Ugarte's Poker Grovel #9 or Mayday! Mayday!Two games to report about, but only one is a story I really want to tell. One game was a silly affair in the Colorado mountains for stakes that small children would laugh at. I did quite well. The second was a game at Ferrari’s place for home game stakes (2/4 for blind games and 5max raise for stud). It went quite poorly.
In front of Pauly and the entire staff of Rick’s, I was kicked and beaten and left bleeding. Perhaps that is a bit dramatic, but I did lose $140, and it wasn’t pretty.
I’d like to start with the small stakes game, but to the extent that anyone reads this at all, they are probably coming from other poker blogs, so I guess that I should start with the serious game. No matter how much it hurts to try to remember.
I don’t even remember the details of where it went so wrong. All I know is that in the second hand of the night, I dropped almost my entire $60 buy-in in a hand of 2/4 Omaha/8. I suppose it makes me a poor blogger that I remember almost nothing about the hand. I remember that the pot was insanely large. I remember that I flopped a very good high with a draw to the nut low. I remember that the low didn’t materialize and the river undermined my high. I remember flicking my cards into the muck and becoming quite sour for the next twenty minutes. I had to go out of pocket for a hand shortly thereafter and ended up rebuying.
After the rebuy things went a little better and I probably earned back about half of my original buy, but it took a turn for the worse again. With A5♥ in late position, I limped in and caught a flop of A-9♥-5. I bet and got two callers. When another 9 fell on the flop, I was stuck with a shitty kicker and lost to an offsuit hand with an ace and a medium kicker. I lost a few more hands like that and saw flushes develop later when I held the top pair after the flop. I also had some moments of serious weakness when I overread people.
Holding AJo, I got some money in the pot when the flop came A-9-6. Two callers again, Pauly and Christian. Turn brought another 9 (damn nines again). I bet, and I got two callers again. I figured one of them was calling to set up a river raise with trips. The river was a K. I figured that it didn’t help anyone. I checked, Pauly bet and Christian raised. I pegged Christian for J9 or some such nonsense and had no interest in running into his trips. So I folded. Pauly called and showed A4. Christian had nothing. Maybe a 6. On reflection, I had committed enough that I really had to call. If I had called I would have chopped a decent pot with Pauly. Instead I just got all sour again. A long and expensive night.
Coach had a rough night also. He rarely got cards to play, and when he did get cards strange things happened. He was dealt KK and bet it agressively out of the chute. Somehow he had two callers through the turn. A Q on the river turned the board into J-T-9-x-Q and he split the pot 3 ways with players holding KT and K4. I think I’d rather have my kings cracked.
On the other hand, Rick played his ass off. He was aggressive. He played strong hands well and represented enough tightness that when he bet, people backed off. That strength earned him a fair amount on hands when I didn’t think he had any cards. I don’t think he thinks much of his own night (other than the outcome, of course), but I was impressed. He played a very solid game and was rewarded for it. Strangely enough, even though he won $210, I don’t think I lost a single hand to him. It was as if Christian was laundering money for Rick’s Cafe. I lost it to Christian, Christian passed it across the table to Rick. Of course, Rick’s isn’t a real business and Rick isn’t giving a share of the money back to me. But I’ll bet it doesn’t go to voter registration drives either.
The depressing tally:
Rick +210
Ferrari +45.50 (though he somehow ended up with $46)
Christian +36 (impressive comeback after an early $200 hole)
Sugarta +0.50 (which Ferrari “forgot” to give him)
Pauly -12 (nice to meet a fellow blogger; hope he comes back)
Coach -34
Swish -100 (I think. He had some serious swings and went on full tilt to end the night.)
Ugarte -140 (Jesus. Did I just write that?)
We now leave the dark depressing world of Ugarte getting his ass handed to him and move to the mountain paradise of Winter Park, Colorado. Brother of Ugarte and I visited my former law school roommate, David, at his parents’ mountain house for his last frolic before fatherhood completely inverts his world. I don’t ski anymore, but Brother, David and a pair of doctors from Dallas (Ziyad and George) got some great ski weather and excellent conditions. But after nightfall, when skiing left everyone too tired to go out, could there be any better plan than poker? How about no limit poker?
We didn’t have chips, though, so we had to quickly find a substitute. And we had to get resourceful. We found a 500 piece jigsaw puzzle. And a bag of peppermint candies. And a box of clementines. Puzzle pieces=1; peppermints=5; citrus=25. Everyone was given 200 units, and the value of 200 units was set at (hold your breath) $5. Yes, you read that right. A puzzle piece was worth 2/5 of a cent. We were playing no limit with a .004 ante and a $5 buy in. Binion’s here I come!
Ahem.
It didn’t take a lot of time for Ziyad to burn through his stack (and you won’t see a more imposing stack than a pile of jigsaw pieces). He wanted to rebuy, but we ran out of fruit and candy. Out came Trivial Pursuit. No fears, dear readers. We didn’t switch to asking questions. Wedges=peppermints; pie holders=clementines. Anything to keep the game going.
The doctors called a lot of very strange games (Elevator and Oklahoma - I can explain if you care) and the rest of us stuck to Texas Hold ‘Em and 7 card stud. Play wasn’t memorable, except I got fantastic cards early in the night and jumped out to a great start. The cards went cold, the doctors were calling stations, and I watched my stack slowly dwindle and I fell to third place.
I drank a lot of wine, got to see a good friend that lives halfway across the country and saw the aspens covered with snow. I don’t think I care that much that I didn’t clean out the rest of the table.
Ziyad +7.50 (Good comeback but not a good player.)
Brother +4.50 (For someone who doesn’t particularly like to play...)
Ugarte +3
David -5
George -10 (Call, call, fold. Missed the inside straight again, eh?)
While I was blogging this, I decided to play a $5+.50 limit SNG. Started strong, got the chip lead and failed to heed my promise to myself. I told myself that I had to remember to play extra tight and let the short stacks get eaten by the blinds so I could coast to third. Instead I had AA cracked by a Q7o that became two pair (though I had to play that hand) and played marginal hands poorly. Despite a clear path to the money, I ran myself into 5th place. Discipline, Ugarte, discipline. I popped a fresh $50 into my account, and I am giving myself until the end of the month to make back my first $50.
I can’t let this Grovel pass without mentioning my deep regret that I can’t play in the Grublog Poker Challenge - an online tournament for poker bloggers - set up by Grubby. It will be 3AM in Paris when the tournament starts, and that is where I will be. I also find it highly unlikely that any internet cafe will have the ChoicePoker software set up. Fortunately, Rick has agreed to carry the banner for Rick’s Cafe Americain in the Challenge, so the Grovel will have a representative. (If you want in, Ferrari, I’ll drop a note to Grubby and ask if we can send two players.)
I’ll have to content myself with playing in BloggerBowl II - Iggy’s tournament in March.
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