anything on the flop or turn, I’m beat. Essentially, the only thing I was ahead of was a busted diamond draw, a busted straight draw or unpaired high cards. If it was any of those, the usual donk move is to make a post-oak bluff of .20 and hope to hell that the other guy folds. In that case, I may even have raised. However, he not only ended up betting out at it (which is strange enough for these people and usually an indicator of a monster). but it was the 1/2-pot button on top of that (which we all know is another tell of strength). Calling this was poor on my part, and I deserved to lose as much as I did.
- I wonder how tight of a fold this was. I got Kd-Js in the SB, one guy calls. I raise to .60, the BB folds, and the one caller doubles my raise up to $1.20. I thought about it for 5-10 seconds, and elected to let it go. A couple of things played on my mind here. First, this was one of the lesser players at the table, and I don’t think he was capable of a re-raise without a rocket launcher of a hand. Second, my self-analysis had conclusively proven that I have a giant problem with overplaying marginal hands such as this. Third, I have a sinking feeling that the main difference between Fold and Call here was the fact that my cards weren’t SOOTED…if they were, I think I may have made the call…bad or not.
- So, I’m down to $13.40 in chips, and I get 9s-8d one off the button. This is a hand that I’d always call with in this position if it’s suited, and sometimes I’ll do it in this case when it isn’t. I kind of thought about it, but I folded it pretty quickly. What was the flop? Of fucking COURSE, it was 9c-9d-8h. If you saw my face at that moment, you wouldn’t be able to tell if I was playing poker or watching the first 15 minutes of Saving Private Ryan. It turns out one guy had Ah-Qd, the other 7c-6s. I *definitely* would have gotten action on this one, too.
- Know how I have been talking about Crazy Girl for this whole post? This was the exact hand when I determined that she was insane, and that I could extract a lot of money from her if I happened upon the right situation. I’m on the button with Ac-9d, and since I hadn’t played a hand really in 2-3 orbits, I popped it up to .60. I was just trying to steal the blinds, really. Crazy Girl calls in the BB. The flop comes 10s-3h-3c. She checks, so I am legally bound by my possession of two testicles to make the continuation bet…so, .60 goes into the pot. She takes about 2.1 nanoseconds to muck her hand. OK, so riddle me this, Batman - what could you have that you’re willing to call 6X the BB pre-flop, only to shot-put your cards into the muck the second a 10-3-3 flop comes out? I don’t even know…did she put me on A-10? A rag hand with a 3 in it? Admittedly, I did a pretty good job of raising with enough different hands to exactly .60 so that maybe there was some confusion there, but I had also been stealing blinds from the button and the BB all night. I’m pretty much mystified with this one.
- Here’s a quick one that I hope shows that I’m starting to learn about marginal high hands. I get Ad-10d two off the button, but a tight player opens for $1.10 three seats before me. Everyone, including me, mucks their hand. Sorry, I’m not calling that much for probably just my 25% or whatever chance of hitting my flush.
- Finally, the hand that finished off my night on the positive side of the ledger! My roommate was watching me play for a good portion of the session to get a sense of what .10/.20 was like, and he ended up ensuring that I didn’t do something stupid at the end.
I got Ac-4c in the BB, Crazy Girl calls, the SB folds and the BB checks. The flop comes 4s-4d-3d. To quote Vince Van Patten, “Showtunes are going off in his head, Mike! He can’t believe his luck”. I check the flop, something I had pretty much only done when my intention was to check-fold the rest of the way. I figured that would get Crazy Girl out of her shell even if she had nothing, which actually wasn’t the case (even better!). She fires out .40, and I pretend to think for about 10 seconds before calling. The turn is a Js, and I check again. Normally I wouldn’t slowplay a monster, but there is little here that I was afraid of so far. If she had J-J, I was just going to pay her off. She bets $2.10, and I fire an immediate re-raise to $4.20 using the auto-button. I hope to hell she hadn’t read that it’s usually a sign of strength, and I guess she hadn’t because she insta-called. The turn was As, and I audibly groaned and said “shit, she probably has a flush!” I guess I’m so conditioned to losing at times that I let it get into my head…I probably would have noticed in a second anyway, but I was grateful to him for pointing out that I had actually just been gifted with the absolute stone-cold nuts. Let this be a lesson to all of you – don’t get so mentally down that you just assume you’re going to lose all the time…because that shit will QUICKLY become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Anyway, what would you do now in this case? You have an unassailable position, and a lunatic in front of you who obviously has something she likes? At that moment, I had about $8.75 left, she had about $14.75 left. The way I see it, the choices are pretty much:
- Check it down, and hope she fires out a bet: No, no, no, no, no. While you could re-raise her all-in if she does bet out, there’s always the chance that she’ll check behind you and cost you the chance to extract more chips. It may have been possible that doing so would make her put me on a busted diamond or straight draw, but I don’t recall re-raising anyone once during the entire session. I put her on putting me on a big hand, so this option is out the window.
- Go all-in myself: I thought about it, but I figured that there was too much of a chance that even the Mad Hatter inside her brain would recognize that the tea party was over, and that there was no way she had me beat. For me, the only argument for this would be that a) she’s a loony and b) she had me covered. Still, I had a feeling she would fold if I went down this route.
- Bet out, and hope to get re-raised: This is what I opted for, given the above. Now, it was a lightning-quick decision about how much to bet. The intention here is obviously to entice a re-raise, and at worst to at least have her call whatever I put out there. The three sub-choices at this point are:
- Bet a very small amount relative to the pot, like $2: Enticing, but she had to have sensed just enough danger to be more than happy to show it down for such a reduced price. A re-raise was unlikely given the player and the situation. If it were me in her shoes, it would work a good amount of the time.
- Bet just a shade under all-in, like $6: Also enticing, but I feared that would be too much, and she’d maybe get just suspicious enough to muck her hand.
- Bet something in the middle: This is what I opted for, and there wasn’t much science to it. I dragged the slider over to a little past the midpoint of the bar, and hit “Bet”. It ended up being $4.80, and she called and showed down her Kd-Kh.
Again, I have to stress that all of the above only relates to how I approached this one player on this one hand, so don’t get any ideas if you happen to find yourself against me on the felt some day! Even I know enough to know that you have to approach each hand as a completely different situation and adjust your game and your patterns accordingly. Anyway, this was a great session in the end, and even though I only profited because of that one monster at the end, I think I played much better than I had in the recent past, and that I’ll make even more money if I keep it up.
Monday, August 11, 2008
Hand Deconstruction, Part 2
In anything, be it hockey when I was a kid, or soccer or poker or the Wrestler application on Facebook now, I have never taken to losing very well. Never. I have the memories of broken sticks and yellow cards and hurled sunglasses to prove it.
The thing is, a lot depends on how the first couple of hands go. It’s weird, but it’s true. In soccer, if we’re warming up before the game and I make a couple of good saves right off the bat, I usually end up playing to the best of my ability...I get a kind of swagger and I don’t think too much about things. I just react and I end up amazing myself with the saves I end up making in the actual game. I think about it later and I can’t believe my body actually did that or I reacted THAT quickly. But, if I end up letting one dribble through my legs or if I fuck one up some other way, it stays in my head for the whole game and I’m much more likely to make some kind of awful mistake when it actually matters. Same thing with poker...if I win a few small pots or a big one early in the session, it becomes like a boulder rolling downhill...I become almost unstoppable. It’s not that all of a sudden I make better decisions on marginal hands (though sometimes that is the case, where I make gutsy calls or good folds I wouldn’t have done otherwise), it’s just that I’m much better suited to playing from a position of strength. I make a great table captain, but I have a very difficult time buckling down and coming back from a third or a half of my stack down (incidentally, this may also be why I’m a mediocre tournament player). That’s one of the many things I have to work on.
Furthermore, the fact that you only have 15 seconds or whatever to act definitely favors either the complete moron or the person whose game is absolutely airtight and who can run through all of this in their head in seconds. I’m not there yet, so there’s another reason for the constant struggle. In person, I have time to think, and I have my fairly-decent people-reading ability to fall back on. In this environment though, it’s like trying to play inmates at the loony bin while hopped up on amphetamines.
Before I get to the hands - I haven't had a chance to start linking to other sites yet, but I have had a few comments about how refreshing it is to see a micro-stakes blog. I ran into this while on Poker News, and it looks like it'll be worth a read once he really gets going: http://my.pokernews.com/FishFood/blog/.
Hand 1:
Seat 3: qiao*** (3.85 in chips)
Seat 7: 9889*** (6.43 in chips)
Seat 10: Swift29 (8.04 in chips)
Swift29: posts big blind $0.10
Dealt to Swift29 [ Td Jd ]
qiao***: calls
9889***: calls
Swift29: raises to $0.30
qiao***: folds
9889***: calls
@@@ F_L_O_P @@@ [ Ah Jc 7c ]
Swift29: bets $0.60
9889***: calls
# # # TURN # # # [ 8h ]
Swift29: checks
9889***: checks
&&& RIVER &&& [ Kh ]
Swift29: bets $0.80
9889***: calls
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Swift29: shows [ Td Jd ] (Pair of Jacks )
9889***: shows [ Qc Kd ] (Pair of Kings )
9889*** wins $3.40 with Pair of Kings
Why the fuck did I check the turn when firing another shell may have gotten rid of him, but yet fired at the river when there were TWO overcards to my pair? The person had something they liked to call two bets – what the fuck did I think they had? I have a real problem with giving up on the turn if my continuation bet on the flop is called...but then again, these people check-call all the way when they have a monster! What do you fucking do at this level? Maybe I thought they would have called anyway with two different flush draws out there, though looking back I wonder if another good bet on the turn would have made them give up. This player is also from China, and they’re all loose and insane, even by micro-stakes standards – keep that in mind.
Hand 2:
Seat 1: nsho*** (7.23 in chips)
Seat 7: 9889*** (8.38 in chips)
Seat 10: Swift29 (6.19 in chips)
Swift29: posts small blind $0.05
nsho***: posts big blind $0.10
Dealt to Swift29 [ 9h 7d ]
9889***: calls
Swift29: calls
nsho***: checks
@@@ F_L_O_P @@@ [ 6h 7h 8c ]
Swift29: bets $0.40
nsho***: folds
9889***: calls
# # # TURN # # # [ 9s ]
Swift29: bets $0.90
9889***: calls
&&& RIVER &&& [ Kh ]
Swift29: checks
9889***: bets $1.45
Swift29: folds
9889***: returns uncalled bet $1.45
The 5-cent call out of the SB was a no-brainer, and the 40-cent call wasn’t too bad, though it could as easily have been 20 or 30. This is the same crazy Chinese player, but they can’t be so mad as to call with just a pair, could they? What wasn’t defensible was, after the 40-cent flop bet was called, betting another *90* cents on the river. The call meant they had something they liked, and four to a straight out there almost guaranteed that they had a made straight. Now, if I had checked and the other person had checked, I could at least try and show down the two pair and hope I got lucky. Or, if fortune really smiled on me, maybe I'd donk out and catch my four-outer for the boat. If the other person made some kind of big bet, then I was probably beaten and I could have saved myself quite a few chips.
On the off chance that they were in there with A-A or K-Q or something, well, then all I can do is tip my cap to a great/crazy bluff and a gigantic set of balls.
Hand 3:
Hand #1454011532000172: Calgary 11532
Seat 1: mrsw*** (3.38 in chips)
Seat 9: Swift29 (10.75 in chips) (small blind)
Dealt to Swift29 [ Kd 8d ]
mrsw***: calls
CG L***: calls
smp5***: calls
Humm***: calls
Swift29: calls
VT B***: checks
@@@ F_L_O_P @@@ [ 2d Kc Td ]
Swift29: bets $0.80
mrsw***: is all in 3.1800
Swift29: calls
# # # TURN # # # [ Tc ]
&&& RIVER &&& [ Jc ]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
mrsw shows A-K
mrsw*** wins $7.21 with Two Pairs, Kings and Tens with Ace kicker
I called an all-in bet with that? Is this defensible? Unlike the post before, I think in this case my flush was good no matter what unless they had Ad-xd. If they had that, more power to them. The pot was 1.80 after my 80-cent bet, and they bet slightly less than double that. These donks only ever make this play when they have an absolute monster, so about the only reasonable holdings were A-A, K-K, K-Q, K-J, K-10, 10-10, 2-2. I have to call $2.38 to win $4.98 (2.09:1), and in these scenarios:
A-A, 10-10, 2-2: I’m going to assume that even if one of the Aces was the Ad, that two running diamonds were not going to come out. In that case, for all three opposing holdings I have two Kings, 3 eights, and 9 diamonds that will win. 14 outs = 2.28:1. Not the worst call ever, still not correct.
K-K, K-Q, K-J, K-10: The two Kings are out, so just the 12 outs. 2.83:1.
This wasn’t as egregiously bad as I thought before I ran the numbers, but still not a great call...especially with so much money on the line. I haven't made too many mistakes at .10/.20, but this was definitely one of them.
Hand 4:
Hand #1519012454000409: Paris 12454 (.5/.10)
Seat 1: AXEL*** (3.30 in chips)
Seat 2: medi*** (18.29 in chips)
Seat 10: Swift29 (10.10 in chips) (big blind)
Dealt to Swift29 [ Kc Ks ]
AXEL***: raises to $0.35
medi***: calls
DI T***: calls
Swift29: raises to $1
AXEL***: calls
medi***: calls
DI T***: calls
@@@ F_L_O_P @@@ [ Ts 2s Qc ]
Swift29: is all in 9.1000
AXEL***: is all in 2.3000
medi***: calls
DI T***: folds
Swift29: shows Kc Ks
AXEL***: shows Kh Jh
medi***: shows 2c 2d
# # # TURN # # # [ 4c ]
&&& RIVER &&& [ 3d ]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
medi*** wins $12.94 with Three of a Kind, Deuces
*** SHOW DOWN ***
medi*** wins $10.41 with Three of a Kind, Deuces
Here’s another wonderful thing about online donkfests. I re-raise to TEN FUCKING TIMES the BB pre-flop, and THREE people call. UGH. Unless you have A-A or K-K, how do you call that? Q-Q would only be defensible if you put the other guy on A-K, and for me, J-J goes right into the muck unless you’re fucking retarded. In this hand, two people call 65 more cents with K-J and 2-2. Oh. My. Fucking. God. That said, why go all-in after the flop? Just on the off-chance that someone donked out on me, why did I do that and lose more chips than I should have? And, if someone hadn’t donked out on me yet and was going to chase something dumb, wouldn’t that have chased them out when chances are I could have extracted more money from them? So, that was the main mistake there, I suppose.
So, I went all-in, and BOTH people called. As it turned out, that poster child for abortion had called my pre-flop raise with 2-2, and hit his miracle two-outer. K-K vs. 2-2 pre-flop is 82%-18% in favor of the cowboys, and if I have my math right, that works out to something like 4.2 or 4.3:1. With my all-in bet, he was getting 2.73:1 on his money ($2.30 into a pot of $6.30), so there’s no possible way to defend his call...especially with someone else in the hand (even if you want to go the implied-odds route and assume that the second retard would call, he still was only getting 3.74:1)! I mean, first off, what did he think I had? With any pocket pair, he was in a whole world of trouble. Even if I were a total moron and had re-raised that much with 3-3, I still had him dominated to the tune of 78%-17%! He must have thought I had two overcards, and he was willing to half of his big stack on a race situation. He would be a 52-48 favorite against A-K, K-Q, etc. However, that doesn’t take into account that there was still yet another moron in the hand as well! It’s one thing to duck two overcards, but three? Four? It essentially doesn’t matter what either of our hands were – against 2-2, there are at least three and more likely four overcards to duck unless we happened to have the same exact hand. Even if we both had, hmm...A-K, he’s still probably only a 65% favorite or so (and that is the most generous and unlikely situation possible).
Speaking of this other moron, he ended up calling the rest of his stack with K-J! Even though it was SOOTED, there were no hearts out there on the flop, so he couldn’t even catch a flush! Wow! All he had in all likelihood was the open-ended straight draw...he couldn’t possibly think he’d win the pot if a Jack came off based on the fact that I bet NINE FUCKING DOLLARS AND TEN CENTS at it, with a dollar pre-flop raise before that (and one ass-bandit who called the $9.10)! Even with a King, any reasonable person would think they would probably be out-kicked. And, the worst thing was I would have had a nice profit of all of his stack if that other stupid bastard piece of shit douche-rocket hadn’t called the pre-flop raise with his pair of twos. Assuming that someone had done the world a favor and tossed Medi into a spinning set of helicopter blades previous to him signing on for this session, I’d have picked up a nice pot here.
If there were any justice in this world, I would have caught a King or a running Ace-Jack and raped that motherfucker of half of his chips. But, that’s poker, I suppose...at least down here in the micro-limit slums.
Hand 5:
Seat 1: Swift29 (9.90 in chips)
Seat 8: Sere*** (9.58 in chips) (big blind)
Dealt to Swift29 [ Qd Kd ]
jdav***: raises to $0.50
Sere***: calls
Swift29: calls
420L***: calls
@@@ F_L_O_P @@@ [ 2d Qc Td ]
Swift29: bets $2.10
Sere***: calls
# # # TURN # # # [ 3h ]
Swift29: bets $3.80
Sere***: is all in 6.9800
Swift29: calls
&&& RIVER &&& [ Ac ]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Sere*** wins $19.21 with Three of a Kind, Tens
Later on in that same game, after I had reloaded for another $10. This is another case of me over-playing a pair plus a flush draw. Some guy raised to 5X the BB, and with another person having already called, I think a call was reasonable getting 3:1 on my money with K-Q suited. The person after me calling made it 4:1, so even better!
The flop was an excellent one to my hand, with the aforementioned top-pair/decent-kicker and the second-nut flush draw. I bet just a tad more than the pot, because with 4 people in there I wanted to get rid of other drawing hands...and, honestly, I was kind of hoping to just take it down right there. The BB was the only one to call, but with only A-A, K-K, A-Q, K-Q, Q-Q, Q-10 and 10-10 ahead of me at the time, I thought I was in fairly good shape. However, all of those are very reasonable hands to call a 5X BB raise with (at least here in micro-land), and in a real-life setting a bunch of those would have meant a re-raise before the flop anyway (at which point my K-Q suited probably goes directly into the muck).
However, the call at that point should have told me something was up. Still, there were a pretty decent range of hands that I was ahead of (A-10, K-10, Q-10, Q-J, J-10, 10-9, maybe even 9-9, 9-8 or a low pocket pair if they were a total maniac). With the last two cards still to come, I figured that another King, another Queen or any of the 9 diamonds left would win me the hand. 2.06:1 is pretty nice in most cases, so I don’t think I did much wrong up to that point.
The 3h was of course useless to both of us, but it lowered my winning chances down to exactly 2:1. It’s not much of a change, so I still thought I was in fairly good shape. Of course, I haven’t mentioned yet the chances involved of winning the hand with what the opponent actually had, 10-10. In that case, the two-pair option is a no go, so it’s just the 9 outs for the flush. Before the turn it would be 4.1:1, and after the turn it’s 4:1 exactly. Those aren’t great odds, but again, the only opposing hands that would lay me those odds were Q-Q, 10-10 and 2-2. After the flop, against a random hand, my pair-plus-flush draw has a 90% chance to win against a random opposing hand. So, perhaps my post-turn aggression wasn’t the dumbest thing ever, but this was against an opponent who had called a fairly healthy post-flop bet.
I think, in retrospect, I had put my opponent on a straight draw. When the harmless turn fell, I guess I was just value-betting to see if they would be dumb enough to actually call it. Imagine my surprise when the son of a bitch went all-in for their last $6.98! At that point, the only thing you can put them on is a set or two pair, minimum. Maybe on the outside they have A-Q, but I’m behind at this point by any reasonable assumption. The way I remembered it, I think I insta-called probably more out of a combination of frustration (remember, I was Tilty McTilterson after the hand above) and impulsiveness more than anything else. How dumb was that play? Well, at this point I’m definitely dead to just the 9 outs for the flush...with one card to come, it’s a 4:1 chance to hit. The all-in bet meant calling another $3.18 into a pot of $16.98. Huh...that’s actually 5.33:1 on my money, so it turns out that was the correct call...I didn’t remember it that way, but it does make me feel a little better. Still, part of me wonders whether I should have checked the turn to see what happened, but then again, wouldn’t that be conceding the initiative to the other person? If they go all-in at that point, it’s $6.98 into a pot of $13.18, or 1.89:1...and it’s an insta-fold of a hand that just may have been ahead.
I guess if I’m being honest with myself, this wasn’t entirely a fuck-up on my part, but to have this happen so soon for all my chips right after going busto on the hand noted above...it’s more than a man can take sometimes.
The thing is, a lot depends on how the first couple of hands go. It’s weird, but it’s true. In soccer, if we’re warming up before the game and I make a couple of good saves right off the bat, I usually end up playing to the best of my ability...I get a kind of swagger and I don’t think too much about things. I just react and I end up amazing myself with the saves I end up making in the actual game. I think about it later and I can’t believe my body actually did that or I reacted THAT quickly. But, if I end up letting one dribble through my legs or if I fuck one up some other way, it stays in my head for the whole game and I’m much more likely to make some kind of awful mistake when it actually matters. Same thing with poker...if I win a few small pots or a big one early in the session, it becomes like a boulder rolling downhill...I become almost unstoppable. It’s not that all of a sudden I make better decisions on marginal hands (though sometimes that is the case, where I make gutsy calls or good folds I wouldn’t have done otherwise), it’s just that I’m much better suited to playing from a position of strength. I make a great table captain, but I have a very difficult time buckling down and coming back from a third or a half of my stack down (incidentally, this may also be why I’m a mediocre tournament player). That’s one of the many things I have to work on.
Furthermore, the fact that you only have 15 seconds or whatever to act definitely favors either the complete moron or the person whose game is absolutely airtight and who can run through all of this in their head in seconds. I’m not there yet, so there’s another reason for the constant struggle. In person, I have time to think, and I have my fairly-decent people-reading ability to fall back on. In this environment though, it’s like trying to play inmates at the loony bin while hopped up on amphetamines.
Before I get to the hands - I haven't had a chance to start linking to other sites yet, but I have had a few comments about how refreshing it is to see a micro-stakes blog. I ran into this while on Poker News, and it looks like it'll be worth a read once he really gets going: http://my.pokernews.com/FishFood/blog/.
Hand 1:
Seat 3: qiao*** (3.85 in chips)
Seat 7: 9889*** (6.43 in chips)
Seat 10: Swift29 (8.04 in chips)
Swift29: posts big blind $0.10
Dealt to Swift29 [ Td Jd ]
qiao***: calls
9889***: calls
Swift29: raises to $0.30
qiao***: folds
9889***: calls
@@@ F_L_O_P @@@ [ Ah Jc 7c ]
Swift29: bets $0.60
9889***: calls
# # # TURN # # # [ 8h ]
Swift29: checks
9889***: checks
&&& RIVER &&& [ Kh ]
Swift29: bets $0.80
9889***: calls
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Swift29: shows [ Td Jd ] (Pair of Jacks )
9889***: shows [ Qc Kd ] (Pair of Kings )
9889*** wins $3.40 with Pair of Kings
Why the fuck did I check the turn when firing another shell may have gotten rid of him, but yet fired at the river when there were TWO overcards to my pair? The person had something they liked to call two bets – what the fuck did I think they had? I have a real problem with giving up on the turn if my continuation bet on the flop is called...but then again, these people check-call all the way when they have a monster! What do you fucking do at this level? Maybe I thought they would have called anyway with two different flush draws out there, though looking back I wonder if another good bet on the turn would have made them give up. This player is also from China, and they’re all loose and insane, even by micro-stakes standards – keep that in mind.
Hand 2:
Seat 1: nsho*** (7.23 in chips)
Seat 7: 9889*** (8.38 in chips)
Seat 10: Swift29 (6.19 in chips)
Swift29: posts small blind $0.05
nsho***: posts big blind $0.10
Dealt to Swift29 [ 9h 7d ]
9889***: calls
Swift29: calls
nsho***: checks
@@@ F_L_O_P @@@ [ 6h 7h 8c ]
Swift29: bets $0.40
nsho***: folds
9889***: calls
# # # TURN # # # [ 9s ]
Swift29: bets $0.90
9889***: calls
&&& RIVER &&& [ Kh ]
Swift29: checks
9889***: bets $1.45
Swift29: folds
9889***: returns uncalled bet $1.45
The 5-cent call out of the SB was a no-brainer, and the 40-cent call wasn’t too bad, though it could as easily have been 20 or 30. This is the same crazy Chinese player, but they can’t be so mad as to call with just a pair, could they? What wasn’t defensible was, after the 40-cent flop bet was called, betting another *90* cents on the river. The call meant they had something they liked, and four to a straight out there almost guaranteed that they had a made straight. Now, if I had checked and the other person had checked, I could at least try and show down the two pair and hope I got lucky. Or, if fortune really smiled on me, maybe I'd donk out and catch my four-outer for the boat. If the other person made some kind of big bet, then I was probably beaten and I could have saved myself quite a few chips.
On the off chance that they were in there with A-A or K-Q or something, well, then all I can do is tip my cap to a great/crazy bluff and a gigantic set of balls.
Hand 3:
Hand #1454011532000172: Calgary 11532
Seat 1: mrsw*** (3.38 in chips)
Seat 9: Swift29 (10.75 in chips) (small blind)
Dealt to Swift29 [ Kd 8d ]
mrsw***: calls
CG L***: calls
smp5***: calls
Humm***: calls
Swift29: calls
VT B***: checks
@@@ F_L_O_P @@@ [ 2d Kc Td ]
Swift29: bets $0.80
mrsw***: is all in 3.1800
Swift29: calls
# # # TURN # # # [ Tc ]
&&& RIVER &&& [ Jc ]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
mrsw shows A-K
mrsw*** wins $7.21 with Two Pairs, Kings and Tens with Ace kicker
I called an all-in bet with that? Is this defensible? Unlike the post before, I think in this case my flush was good no matter what unless they had Ad-xd. If they had that, more power to them. The pot was 1.80 after my 80-cent bet, and they bet slightly less than double that. These donks only ever make this play when they have an absolute monster, so about the only reasonable holdings were A-A, K-K, K-Q, K-J, K-10, 10-10, 2-2. I have to call $2.38 to win $4.98 (2.09:1), and in these scenarios:
A-A, 10-10, 2-2: I’m going to assume that even if one of the Aces was the Ad, that two running diamonds were not going to come out. In that case, for all three opposing holdings I have two Kings, 3 eights, and 9 diamonds that will win. 14 outs = 2.28:1. Not the worst call ever, still not correct.
K-K, K-Q, K-J, K-10: The two Kings are out, so just the 12 outs. 2.83:1.
This wasn’t as egregiously bad as I thought before I ran the numbers, but still not a great call...especially with so much money on the line. I haven't made too many mistakes at .10/.20, but this was definitely one of them.
Hand 4:
Hand #1519012454000409: Paris 12454 (.5/.10)
Seat 1: AXEL*** (3.30 in chips)
Seat 2: medi*** (18.29 in chips)
Seat 10: Swift29 (10.10 in chips) (big blind)
Dealt to Swift29 [ Kc Ks ]
AXEL***: raises to $0.35
medi***: calls
DI T***: calls
Swift29: raises to $1
AXEL***: calls
medi***: calls
DI T***: calls
@@@ F_L_O_P @@@ [ Ts 2s Qc ]
Swift29: is all in 9.1000
AXEL***: is all in 2.3000
medi***: calls
DI T***: folds
Swift29: shows Kc Ks
AXEL***: shows Kh Jh
medi***: shows 2c 2d
# # # TURN # # # [ 4c ]
&&& RIVER &&& [ 3d ]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
medi*** wins $12.94 with Three of a Kind, Deuces
*** SHOW DOWN ***
medi*** wins $10.41 with Three of a Kind, Deuces
Here’s another wonderful thing about online donkfests. I re-raise to TEN FUCKING TIMES the BB pre-flop, and THREE people call. UGH. Unless you have A-A or K-K, how do you call that? Q-Q would only be defensible if you put the other guy on A-K, and for me, J-J goes right into the muck unless you’re fucking retarded. In this hand, two people call 65 more cents with K-J and 2-2. Oh. My. Fucking. God. That said, why go all-in after the flop? Just on the off-chance that someone donked out on me, why did I do that and lose more chips than I should have? And, if someone hadn’t donked out on me yet and was going to chase something dumb, wouldn’t that have chased them out when chances are I could have extracted more money from them? So, that was the main mistake there, I suppose.
So, I went all-in, and BOTH people called. As it turned out, that poster child for abortion had called my pre-flop raise with 2-2, and hit his miracle two-outer. K-K vs. 2-2 pre-flop is 82%-18% in favor of the cowboys, and if I have my math right, that works out to something like 4.2 or 4.3:1. With my all-in bet, he was getting 2.73:1 on his money ($2.30 into a pot of $6.30), so there’s no possible way to defend his call...especially with someone else in the hand (even if you want to go the implied-odds route and assume that the second retard would call, he still was only getting 3.74:1)! I mean, first off, what did he think I had? With any pocket pair, he was in a whole world of trouble. Even if I were a total moron and had re-raised that much with 3-3, I still had him dominated to the tune of 78%-17%! He must have thought I had two overcards, and he was willing to half of his big stack on a race situation. He would be a 52-48 favorite against A-K, K-Q, etc. However, that doesn’t take into account that there was still yet another moron in the hand as well! It’s one thing to duck two overcards, but three? Four? It essentially doesn’t matter what either of our hands were – against 2-2, there are at least three and more likely four overcards to duck unless we happened to have the same exact hand. Even if we both had, hmm...A-K, he’s still probably only a 65% favorite or so (and that is the most generous and unlikely situation possible).
Speaking of this other moron, he ended up calling the rest of his stack with K-J! Even though it was SOOTED, there were no hearts out there on the flop, so he couldn’t even catch a flush! Wow! All he had in all likelihood was the open-ended straight draw...he couldn’t possibly think he’d win the pot if a Jack came off based on the fact that I bet NINE FUCKING DOLLARS AND TEN CENTS at it, with a dollar pre-flop raise before that (and one ass-bandit who called the $9.10)! Even with a King, any reasonable person would think they would probably be out-kicked. And, the worst thing was I would have had a nice profit of all of his stack if that other stupid bastard piece of shit douche-rocket hadn’t called the pre-flop raise with his pair of twos. Assuming that someone had done the world a favor and tossed Medi into a spinning set of helicopter blades previous to him signing on for this session, I’d have picked up a nice pot here.
If there were any justice in this world, I would have caught a King or a running Ace-Jack and raped that motherfucker of half of his chips. But, that’s poker, I suppose...at least down here in the micro-limit slums.
Hand 5:
Seat 1: Swift29 (9.90 in chips)
Seat 8: Sere*** (9.58 in chips) (big blind)
Dealt to Swift29 [ Qd Kd ]
jdav***: raises to $0.50
Sere***: calls
Swift29: calls
420L***: calls
@@@ F_L_O_P @@@ [ 2d Qc Td ]
Swift29: bets $2.10
Sere***: calls
# # # TURN # # # [ 3h ]
Swift29: bets $3.80
Sere***: is all in 6.9800
Swift29: calls
&&& RIVER &&& [ Ac ]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Sere*** wins $19.21 with Three of a Kind, Tens
Later on in that same game, after I had reloaded for another $10. This is another case of me over-playing a pair plus a flush draw. Some guy raised to 5X the BB, and with another person having already called, I think a call was reasonable getting 3:1 on my money with K-Q suited. The person after me calling made it 4:1, so even better!
The flop was an excellent one to my hand, with the aforementioned top-pair/decent-kicker and the second-nut flush draw. I bet just a tad more than the pot, because with 4 people in there I wanted to get rid of other drawing hands...and, honestly, I was kind of hoping to just take it down right there. The BB was the only one to call, but with only A-A, K-K, A-Q, K-Q, Q-Q, Q-10 and 10-10 ahead of me at the time, I thought I was in fairly good shape. However, all of those are very reasonable hands to call a 5X BB raise with (at least here in micro-land), and in a real-life setting a bunch of those would have meant a re-raise before the flop anyway (at which point my K-Q suited probably goes directly into the muck).
However, the call at that point should have told me something was up. Still, there were a pretty decent range of hands that I was ahead of (A-10, K-10, Q-10, Q-J, J-10, 10-9, maybe even 9-9, 9-8 or a low pocket pair if they were a total maniac). With the last two cards still to come, I figured that another King, another Queen or any of the 9 diamonds left would win me the hand. 2.06:1 is pretty nice in most cases, so I don’t think I did much wrong up to that point.
The 3h was of course useless to both of us, but it lowered my winning chances down to exactly 2:1. It’s not much of a change, so I still thought I was in fairly good shape. Of course, I haven’t mentioned yet the chances involved of winning the hand with what the opponent actually had, 10-10. In that case, the two-pair option is a no go, so it’s just the 9 outs for the flush. Before the turn it would be 4.1:1, and after the turn it’s 4:1 exactly. Those aren’t great odds, but again, the only opposing hands that would lay me those odds were Q-Q, 10-10 and 2-2. After the flop, against a random hand, my pair-plus-flush draw has a 90% chance to win against a random opposing hand. So, perhaps my post-turn aggression wasn’t the dumbest thing ever, but this was against an opponent who had called a fairly healthy post-flop bet.
I think, in retrospect, I had put my opponent on a straight draw. When the harmless turn fell, I guess I was just value-betting to see if they would be dumb enough to actually call it. Imagine my surprise when the son of a bitch went all-in for their last $6.98! At that point, the only thing you can put them on is a set or two pair, minimum. Maybe on the outside they have A-Q, but I’m behind at this point by any reasonable assumption. The way I remembered it, I think I insta-called probably more out of a combination of frustration (remember, I was Tilty McTilterson after the hand above) and impulsiveness more than anything else. How dumb was that play? Well, at this point I’m definitely dead to just the 9 outs for the flush...with one card to come, it’s a 4:1 chance to hit. The all-in bet meant calling another $3.18 into a pot of $16.98. Huh...that’s actually 5.33:1 on my money, so it turns out that was the correct call...I didn’t remember it that way, but it does make me feel a little better. Still, part of me wonders whether I should have checked the turn to see what happened, but then again, wouldn’t that be conceding the initiative to the other person? If they go all-in at that point, it’s $6.98 into a pot of $13.18, or 1.89:1...and it’s an insta-fold of a hand that just may have been ahead.
I guess if I’m being honest with myself, this wasn’t entirely a fuck-up on my part, but to have this happen so soon for all my chips right after going busto on the hand noted above...it’s more than a man can take sometimes.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
Hand Deconstruction
So, as promised, I collected some of the worst hands from my Excel project to deconstruct in front of an audience of...well...the 2 or 3 people who read this. Without further ado, I think I'll start with THAT FUCKING STARTING HAND...
(Keep in mind that for the interest of space, I've deleted any non-necessary action such as non-principals folding.)
Seat 2: taho*** (9.97 in chips)
Seat 10: Swift29 (10.55 in chips) - 2 past the big blind
Dealt to Swift29 [ Ac Jh ]
Swift29: raises to $0.40
taho***: calls
@@@ F_L_O_P @@@ [ 7d 5c 6c ]
Swift29: bets $0.80
taho***: calls
# # # TURN # # # [ 8d ]
Swift29: checks
taho***: checks
&&& RIVER &&& [ Qh ]
Swift29: checks
taho***: bets $1.28
Swift29: folds
taho***: returns uncalled bet $1.28
*** SHOW DOWN ***
taho***: mucks
taho*** wins $2.45
I like to think that this was an intelligent check-fold, but with it being .5/.10 online, I just don't know. I figure a 4X BB pre-flop raise will at least get rid of the 8-5 type starting hands, but who knows? Part of my frustration with online play is that who the fuck knows what these idiots will call with? Anyway, as you can see, this was an awful flop for my hand. However, I am rarely afraid to make continuation bets, as it does pick me up my share of small pots. In this case, though, I don't know it was the right play...especially not for the pot-sized bet that I put out there. With three to a straight and two to a flush out there just on the flop, it's a minefield for my A-J offsuit. About the best I could hope for would be to see a free turn or pay minimally for the privilege and that another club comes out. At least in that case, I could hope to see a cheap/free river and catch the nut flush.
Worst of all, I could probably have gotten the same information for .30 or .40 that I did for .80. Even most super-donks would fold if they completely whiffed on that flop, but those same donks would likely call pretty much anything with even as low as third pair...a holding which, in this case, would have won the pot anyway. The turn was of course even worse for my cause, and at that point I was committed to the check-fold game plan. One thing I've noticed when these fuckers have a monster is that they don't bet out all that often...they check-call all the way down. While it's hilariously bad play, it does in a weird way obfuscate their hands a bit because they do the same thing whether they have third pair, a gutshot straight draw or even if they've flopped a full house.
That said, the river action makes me believe the guy had the monster - it's been my experience that someone hitting the "1/2 pot" button or even the "pot-size" button is usually a tell that they have something they like. It SCREAMS out "value bet" to me, and I'm always careful when they do it. I think he was praying that I had a Queen and that I'd call another 1.28 to see his straight. Well fuck you, buddy...you probably called my raise with 9-3 offsuit and got lucky. Bully for you.
Seat 5: choo*** (16.21 in chips)
Seat 10: Swift29 (9.35 in chips) Under the Gun
Dealt to Swift29 [ 3c 5c ]
Swift29: calls
taho***: calls
choo***: calls
Sens***: calls
vanl***: checks
@@@ F_L_O_P @@@ [ 3h 4c Tc ]
vanl***: checks
Swift29: checks
taho***: checks
choo***: bets $0.28
Sens***: calls
vanl***: folds
Swift29: calls
taho***: folds
# # # TURN # # # [ 9h ]
Swift29: checks
choo***: bets $0.70
Sens***: folds
Swift29: calls
&&& RIVER &&& [ Ah ]
Swift29: checks
choo***: bets $1.40
Swift29: folds
choo***: returns uncalled bet $1.40
choo*** wins $2.69
OK, first of all, calling with 5-3 suited under the gun is a rookie fucking mistake and I'm embarrassed to even show you all this one. I love taking flops with those kinds of hands, but I have to get better at doing so when I at least have positional advantage...calling with it here is like bringing a dull scalpel to a rocket-launcher fight. Still, at least I lucked out and got a bunch of callers with no raises...these types of hands play well in multi-player pots, and you can usually get away from them cheaply if you whiff. The problem is, sometimes you hit just enough to keep you around. That's what happened here, and as you can see, I took a pretty good battering on this one.
Normally, this is the kind of flop you dream about with this hand - flush draw with a pair. There was 50 cents in the pot pre-flop, and the post-flop action (by the time it got to me) meant that I had to call 28 cents with a pot of 1.08. That works out to 3.9/1 for my money, so I figured I had to call there. The bettor went with a bet other than the 1/2 or pot buttons I was talking about above, so he may have been trying to steal. There seems to me in retrospect to be about an equal chance of that vs. something like 10-9, J-10, Q-10, K-10 or perhaps even 10-10. I don't think the set was all that likely because then he'd go to the check-call routine (most of these people aren't smart enough to see the danger when they have a set or two pair and there's four to a flush out there). I'll say that 10-9, J-10, Q-10 or total bluff are the two most likely options (though a bluff would beat me in a showdown cause, well, I'm sitting on five-high). In that case, there are 2 threes, 3 fives, and 9 clubs that can (in my mind) win it for me, for a total of 14 outs. In case you don't know the formula for converting outs to a ratio (with the turn and river still to go), here you go (where x = number of outs):
(46-x)/x = x:1
So, I had a 2.28:1 chance to win for 3.9:1 on my money. That's an insta-call, right? So far, so good. Even if the guy had two pair or a set, it wasn't the worst call of my poker career...I had a 4.1:1 chance to win.
The turn, to be quite frank, sucked a fucking dick. That was no help to me whatsoever, and keep in mind that in retrospect I had 10-9 as one of his likely holdings. Now, I had to call a 70-cent bet into a pot of 1.78 - that's 2.54:1 on my money. However, the number of outs I had could as easily now be 9 as it is 14. Let's look at both scenarios. The formula above would now change to (45-x)/x, as there is one less card in the deck. If he doesn't have a set or two pair, I'm now only 2.21:1 to win. If I need to catch the flush, it's even worse - it's a 4:1 shot exactly. Either way, this was the mistake of the hand - I should have cut my losses and chalked it up to yet another monster drawing hand that didn't pan out when the other guy had something he liked and would have fucking paid me off. *sigh*
Of course, the river was a total blank as far as I was concerned, and at that point there was no way I was calling any bet, let alone that big of one. While I played this OK until halfway through, I still lost 70 cents that I shouldn't have by calling on the turn.
Last one for this post:
Hand #1584012214000021: Paris 12214
Seat 1: nsho*** (5.90 in chips)
Seat 10: Swift29 (9.12 in chips) Under the Gun
Dealt to Swift29 [ Jh Qd ]
Swift29: raises to $0.50
nsho***: calls
@@@ F_L_O_P @@@ [ Td 7h 7d ]
Swift29: bets $0.60
nsho***: calls
# # # TURN # # # [ 9d ]
Swift29: checks
nsho***: bets $1.18
Swift29: calls
&&& RIVER &&& [ 8d ]
Swift29: checks
nsho***: checks
*** SHOW DOWN ***
nsho***: shows [ Kc Kd ] (Flush, King high)
Swift29: mucks
nsho*** wins $4.51 with Flush, King high
Swift29: mucks [ Jh, Qd ] (Flush)
This, on the other hand, was just fucking stupid all the way around on my part. It's funny how I spent the whole last post trying to convince you all that I'm not a total donkey, then I post this to completely circumvent that argument. Heh.
Anyway, let's count the mistakes, shall we?
1. That idiot Swift29 raised 5X the BB under the gun with a marginal hand like Q-J. Oh, dear.
2. Immediately after someone calls that high of a raise (which should at least have been a warning sign), I then bet out 60 cents on the flop. It's another case where 30 or 40 cents probably would have gotten me the same information - if he whiffed on the flop or thought I had the third 7 (which I think I was trying to represent there), he would have went away. If he had something he liked (or even four to a flush, as these people will call down to the ends of the earth with a flush or straight draw), he would have called and I'd have gotten the information that I needed to know. Still, I suppose the 60 cents is somewhat defensible as a continuation bet.
3. The turn ended up being the bait that turned this from a battering into a bloodbath. The 9d gave me an open-ended straight draw and a flush draw...enticing, right? However, this is where...you know...thinking and stuff about what the other guy has just maybe could be beneficial. The fact that he called the big bets pre-flop and post-flop meant he had to have something he really, really liked. Let's look at some of the reasonable holdings he could have had (including what he did, the K-K with a diamond) and see what my chances of winning were...and whether it was anywhere close to proper to call with a 1.18 bet into a 2.20 pot (1.86:1).
A-A, K-K, Q-Q, J-J (no diamond): This would actually have been the best scenario, as I'd have the most outs possible while being in no danger of facing a higher flush. Not only that, as an micro-stakes online player, he'd call down to the gates of hell with them, even with four to a different suit out there. Anyway, I'm looking at 3 non-diamond Kings, 3 non-diamond eights, and 9 diamonds to hit a hand that can beat this. If he had one King or two Kings, it'd be 1-2 less outs. The best case scenario would be, with all 15 outs, an exact 2:1 chance to win. Even then, for 1.86:1 on my money, it technically wouldn't be correct to call. If he had one King it would drop down to 2.21:1 to win, and K-K would mean it was 2.46:1. If he had A-A, you can take away the 3 non-diamond Kings as outs, as those would give him a higher straight. You can drop those winning chances even further down to 2.75:1 there. Terrible, terrible, terrible...and this is the BEST-case scenario. Sean, you are a fucking nimrod sometimes.
A-K (no diamond): A-K with no diamond would eliminate the six outs to hit a straight, as he would already have a higher one. A flush is all that will do, so with 9 outs, it's back to the 4:1 chance to hit your flush on the river. A call in that situation is just horrendous.
A-10, K-10, Q-10 (no diamonds): K-10 would be the same 2.21:1 chance as above, while A-10 and Q-10 would be the same 2:1 chance as above.
10-10: A set would definitely explain both his calls, and I'd have the same 2:1 chance as above.
A-x, K-x, including big hands like A-A, K-K, A-10, K-Q, etc (with a diamond): Any big hand with an A or K diamond or even any A-Rag/K-Rag hand with the Ace or King of diamonds means I'm drawing to just a few outs. How few? Well, you can forget hitting the flush, because my Q-high flush is useless in the face of that. There are a few sub-scenarios here, and none of them are pretty:
Ad-Q/Ad-J/Kd-Q/K-d-J: In this case, three of my outs are gone because I hit a pair with the Q or the J depending on which he had, then with the pair of 7s on the board, we'd both have two pair and his kicker would play. In this case, I'm down to the 3 of the one that he doesn't have, and 3 eights for the straight. Here, I'm a distant 6.5:1 to win.
Ad-A/Kd-K: This is the one he ended up having, with the cowboys. The flush is out the window because of his higher diamond, so I have the 3 eights for the straight and the 3 (or 2) Kings left. With A-A it's the same 6.5:1 as above, and with K-K (again, what actually happened), I'm an appalling 8:1 to win. Can you see why I'm beating myself up so badly over this one?
Finally, the worst case scenario: If he had Ad-xd or Kd-xd, I was drawing ABSOLUTELY STONE FUCKING DEAD.
Now, of course I didn't know exactly what he had, and any of the above seems just as reasonable a holding to me as the others, given that this is online micro-stakes and all. If you take the average ratio to win out of all of these, you end up with a final tally of 3.64:1 for a chance at 1.86:1 on my money.
I'm not usually this bad of a player, but this hand was brutally, brutally bad on my part.
More hands coming up soon...
(Keep in mind that for the interest of space, I've deleted any non-necessary action such as non-principals folding.)
Seat 2: taho*** (9.97 in chips)
Seat 10: Swift29 (10.55 in chips) - 2 past the big blind
Dealt to Swift29 [ Ac Jh ]
Swift29: raises to $0.40
taho***: calls
@@@ F_L_O_P @@@ [ 7d 5c 6c ]
Swift29: bets $0.80
taho***: calls
# # # TURN # # # [ 8d ]
Swift29: checks
taho***: checks
&&& RIVER &&& [ Qh ]
Swift29: checks
taho***: bets $1.28
Swift29: folds
taho***: returns uncalled bet $1.28
*** SHOW DOWN ***
taho***: mucks
taho*** wins $2.45
I like to think that this was an intelligent check-fold, but with it being .5/.10 online, I just don't know. I figure a 4X BB pre-flop raise will at least get rid of the 8-5 type starting hands, but who knows? Part of my frustration with online play is that who the fuck knows what these idiots will call with? Anyway, as you can see, this was an awful flop for my hand. However, I am rarely afraid to make continuation bets, as it does pick me up my share of small pots. In this case, though, I don't know it was the right play...especially not for the pot-sized bet that I put out there. With three to a straight and two to a flush out there just on the flop, it's a minefield for my A-J offsuit. About the best I could hope for would be to see a free turn or pay minimally for the privilege and that another club comes out. At least in that case, I could hope to see a cheap/free river and catch the nut flush.
Worst of all, I could probably have gotten the same information for .30 or .40 that I did for .80. Even most super-donks would fold if they completely whiffed on that flop, but those same donks would likely call pretty much anything with even as low as third pair...a holding which, in this case, would have won the pot anyway. The turn was of course even worse for my cause, and at that point I was committed to the check-fold game plan. One thing I've noticed when these fuckers have a monster is that they don't bet out all that often...they check-call all the way down. While it's hilariously bad play, it does in a weird way obfuscate their hands a bit because they do the same thing whether they have third pair, a gutshot straight draw or even if they've flopped a full house.
That said, the river action makes me believe the guy had the monster - it's been my experience that someone hitting the "1/2 pot" button or even the "pot-size" button is usually a tell that they have something they like. It SCREAMS out "value bet" to me, and I'm always careful when they do it. I think he was praying that I had a Queen and that I'd call another 1.28 to see his straight. Well fuck you, buddy...you probably called my raise with 9-3 offsuit and got lucky. Bully for you.
Seat 5: choo*** (16.21 in chips)
Seat 10: Swift29 (9.35 in chips) Under the Gun
Dealt to Swift29 [ 3c 5c ]
Swift29: calls
taho***: calls
choo***: calls
Sens***: calls
vanl***: checks
@@@ F_L_O_P @@@ [ 3h 4c Tc ]
vanl***: checks
Swift29: checks
taho***: checks
choo***: bets $0.28
Sens***: calls
vanl***: folds
Swift29: calls
taho***: folds
# # # TURN # # # [ 9h ]
Swift29: checks
choo***: bets $0.70
Sens***: folds
Swift29: calls
&&& RIVER &&& [ Ah ]
Swift29: checks
choo***: bets $1.40
Swift29: folds
choo***: returns uncalled bet $1.40
choo*** wins $2.69
OK, first of all, calling with 5-3 suited under the gun is a rookie fucking mistake and I'm embarrassed to even show you all this one. I love taking flops with those kinds of hands, but I have to get better at doing so when I at least have positional advantage...calling with it here is like bringing a dull scalpel to a rocket-launcher fight. Still, at least I lucked out and got a bunch of callers with no raises...these types of hands play well in multi-player pots, and you can usually get away from them cheaply if you whiff. The problem is, sometimes you hit just enough to keep you around. That's what happened here, and as you can see, I took a pretty good battering on this one.
Normally, this is the kind of flop you dream about with this hand - flush draw with a pair. There was 50 cents in the pot pre-flop, and the post-flop action (by the time it got to me) meant that I had to call 28 cents with a pot of 1.08. That works out to 3.9/1 for my money, so I figured I had to call there. The bettor went with a bet other than the 1/2 or pot buttons I was talking about above, so he may have been trying to steal. There seems to me in retrospect to be about an equal chance of that vs. something like 10-9, J-10, Q-10, K-10 or perhaps even 10-10. I don't think the set was all that likely because then he'd go to the check-call routine (most of these people aren't smart enough to see the danger when they have a set or two pair and there's four to a flush out there). I'll say that 10-9, J-10, Q-10 or total bluff are the two most likely options (though a bluff would beat me in a showdown cause, well, I'm sitting on five-high). In that case, there are 2 threes, 3 fives, and 9 clubs that can (in my mind) win it for me, for a total of 14 outs. In case you don't know the formula for converting outs to a ratio (with the turn and river still to go), here you go (where x = number of outs):
(46-x)/x = x:1
So, I had a 2.28:1 chance to win for 3.9:1 on my money. That's an insta-call, right? So far, so good. Even if the guy had two pair or a set, it wasn't the worst call of my poker career...I had a 4.1:1 chance to win.
The turn, to be quite frank, sucked a fucking dick. That was no help to me whatsoever, and keep in mind that in retrospect I had 10-9 as one of his likely holdings. Now, I had to call a 70-cent bet into a pot of 1.78 - that's 2.54:1 on my money. However, the number of outs I had could as easily now be 9 as it is 14. Let's look at both scenarios. The formula above would now change to (45-x)/x, as there is one less card in the deck. If he doesn't have a set or two pair, I'm now only 2.21:1 to win. If I need to catch the flush, it's even worse - it's a 4:1 shot exactly. Either way, this was the mistake of the hand - I should have cut my losses and chalked it up to yet another monster drawing hand that didn't pan out when the other guy had something he liked and would have fucking paid me off. *sigh*
Of course, the river was a total blank as far as I was concerned, and at that point there was no way I was calling any bet, let alone that big of one. While I played this OK until halfway through, I still lost 70 cents that I shouldn't have by calling on the turn.
Last one for this post:
Hand #1584012214000021: Paris 12214
Seat 1: nsho*** (5.90 in chips)
Seat 10: Swift29 (9.12 in chips) Under the Gun
Dealt to Swift29 [ Jh Qd ]
Swift29: raises to $0.50
nsho***: calls
@@@ F_L_O_P @@@ [ Td 7h 7d ]
Swift29: bets $0.60
nsho***: calls
# # # TURN # # # [ 9d ]
Swift29: checks
nsho***: bets $1.18
Swift29: calls
&&& RIVER &&& [ 8d ]
Swift29: checks
nsho***: checks
*** SHOW DOWN ***
nsho***: shows [ Kc Kd ] (Flush, King high)
Swift29: mucks
nsho*** wins $4.51 with Flush, King high
Swift29: mucks [ Jh, Qd ] (Flush)
This, on the other hand, was just fucking stupid all the way around on my part. It's funny how I spent the whole last post trying to convince you all that I'm not a total donkey, then I post this to completely circumvent that argument. Heh.
Anyway, let's count the mistakes, shall we?
1. That idiot Swift29 raised 5X the BB under the gun with a marginal hand like Q-J. Oh, dear.
2. Immediately after someone calls that high of a raise (which should at least have been a warning sign), I then bet out 60 cents on the flop. It's another case where 30 or 40 cents probably would have gotten me the same information - if he whiffed on the flop or thought I had the third 7 (which I think I was trying to represent there), he would have went away. If he had something he liked (or even four to a flush, as these people will call down to the ends of the earth with a flush or straight draw), he would have called and I'd have gotten the information that I needed to know. Still, I suppose the 60 cents is somewhat defensible as a continuation bet.
3. The turn ended up being the bait that turned this from a battering into a bloodbath. The 9d gave me an open-ended straight draw and a flush draw...enticing, right? However, this is where...you know...thinking and stuff about what the other guy has just maybe could be beneficial. The fact that he called the big bets pre-flop and post-flop meant he had to have something he really, really liked. Let's look at some of the reasonable holdings he could have had (including what he did, the K-K with a diamond) and see what my chances of winning were...and whether it was anywhere close to proper to call with a 1.18 bet into a 2.20 pot (1.86:1).
A-A, K-K, Q-Q, J-J (no diamond): This would actually have been the best scenario, as I'd have the most outs possible while being in no danger of facing a higher flush. Not only that, as an micro-stakes online player, he'd call down to the gates of hell with them, even with four to a different suit out there. Anyway, I'm looking at 3 non-diamond Kings, 3 non-diamond eights, and 9 diamonds to hit a hand that can beat this. If he had one King or two Kings, it'd be 1-2 less outs. The best case scenario would be, with all 15 outs, an exact 2:1 chance to win. Even then, for 1.86:1 on my money, it technically wouldn't be correct to call. If he had one King it would drop down to 2.21:1 to win, and K-K would mean it was 2.46:1. If he had A-A, you can take away the 3 non-diamond Kings as outs, as those would give him a higher straight. You can drop those winning chances even further down to 2.75:1 there. Terrible, terrible, terrible...and this is the BEST-case scenario. Sean, you are a fucking nimrod sometimes.
A-K (no diamond): A-K with no diamond would eliminate the six outs to hit a straight, as he would already have a higher one. A flush is all that will do, so with 9 outs, it's back to the 4:1 chance to hit your flush on the river. A call in that situation is just horrendous.
A-10, K-10, Q-10 (no diamonds): K-10 would be the same 2.21:1 chance as above, while A-10 and Q-10 would be the same 2:1 chance as above.
10-10: A set would definitely explain both his calls, and I'd have the same 2:1 chance as above.
A-x, K-x, including big hands like A-A, K-K, A-10, K-Q, etc (with a diamond): Any big hand with an A or K diamond or even any A-Rag/K-Rag hand with the Ace or King of diamonds means I'm drawing to just a few outs. How few? Well, you can forget hitting the flush, because my Q-high flush is useless in the face of that. There are a few sub-scenarios here, and none of them are pretty:
Ad-Q/Ad-J/Kd-Q/K-d-J: In this case, three of my outs are gone because I hit a pair with the Q or the J depending on which he had, then with the pair of 7s on the board, we'd both have two pair and his kicker would play. In this case, I'm down to the 3 of the one that he doesn't have, and 3 eights for the straight. Here, I'm a distant 6.5:1 to win.
Ad-A/Kd-K: This is the one he ended up having, with the cowboys. The flush is out the window because of his higher diamond, so I have the 3 eights for the straight and the 3 (or 2) Kings left. With A-A it's the same 6.5:1 as above, and with K-K (again, what actually happened), I'm an appalling 8:1 to win. Can you see why I'm beating myself up so badly over this one?
Finally, the worst case scenario: If he had Ad-xd or Kd-xd, I was drawing ABSOLUTELY STONE FUCKING DEAD.
Now, of course I didn't know exactly what he had, and any of the above seems just as reasonable a holding to me as the others, given that this is online micro-stakes and all. If you take the average ratio to win out of all of these, you end up with a final tally of 3.64:1 for a chance at 1.86:1 on my money.
I'm not usually this bad of a player, but this hand was brutally, brutally bad on my part.
More hands coming up soon...
Frustration
I suppose this is as good of a way to begin this blog as anything, especially as it encapsulates a lot of what is going wrong with my game right now. Tonight we had our semi-regular home game which serves as the main entertainment for the evening, usually with a UFC show in the background (as was the case tonight, and it's a good thing...my main man Georges St.Pierre retaining his title was the only good thing to happen today).
Over the last week or so, I've been taking the hand histories from Sportsbook and slowly slogging my way through entering them into an Excel sheet I created (Poker Tracker doesn't work with SB, and I don't have the spare 55 bucks right now anyway). During this process, a few patterns immediately jumped out at me. First, I've done very well at the highest limit I've been playing at (.10/.20, +$40), horrendous at the one below it (.05/.10, -$41), and not so great at the smallest limit either (.02/.04, -$7.50 or so). I attribute this to some extent to the fact that continuation bets and the like actually WORK sometimes at .10/.20, whereas the other two limits are always no-fold 'em hold 'em. Two other things - my play from the blinds isn't all that great, and I lose a TON of money on marginal high hands (which I will define as anything from A-J suited on down to 10-10). When I win with them, it's always a small pot...I make a small raise and opposing hands go into the muck at the speed of fucking light. When I lose with them though, I hemorrhage money like my chip stack got ventilated by an Uzi. Nothing really changed with any of this tonight (keep in mind that the home game is .5/.10 as well).
Anyone reading this who doesn't know me would probably think I was no better than any other online micro-stakes donkey playing in the various card rooms on teh intarwebz. But, I went down to Atlantic City and profited over $200 in a couple of long sessions at the $1/$3 tables at Bally's. In these home games, I usually do very well for myself. Maybe it sounds like I'm trying to convince myself (shit, maybe I am), but I'm not a bad player...I really, really am not. It just feels like it lately, though. One thing I do need improvement on though is my focus - when I play online, I always have to fight the urge to check my e-mail or fuck around on Facebook...when I play the home games or even at AC, I'm not watching the other players and the hands I'm not in enough. While I'm not usually prone to go on tilt, when I do, it's 0-to-Berserker Rage in about 2 seconds. Tonight, I was on tilt even before the game started due to some bullshit that went down at my soccer game last night. If this weren't a game with friends, I would never have played at all...so I suppose it isn't surprising that I wasn't paying a lot of attention, wasn't playing smart and definitely wasn't basing calls or folds based on reading the other player's hand. Still, in a just world I would only have ended up a buck or two down instead of 7.
I've started taking down hands in a notebook now, so I can actually give specifics. I opened up the game by stealing a few blinds and getting out of the way when it wasn't worth trying. I'm usually aggressive in that manner, and I like to set my table image early. On the 7th or 8th hand though, I got myself a nice holding of A-10, and raised it up. One caller and one terrible flop later, I had to fold...said caller informed me he held Q-Q. Trust me, it wouldn't be the last time I had a nice hand end up second best in the course of the evening.
One orbit later, I picked up .90 with Q-10, only to lose all of that in the next hand with 4-3 (I believe I had an open-ender that whiffed). A few hands after that, my K-K ran up against A-A for a -1.90 loss, and on the VERY NEXT FUCKING HAND, my A-J with the ace paired ran up against A-K for a -2.75 loss. I can't fucking REMEMBER the last time where I actually had someone dominated and they actually paid me off for it. Two orbits later, it happened again. My K-Q suited profited a whole 10 cents, then I picked up A-J again and lost 1.15 with them (all told, I had them 7 times in 181 hands, and lost 5 of them for a -7.35 total). I mean, it's not like I'm playing super-tight and everyone knows when I have a hand - out of the 181 hands, I had some part in 114 of them! I mean, a decent amount of those involved folding my blinds to a pre-flop raise, but it's not like I was the Rock of Gibraltar! Furthermore, I have the reputation in this game as kind of a loose and wild maniac, so I just don't get why my good hands aren't getting paid off.
I did recover at that point and won a few pots. I got .35 with A-J, 70 with K-K and .35 with K-10. Still, that hardly made up for the losses before, and I soon lost another .60 with A-J again. A few orbits later, another .40 was gone with Q-6 suited when my flush draw swung and missed like, well, anyone on my favorite baseball team. F-r-u-s-t-r-a-t-i-o-n.
So it went for another two hours or so, until I finally won one good pot (1.25) with A-10 where I may have raised someone off of the best hand. I think I had the 10 paired, and someone had their Jack paired or something. A solid win with A-Q was mostly neutralized by a 30-cent loss with Q-10. I won a total of 90 cents with K-8, 2-2 and 6-5, only to lose 1.50 with K-2 suited where my opponent kept making the bets enticing enough where I had to call with my four-flush draw. It whiffed, of fucking course. I've been playing for three years now, and I think the last flush I hit that paid me anything significant may have occurred at the Outer Banks in 2005 when I first played this fucking game. Ugh.
As it got towards the end of the session (well, when I bailed anyway), I had lost ANOTHER 90 cents with A-J, but then I went on a bit of a hot streak. I picked up 1.50 in total with A-6 suited, 9-8 and 10-10, a dollar with J-8, .35 for stealing with 7-2 (everyone pays a nickel if 7-2 wins in our game) and another .30 with 7-5. I folded the SB for just the 5 cents, and at that point I was only 4.25 down...not so bad considering the horrendous luck I had been having to that point.
Then, THAT hand happened. Like I said, I usually keep a lid on my anger pretty well, but Tilty McTilterson showed up after this one.
I had...no, really, GUESS WHICH FUCKING HAND. The flop came something like J-8-x, and my opponent was first to act. He put in a .30 raise or so, which I of course called as my Jack was paired with top kicker. The turn was I believe a Queen, which I didn't think my opponent had. Still, he raised a pretty significant amount, I think 1.50 or somewhere close. If memory serves, the river was a 10. With a board of Q-J-10-8-x, I should have realized the danger at some point, although in my defense, this opponent had raised me off the best hand a few times and had shown total bluffs afterward. In retrospect, I should have trusted my instincts and went all in on the turn. Still, I figured that he didn't have A-K, and I didn't think he had a set either. Honestly, I couldn't really put him on anything, but I felt like I had the best hand the whole way. He bet less on the river than he did the turn, .75 or thereabouts. I had to call with those pot odds, and I felt I had the best hand anyway. He turns over 9-9, and a nanosecond later my sunglasses where hurled across the room. I immediately got up and left the room to clear my head, because holy SHIT, was I steaming. I mean, I was ready to explode. I wish I knew what he thought I had the whole way, you know?
However, that's no excuse for the cavalier way I played the hand. There was enough danger on that board where he could have had a lot that beat me - J-J, Q-J, 10-10, 8-8, Q-10, a set of whatever the blank was, A-K, K-K, even A-A. At some point, I should have given some consideration to the fact that if he was betting at it, he had to have SOMETHING. While betting at it with 9-9 was fucking insane and he only won with the runner-runner turn and river, I don't know what I was beating other than a total bluff or some holding like J-7 or something (which he was capable of having based on how he was playing). On the flop, I should have re-raised all-in right there, or at least something significant. I could have done it on the turn too...if he had called at that point, I probably would have had a lot more right to be as mad as I was.
It's not a mistake that I probably would have made in Atlantic City, but it irks me all the same because I KNOW better. I'm a better player than this, and I probably shouldn't play when I'm in this mental state next time, even if friends are over.
Ugh. What a fucking weekend. In the next post, I'll show some hands from those histories on SB I was referring to before, and I'll try and deconstruct some more of my mistakes for you. Until then...
Over the last week or so, I've been taking the hand histories from Sportsbook and slowly slogging my way through entering them into an Excel sheet I created (Poker Tracker doesn't work with SB, and I don't have the spare 55 bucks right now anyway). During this process, a few patterns immediately jumped out at me. First, I've done very well at the highest limit I've been playing at (.10/.20, +$40), horrendous at the one below it (.05/.10, -$41), and not so great at the smallest limit either (.02/.04, -$7.50 or so). I attribute this to some extent to the fact that continuation bets and the like actually WORK sometimes at .10/.20, whereas the other two limits are always no-fold 'em hold 'em. Two other things - my play from the blinds isn't all that great, and I lose a TON of money on marginal high hands (which I will define as anything from A-J suited on down to 10-10). When I win with them, it's always a small pot...I make a small raise and opposing hands go into the muck at the speed of fucking light. When I lose with them though, I hemorrhage money like my chip stack got ventilated by an Uzi. Nothing really changed with any of this tonight (keep in mind that the home game is .5/.10 as well).
Anyone reading this who doesn't know me would probably think I was no better than any other online micro-stakes donkey playing in the various card rooms on teh intarwebz. But, I went down to Atlantic City and profited over $200 in a couple of long sessions at the $1/$3 tables at Bally's. In these home games, I usually do very well for myself. Maybe it sounds like I'm trying to convince myself (shit, maybe I am), but I'm not a bad player...I really, really am not. It just feels like it lately, though. One thing I do need improvement on though is my focus - when I play online, I always have to fight the urge to check my e-mail or fuck around on Facebook...when I play the home games or even at AC, I'm not watching the other players and the hands I'm not in enough. While I'm not usually prone to go on tilt, when I do, it's 0-to-Berserker Rage in about 2 seconds. Tonight, I was on tilt even before the game started due to some bullshit that went down at my soccer game last night. If this weren't a game with friends, I would never have played at all...so I suppose it isn't surprising that I wasn't paying a lot of attention, wasn't playing smart and definitely wasn't basing calls or folds based on reading the other player's hand. Still, in a just world I would only have ended up a buck or two down instead of 7.
I've started taking down hands in a notebook now, so I can actually give specifics. I opened up the game by stealing a few blinds and getting out of the way when it wasn't worth trying. I'm usually aggressive in that manner, and I like to set my table image early. On the 7th or 8th hand though, I got myself a nice holding of A-10, and raised it up. One caller and one terrible flop later, I had to fold...said caller informed me he held Q-Q. Trust me, it wouldn't be the last time I had a nice hand end up second best in the course of the evening.
One orbit later, I picked up .90 with Q-10, only to lose all of that in the next hand with 4-3 (I believe I had an open-ender that whiffed). A few hands after that, my K-K ran up against A-A for a -1.90 loss, and on the VERY NEXT FUCKING HAND, my A-J with the ace paired ran up against A-K for a -2.75 loss. I can't fucking REMEMBER the last time where I actually had someone dominated and they actually paid me off for it. Two orbits later, it happened again. My K-Q suited profited a whole 10 cents, then I picked up A-J again and lost 1.15 with them (all told, I had them 7 times in 181 hands, and lost 5 of them for a -7.35 total). I mean, it's not like I'm playing super-tight and everyone knows when I have a hand - out of the 181 hands, I had some part in 114 of them! I mean, a decent amount of those involved folding my blinds to a pre-flop raise, but it's not like I was the Rock of Gibraltar! Furthermore, I have the reputation in this game as kind of a loose and wild maniac, so I just don't get why my good hands aren't getting paid off.
I did recover at that point and won a few pots. I got .35 with A-J, 70 with K-K and .35 with K-10. Still, that hardly made up for the losses before, and I soon lost another .60 with A-J again. A few orbits later, another .40 was gone with Q-6 suited when my flush draw swung and missed like, well, anyone on my favorite baseball team. F-r-u-s-t-r-a-t-i-o-n.
So it went for another two hours or so, until I finally won one good pot (1.25) with A-10 where I may have raised someone off of the best hand. I think I had the 10 paired, and someone had their Jack paired or something. A solid win with A-Q was mostly neutralized by a 30-cent loss with Q-10. I won a total of 90 cents with K-8, 2-2 and 6-5, only to lose 1.50 with K-2 suited where my opponent kept making the bets enticing enough where I had to call with my four-flush draw. It whiffed, of fucking course. I've been playing for three years now, and I think the last flush I hit that paid me anything significant may have occurred at the Outer Banks in 2005 when I first played this fucking game. Ugh.
As it got towards the end of the session (well, when I bailed anyway), I had lost ANOTHER 90 cents with A-J, but then I went on a bit of a hot streak. I picked up 1.50 in total with A-6 suited, 9-8 and 10-10, a dollar with J-8, .35 for stealing with 7-2 (everyone pays a nickel if 7-2 wins in our game) and another .30 with 7-5. I folded the SB for just the 5 cents, and at that point I was only 4.25 down...not so bad considering the horrendous luck I had been having to that point.
Then, THAT hand happened. Like I said, I usually keep a lid on my anger pretty well, but Tilty McTilterson showed up after this one.
I had...no, really, GUESS WHICH FUCKING HAND. The flop came something like J-8-x, and my opponent was first to act. He put in a .30 raise or so, which I of course called as my Jack was paired with top kicker. The turn was I believe a Queen, which I didn't think my opponent had. Still, he raised a pretty significant amount, I think 1.50 or somewhere close. If memory serves, the river was a 10. With a board of Q-J-10-8-x, I should have realized the danger at some point, although in my defense, this opponent had raised me off the best hand a few times and had shown total bluffs afterward. In retrospect, I should have trusted my instincts and went all in on the turn. Still, I figured that he didn't have A-K, and I didn't think he had a set either. Honestly, I couldn't really put him on anything, but I felt like I had the best hand the whole way. He bet less on the river than he did the turn, .75 or thereabouts. I had to call with those pot odds, and I felt I had the best hand anyway. He turns over 9-9, and a nanosecond later my sunglasses where hurled across the room. I immediately got up and left the room to clear my head, because holy SHIT, was I steaming. I mean, I was ready to explode. I wish I knew what he thought I had the whole way, you know?
However, that's no excuse for the cavalier way I played the hand. There was enough danger on that board where he could have had a lot that beat me - J-J, Q-J, 10-10, 8-8, Q-10, a set of whatever the blank was, A-K, K-K, even A-A. At some point, I should have given some consideration to the fact that if he was betting at it, he had to have SOMETHING. While betting at it with 9-9 was fucking insane and he only won with the runner-runner turn and river, I don't know what I was beating other than a total bluff or some holding like J-7 or something (which he was capable of having based on how he was playing). On the flop, I should have re-raised all-in right there, or at least something significant. I could have done it on the turn too...if he had called at that point, I probably would have had a lot more right to be as mad as I was.
It's not a mistake that I probably would have made in Atlantic City, but it irks me all the same because I KNOW better. I'm a better player than this, and I probably shouldn't play when I'm in this mental state next time, even if friends are over.
Ugh. What a fucking weekend. In the next post, I'll show some hands from those histories on SB I was referring to before, and I'll try and deconstruct some more of my mistakes for you. Until then...
Friday, August 8, 2008
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