Had a chance to visit the in-laws and the wife/kiddo in Vegas, so I couldn't pass up on an evening tournament. Especially with my better half indulging in the slots - I'm way more +ev than her, even as a recreational poker player who almost only plays tournaments.
Almost.
I wanted to play in Alliante station's big Sunday night $90 freeze out, but alas, the room is small and they shut it down after a mere 6 tables. Turns out it was their monthly 100% payback tournament, so I had very little chance of getting in as all the locals had already locked up their seats.
I did put in as an alternate, but I was 16th. They ended up taking 4.
So after haplessly standing around for 45 minutes while the wife played slot jockey, I reluctantly plopped down to a 2-4 fixed limit game with a hundred dollar rack.
I remember fixed limit poker from back in the day, enjoyed it then, and believe it or not still enjoy it now. These days it's completely unbeatable, as the old "no flop no drop" axiom doesn't apply. Chips are taken regardless, up to 10% or $6 which is absurd in a $40 pot. Still, it beat draining my bank account on the machines, and I wasn't really in the mood to mix it up with the sunglass wearing punks at the 1/2 tables.
Anyway, the game can be an absolute beast of a grind - but if approached with a light heart and the spirit of fun, well, you get a few hours of entertainment and if you're lucky (as I was) you may turn a tiny profit.
I ended the night up over $30, thanks mostly to good fixed limit habits that I haven't lost. It all came back to me. When I speculated, which is very tempting to do in limit - it was almost always with cards that had some post flop equity and almost always in position. I didn't limp in early position with small suited connectors, but I confess I did with small pairs.
If I had a premium I would raise, knowing I was bound to get multiple callers anyway - but I did get value when my hands held, and I was able to get away on wet boards with action behind or in front.
I felt very comfortable, but also recognized the futility of actually making any money. The table was friendly, fairly fishy and mostly locals. A fine way to spend a Friday night.
My biggest hand of the night came early on. Bunch of limpers, the button raised, I defended my big blind and only one folded (why?) behind. I flopped four to a nut flush with Ah5h. I led out (semi-bluffing is a great tool, though often overused by older players, in Limit) and it was folded to the button who re-raised me and I flatted. The turn brought me the nuts and I led again, he 2 bet me and I 3 bet and he capped. Awesome. The turn was a blank. I fired, he flatted. With all the pre-flop limp/callers the pot was about $50. Silly but fun.
I also dragged a biggish pot on my last hand before I racked up. I was down a few dollars when I looked down at queens from EP and raised. Got 3 customers. Board was a low rainbow. I fired, all 3 called. Great. Turn was an ace, I checked - SO DID EVERYONE ELSE. Awesome. The river was a king. I bet, though I don't know why really. 2 callers, I had the best hand. Maybe $40 in the pot. Funny game.
The next night I figured it would be more family time, but after a way too large breakfast buffet at Red Rock, the wife surprised me by wanting to go play slots. She had ended up a bit after her binge the previous evening, so I was happy to let her. Meanwhile, I took the munchkin bowling and we had a great time.
Later in the evening when things settled down, I was able to go back to Red Rock and enter their super turbo $65 splash-a-ment.
Less than one orbit in, I had aces in the big blind. Limp, limp, limp, limp - and it was on me. Big ass raise, 10x. All folded save for the small blind. Stubborn.
Flop came 566. He checked, I bet large, 2000, a third of my stack and almost a pot sized bet. He called.
On the turn he checked and I should have checked behind here for pot control. Also his check/call on the flop should have set off the alarm bells. A big value bet by him on the river and I should have been able to find a fold.
Unfortunately because I was so pumped to be playing and because I instinctively knew that this home game hero had binked it - I jammed the turn and he snapped with a baby six.
I suck.
Re-entered and went to another table.
Let me just say - I ended up min-cashing in this one, so I made $10 more than my investment; but there were times along the way that were pretty great for me as a poker player. Not the badly played aces or the first hand at my new table though.
I was so tilted that when I re-entered I almost ended up triple barrel bluffing away all my chips.
I watched the table at first, maybe half an orbit. Lots of limpers, very passive.
As I said, I was steamed, so I decided to bet with 2 limpers behind me, I had 65. I made it 3x plus 3 more blinds, 6x total.
All folded but the one older and mouthy guy to my right.
The flop came with a king and two hearts. He checked, I c-bet half the pot, he called. Turn was a black ace. He checked, I c-bet half the pot, he called. River was a blank.
Sigh. I was pretty steamed at this point; both from my badly played aces and the fact that my gut said mouthy didn't have shit for a hand. I knew he was drawing, and I knew that he had missed. He checked, I pushed.
I'm guessing he was a long time vet of live poker, so that's probably why he tanked so long before folding to my river shove (which was another c-bet for half the pot) - he sensed weakness from me, but he knew the only thing he could beat was a bluff, and he didn't have the stones to make the hero call.
It was a big pot. Ship it. Everyone was curious, so I stuck the needle in and showed the bluff.
Felt great afterwards and relieved that my steam 3 barrel bluff had worked out. If a heart had come on the river I likely would have had to give up and been down to a third of my original stack. As it was, I had more than doubled up. I had gotten lucky that my read was right, and even luckier that he hadn't looked me up anyway with ace high.
For the next two hours I was able to accumulate almost exclusively through small ball moves and selective aggression in position.
The nice lady on my left clucked her tongue as I brutalized the limpers. Finally, in a battle of the blinds, she came along into a hand with me when it was folded to my SB and I limped with AJ.
The flop came with an ace and I check called her 3 barrel bluff all the way to the river with top pair to scoop an ass load of chips from her. Perfect read, perfect line to extract the most chips.
As I mentioned, there were a few really transcendent moments - I felt I had absolute control for a good two hours. I finally busted mouthy with pocket kings when he limped and then check raise shoved into me with KJ. Image truly is everything.
I'm trying to remember specific hands, and can't really - but I really felt (at least for those two hours) that I had entered a different level.
I was very disinterested in playing from early position - I folded QJ I don't know how many times, plus loads of baby aces.
In position however, I was a beast, and played all of the hands I folded in EP and more.
Occasionally, if the targets were right, I didn't even bother to look at my cards until the turn if they had stuck around. It was great.
Then the third table broke and we were down to 18 players. I was the tournament chip leader when a young guy and an older gent with sunglasses (usually a bad thing) came to our table.
The young guy I pegged as a better player and avoided him until I couldn't. I raised in the cutoff with a pair of threes and he defended his big blind. The flop came a perfect ragged board with a king. I c-bet, but he wasn't going anywhere. I also c-bet the turn, which I don't remember. He check raised me big. He was full of shit, I felt it, but I had blanked and had to let it go.
Deflated a bit, it was my first significant loss the entire tournament at this table, I took my foot off the gas until I got tangled up with the old guy.
Again, I was in position, but again I had blanked and he check raised me big on the turn. I probably shouldn't have fired a second barrel, but the specifics of the hand escape me.
After those two big hits to my stack we broke for the final table.
Since an average stack was less than 10 bigs at this point, I'm happy to report that my monster stack of 15 bigs managed to hold on just pass the bubble before my AK lost to AQ after all the chips were in pre-flop.
Great time and great fun, but I wish I had adjusted quicker to the two new guys. As it would turn out, the old guy knew what he was doing, the young one not so much - as he managed to spew away most and then all of his chips with absolutely horrific calls that he made POST-FLOP. Crazy.
He didn't make the money, and it was gratifying to see I have to admit. He came off very confident, borderline cocky, but he really didn't have a clue. Earlier I took a hit when I called a tiny stacks shove with aces, and they were cracked yet again.
"OMG that is so sick! How sick is that Oh my God!" he went on and on and on. I didn't say anything, but the old guy chimed in.
"Actually that's pretty standard if you do this long enough..."
It was a remark that was very much appreciated by this fish. The good side of poker once again coming to light.
Speaking of that, my recent post on this blog made it onto 2+2 when I also happened to start a thread on the matter of Barbara Enright.
It is now officially an "epic" thread as it's numbers have climed north of 350 posts and show no signs of slowing.
Predictably, most of the comments are negative towards me, including some rather personal and nasty ones - but it's okay. I called Enright, a woman that I've never actually spoken too, a few nasty names on this blog, and I know she doesn't care. I don't care either.
You see, I'm old enough to understand that adults sometimes get carried away with the name calling, and in the end it doesn't really matter. Was I wrong to drop the c-bomb? Probably. Would I be embarrassed were I to run into Enright and she somehow recognize me or call me out on the name calling? For sure. But I would deal with it like a grown up, and I know she would too. The same can't be said for a lot of the trolls on 2+2, but in the end I hope they could at least recognize the difference between a passionate argument and true malice. I have none of the latter for Ms. Enright and in fact said so in my original post.
As for the bigger picture, I'm really quite thrilled that I seem to have really touched a nerve, that is - the truth hurts and people lash out when someone hits the mark.
My good poker buddy Mixer said he disagreed with my point of view until we discussed it a bit - I actually mostly agree with him and the 2+2 community. I never said I thought it was wrong to say no to any kind of chop. It's always a poker players prerogative to say no. And most chops are indeed bad poker, especially taking a bit off the top to pay the "bubble". I for the most part agree that it's stupid, because it just makes the next guy out the bubble.
But where I depart from the majority, is that more important than having the facts and figures, in the real world I like to live my life by the golden rule, that is, I try to treat others the way I would want to be treated. And in this particular instance, I agree with Barry Greenstein, who is famous for saying - "Math is idiotic."
If I was a life long grinder, a professional poker player - If I had spent most of my waking hours at the table - I would hope that I could still be able to remember back to when I first started and what it was like to be a wide eyed recreational player and what I would have thought if my first ever cash had been callously denied by a humorless senior citizen. In other words, no matter how much the game had beaten me down, I would hope that could put myself in someone else's shoes and weigh that against my own financial interests.
Taking $330 out of $5600 that is almost certain to be chopped up anyway is on it's face an easy choice when it is weighed against the reward of simply thinking of others before yourself. Doing the right thing isn't always the smartest thing, strictly by the numbers. But in the context of this tournament, nearly nine hours into a $75 buy-in event, stuffed to the gills with amateur poker enthusiasts, to make a motion to refuse such a minor safety, after the motion has been announced to the jubilation of the entire room is quite simply a dick move. And I called her on it, and the outrage across 2+2 bears out that I hit very close to home and that I am almost certainly in the right.
Could I have been nicer about it? Sure. Name calling does indeed always weaken an argument; but I've been blogging on a regular basis about poker and lots of other stuff for going on 8 years now, and what I love about it is that I can be brutally honest. More often than not I am brutally honest on myself, but occasionally if I see an injustice, I'm going to call it like I see it. A dick move is a dick move, and if the person pulling the dick move happens to be a douche about it, I'm going to call them a douche. That's just the way it is.
Anger from the other side will often focus on the name calling, because they know they are wrong about the actual issue. That's fine. They are welcome to focus on this minor point because I can sleep well at night knowing I don't bear anyone, even the dicks and douches, any real ill will. But I absolutely will not waste energy and focus trying to walk a super narrow path of righteousness when my opponents have long forsaken any sense of decorum or restraint themselves. There is a line that I won't cross in vitriol, but I am no saint and I will not beat myself up over occasional name calling, especially if it's the truth.
So anyways, I returned to L.A on Memorial Day. without the wife and munchkin, they were to stay on vacation, I had to go back to work. But before work I still had the entire evening before me - so I headed out to the Bike for their Deep Stack poker series - $135 for 18K in chips and a pretty good structure.
I knew going in that this one was a beast, we would be playing till the sun came up if I final tabled and even if I went deep it could be 2am before the money bubble burst. Still, the guarantee was 40K, so it would be a nice payday if I could get to the top half of that final table.
Alas, it was not to be as I busted 64th out of 540 runners, about ten players shy of the money.
Overall I was very happy with my play - I was fine early on with getting all my chips in pre-flop with kings, despite my experience and my gut screaming that I was indeed about to see aces (and I did, it hurt me but I still had 50 bigs or so). I was also very good with my target selection and stealing, up until I made two or three bad moves out of position against monster stacks that hurt me quite a bit. Afterwards I played the shortstack very well and simply got unlucky when my AK lost to AQ - AIPF of course.
The aforementioned bad moves were simply ill advised. I knew the blinds were set to skyrocket and it was time to accumulate, but I really needed to pick a better spot or even abstain for a few more orbits. I loved my first few tables, and managed to score a lot of chips from them, but really the table with the mistakes was more of a table of doom, and I knew it almost immediately after sitting down. The problem was, I had two factors weighing against me - 1) my stack size was medium, a perfect target and not large enough to maneuver post flop effectively, and 2) the table was top heavy with competent (ie, better than me) villains. A deadly combination that thankfully only whittled me down from just under 50 bigs to about 25.
Of course when the levels really got big, it was simply shove or fold. I did get moved to a much better table, so that kept my head above water for a long while. I'm happy to report that when I did pull the trigger I did at least have 15 bigs and hadn't waited too long to get it in. If my AK had held it would have been almost a triple up (all the antes and another short stack caller were in too) and virtually guaranteed me a min-cash.
Yes, I would have loved that, as it was indeed almost 2am when I hit the rail. But on the other hand, I'm glad I wasn't chicken shit about sticking it in. The real money is only at the end, and despite my mishandled steals at the doom table earlier, I feel I could've climbed back if I'd recovered to 40 bigs or so. Ah well. Good times, though I was pretty much dead at work the next day.
Coming up - I'm hoping to get a few more big events under my belt before the WSOP at the end of June. I missed out on Eric's game this week, but that's okay, I think he invited Babs who is one of the WSOP staked players from my home game. She needs the practice. She also did a Bike Deepstack last night and I think it was pretty worth it to go through a bigger card room event like that.
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