Return of the Grievous River

by john | Aug 8, 2010 | Poker

Last night marked the return to action of the degenerates of the Falstaff home game, albeit not in the Casa de Falstaff. We were at a secret underground bunker (Skoon’s man-cave) rather than my den because Suzy’s been laid up after foot surgery a couple weeks ago. She’s had issues with plantar fasciaitis (sp?) for several years now and had a procedure done where they send shock waves into her heel to break up nodules that have grown into the tendon. She’s healing up nicely and I expect she’ll be able to return to regular housecleaning and lawnmowing duties soon.

But the game coincided with some travel on the part of our merry band of goofballs. Special K is headed off to the desert to do his part making computers safe for democracy again (keep your head down and your butt dry, pal!) and A-List blogger Bobby Bracelet has now relocated to Charlotte, so it was a sendoff game for the K, and a welcome game for the Bracelet, and I’m pretty sure they were both happy with their results on the night.

I built a big stack early by catching cards and playing relatively tight, but the cards I was catching got me into a ton of hands, and the tiny bit of fold equity I had developed vanished before too long. I’ve played so fast and loose in this game for so many years, pretty much all I have to do is look at  flop with chips in my hand and I’ll hear “call” from at least a couple of spots. And I don’t mind that. Most nights. When I’m not getting snapped off.

WARNING – BAD BEAT STORY – if you don’t like them, don’t read. But you’re not getting $1.

So I pick up Aces (for the second time on the night – first time I got the blinds) on the button. I raise from .50 to $4. SB calls, BB pops it to $8. Folds around to me, and I shove (not that impressive, since I only have about $30 more in front of me). SB calls, BB thinks for a while, puts me on the Hammer, calls. I turn over Aces, SB turns over AK, BB shows 88. Flop comes down something like 3-J-9. Turn 7. And you know what the river was right? Since I did put in the disclaimer that it was a bad beat story, it can only be the 10-ball coming from on high to piss me off and send me reaching into my pocket for a 3rd buy-in.

I had pissed away all my profits earlier by catching a set on the river against one of the more aggressive and bluff-happy players at the table, only to find out that he’d turned a bigger set. I hate it when you think you’ve rivered somebody only to find out you were drawing dead on the turn. And I blew the rest of my first buy in playing bad. So after having my aces cracked for my stack I sat out a couple hands, thought it over and remembered something that I read on somebody’s blog a long time ago – my job is to get my money in ahead. That’s all I can do. So I reached in for another buy-in, and reloaded. This was gonna be my last buy-in, since I have long since run out of real bankroll paying for real-world events and now can only grab a little cash when it’s time for a home game.

So then I went on a run, and then I got chirping chips, and then I started to play hands blinds in Omaha, and I got stupid lucky and ended up ahead for the night. But since there was a bad beat story, I figure it’s only right that I relate a couple of winning hands as well. I’d been flopping big hands all night and underplaying them and getting run down because of it all night. Flop two pair, play it too slow and lose to a bigger two pair or flush – that kind of thing. So I decided that the next time I hit a flop hard, I was gonna bet the shit out of it. So I call a preflop raise in late position with 55. Button calls behind me, and three of us see a flop of J-5-x. Original raiser (same guy that turned a set of kings to my rivered set of fives earlier) bet out about a pot-sized bet, and I shoved all in over the top for $106 more. Button thought for a minute and called all in for less. Original raiser thought for a little while and folded. Uncle Phil was the button and turned over his cracked aces, and my set held up. At that point I was about even on the night.

A little while later I called a preflop raise with 87s, and the flop came down 8-J-x. T led out with a bet, and I called, hoping to catch something. Jim the Knife came along as well, and I hit another 8 on the turn. T led again, I called, and Jim stuck around. River was the case 8, and this time I pulled the trigger and raised when T led. Jim thought and thought but finally threw away 99. T thought for a minute and called with her Jack, and I showed my quads to drag a very healthy pot.

I picked up Aces one more time, for three on the night, and won about a $20 pot with them. So for anyone keeping score, that’s Aces for -$50, and 55 for $200. It’s never been said that I play cards well, but I sometimes play bad cards very well. I felt pretty good about last night’s game after I got off tilt for getting my aces snapped off and getting run down for the fourth or fifth time. My reads were usually pretty good, and that’s due in part to spending a couple hours every night playing on Full Tilt. I’ve been doing a bunch of little SNGs and have double my roll to a whopping $100 there. So I’m actually working on my game for the first time in a long time, and I’m seeing some results. Now let’s see if I can go another session without losing everything.

BBT5 Invitational Part 1

by john | Apr 19, 2010 | Poker

Wherein I play some hands good, some hands bad, some hands mediocre, and bust out just a little out of the money. For my non-pokery readers, this is a heavy poker post. If you’re not into that, read an archived post for a little while.

So last night was the first BBT5 invitational tournament, and I was both happy and disappointed with my performance. Happy that I went deep, busting two out of the money in a tough field, and disappointed that I pissed away a big chip lead in two really poorly played hands. Of course, there was some debate that I acquired the chips in poorly played hands, so that’s only fair I suppose.

Let’s start with two hands that I played (in my mind) well, that built my stack up huge in the middle going of the tournament. In my mind, where I am a good poker player (which, sadly, only is true inside my head, but it’s my blog, so deal with it)these two hands exemplify how my game works when I’m on my game. And for a little while during this tournament, I was on. In the first, I laid a huge suckout on Lucko to double up and grab a bunch of chips. In the second, I won a coin toss against Bayne and pretty much played it as well as I could to get a bunch of his chips. Later on, we’ll go through the steps of the courtesy double-ups I granted Doc Chako and Julius Goat to show that I know when I suck as well as having a few delusions about when I play gOOt.

In the first hand, I was in the small blind with Lucko directly to my right. Lucko had been there for a while, and what I know from his game is that he’s a solid, experienced, aggressive tournament player. He had done some fairly predictable things in the orbits since he sat down, raising in late position almost every time it folded to him, and I surrendered my blinds every time like a good little donkey. In this hand I decided to defend my blind with 9s-3s, mostly planning to (a) call, then fold if I missed the flop entirely, setting up a chance to call and check-raise later with a monster or (b) call with trash and if I hit my baby flush or something stupid like a pair of nines on a non-paint board to snap off a steal by catching my garbage. My thoughts on his range were – 40% any two big cards, 40% any pocket pair, 20% any two napkins with the button. Of course I didn’t break it down that coherently in my conscious thoughts, it went more like this in my head “Lucko is a good player, he likely has a real hand. If I hit my trash and he misses his real hand, I might get a pile of chips out of him.” He had me slightly covered, but we were both pretty deep at this point.

The flop came down A-2-4 in some arrangement of suits, no flush draws. Now I’m thinking he probably hit his Ace, but if I peel one and hit my gutshot I can almost certainly get a bunch of chips, and maybe even double through Lucko here. So I check, he makes a fairly decent-sized c-bet, maybe 2/3 or 3/4 pot, and I peel one off. The turn brings my 5 to give me the wheel, and I check my straight, pretty sure that if he has an Ace, he’ll fire again. He fires again, and I put out a healthy raise. Lucko thinks for a moment and moves all in over the top. I snap-call, he shows AK and is drawing dead. Lucko’s crippled, and goes out a little while later, but not before griping in the chat about how these are the “worst tournaments ever,” and making a few snide comments about bloggers. Now let me make it clear, I am not a good poker player. Most days, I’m not even mediocre. And I think Lucko is a better tournament player than me by a mile. Which all combined to let me double through him in that hand. I may not be a good poker player, but I play with some very good poker players, and I have only stayed alive by learning how to match up against a better player – figure out what they think you should do, and do something different. I couldn’t peel one for the gutshot against BadBlood or Special K, because while they are good players, they have enough hands logged against me to know that I’ll do that, and I would never have gotten a turn bet out of them, much less the re-raise. With Lucko and I not playing each other very much, I used his solid game against him for a double up.

Now, am I saying that taking a card off drawing for a gutshot was a mathematically correct move? No. But was it really a very bad move? Also, I posit the answer is ‘No.” Of course I didn’t go into nearly as much detail thinking through the hand in progress as I did explaining it here, but that’s what thin-slicing is all about. And if you’re not familiar with the term, read Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, which every poker player should read anyway. It went more like “He’s stealing my blind again, I need to defend. This hand is easy to get away from if I miss, and if I hit, it’s unlikely to help his hand. I call.” Then something like “He probably hit the ace, so the only way I pay off another bet is if I make my straight, but if I get there he’ll fire again, and I might get him to call a raise, too. I call.” Then “Got there. If I check, he’s almost guaranteed to bet. I check.” Then “Got him. Now let’s see if he’ll call my raise.” Then “Wow. If he really has 3-6, then he’s way, way more creative than I give him credit for, and he deserves all my chips, but I’m almost 100% sure I’m good here. I call.” Then “well, that went well.” So, that’s a long-winded way of saying if you insinuate in the chat box that I’m an idiot, you’re stuck with a long-winded explanation of why I just flat outplayed you.

The next hand pretty much played itself for both of us. I had the button with T-T, and put in a 3xBB raise, which was the identical raise that I made any time I opened a pot all night. Bayne was in the SB with A-J, and called. Reasonable action all the way around. Flop came down X-J-T, and We both checked. I thought I was being all sneaky, and so did Bayne. Tricky poker players :). I don’t remember the turn action, but I think Bayne bet and I raised. The river was another Jack, and I think Bayne checked and I bet about 1.3x the pot, or maybe a little more. I remember pressing the pot button and starting to scroll down, and then I thought “waitaminit, this would be a really good time to overbet. If he folds, I don’t lose out on anything, but if he has a Jack, it’s gonna be hard for him to not call me. So I overbet the pot, Bayne called, and I showed my boat. That one kinda played itself, but I was really happy about adding a level to my thinking on the river bet sizing.

Then I got moved to a new table and donked off all my chips. First I was in either late position or a blind with A-Q, and Chako raised preflop. I thought about three-betting, but decided against it, then the flop came down X-Q-K. Doc led out, I put in a big raise, and he went all in. I called to see his K-Q, and felt like the moron that I was. No Ace for me, too bad, so sad. I could have easily gotten away from that hand with second pair, top kicker, especially when I thought to myself that he had started behind and outflopped me. But sometimes we get in the habit of wanting to fabricate bad beat stories, and that’s what I subconsciously did there. I wanted to be able to whine about Doc’s preflop hand and him catching up and all that shit, but I really can’t, because I played it bad. It was absolutely one of those self-creating bad beat moments, and I gave away a bunch of chips in the process.

I did it again a few hands later when I called Julius Goat preflop with Ac-Jc, and then raised him on the Ace-high flop. I could certainly have gotten away from his re-raise, but I wasn’t quite smart enough, and was trusting in my suckout mojo too much. He showed AK, and I had given away 60% of my stack in two hands. I never really recovered, and although I could have probably folded my way into the bottom tier of the money, when I flopped 2nd pair and the up and down straight draw on a T-Q-K board holding QJ I decided that it was time to double up or go to work on the PokerStars blog. I went to work while JJOK went on to win the thing. Congrats, dude! And thanks again to Full Tilt Poker and AlCantHang for putting this together! I had Dave from Poker from the Rail at my starting table and it was fun playing with him for a while. I’ll be back next week to try and play a little better, and without the distraction of a work assignment that evening, so maybe I’ll do a little better.

And somedays it pays to be an old-timer

by john | Apr 16, 2010 | Poker

And not just because I’m creeping ever-closer to the free sweet tea at Hardee’s.

Once upon a time I had a poker blog. Some days this spot here even masquerades as one, but those days are few and far between, kinda like my winning sessions at the poker table. Maybe if I sucked less, I’d write more. And maybe if I wrote more about my game, I’d suck less. It’s entirely possible that it’s something like the antithesis of the vicious cycle, but who knows?

Anyway, because I occasionally write about poker (and have you ever noticed that occasionally is one of those words that NEVER looks right the first time and you always have to go back and take out an “s” in the middle to get that stupid little red line to go away (thanks, Richard, bane of my existence)?) the fine folks at Poker from the Rail have invited me to be part of the BBT5.

If you’re not a poker blogger and are still reading this, what’s wrong with you? No, really, here’s the deal. The Battle of the Blogger Tournaments started life as a fun series of tournaments hosted by friends who wanted to get together and give away some cool prizes. Then more people started playing, and the prizes and prize pools got bigger, and the tournaments attracted the attention of some cool folks with prizes to add. Then Full Tilt Poker stepped up huge and started adding WSOP seats to the mix, so some of the tournaments got a little less blogger-centric, then a LOT less blogger-centric, and more competitive, and what started out as kind of drunken chatroom fests with a poker tournament happening in the background turned into real poker tournaments with a few drunks playing but a lot of serious players. Then some old farts decided not to play because it wasn’t like the good old days (and get off my lawn!) but it was still a wildly successful series of tournaments that put some bloggers and readers into the WSOP Main Event and some side tournaments, too. For the record, I didn’t decide to not participate because of any of that, I just am usually broke online and have stuff going on when the tourneys are running.

But now, because I’ve been around for a million blog years, and still sometimes write about poker, I’ve been invited to be part of the BBT5, which includes two open tournaments each week for the next six weeks, and one invitational tournament each week. I’ll be playing all the invitationals, which could be bad for me, because I suck, but since they’re freerolls, won’t be too bad. And since a bunch of my friends have also been invited, it’ll be like old home week, with chips! The top two finishers each week get seats in the Tournament of Champions, and the top 5 folks in the TOC get WSOP seats to either the Main Event or a preliminary event, depending on where they finish. So that’s way cool. I get six freeroll shots at a Main Event seat, which there’s no way I’d pass up. So for the next few weeks, I’ll be on Full Tilt (with the terribly original screen name of Jhartness) playing for my shot at poker glory (or at least $10K to throw at credit card payments). Go here for more details on the BBT5, and give Al a big smooch from me when you see him!

Now here lies my dilemma – if the seas part and all seven seals unlock and I manage to win a seat, do I play? There’s no question that I’m not a very good card player, but I do have some history of success in well-structured tournaments (Venetian, Casa de Blood, etc.). The structure of the WSOP Main Event is nice and deep, and I might have a shot to crack the money (top 10%), which would double my “buy-in.” And since the buy-in is not coming out of my pocket, that’s $20K in free money. Then the upside potential is in the millions for a final table appearance. The flip side is $10K cash in hand, which wipes out all my existing credit card debt and leaves me a little on the side. Our finances took a hit last year when PokerNews restructured and no longer needed my services, so between that loss of revenue and a couple of weddings and some frivolous spending, we’ve accrued a little debt that I’m working to get rid of. So, I ask you, dear readers (if anyone actually made it this far) – if you considered yourself no better than 40% to make the money, thus walking away with at least $20,000, would you play the Main Event or pocket the ten grand? Obviously this debate is so far into the future as to be laughable because I first have to win my way into the TOC and then finish in the top two spots there to even qualify, but it does make for interesting conversation, because I do plan to be in the TOC. After all, I was invited, and what’s the point of showing up at a party if you’re going to leave early?

It’s that time again…

by john | Jan 14, 2010 | Poker

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker! The WBCOOP is a free online Poker tournament open to all Bloggers, so register on WBCOOP to play.

Registration code: 797867