Where things can get pretty igry ...Rick's Cafe Americain

My first tournament, a $10+1 limit Texas hold ‘em SNG didn’t go so well.  I played stupid early, recovered middle and got chewed up by the rapidly advancing blinds late.  I busted out in 5th on a suck-out, but I put myself in a short-stack position and I didn’t even ask for the hand history because I didn’t want to relive it.

I took a few days off, but got back on the horse today.  I did it even though I think the levels come much too fast.  10 hands at each level, regardless of time, means that before you blink the blinds are 150/300—and you only start with 800 chips!  Still, I wanted to redeem myself, so I decided to play another limit tournament.  Sometimes it is better to be lucky than good.

I had folded all the way through level 1 when I found myself in the SB with Q♣7♣.  MP raises and gets two callers including the button.  I call, as does the BB.  As Pauly?s mother always says, ?You have to defend your blinds.?

The flop is T♣-8♣-3♣. Its hard to tell if I have the best flush, but I like what I see so far. I check, the BB bets, everyone else calls and I check-raise. Two folds, but the cutoff and button call.  The turn is K♣.  Sure, the A♣ is still out there, but there is one less card that can beat me and I’m going to see the hand to the river.  (After last week’s game at the Blue Parrot, Ferrari would be wary of one of the players hitting the flush on the turn holding A♣x, but I can’t worry about that.) I bet, button calls.  The river is a blank, so I bet out again and the button calls again.

K♣ was a perfect turn for me.  The button (siouxdonym) didn?t have an offsuit Ac, he had an offsuit Jc.  He played two overcards to the flop with an inside straight draw even though there was a flush on the board and I check-raised the flop.  I think I can see why people love playing on Party.  My KQ ♣ flush beats his KJ ♣ flush for +270 with blinds at 10/15, a pretty nice level one haul.

Easy come, easy go.  I lost half of it back to siouxdonym on the next hand. I raised with 99 on the button and he called out of the cut off.  He check called me all the way even though he hit top pair on the flop (tens) with a K kicker. If I had his hand I probably would have thrown a raise at me for value, especially since the turn brought him a flush draw, but he may have been wary of my preflop raise. Still, the way the blinds chew you up in these SNGs you can’t afford to lose many hands.

I then lost a hand that I should have played aggressively.  This is a persistent hole in my game, made more striking because I can see my mistakes as I am making them.  Holding QdTd in the SB, I call a preflop raise because there are 5 players in the pot.  Flop comes Th-8d-7d.  Top pair, decent kicker, flush draw.  I bet, preflop raiser raises again and four people including me see the turn. 9s.  Now there is a straight on the board, so I check to the raiser who bets again.  Obviously I should have folded or raised; instead I only called. The river paired the 8 on the board bit the raiser has no fear and bets again after my likely too-anxious check.  With both a straight and a full house as possibilities, this was a golden opportunity to bet or check raise. A real chance to fuck with a preflop raiser that is likely sitting on a high pair or AK. Why raise preflop if you have the kind of middling cards that would be helped by this flop? Instead I wimp out, check-call and lose to the dead man?s hand when he turns over bullets.  I should have been able to make him fold his aces with that board, but I just couldn’t pull the trigger. Ugh.

My efforts to keep myself afloat by stealing blinds was barely working.  I was down to T355 when the blinds went to 100/200 - and I was stuck in the SB with 74o.  I completed to 200 with the intention of pushing all-in after the flop - regardless of the flop - and hoping for a fold.  My stack was so small that I couldn’t afford to wait around for a playable hand. Fortunately the player mucked when I bet the flop of Q-Q-2 and I picked up the BB; back up to T555.

By then we were down to five players and I was the short stack at T555. The blinds had jumped to 150/300 and I caught the luckiest possible break.  I was dealt 42o in the BB and pushed all-in against the SB, who had limped in.  I really only wanted to force a fold (and defend my stack from the encroaching blinds), but SB called and flipped over QTo.  I flopped two pair, though, and doubled up against the second smallest stack at the table. (And promptly apologized for winning with such garbage.) That hand should have been the death knell but was instead the start of the comeback.

Over the next five hands I got Big Slick twice, but had almost nothing to show for it.  The first time I raised preflop and the table folded to the raise.  Picking up the blinds was nice, but small beer - particularly in light of my meager stack.  The second time I got AK I was in the BB. The table folded to me again without my even putting in a raise, netting me the even smaller beer of just the SB. Total profit for two Big Slicks? T450. Yech.

After a bizarre hand had the big stack knock out two players at once to get us heads-up, I actually just got lucky.  I four-bet the pot pre-flop with A7o. It was essentially a race, since ch49er was playing QTs.  I went all-in when the flop came Q-5-2 but got lucky enough to spike an A on the turn.

ch49er is passive head?s-up, so it was easy to steal pre-flop and build up the advantage I gained from the lucky A. Still, it took another suck-out to put him away.
I had an almost 3:1 chip advantage when I was dealt A7o again.  He four-bet the pot pre-flop.  And after the flop (J-9-5 rainbow), I essentially forced him to put himself all-in with a raise.  He couldn?t have minded though, not when I showed my A7 to his AK.  But again, I got lucky and spiked a 7 on the river to win the tournament.

The tournament was just the right combination of lucky and good. Even the hands I sucked out on I don?t feel particularly guilty about.  I was trying to play aggressive into better hands, as opposed to passively catching cards after stupid calls. I just don?t think it is nearly as horrible to catch cards when being aggressive. All that really happens is that your hand becomes what you were pretending it was all along ? tough shit to the player who saw through the bluff.

Flush with cash after my SNG victory ($39 profit), I sat down at a $25 max buy-in PL Omaha/8 ring game.

I sat down at a $25 buy-in .25/.50 PL Omaha/8 table.  The first thing I will say about ring games on Party (and probably at all of ths sites): The goddamn rake eats up the profit from the blinds if you end up splitting the pot hi/lo.  Essentially, it ends up being necessary to win the big hands - a lot of small wins won’t overcome the rake. Also, I like the celebratory cannon fire when I win a big pot.  It makes me feel like someone cares.

I got the big cannon fire on one of my first hands of Party Omaha/8.  I was dealt J♦Q♦J♠7♠.  The flop gave me top set, but put two ♥ on the board.  To keep out the flush draws I bet the pot, but I still got two callers.  The turn was a blank. I underbet the pot, and got only one caller.  The river was a T, filling my house and I went all-in only to have everyone fold. Up $27; cannon fire and confetti!).

I play clustered hands in Omaha/8 - particularly if I think I can get value.  So I was pretty happy when I was dealt J-T-9-7 and 6 people saw the flop after a preflop raise to ~$2.50. The flop was 9-6-K with two of a suit I didn?t have. With an open-ended straight draw (either a Q or an 8) I was fortunate to be able to call cheap.  The turn paired the 9 from the flop.  With ~$15 in the pot, the $5 bet from Singman69 is a significant underbet so I called (one other caller, motivation unknown, also called).  The river was an 8, giving me the nut straight, but there was still a potential FH on the board, so I just flat called when he underbet the pot again ($15 into a $30 pot) on the river.  He had nothing; the river paired his eight and gave him nines up. My stack was up to $83. (More cannons.)

I dropped $10 when I flopped the sucker straight (holding 3-4-5-7, the flop was 6-7-8) and I lost to a BB that got to see a cheap flop with A-4-9-T. I got nailed in both directions because he had the straight on the high side and his A4 beat my 34 for low.

Interlude:  How is this for a Party Poker moment: I watched a woman bet a hand on the turn until she had ten cents left.  She apparently didn’t know enough about pot odds because she folded to a bet on the river with $20 in the pot, holding on to that last dime.

In my final hand of the day, I caught a straight to the A on the turn and bet the pot to chase out flush draws. It worked.

I finished the session +35 and finished the day +75.

I think, as Rick has been known to say, this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

I came to this game ready to play.  I hadn’t played in over a week—in person or online—so I felt a little rusty, but I also felt like my mind was fresh and I was ready to abandon my mincing tight-weak style.  That I would be willing to raise into a bluff when I suspected a bluff but didn’t exactly have the nuts myself.  That I would lord over the table like a home game Lederer.

It lasted about two hours.  And then like a rubber band released from a finger, my game inflicted minor damage on the people around me before returning to its natural limp state.  The tragedy is that I know the hole in my game, have known it for a while, and still find myself spinning my wheels.

Ferrari was in the one seat, of course, since it is natural that the host would take the comfy chair and place it exactly where he wants to sit.  This takes the form of a home game “rule” at the Blue Parrot, and you can’t fight City Hall.  Rick was in the 2, followed around the table by Joel, Coach, yours truly, Blue Parrot rookie Dawn, Pauly, asphnxma and Sugata.  Coach and Dawn left early and popular addition Christian joined the table in between Sugata and Ferrari.

(This recap not enough? Dawn has already recapped the action ... twice, as has Mr. Mxyzptlk. Once Pauly gets his recap up, it will appear here.)

[At this point we pause to scream and curse at the heavens because something in another window caused IE to crash, erasing at least 3 paragraphs of pure blogging gold. They have been replaced with what follows.]

I came late to the game because I stopped by the Parsons school to check out a friend’s thesis project. It is a very cool design for an installation-art museum that will never, ever be built. Pity that.  Count it among the things that I would do if I were a multi-billionaire after I got finished cackling with delirious glee about my good fortune.

I arrived to find a game of 2/4 hold ‘em in progress (Texas, natch) and took my seat.  The table voted to allow me to play without posting since the blinds hadn’t reached my seat and I wasn’t cheating anyone.  (Actually, I think I was cheating myself.  I paid the same in blinds as everyone else but saw fewer free hands. Shit. I have to pay attention to this stuff.) My game early was strong because I have decent reads on a few of the players at the table.  They don’t work all the time, but they can pay off when they do.

First, Ferrari. He raised preflop when I was in the big blind.  I was holding something like Q5o, though I only remember the 5 for sure.  I called strictly to protect my blind because I don’t want a reputation as someone who can be pushed out of a pot with a small raise.  I think the flop was K-5-3. Ferrari checked, so I knew he didn’t have a K.  He insists that he plays tight preflop and laments that nobody respects his raises.  I know that he is a pretty tight player, and I have a different theory.  Ferrari’s suckout reactions make Hellmuth seem almost reasonable so it is almost worth the preflop investment solely for the opportunity to river him.  Here, I suspected that my fives were good, but was willing to check down the hand. When he bet the turn 4 I knew he was bluffing.  The river was a 7, I bet, he called and said “You’ve got me” as he flipped over AJ.  And so I did.  (There is a coda to this story, but it belongs in another section.  You will see it there.)

A similar hand followed when we switched to Omaha/8 and I took down a pot with two pair that I knew - knew with metaphysical certitude - would hold up even though it wasn’t even the top two pair on the board.  I had a good sense of when people were betting strength and was getting out of hands when I was weak.  I even used this early strength to drag a pot against Rick when I got four to a flush and came over the top on him.  He probably had the best hand, but a little respect can go a long way.

Dawn had a peculiar habit when betting.  It is standard at our game to make change from the pot when betting. It isn’t that we aren’t familiar with the oversize chip rule, it is just easier to make change when the chips are right there in the pot.  Despite this, Dawn would always throw out a $5 chip for every $4 bet, leading to a chorus of “take one back” every single time.  It has to be because she is a she that the table was in good spirits about this; had it been Swish, someone (perhaps me) would have yelled “Is 4 too difficult a fucking concept for you?” As I read this I detect a latent sexism there, but to the extent it actually civilized us (read: me) it is probably for the best. 

I’m still going to yell at Swish, though.

Dawn indicated in her recap that she isn’t coming back. I hope that isn’t the case (she did win $24).  And it isn’t only because we are evil.

As Dawn recounts, the news of Christain’s impending arrival was greeted with whoops and hollers.  He is a good guy with a habit of losing a lot of money at our game.  His reputation cost Ferrari a lot of money last night. 

Christian’s raises haven’t been respected in a long time, so Ferrari probably thought he was going to drag a big pot with AT when (1) Christian capped the betting preflop and (2) Ferrari hit top two pair on the flop.  The pot got very large, particularly for heads up, and you could have knocked Ferrari over with a feather when Christian turned over Rockets.  Christian burned him again later when he rivered Ferrari by having his top pair/top kicker turn into a nut flush on the river, leaving Ferrari with a king flush that he hit on the flop. (This led to a classic Ferrari lamentation, but nobody at the table could think of a single thing Christain did wrong in the hand.) These hands have been revised to comport with reality. Thanks to Ferrari for reliving his own pain to make the corrections. You can read the original slightly erroneous report of the first hand in Pauly’s recap.

I used the strength I had built up early in the night to push Ferrari and Christian out of a pot when I flopped two spades for my Q♠9♠ and three-bet the pot as if I had an A to match the one that came on the flop.  Christian claims that he had KK, and the hangdog look on his face makes me think that he was telling the truth.  I don’t know what Ferrari raised with in front of me.  I suspect he was just not giving Christain his props again. I actually have no idea how Christian finished.  He was up a lot, then down a lot, then I think he recovered some.  I was too focused on my own swing to take note of the final result.

That final result wasn’t good for two reasons. (1) I let the early success go to my head and started thinking I was Kreskin; and (2) I still haven’t figured out stud, particularly the wild card games.

Reason #1 is best demonstrated by the coda I promised earlier.  I ended up heads up with Ferrari holding A7o in the SB.  The flop had a K and two ♦, none of which helped me.  Ferrari bet, but I think there is a tell in his betting style.  I can’t define it (and Ferrari is sure to accuse me of trying to put him on tilt) but I feel like I can sense when he is betting with a hand or betting because he senses weakness.  In any event, I called.  And I called on the turn. (A brick.) And I called on the river. (A ♦, but probably a brick all the same.) By now you should realize what I did wrong.  I knew that Ferrari’s hand was weak.  I even knew that he knew that I knew his hand was weak.  I still don’t know why I didn’t raise on the turn.  I am sure he would have tossed his cards away instead of hanging around to take the pot with pocket 2s.

As for Reason #2, I still haven’t figured out stud drawing odds, much less pot odds.  Wild card games completely fuck me up because even my modest odds knowledge goes completely out the window.  My relationship to stud is much like Kit’s fascination with the high hard ones: I can’t hit ‘em, but I can’t lay off ‘em.  I blew through a LOT of money watching people turn over hands that I should have seen from a mile away, but didn’t.  I also got married to good starting hands that never amounted to much.  I really have to stay away from stud. It has been nothing but bad news for me.

I lost money for one more reason.  On three hands in the space of about 6 hands, Joel misread his hand and had flushes that he didn’t even see.  I was caught in one of those where I read Joel perfectly.  I was winning when his mouth spoke, but lost when the cards spoke. Them’s the rules, and them’s the breaks.

All told, I parlayed my early success (a high water mark of ~+$130) into a loss of $23.50.  Meanwhile, sitting to my left, Pauly staged an impressive comeback from an early hole to finish up $180.  Pauly will have the full tote board, but I know for sure that Ferrari had another long night.

I was surprised to see when I left the game that the weather was perfect.  It is typical of my poker experience that the weather is a metaphor for my performance.  It is just that sort of thing that makes me occassionally question my committed athiesm. 

But when I emerged from the subway, the Brooklyn Museum was shrouded in fog.

Around the Net

The latest addition to the blogroll is Stay Free!, a fantastic magazine about, well a lot of things, but particularly consumer culture.  It is skeptical and earnest but doesn’t resort to screeching.  It also still manages to be funny, which can be hard when you care about something.  Go to the website, of course, but subscribe to the print version. Nobody likes a freeloader.

If you are going to just stick to the web, check out the Stay Free! project Illegal Art, an exhibition and commentary on the attempts of trademark/copyright holders to immunize themselves from comment or parody.  The legal disclaimer alone is worth the visit, but the exhibit itself is great. (If you want to see more by the author of the disclaimer, check out The Van Gogh-Goghs.)

I apologize to the other poker bloggers out there.  I haven’t really been keeping up with my reading, so I have nothing to link to.

LATE BREAKING AMENDMENTS
Sean from Anisotropy is back. I said that I would return him to the blogroll when he resurfaced, and so I shall.  But it appears that the Grovel has disappeared from his blogroll ...

Also, Stephen Elliot has distributed a new poker report to his subscribers, so the new report of a tournament at Lucky Chances should be posted to the public soon. (Subscribe to the mailing list at pokerreport-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.)

The Best of Times

After six years of working as a lawyer in a commercial litigation firm in New York City, I finally walked away from the whole damn thing. Every day I wake up, look at the clock, smile and then go back to sleep. After a week, the joy has not gone out of that.

I’ve never particularly enjoyed being a lawyer. Everything that I liked about law school (limited personal responsibility; a preference for legal arguments that weren’t dependent on the particular interests of a paying client; colleagues who were down for weekday drinking) has nothing to do with the practice of law at a commercial litigation firm. Sure, there were moments of pride, thrills of victory and plain old intellectual stimulation but they were few and far between.  Mostly it was a vortex of despair.  And I felt this despite (brace yourself, because you don’t hear this every day) the great group of attorneys I worked with from January 2000 through June 2003.  They are bright, ideosyncratic and shockingly tolerant of me despite some considerable flaws in my legal skills. (Notably, I am spectacularly lazy unless I think someone else is going to pay a price for my sloth.  Also, I tell inappropriate jokes at client meetings.) I know things could be worse - my first legal job had the added pleasure of working for brainless assholes - so I count myself lucky to have worked with folks like Rick, Sous Chef and Ferrari. In other words, they laughed at my jokes and never once reported me to the EEOC.

Last July the Firm was bought by a larger firm.  The new place was mostly benign (though it occassionally reminded me of my detested first job) but just didn’t have the same spark that made the Firm the sort of place that made professional inertia seem somehow acceptable. So, having spent almost a year at the new place, I have put away the briefcase (actually I literally lost the briefcase a year ago) and hung up my suits (actually we forced the Firm to go casual years ago) and traded in the life of an attorney for the life of a would-be stand-up comic. 

Don’t bother looking for evidence of the likelihood of success; you won’t find it here. Just trust me: this is a step in the right direction.

The Worst of Times

Um.  It’s been a week and a half and I haven’t really written anything. I’ve added a few more ideas to my “notes for future routines” book, but I haven’t done any of the hard work of developing routines. Today. Tommorow. (Maybe not tomorrow.  On my last day of work I got a notice from the Brooklyn Supreme Court.  I report for jury duty tomorrow at 8:45 AM. How did they know?)

If I don’t get going on this I may end up pulling a Costanza and just showing up at work again in a week or two.  On the other hand, I consider it a good sign that I am already worried that I haven’t done anything.  I went longer than this at the office without doing any work and it never once bothered me.  I believe that is called “growth.”

Perfectly Ordinary Times

I haven’t even really been playing a lot of poker, so I can’t even blame that for my lack of productivity.  I haven’t really played online at all, but I had the Tournament at the Blue Parrot to tide me over for a little while last Monday, and a visit to the Churchwarden’s on Thursday.

The cast at the Churchwarden’s is getting thin.  We were down to five because Rick takes his job seriously despite his own impending departure.  Leo Bloom, Helmut and Sean filled out the table.  Darren was supposed to come but he gave some lame excuse.

This table has become perpetually short ever since the office space that the Churchwarden shares has become a battle zone.  For reasons too silly to recount here, the shared space is now divided by a curtain.  I was sure that sort of thing only happened on sitcoms, but it has happened here.  This is unfortunate for two reasons.

First, it is always nice to play at a full table.  The blinds don’t come around as quickly, there is usually more coffeehousing and the tightness of my game isn’t exactly ideal for a shorthanded, low-limit game. Second, those folks were, without question, among the worst poker players I’ve ever seen.  My hourly rate took a hit when they left the table and that isn’t good either.

It is still a monthly highlight.  There isn’t any particular hand that stands out in the game, which isn’t surprising since I just floated along from the first deal to the last.  I played horribly for the first hour and slowly bled to death.  I recovered in the second hour by stealing the blinds a few times.  I dragged a decent Omaha pot with a full house when a flush materialized, but gave up half to a liberal policy on pulling your cards from the muck when Leo realized that he had a qualifying low hand.

In truth, this game is more about fucking around than it is about playing poker. I didn’t play particularly well; I didn’t play with the courage necessary to profit from bad cards. As a result I finished up for the night, but earned less per hour than an eight year old girl in a Nike shoe factory. But I still had a very good night, which is really the beauty of the game. 

Even a bad poker game beats a good day at work.

The Tally

Helmut +$32
Leo Bloom +$26
Churchwarden +$1.50
Ugarte +$.50
Sean -$60

Blog Stuff

Since artistic endeavors are sort of the theme today, check out Pauly’s literary webzine Truckin’ - a new edition to the blogroll (as soon as I get around to adding it).