Ugarte's Poker Grovel #23, or JackedAnother Monday, another game at Ferrari’s place, another breach of etiquette by Ferrari directed at me. And this one may have cost me money.
The game was a short one for me, but it still managed to be expensive. I was playing tight again, but that doesn’t matter when your good hands get beat anyway.
Poker blog stuff follows the game report.
The rain outside made the air dank and humid. Almost as though Ferrari was hot-boxing us. The air was making people a little crazy, and the dual themes of the night were “anyone can have a flush at any time” and “beware of jacks.” I didn’t learn that these were the themes until well into the evening, though.
I don’t know if Pauly will blog it in light of his trip to Vegas (ed. - he did.), but there was plenty of action before I arrived. At least two players left before I got to the game, but neither won more than $20. On the other hand, not only was Ferrari’s stack small, he had rebought. Pauly looked like he was doing all right, but I soon found out that he had rebought also. Danny and Marie (Hee!) looked like they were treading water. Coach and Joel were cleaning up. Shuffle up and deal me in.
Like I said, I was playing tight. Both Ferrari and Marie called rounds of Omaha/8, and in those 14 hands I played two. I folded one after the flop and lost to Danny’s suck-out flush draw - that I managed not to notice - on the other. (Did he really play 8♣3♣? Yes he did. It would not be the last time that suited trash took a pot, even if it is the last time it appears in the Grovel.) Not too expensive, but not good.
Coach likes to call wild card games, so I wasn’t surprised when he called Follow The Queen (Queens wild). I was downright pleased when he dealt me AQ in the hole. I bet on 3d street, 4th street and 5th street, with escalating bets each time. My board was showing a straight draw, but since I had been betting it from the beginning, my hand really had limitless possibilities. Only someone without much experience or a great hand would stay in against me ...
Unfortunately, my aces never improved. Nothing paired up and I ended up with four to a straight and four to a flush. Marie check-called all the way with a Q in the hole and bet out on the river. When she bet on the river, I had to lay down becasue she had a pair of fours showing, and I knew that she must have had a Q in the hole to call the early bets. In a 7stud wild card game, trip fours dragged the pot. I leave it to you to decide whether trip fours is a great hand. That hand really should have been a sign that I would keep finishing second best, but I played on.
Hold ‘em saw my only win of the night, as the tilt Ferrari was on when I arrived continued. He called my preflop raise out of the big blind with suited trash, caught top pair on the flop (queens) and he bet it to the river. My preflop raise was sincere, though, and my pocket kings took the pot. This was the highlight of the evening.
And then came the thunderstorm. The rain outside had gone from a light drizzle to a steady downpour, and it makes for a convenient, if cliché, metaphor. My day, like the weather, was about to get much worse.
Another game of Q+FTQ, brought another wild card in the hole, and three to a straight off the bat. 4th Street was a Q. 5th Street was a 9, but a 9 that followed Marie’s Q. Out of 5 cards, three were wild. So far so good. 6th street was a 6h, which very nicely combined with my door card 2h, to give me a straight flush. By the time the river came around, Marie had JJQ showing. $5 max raise and a lot of action meant that the pot was probably ~$60 before the last round of betting. Marie bet, I raised and Marie called. I turned over my straight flush as Marie turned over her jack in the hole to make four jacks. She dispiritedly announced four jacks. And then Ferrari picked up her third hole card - revealing a 9 - and suddenly my straight flush might as well be a busted straight.
There are all sorts of reasons why I may have lost the hand anyway, since cards speak and eventually Marie may have flipped the 9 herself, but this is the second game in a row where Ferrari has reached into someone else’s cards. Last game, Ferrari plucked a card of mine out of the muck “to see what he would have had” if he stayed in. Coach was appropriately outraged, but I just shrugged my shoulders. What do you do when the host is the person breaching the norms? You blog it, I guess. Yes, I understand that everyone is supposed to turn up all of their cards - but if Marie had mucked after announcing four jacks, she would have lost despite the fifth jack.
I also took a pounding in Anaconda when the first pass brought me the case 9 from Danny, but as Danny was giving me quads, Joel was sitting on his left passing him ... quad jacks. The knaves killed me for good, as the round of betting after the declare put me all in. Which brings up another question for the crowd:
The rules at Ferrari’s are thus: Table stakes do not apply - if a player is raised more than their stack, they can dip into their wallet to cover the bet. If the player instead chooses to go all-in, the player can’t rebuy if they lose the hand and is done for the night. The theory seems to be that there is an advantage in being able to selectively go all-in, but I can’t say I really understand where any advantage gained is unfair. No matter, as I think the standard should always be table stakes. My plea for table stakes:
The game is a $100 buy-in. The buy-in is essentially a stop-loss provision. It sets a maximum that I will lose before I make a decision about buying in again. If I have to dip into my wallet during a hand in order to keep playing after the hand, I am effectively being forced to increase my buy-in. Additionally, table stakes lets everyone know how much a player has to risk to call their opponents all the way to the river. If you want to be in a position to cap every raise, you can buy in before the hand. Table stakes is a simple, easily enforced rule.
And even if Ferrari’s rule seems simple, is it really a “rule” if after the hand Ferrari tells me that I can rebuy?
Unwilling to just go home, I hung around and acted as the dealer for the rest of the night. Ferrari and Pauly took some money back from Danny, but the hold ‘em was mostly uneventful. $120 lighter, I borrowed cab fare from Ferrari and set off into the rain for a cab back to Brooklyn.
In the cab ride on the way back, I ended up talking to my white (albino? maybe.) cabbie about my grind at the tables and his on the streets. I like to talk to drivers about the vicissitudes of driving in a town like New York. Stories about medallion leasing or investing in medallion purchases are interesting, and like all cabbies he had his share of drunk passenger stories. “I have limits in what I will put up with, you know? I don’t come and vomit in your office,” noted my temporary chauffeur.
It was one of my better rides in a good while. Then it took a strange turn as we rumbled down Flatbush Avenue. He said that it is an advantage to be a minority in the industry; he benefits from his whiteness because people get in and see he isn’t a “sand nigger” and it leads to bigger tips. Ugh. How ugly that looks on paper. But I couldn’t decide if he was a racist, or if he was projecting the racism onto his hypothetical passengers. It is a tough trick to pull off, but I ended up giving him the benefit of the doubt. Why? Because that sort of casual racism is just too depressing to contemplate.
Especially on a night when I was already so far down.
Poker Blog Stuff
Ferrari often complains (both publicly and privately) when I write something about him that he disagrees with (check back for comments to today’s missive), but in his heart he knows that he gets off easy. In Stephen Elliott’s April 8th poker report (soon to be posted, I’m sure), he gives a friend a severe beating. This is the sort of thing that might even get me banned from Ferrari’s game:
The updates aren’t daily (and not even necessarily weekly), so to keep up with Elliott’s home games, you can subscribe to his yahoo group by sending an email to pokerreport-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.
Felicia keeps running the Poker Blogger tournaments at Planet Poker, but I still havent managed to get myself signed up. Eventually I am going to have to get into that game. Paulsburbon won the Easter tournament, so huzzah for him.
Richard Brodie over at Lion Tales has a good tournament write-up that acts as a reminder that bad beats are just a part of the game. He doesn’t apologize when he catches cards on the river and he doesn’t complain when his opponents do. A good lesson for us all.
Iggy had a good run in a PokerStars WSOP qualifier that turned into a winner-take-all cash tournament when there weren’t enough players to cover the entry fee. Iggy did well enough to chop the prize with the rest of the final four and earned more than $2,000. Real dollars, not tourney dollars. Big props to Iggy for the big win. I’ve got to start playing in the WSOP qualifiers at Stars. It would be like buying a lottery ticket, but hey, I do that also.
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