Where Sam doesn't play anymore ...Rick's Cafe Americain

I met Brother of Ugarte at the second of two sets I did two Wednesdays ago (I can’t believe it took me 10 days to write this). I don’t get to see him as much as I’d like anymore and this show would end early enough that we could hang out afterwards. I did my set, did the courteous thing and sat through two other comics, and then we headed over to Mamoun’s for falafel (two bucks, man!) and Caffe Reggio for dessert (not two bucks.) At 10:15 I realized that I had to head uptown for the weekly no limit tournament at A.M. and I said goodbye to Brother. Mistake #1.

When I arrived at A.M., the room was packed - but no asphnxma. It wasn’t packed because of a high turnout, though. A.M. is actually the office space for an improv group and our poker room is actually a rehearsal room. And both rehearsal rooms were occupied, and would be for at least an hour. I decided to stay because it was The Chief’s last night in New York. Mistake #2.

After adjourning to a nearby bar for an ill-advised beer (I had already fulfilled two one-drink minimum obligations), we finally started playing cards at midnight. Sporto asked if we wanted to shorten the blinds on account of the hour, but we were purists and decided that we didn’t want a crapshoot. Mistake #3.

We dealt for position and Paula - the calling station who broke me last week - was on my left. She was back to playing aggressive poker and torturing the players around the table by calling every preflop bet, underbetting the flop with the nuts (she had the nuts a lot early on) and bluffing at every checked pot (all those showdowns had the rest of the table gunshy on ragged flops). She and Sporto slowly collected everyone’s chips. They were sitting next to each other, and the slant on the table was obvious. I had done a little accumulating myself, but it was all for naught when I blew half of my stack by calling with pocket tens when Tiger who pushed in front of me. He hit one of his overcards.

I got some chips back by stealing blinds and was back at the table average when Deke pushed in front of me. Foolishly, instead of pushing over the top to isolate, I just called. (Mistake #4) Paula quickly called behind me. I followed up my terrible preflop play with my worst flop play of the night: I checked a 9 high flop, expecting Paula to bet. She did not. (Mistake #5). She checked behind me when the turn was an 8. And she checked behind me again when a jack came on the river. All the while, Deke was sitting all-in accusing us both of having nothing. After the river, he turned up pocket fives. I exhaled (expecting QQ from all of his bitching), I showed my tens and Paula flipped pocket eights for a turned set. Which is the only reason I didn’t call my check on the turn a mistake (even though it was). Goodbye Deke.

Deke’s exit put me on the shortstack and the bubble. With Paula still playing every hand behind a huge pile of chips, I was hoping that either Tiger would push into her and bust or she would walk into a trap set by Sporto and throw away what she had. I decided that my best bet was to either wait for her to bust or double through Paula when I knew I was ahead. She would call any bet, so it made no sense to bluff. Fortunately, I didn’t have to wait until the blinds swallowed all of my chips.

Paula’s strategy is good for chip accumulation at the beginning of the tournament. People are willing to let go of hands because they don’t want to bust early.  It is hard to put her on a hand. Her plausible range is huge, so she induces a lot of folding from people that miss their flops. She doesn’t change gears, though, and as people start realizing that their stacks are dwindling, her calling/bluffing ways make her the favorite target of shortstacks looking to double up. All of those minimum bets and ill-advised calls start catching up to her. She is also particularly fond of minimum betting, which can be a good way of keeping players you want to call in hands, but is also a good way of hanging on to players you want to fold. So it was that she limped to my 92o in the big blind to see a flop of Q-2-2. I checked because, as regular as the sunrise I knew she would bet the flop and call when I pushed. And she did. With nothing. Two big blinds later the hand played out almost exactly the same: JTo in the big blind, flop of T-T-8, check-bet-push-call. And we have a new shortstack.

There weren’t any interesting hands after that. She eventually had to push and busted out in 4th (bubble); shortly thereafter I had to do the same (quadrupling up still left me way behind Sporto and Tiger). As soon as I busted, Sporto and Tiger chopped so that they could play Worlds of Warcraft. Because they are nerds.

The end result is that I finished in third, which paid $18. Subtract the $10 buy in and I netted $8. I arrived at 10:30 and left at ~2, so I made less than $3/hr. Which, I think it is fair to say, was mistake #6.