Deep Stack Poker Today

I played the Hideaway Sunday noon deep stack today.  You start with 200 big blinds and rounds are 20 minutes, so there's actually some poker play before stacks become short.  I'm going to try a bit different reporting format.  Note that the tournament starts with 100-200 blinds.

I finished 8th of 22, which means I played a while and didn't get any money.

Why I lost:

1. I played only B+/A- poker and could have played better.
2. I got unlucky.  And this was the primary reason.

I sounds like sour grapes to say I got unlucky but given how tournaments play you need to make some hands AND get paid when you do or win a lot of coin flips.

I believe I pushed all-in and risked my tournament life twice the entire tournament.  Once in the middle stages I re-raised pre-flop with AA and my opponent folded and even if called I would have been all-in with the nuts.  The other time was my last hand.

And the former hand is a good example of how I got unlucky.  In the first round of the tournament I flopped the nut flush draw, turned the flush and got paid off by a player who flopped a straight.  And that's the only time by big hands really got paid off.  I won a ton of pots, but most were raising pre-flop and taking blinds or taking it down with a continuation bet, often when I had nothing.

I had a stretch of hands where I had KK, QQ, and KQ and couldn't even get any action on my pre-flop raises.  With QQ I raised just more than 2 BB in EP.  With KQ I raised less than 4 BB from the small blind after 2 limpers.

3 key hands that made or broke the tournament for me:
1) The aforementioned AA hand.  I think I played this pretty poorly.  I had about 53000 in chips.  With blinds 1500 and 3000, MP raises to 10K, I have AA in SB and after thinking a bit decide to shove since any re-raise commits me.  I also though the oversized raise might look weak.  This was bad for two reasons.  First, he still has to call off most of his stack here.  And unless he has a top 5 hand it's not likely.  Second, with AA I'm so far ahead I can afford to slow play.  In retrospect I should have smooth called and check-raised all in on the flop.  Might have busted, but likely could have won 15K or maybe 40K more. (Note that something seems off here but perhaps this was the start of the level.  The next hand seems to have happened way later.)
2) Last hand before the second break.  Blinds are 1500/3000 about to go to 2000/4000.  UTG shoves for 30K and it folds to me in BB.  I know UTG understands short stack play and that he doesn't have time to wait.  I have 66 and it's going to cost me 1/3 of my stack, which is borderline for calling.  I decide that so much of his range is two-big cards that I should call.  He says "nice call" and rolls over A2s.  He catches an ace on the river and instead of being up to 123K and first or second in chips, I have 62K and an average stack.  This is killer.  I realize I'm going to lose 30% of the time and that's poker.   But I KNOW to win I need to win pots like this.
3) I had raised and won the pot uncontested pre-flop about 4 of the last seven hands (I had K8, KK, QQ, KQ so it wasn't just moves).  I showed KK once.  Action folds to me on the button with KJs.  This is a raising hand but I'm concerned someone will play back at me.  My error is that they two player in the blinds are so tight that they aren't going to play back with less than a premium hand.  SB and BB calls.  Flop is JT6 all clubs, it checks to me and I bet 12000 into 18000.  SB raises to 25000 and I call.  Turn is a 2 and she shoves for the pot.  I think a long time and decide I don't want to go broke here.  Should have raised PF, should have shoved the flop, should have called her shove knowing her game.

Lost too many chips on that last hand and put me in bad shape the rest of the way.

Meier got 4th place, which was nice for him.  Will definitely play this again.

No Limit comes to Washington

Well, sort of.

While playing poker in casinos has been legal as long as I remember, Washington has a screwed up set of laws.  First the maximum poker bet in tribal ("Indian") casinos has been $500, but in card rooms the max was $20 when I started playing several years ago.  They upped the maximum to $40 about 3 or 4 years ago which led to a bunch of 20-40 limit games, which is actually decent stakes, and some 2-40 spread limit.  The 2-40 game was a huge improvement over the 3-6 and 4-8 limit games that dominated the area.  Not only could you bet enough to get people to fold but you had huge implied odds which made it "correct" the play a lot of speculative hands, even against raises.  This led to much more action and much more profit.  But still it wasn't even close to no limit -- the $40 max came into play in almost every raised pot.

The Washington Gaming Commission has been debating higher limits probably since the day they upped the limit to $40.  Finally a month ago they decided to allow a trial of hold 'em with a $100 max bet with the law going into affect 30 days later.  Friday the 15th was day 30 and The Hideaway was one of the places that got a 3-100 spread game going.  It's still not true no limit but in playing a few hours I only saw one hand where the $100 max came into affect.  With a $200 max buy-in, you run out of chip before you run into the cap.  Note that if someone bets $40, you can then raise to $140.  It's really hard to have a deep enough stack and big enough pot that you'd want to bet more than $100.

Anyway, I played in the inaugural game after work on Friday.  Lots of people were interested in playing or at least willing to try.  The game was really good.  I doubled my buy in over 3-4 hours and it would have been much, much better had I not lost a huge pot on a bad suck out.  But that's poker.

I expect I'll still play at Snoqualmie with the 2-5 no limit, but this game is a good alternative.

Hideaway Fall Classic

One of my disappointments in the local poker scene is the lack of reasonably priced deep stack events -- tournaments where you actually play some poker before you get to the stage where everyone is shoving all-in every hand.  Either you have daily $30-60 tournaments that are fast with little or no skill or $500+ special events like Tulalip's 10-10-10 $1010 event.  So I was excited when I saw The Hideaway was having a Fall Classic with a series of reasonably priced events $60-120 and $240 for the main event with a lot of chips to start with and 20-minute rounds.

I played in a few of these.  The first was a $60 buy-in tournament starting with 30K chips (100-200 blinds) and 20-minute levels -- their normal tournament but twice as much play.  I didn't play very well and went out early.  The second event was an interesting twist on a team tournament.  Normally in a team tournament, the teammates switch who's playing every level (15 - 30 minutes).  In this tournament each team member was part of a pool of 20 players.  Each pool played its own tournament with the top 3 getting paid.  Then the top team, based on the ranks of its team members, wins 25% of the total prize pool.  I finished 4th in my pool and Meier got 3rd in his pool, which made us the top team.  We'll take it but we both feel like we could/should have won our individual pools as well.  Meier in particular got unlucky on his last two hands or could have been heads up with 2/3 of the chips.

I had a Mariners conflict and missed the Omaha/8 tournament which I wanted to play.  I played the NL bounty tournament Friday AM and finished with two bounties and go unlucky and busted at the final table.

Then I played the HORSE tournament on Saturday.  HORSE is a mixed game where you play Hold 'em, Omaha/8, Razz, Stud, and stud/Eight.  (Yeh, the "E" is kind of a stretch.)  Anyway, the tournament sucked and everyone who played in it thought so too.  Basically they started with too many chips for everyone given it's a fixed limit structure and raised the blinds too slowly.  I played 6 hours before busting at which point they got to the final table of 8 from 24 who started.  A tournament of this nature shouldn't take 6 hours to complete much less to just get to the final table. We spent 3 hours just passing chips back and forth when the blinds were tiny.  Then played some poker for a couple hours, then hit a shove fest where it came down to who caught cards.  Oh well.  Was fun to play HORSE for real and I'd probably go back for their cash game.  But I'd never play a structure like that again.

For the series, I think I wound up slightly ahead -- cashing once in the team tournament to pay for my four entry fees and having the bounties as profit.

No poker as I'm busy at work.  Played a silly social game Sunday night.  I'm not even sure you could call it poker.  Looking to play on Friday when the card room max jumps from $40 to $100 and there's going to be 1/3 "no limit" at the Hideaway.

Toronto and Buffalo

Before going back to work I got in one last vacation.  My friends Meier and Nanci were going to Buffalo for a week with a two-day side trip to Toronto in the middle.  Having never been to either or Niagara Falls, at least that I remember, I decided to join them for part of the trip.  When am I ever going to have a chance to see Buffalo or Toronto?

Flew into Toronto on Monday and they met me at the airport after I passed through customs.  We drove to downtown Toronto and wandered around.  Perhaps the most interesting things we saw was Paws Way, which is as cute as the pictures on their web site.  It's part dog history museum, part educational facility, part shop, and part training center.  They also have a little cafe in the front.  I had no idea such a thing existed anywhere.  Had dinner at Il Fornello.  Went back to our hotel, which was all the way back by the airport, but not before driving through the large Jewish neighborhood of Toronto.  Next day we got a late start, saw Casa Loma (house on the hill) which is a famous historic castle.  After being there and watching some house hunters, I decided our home should have a fancy name.  So now we live at "Casa Oso" or perhaps we should call it "Casa Oso de miel".

We had a late lunch then spent an hour at the Shoe museum which was surprisingly OK.  By pure coincidence the Mariners were in town, so we went to the Blue Jays game that night.  We had checked ahead and thought it would be fun to see a game in Toronto.  Of course, the Mariners lost and looked terrible, but made it interesting in the 9th.  Ichiro had 4 hits. And the stadium was empty.  We complain about the Mariners drawing 10-15K, but there must have been only about 4000 people at the game though the Jays reported 12K paid.  Before going to the game Nanci and I went up the CN Tower and had great views of the city and a cool view looking straight down on Rogers Centre (nee the Skydome).

 

 

Went back to the airport hotel, got some sleep then got up the next "morning" and headed to Niagara Falls on the way to Buffalo. 

Niagara Falls was awesome.  A picture is worth 1000 words.

We had hoped to play poker at Casino Niagara but they had a couple of dealers call in sick and had 15 names on the wait list.  I found this stunning as I'm sure they could have found back up dealers.  In this economy every dealer is looking to pick up extra shifts. Then back to the US of A. Buffalo isn't very touristy.  After Meier and Nanci dropped me at my hotel I walked around downtown for a little bit and saw some of the historic buildings.  Meier picked me up later and we went to Duff's for buffalo wings with Nanci's family -- how can you go to Buffalo and not have wings?!  Wings were good but we all ate too much.  Meier and I headed back to the Falls to play some poker, actually wound up playing on the New York side and had an interesting border crossing at 2:30 AM when we wanted to go back to pick up poker chips.  Ended OK but got home very, very late.

Thursday I got up and wandered around town by myself.  Walked down to Coca-Cola Field, then walked along the waterfront and looked across to Canada.  Meier met me and we discovered that City Hall has a free viewpoint on the 28th floor so we got a good look at the city.  Then it was back to eating -- some famous hot dog place that didn't impress me at all and Anderson's for custard (soft serve ice cream) which was pretty good.  Then airport and home.

Lots packed in in just four days.

Back to No Limit

I played 2-5 no limit at Snoqualmie Casino last night for the first time in a couple of months.  After a horrible start and an up and down session, I cashed out up 1/2 a buy-in.

My very first hand, I limp re-raised in a straddled pot with QQ and the raiser shoved all-in.  I was pretty sure he had AA or KK and folded.  It's possible I made a bad lay down not wanting to lose all of my chips on the first hand but I think it was right.  Even so, it cost me half my stack.  I had to add on a couple of times to have a healthy stack and was basically back to my starting chips when my big hand of the night came up.

I limped in middle position with pocket eights and 6 or 7 people saw a flop of Q-8-3 with two clubs.  I bet $20 and a player check-raised to $70.  He was one of my targets at the table, clearly willing to put a lot of money in on a draw or medium strength hand. Given he might be drawing and was unlikely to have QQ (and if he does, I lose all my chips), I re-raised him to about $170.  He went all-in and I immediately called.  The turn was a club, which I didn't like and the river was a blank.  He showed KQ for one pair and I doubled up.  Unfortunately I lost of bunch of those chips soon after on a bad bluff.  I ground back over the rest of the evening and as noted cashed out well ahead.

I made a couple of poorly timed bluffs, but overall played pretty well though I was a bit rusty.  Hope to go back soon.

Poker success

Made a nice comeback from my poker losses to cash out a big win last Thursday at Club Hollywood.  Was a loose, weak game with people throwing money around.  I made back my losses from the previous week and also ran good as opposed to running horribly bad.  Big hand when my over pair and nut-flush redraw was actually behind on the turn and drew out against second-nut flush and the guy played the river poorly.  Need to get back to Snoqualmie this week and play more no limit.

Also, Tommy is doing much better after a few days of recovery.  In fact he probably has too much energy for his own good.

Poker Tournament Win

Been working on a lot of small projects over the past couple of weeks.

Had cousins in town last weekend -- on their way to an Alaska cruise -- and spent much of Thursday, all day Friday and Saturday evening with them.  Working on getting ready for 4th of July this week.  Cleaning up, though Monica doesn't notice it, planting plants, making lists and checking them twice.

I took a break today and played the 11 AM tournament at Hideaway.  As I've probably mentioned, this is the best local daily tournament as you start with 100 BB but it's still pretty fast.  Was able to grind my way through with great short stack play and bully the table, despite losing half my stack with QQ vs AA, ironically with both of us limping in.  One thing I like about this tournament is that the short stack play is terrible and any tournament like this involves mainly short stack play from about 12 players left.  Stole blinds, but really I won because I won a bunch of races, mostly as a slight underdog.  After the ugly QQ vs AA hand, I won KQ vs. 77, 33 vs a very short stack A6, KJ vs 99 for 75% of the chips, and on the final hand my JTs beat the small stacks Q6.  I raised on the button and he called.  Made a net of $300+.

Home Improvement this week

Our hardwood floors are done.  Our contractor just needs to put together some things he took apart to install the floors, like closet doors and the cover to the air return.  And then the hardwood stairs go in which is a different project.  We decided to just use solid white risers (the vertical part of the stairs), so I painted the MDF boards that he brought over.  Thought it might take a couple hours, but with a roller and a long handle it took about 15 minutes for the actual painting.

Our deck is going, going.  They delivered the new boards today.

I need to plant some fruit shrubs and trees.  Seems like a good time as it's still wet and rainy.  Also been working on our auction business a bit.

Played poker Tuesday night at Snoqualmie Casino.  It was the first time I'd been there in three months.  I came back from Las Vegas in March and was a bit frustrated and took a break.  Between being out of town every weekend, finishing up work, and knowing I was going to Vegas, poker didn't fit in April or May, or when it did I met Meier in Seattle.  Anyway, a very boring session.  I saw two pocket pairs -- raised and flopped top set with jacks, called a raise and folded the flop with sixes -- and AK and AQ (won with both), and a bunch of nothing.  Good news is I finished up a bit.  A lot of times when card dead I play too many very speculative hands and wind up behind.  I tightened up and just made money where I could.  Bummer is that it was a very good table -- saw a number of pre-flop all-ins for $200 with marginal hands.  Lots of money was being passed around.  Couldn't really get much though.

Anyway, back to work on home projects.

Update

As expected I didn't blog from Las Vegas.  I was doing some running updates on Twitter and Facebook.  Just not enough time/dedication to sit for 10 minutes each day and blog.

Had a great time in Vegas.  The weather was hot and sunny and I actually got to enjoy it for at least a few minutes each day.  Yes most of my time was spent inside poker rooms -- which is why the weather in Vegas doesn't matter too much -- but I walked outside and spent a few mornings relaxing by the pool. Overall I wound up down a bit for the trip playing poker.  I did really well the first week, then the second week I made a few mistakes and got a bit unlucky in a few hands.  No doubt playing a lot improved my game.  One of my big takeaways is learning to trust my reads -- i.e., whether my opponent has a hand or is bluffing -- which have been dead on.  I've been pretty good but lost a few pots where I called and should have raised.

I played at about a dozen different poker rooms and stopped by two or three others just to take a look.  Added to my chip collection and upgraded a number of other chips to excellent condition.  I guess with all the action the WSOP brings to town a lot of places put new $1 chips in play.  Speaking of which, one of the really cool things I did was to check out the WSOP action.  Meier and I watched the $50,000 Players Championship where we could see 100 of the best -- or at least 100 of the wealthiest poker players -- up close.  Basically every big name player was there, like an all-star game or sorts.  I'd say 1/3 of the field was big name players anyone who follows the sport would recognize (Doyle Brunson, Mike Matusow, Phil Hellmuth, etc.), 1/3 were guys some people would recognize or some knew that they won this or that tournament, and the rest appeared to be internet wonder kids.  There were a bunch of young guys that didn't look at all familiar. In addition to watching the start, I came back three days later to sit in the studio and watch the final three battle it out.  It's just what you see on TV.  In fact if you watch on ESPN July 27th, you should be able to see me on TV.

Also met up with my cousins Roz and Irv while there and got to catch up.  And I did a touristy thing and checked out the Auto Collection at Imperial Palace.  Lots of cool, classic cars; Monica would love it.

Last week I spent catching up between handing our remodeling projects.  With the floors being sanded and finished, I had to get the dogs out of the house every day.  Our deck contractor also started the tear down of the existing deck.  We knew some of the decking was bad, but as he's removed the decking up we can see how badly rotted some of the joists are.

The hardwood floor is basically done.  The flooring is all in, sanded and finished.  He just needs to reinstall the molding, air registers, and some other things that were removed.  He's also going to install the hardwood stairs and then we're done with the inside.  Deck project is going to take a while.

Day 10, Monday

Took it easy and slept late.  Didn't do much.  Yay, me.

Met a friend to play poker for an hour at Parkers.  Had never played there and not a bad place.  Then met Monica and friends at Bell Square for dinner (Cheesecake Factory) and some browsing.  Good news is we had great service.  Bad news is I figure I get service like that once a year and we still have six months to go.

Tomorrow is Cocoa's birthday. We don't know how old he is.

Taking the Summer Off

As many of you who are reading this know, a couple months ago my company decided to close its Bellevue office and laid us all off.  I was part of the transition team that was retained until May 3 to help move our work from Bellevue to Kiev.  While May 3 is technically my last day at Serena, Thursday was my last day in the office and today starts my "summer".

Rather than jump back into another job, I decided to take a break for the summer to work on some projects.  I'm going to try to blog about my day-to-day activities though won't necessarily post daily. One thing I want to do is take an extended trip to Las Vegas though this seems harder and harder to fit in around other plans.

Tulalip tournament

Finally played poker for the first time in a couple of weeks.  A friend wanted to play the Tulalip evening tournament, so we met in Northgate and carpooled up.  The tournament has 30-minute levels which is much better than the 15-20 minute levels you see in most places.  The structure allows for play, though there's a huge jump after the first break when blinds go from 100-200 (300 an orbit) to 200-400 with a 25 ante (850 an orbit).  To be frank, this is a flaw in what's otherwise a good tournament.

Given that you go from good stack to short stack after the break, I took some chances in the third and fourth levels and wound up busting out early.  While busting out early seems like a bad thing, it's actually better to take chances and bust out early than nurse a tiny stack a long time and still miss the money.  11th and 120th place pay the same -- nothing.  Of course if you get to 11th or 12th, you had a chance to cash, but truly these no difference between 30th and 90th except you waste a couple more hours.  A had a couple of hands where I made a steal raise, bet the flop and got check-raised all-in.  Not having much of a hand, I could fold but that cost be a lot of chips.  Went out when I made a small raise with KK looking for action, shoved on an A-A-9 flop (pretty good) and was called by 99.

The cash game was good, though I hate the 1-3 blinds and $200 max structure.  I guess it's the same as 2-5, $300 max but both feel very, very small.  On an aside, that's one of the pluses of playing in Vegas -- they have larger max buy-ins which allows you to win more money and play more hands.  Imagine choosing between two stocks that are similar companies each selling for $10/share (yes the price is silly but bear with me).  If you were told one stock could never go above $20 while the other could go into the $50s, the latter is the better choice all other things being equal.

I turned a small profit in the cash game and was close to even for the night.  I think I made one bad fold, but since I folded I'll never know. I'd go back sometime, but it's still quite a trip.  With a couple stops at the park and ride and dropping off Meier and home, it took me well over an hour to get home.

Tournament at Hideaway

I played the 2-5 game at Snoqualmie last Wednesday and had some huge swings.  Was down two buy ins at one point.  Quite honestly I wasn't playing well -- too loose and too passive.  I got "fooled" on a big hand where my opponent took a lot of time to make his decision on the flop and looked like he was going to fold and I pegged him for weak.  Instead he had flopped the nuts and I guess was pondering a raise.

I shaped up my play, hit some draws, made a couple of hero calls in big pots and wound up cashing out up a buy-in. That gets me close to even for the year.

This morning I decided to check out Hideaway with Meier.  We'd popped in a couple of time since it re-opened a couple of years ago, but it never seemed inviting.  Was the same four to six regulars and a couple of dealers hoping to get a 3-6 game started.  But recently they've been advertising a pretty good structure for their daily tournaments so I figured I'd give it a try.  I had the day off today for President's Day (yes really) and Meier is always happy to play in Shoreline casinos.  It turns out we know the casino manager there.  Mooske used to be the poker room manager at Treasure Casino and then Rascal's before both places removed their poker room; and while there ran the best low buy-in tournaments in town.

Unfortunately it was a bit of a last minute decision and we were both alternates.  I didn't get in until the middle of the third level which put me at a disadvantage.  After the break, it was push fest time -- my chip stack was so small my only choices were to go all-in or fold.  I stole the blinds with 54s, then raised with KQs and was called by a shorter stack with 44 -- a really terrible play as he's either a slight favorite or a 4.5:1 dog if I have a pair -- flopped a king and knocked him out.  Then I shoved with AK and took the blinds and had my M up to 9 and we broke to two tables.

From this point on I ran over the table, shoving liberally to pick off blinds which is the only way to play.  Sometimes I had hands, but a lot of times I just had position.  I believe of the perhaps 15-20 times I pushed all-in pre-flop the KQ v 44 hand was the only time I got called.  In a key hand, a decent shack shoved, I found KK and re-shoved and didn't get unlucky against 66.  At this point I finally had enough chips that I could raise without having to go all-in.

At the final table, the big stack was on my right and I continued to accumulate chips once he was out of the hand.  I think we started the table with 165K for him and 120K for me.  Key hand of the tournament.  Blinds are 10K-20K and big stack (now #2 stack) is first to act min raises to 40K, I ask what he has left and he counts 150K.  I shove for 230K total with AK, the BB tosses in her last few chips and #2 guy thinks a long time before folding JJ.  BB shows QT (or something silly), I flop an ace and we're 5-handed and I have almost half the chips in play.  It was easy from there especially since no one wanted to tangle with me.

Last hand I limp on the button with A7o, trying to trap.  Flop is K-7-4 and my opponents pushes for about the size of the pot.   I think a bit and can't believe he has a king and call.  He shows 54 and doesn't suck out.

If only they were all this easy.  Turned $50 into $565 in about 2.5 hours.

Wild poker action last weekend

I played at Snoqualmie last Saturday night.  Weekends are usually good games because everyone is out having fun and thus the play is more relaxed.  You don't often get "drunk tourist" locally like to do in Las Vegas, but on Saturday night there's a lot more drinking.

It was one of the wildest sessions I've had in a while -- up a bit, down a lot, back to ahead, and finally down a bit.  In a short four hours I had a ton of hands.  AA, KK, QQ, JJ twice, AK at least three times, KQ, AJ, 88, probably some others I forget.

That said, a lot of medium pots but no huge pots.  I don't think I saw the turn with any of the big hands.

I'll never understand why people enjoy getting plastered while playing poker.  A social drink sure, but what's the fun in paying $30/drink because you're so out of it you're giving away your money.  That said, I'm happy to relieve stupid people of their cash; that's much of why I play poker.

Vegas poker trip

Went to Vegas for a few days right before New Year's.  It's a great place to play because there are more good poker rooms in a two mile stretch than there are in all of Washington and Oregon combined.  Had a couple of huge cashes, mainly at the Venetian and Planet Hollywood and came out enough ahead that the trip was free.  Of course staying three nights for $89 total makes that pretty easy.

I played so much poker in three days that I really can't talk about interesting hands or sessions.  Independent of the cash result, it was a lot of fun to live on the wild side.  Cuz I'm kinda a simple boring guy :)

I'll be heading back in March and it looks like July as well.

Poker update

It's not that I haven't been blogging, I actually haven't played much poker since my last post. With the holidays, evenings have been spent shopping, wrapping, packaging, lighting candles, etc.  And then I had a major "non-playing" disappointment.

I played at Snoqualmie a couple of weeks ago and nearly tripled up by buy in. One of my best results of late.  Basically had two big hands where I hit sets and got paid.  One I erred by calling too much pre flop -- but I just didn't believe the guy -- but the other I played well calling down what was essentially a three barrel bluff on an all-club flop.  Also had a simple hand where four people limp called my raise to 25 and a flopped top pair and took down the pot.  I wish I could have more hands that were so easy.

We spent the weekend at Tulalip for my birthday so I could get a lot of poker in.  Unfortunately it didn't work out well. Monica wanted to go shopping after dinner so I accompanied her and didn't get into a game until after 9 PM.  It had been a long day and I just wasn't feeling it.  Though it was a great table with really bad players.  I also liked that their 3-5 game allows a $500 buy in which means more money on the table.  Wound up winning a little bit almost all of it on one hand where a guy "donated" $300 with trips, no-kicker against my tips-ace kicker when his hand HAD to be no good on the turn.

Hope to get in a session this week, likely Friday if not before, before I head to Las Vegas next Monday.

Poker this week

I'm trying blogging from my phone. Good week of poker. Came out ahead on cash game Tuesday. Won a home game tournament Friday and cashed in the Snoqualmie tournament today.

Hmm, apparently blogging via phone doesn't create a title.  Scratch that and stick to Twitter and Facebook via phone/text.

Session on Tuesday was good.  I nearly doubled up early with KK vs AK with all money in pre-flop.  He really thought he was racing when I four-bet!?!  Played a couple more hours and gave some back.  Some friends held a home game Friday night.  Well, I wish it was Friday night.  We were supposed to start at 9:30 but actually started at 11 (!). Without much structure and organization we kept the starting blinds for at least 90 minutes.  Good news was that I chopped the prize pool with another player at 2AM though I had a small chip lead. 

Today I probably played the best tournament poker I've played in a long time.  I had one bad read, but basically made hands, put pressure on other people, and kept winning pots.  By the time we got to the final table everyone was micro-stacking (about 2-5 BB) and the determining factors were draw for seats, getting lucky with cards, then chips, and last a touch of skill. I did poorly on the first one and wound up 8th. So I cashed twice in one day.  Not sure I've ever done that.

The wild variance of tournaments

Tournaments are great fun because you can turn a 60 buy in into a few hundred of few thousand dollars in three or four hours. I enjoy them because the competition is generally week because people don't adjust their play to tournament constraints. Adequate cash players become bad tournament players and bad players become terrible in tournaments.

The flip side is the variance is high. While 30-50% of cash players at a table come out ahead only 10-15% of players in any tournament make the money. As well, with short stacks, you can't be patient and one mistake or one unlucky hand can do you in. Today was a day like that.

Played the Snoqualmie $60 bounty tournament. In addition to paying the top 10 players, you get $10 for every player you bust out. It's a reasonable tournament -- the players aren't very tough but it plays pretty fast. You have to take some chances. Today I had three key hands in huge pots, which coincidentally all involved the same hole cards.

Experts say that when you get under 8-12 big blinds, you should either go all-in or fold preflop. In part that's because you shouldn't raise for 1/3 of your stack and then ever fold. I generally agree but I've found that in these fast tournaments, bad players react almost the same to any raise size. If you have 10 BB whether you raise to 3 BB or 10 BB, people will look you up with TT,AQ+ and fold everything else. A small raise puts a few more hands in play. Thus a small raise has almost the same benefit is a big raise without risking your tournament life with 5-high. That said this play can sometimes get you in trouble. Because of my cards, stack size, and position, I wound up with a few hands where I raised, got called and was all-in on the flop.

First time I had king-rag, flopped a king and both players folded. Then the last hand before the break, the first key hand came up which hurt me. I read an article where the author declared the worst thing that happens in poker is when a third party makes a stupid play which affects the outcome of the hand. And I ran into this here. A MP limps, late position player with a short stack limps in, I complete the SB with JT, BB checks. The flop is 5-2-2 rainbow. This seems like a good spot to bluff -- except for BB, there's no reason anyone should have a 5, 2, or 43 -- so I make a small bet, BB calls (oops), LP calls (double oops). Even if I hit a J or T on the turn, I'm going to be careful. Turn is a T, I check BB bets 1200, LP goes all-in for 1800, I think a long time and fold -- one of them must have me beat, BB says "I have to call". BB has 95, LP has Kh7h, there are not two hearts on the board. LP simply decided he wanted to go home. He made obvious mistakes on all three streets including a naked bluff with no fold equity; it's his money he can do what he wants BUT his stupid play cost me the pot and truly donated chips to BB. I could call one player here, but not two.

Next key hand. UTG limps and it folds to me in the hijack with 7h5h. I decide to steal here, though to be honest I missed that UTG was in until I declared raise. The BB and UTG both call. Flop is Th-8h-5s, pretty good for my hand. Both players check, I shove all in for 2/3 of the pot, BB folds but UTG tanks and finally calls with JdTd. His call is easy if he knows what I have, even though I'm a slight favorite, but this is the exact peril of limp calling (see a couple posts below) with a marginal hand. Even if you hit, you have no idea if your hand is good. Turn ace, River 7. I survive.

Last hand. One mid position limper. I have AJ in SB and raise to 1200, BB is only caller. Flop is J-T-x. I bet 2000, BB raises to 4000, I got all in for about 5500, he calls (uh oh). He has JT. The turn is a ace, but he resucks with a river ten and I'm done. This worked great for him, but I think he'll get in trouble calling here with JT. If he doesn't hit the ten, he's going to lose a lot of chips here.

Poker is a game of skill, but in the short term, luck plays a pretty huge factor. And my luck wasn't so good today.

Snoqualmie 11/18

Had one of the most frustrating nights of poker in a while. First see my previous post on bad players.

Was at a good table at Snoqualmie against a number of bad players and wound up down a buy-in. Played three or four hands the first hour and was up $4 -- I had K8 in the blinds flopped top pair a rivered a straight and won a small pot. I could never get anything going. Had at most one big pair, no big aces that I recall, and a couple of small pairs. Saw a lot of KQ, KJ, 75 hands.

A made a few bad plays, but meanwhile I watched people throw money around. The guy on my left seemed like he had never played live before -- needed an explanation on every bit of terminology. He was pretty tight, but would limp call for 20% of his stack. I made a bunch of second best hands, but I think my real problem was inconsistent aggression. I'd make a loose raise pre-flop then give up when someone check-called. I think I could have pushed people off better hands a few times with a turn or river bet. And I probably played a bit too lose.

But ultimately when people are calling too often, you have to make a hand to win, and I couldn't make a hand.

Overall I'd grade my play a B-, but I need to be on my A game.

Recognizing bad players, way #1: Limp, call

A key element to winning at poker is playing against bad players. If everyone at the table is as good or better than you, the only way you can make money is to get lucky. So it's critical to find bad players and be able to recognize them. How do you find a bad player? Easy, look for them to make bad plays. What's a bad play, well that's not so easy. But here's a favorite of mine.

Sklansky's gap theory says you need a better hand to call a raise then to raise. An application of that is that limp calling is a bad decision. You have a hand you've already deciding isn't worth raising, are now faced with a raise and decide to call the raise. Essentially concluding A > B > A.

Like anything in poker, it's not a hard truth but "it depends". This doesn't apply to a fixed limit game where you're getting at least 4:1 and sometimes 10:1 on your call; here you'd be foolish to fold though this is a reason to not limp first in or in early position. In non-poker terms, once you've paid/wasted $4 for a bottle of water, you might as well drink it. In no limit games, this is often a bad play but one you see all the time. With deep enough stacks and a speculative hand, it makes sense to call a small raise with a speculative hand, like a small pair. But you need to be able to win enough money when it hits to make up for the times it misses. If you start with $100, limp in early position with 44 and someone raises to 25, you can't call off 1/4 of your stack. You'd actually be wise to fold a raise to 15 unless several others are in the pot but that's open to discussion.

That said, one of the worst plays you can make is to limp with a medium strength hand -- a suited ace, ace-jack, ace-ten, two face cards -- then call a raise out of position when you're easily dominated. You're better calling with 98 than with AT even though AT is a better hand overall.

This is doubly true in a short-stack game where players have 20-50 BB only. Watch players who limp call and see if they ever put in more than 10% of their stack or have trouble hands.