Archive for the ‘Poker’ Category
Never Say Never Again
Part the first – giving it one more try
I must be short a couple dozen brain cells, because last night I decided to log on to Pacific Poker. Yes, that’s right, the site I consistently lose on, the site I swore was no good for me. But, I don’t really have the bankroll to play the smallest no limit game that’s available on Poker Room, and I use a Mac. Since very few of the poker sites bother to support us, we are relegated to giving all of our fees and rake money to only a couple of sites that are nice enough to have Java interfaces. (But, yes, I have been tempted to buy a POS Windows box just so I can play on Party Poker or Poker Stars. However, I am a miser. That miserliness probably explains my puny bankroll that sends me to the micro-limits. Anyway, moving on…)
So, having a desire to play some no limit, I logged into the dreaded money-sucking Pacific Poker. I quickly found a seat at a $10 table (that’s $10 buy-in, with blinds at all of 5 and 10 cents, boy am I a big time gambler!). After an early and poorly timed stab at the pot, I rebought the $2 that would bring me back to the max. See, I’ve been reading a lot of poker blogs (check out the list on the right for real poker bloggers), and a back entry I read the other day pointed out that it is important not to let yourself get too far below the max buy-in, or you’ll not have any leverage when you get a fabulous hand. I didn’t really run into any such situations last night, but I still think it’s nice to practice smart behavior when money is on the line (even if it is $2).
Part the second – variance swings the other way
After the $2 loss, I went on a relatively nice run, getting a few good starting hands, and making people give me their money. I didn’t really have any monsters; I just slowly acquired small pots. But there was one particularly memorable hand.
I was dealt a pair of twos, one of which was a diamond, and limped in from late position. Limping was totally the standard at this table. And while I do believe that limping is despicable, when you can see a flop for next-to-free with a tiny pocket pair, why the hell not? Five of us saw the super cheap flop of A34, all diamonds.
Well, look at that, four to a straight flush. How can you fold four to a straight flush if it’s cheap? In fact, it checked around to me, and I bet half the pot just to get rid of the riff-raff. No free cards! Okay, the flop was free, but no more free cards! All but the seat to my right folded, and the turn came with another 3. I put the caller on a four-flush, and tried to bump him from the pot by betting a bit more than 2/3 of the pot. I would have folded if he had raised (this is important to note because my most obvious poker failing is betting without a plan if the other guy raises). But he just called.
Let’s ignore the stupid part where I check after him on the river, which was just a black 9, and pretend like I bet some small amount that he called. Whatever. I won the hand when he showed Q5 off-suit – the 5 was diamonds. I commented in the stupid little chat window “Aha! You had the other half of my straight flush!” He just dejectedly answered, “Yup,” as the pot was pushed my way (yeah, that’s right, I won a hand with two pair, deuces and threes, what a hand).
Part the third – how to win at Stud
After I amassed a huge 30 big-blind win at that table (sounds better that way!), finally making up for my previous horrid runs (okay, not really making up for it, but making me feel better about it), I decided I was bored with NLHE. So, on a whim, I decided to try out the 5/10 Stud. As in 5 and 10 cents. Big spender here! I know the internet is full of strategy about starting hands, when to call, when to raise, how to decide if your draws are live, etc., etc. But I bet no one else’s advice is as good as mine:
Be lucky.
I’m no good at stud. I have little-to-no practice, and I have always thought it was too difficult. Following all of those cards… yikes! But if you want to win at Stud, you just have to get four flushes and three straights in the span of an hour where 36 hands were dealt. It was awesome. I love it when variance takes a turn in my direction!
Part the fourth – and to top it off
I had all this poker time last night because Mike had to work late. He got home just before nine, after my awesome game of Stud (I am so the master! Haha, not.) We talked about stuff, and he went to his book. So what was I to do, but go back to Pacific Poker, and sign up for a cheap-o SNG. I actually play larger ones at Poker Room, but I have faith in my ability there. I’m still nervous about Pacific, so I just went for the $2.50 5-person SNG. It was insane. I’ve never seen such a love for top pair no kicker. I raked in the tournament dough and after a 7 hand or so heads-up match, I took the victory! My account has been credited with $6.25!
Best day of poker ever.
Or at least in a long, long time.
My First Grown-Up Vacation (part nine in a series)
I took the first exit that had a gas station listed on the friendly blue sign. It in fact had three listed. And all three were closed, because it was after 11 PM by this point. Commence serious freaking out. Commence Mike getting mad at me for not filling up before we left. Commence feeling guilty. Get back on the highway and start hoping and praying.
All for naught, the next exit had a sign explicitly stating there was a 24-hour Mobil. So we went to that, and realized that McDonald’s is “now open ’til midnight or later,” and so we got some dinner. At 11:15 PM. But who’s counting.
It turns out that the drive down I-95 to Foxwoods is ridiculously long. I didn’t think Rhode Island was that large. And for fun, I totally got us lost in the Foxwoods complex.
We were absolutely exhausted when we arrived at the hotel, where they had saved a room for us – but not the kind I’d reserved! I was so angry, but too tired to make a fuss like I would have liked, so I did what any thoroughly emotionally and physically exhausted person would do. I cried. Not heaving sobs or anything, just straight tears. It sucked, and I was angry, but I was too tired to fight for anything, not even a free meal ticket, let alone a free room. At least I hadn’t paid full price for the room to begin with – Wampum rewards or whatever they’re called.
We went to our room, set the alarm for 5:00, and collapsed into a heap on the small bed, thoroughly pooped.
Small alarms probably went off in your head at this point. Why the hell would we be waking up at five o’clock in the morning the day after not getting to a bed until after one o’clock in the morning? Well, for a poker tournament, obviously!
Foxwoods has these $80 + 20 NLHE tournaments on Fridays (and most other weekdays) that I was exceptionally excited about. Not excited enough to not sleep through the alarm… but excited enough to wake up naturally at 5:30. Shower. Wake up Mike. Wait for Mike to shower. Check out of hotel. Drive over to the casino. Get duplicate Wampum cards since we forgot ours. Sign up for the tournament.
Well, now it was 7:00 and the tournament isn’t until 8:00. I had been counting on being able to have the breakfast buffet, which I think I read somewhere was pretty good, but that doesn’t open until 8:00! So we went to the one place in the casino serving food and I got a muffin and a juice. Mike was still asleep and so not hungry.
Eventually 8:00 rolled around, and I was sitting in seat 6 on table 1. I was extremely excited, and once I got through my first bought pot (I knew he had nothing, I just hoped he didn’t know I had nothing), I was settled enough. I was a slight chip leader at my table for quite a while, until the first bust out happened. This was when the gentleman to my right had his pocket aces busted by the gentleman two to his right’s pocket kings. Obviously kings-guy was now the chip leader. But that really would turn out not to matter much to me.
The person who replaced aces-guy was a very tall man. That was about all I knew about him when I got stuck in a pot with him. I flopped an openender when 9TJ hit the board with AQ in my hand. I bet a significant amount, hoping to just buy the pot from the two people already in it, who had checked to me. One left the pot quickly. The other… reraised all in. I had him covered, but it would only leave me with 8 big blinds or so if I called. Of course, it would only cost me about that many – for a pot that was already well over what would make good pot odds. Really, I forget the math. And maybe I did the math wrong. And maybe I should have listened to my gut that was telling me “He has KQ – FOLD!” Or, maybe I should just forget the whole thing and move on.
Which is what I tried to do after he showed the KQ, and my saving K never showed up on the turn or river. The rest of the table was routing for me – we were all friends now, and he was the intruding newcomer. I knew it was all-in time, so when my next hand was AJ, I just did it. There had been a couple limpers before me, including KQ-guy, they all folded, except for him. He called saying he had to gamble. His gamble paid off when he hit a baby flush on the flop, and I was out.
I checked on Mike, who seemed to be doing pretty well, and went over to sign up for a little ring game action. I knew I would be blowing off money there, but I pretty much needed to get the tilt over with. So I just blew through a small stack of chips while constantly getting second best hands. Not my best poker day ever. But it was quite fun.
Since I was already on a -EV day, I figured why not go for some roulette while Mike keeps beating on the tournament. For some reason, my luck chose that moment to turn around, and I went up $17. Sweet! I also had quite a bit of fun doing it. There were some friendly people and the dealer (I guess that’s what you’d call him) was very entertaining. Mike joined me after he busted out of the tournament, but his luck didn’t hold out from our last trip where he won $40 or something ridiculous like that. (We are not high rollers. We really just go to Foxwoods because it’s fun, and expect to “pay” the casino a certain amount for the entertainment before we leave.)
I decided to try out some Caribbean Stud poker with my new winnings. My parents had talked quite a show about how awesome it is. This is also a -EV game, but it seems like it would be a slow leak, and possibly fun. After tipping the dealer, I was down $3, so basically even. But it actually was kind of fun.
We went to the buffet for lunch, and I took advantage of the peel-and-eat shrimp and topped it off with a staggering waffle sundae. We dumped some remaining quarters into the slot machines, and decided that we were thoroughly exhausted. We packed ourselves into the car, and drove on home. Mike slept in the car. I stopped to pick up the mail from the post office (it was a ridiculously huge pile, and of course it was mostly spam).
And then we were home.
Free Money!
It had been a rather long time since I logged on to an internet poker room and gave away took in money. The last time I did was over a month ago, and it was my last attempt at two-tabling (not good, not good at all). So, when Mike signed on to Pacific last night to try working the bonus he got from my referral, I felt I ought to work on my end of that bonus as well.
Let me just say that Pacific Poker has made me its bitch. I’ve tried their $.05/.10 NLHE tables, their $.25/.50 HE tables, their $.25/.50 O8 tables, their $.50/1.00 HE tables, their $8 SNGs, their $5 SNGs, their $2.50 SNGs, and once when desperate their $.05/.10 Stud tables. I have not had a single winning attempt. Not one! They say even a broken clock is right twice a day, but I’m just never right there!
Also of note, I make no claims to be any kind of card shark. I’m a slightly larger than average fish on a good day. I can identify good starting hands, I can calculate odds, and I’m learning how to put on pressure bets, but I’m really only better than the guppies. But of course, I really only started getting serious (and not really that serious, compared to real poker bloggers) about learning real-money poker (as opposed to valueless-chip wild card poker with my cousins) in the last six months or so, and I play with a bankroll of around a penny (okay, more than that, but basically not a bankroll so much as some money I use for playing with).
So last night, when I “sat down” to play Omaha Hi/Lo on Pacific, I had no expectations whatsoever. I was down, then up just a little, then back down. I eventually got frustrated and spewed money out to the table. I’m sure everyone else there was thrilled to see my bonus money go their way.
Wanting to prove myself, I went back to my preferred site Poker Room. [Side note: anyone else play poker on a Mac running OSX know of any other sites that work?] I didn’t just go running to the site, I went running to the Turbo SNGs – also known as Coins for Bowser where Bowser == me.
I suppose if I was in this poker thing just for money, I would never go anywhere else. I’ve won more than 40% of these tables, came in second (which also pays, though just a pittance) another 20%. Plus, they’re over quick, so you can do a few of them in an hour. First table – the $5 variety I usually go for. I got to heads up, and then got unlucky at the wrong moment and ended up in second. Then, for some reason, I decided I’d try something new.
A few weeks ago, Poker Room had a promotion where whoever won the most SNGs in a weekend would get some ridiculous sum of money. That same weekend, they added new Turbo tables at the $10 level, as well as $20, $50, and probably higher (I don’t scroll down that far). I was curious to see how the play was up one level, so I put my $10 in, and was pleased to find the same level of play (a.k.a. passive and occasionally stupid) as at the $5 variety.
Unfortunately, though, I got unlucky at the wrong moment, and went out in third. I got all my money in on the flop when I was best, and the turn and river did me in. Such is poker. But even with the bubble loss, I was confident that I could beat this table. So, I signed up for another.
Before I go on to talk about that, though, I’d like to mention one particular ass who was seated to my left during the first $10 table. He got royally pissed when my full house beat his straight (like they are prone to do…), and started gunning for me. But not in the “I’m going to be smarter than you and take all your money” kind of way – more like the “I’m going to make fun of you and call you ‘gay’ a lot” kind of way. I think he was trying to get me on tilt. I laughed at him and said “thanks” every time he said something rude about me. And I laughed even more when the guy who took me out unceremoniously took him down in one hand later.
Moving on. At the start of this second $10 table, I was getting crap for cards. But I decided to make myself the bully of the table, and for some reason it was working. Pre-flop raise, two callers, bet the flop, both fold. I did this probably six times in a row before someone got the nerve to call me. Then I calmed down a little, but by that point I was already a staggering chip leader. Aggression is awesome. Aggression won me the table.
There was one hand I played through to showdown that I am a little uncertain about. I flopped top pair and a baby flush draw, and was in with one person. I bet half the pot and he called. The turn brought my heart flush, but I was scared for a bigger flush. Apparently, though, I was not scared enough to fold. I checked, he bet half the pot, I called. The river came, it was not a heart, I checked, he bet half the pot, I called. I’m pretty sure that was wrong. If I thought I was beat, I should have folded. And if I thought I wasn’t, I should have raised. I’m also pretty sure the “check-call” is not a real popular poker “move.” It turned out okay, as the other guy just had two pair.
All in all, at the end of the day I was up $17 on Poker Room. (Let’s not discuss Pacific. That money is dead to me.) Also, and this is really the important part to me, I was excited about poker again. My heart was racing when I bet, and when I had a good hand, I was shaking. It was awesome. Not as awesome as playing at Foxwoods, but way more awesome than driving three hours round trip.