Ugarte's Poker Grovel #38, or Long Time No CardsPart one of my poker update was such a relief to get off of my chest, I am typing part two right away but giving it a day to simmer, thus the 9/27 posting date.
I played a second tournament last night. Even though asphnxma beat me to the recap, and the tournament didn’t go so well for me, I’m going to publish anyway.
I’m not starting with the tournament, though. After the last tournament, I got a meager three hours of sleep and readied myself for a trip to Portland. I won’t bore you with the non-poker details of the trip except to plug two things:
(1) My friend Zale is one of the producers of Pickathon, a bluegrass festival at Horning’s Hideout in North Plains, Oregon. It is this weekend, and I highly recommend it for music fans on the West Coast.
(2) I fought through my back pain and went hiking through the Columbia Gorge. Based on our starting point and the diversions we took from the main trail, I think we covered ~4.5 miles. Strangely enough, 4.5 miles of hiking actually made my back feel better. And it really is gorgeous. The link has some great pics of the waterfalls we went past.
No Limit for No Money
When we got back to the house we were too tired to do anything except ... play poker! So we found a coffee can full of change, passed out a little over a dollar to everyone and played a little .01/.02 no limit. Carrie is becoming a decent player, but still needs work on starting hands. Wendy chases too much, and for some reason considers feeding her child more important than playing. Zale started aggressive, but eventually it came back to bite him. He also needed a little bit of work on “outs”. Still, it was a fun game while it lasted. We didn’t count the change at the end, but I think I may have managed to work my way back into the lead. Hard to tell, though. Carrie had most of Wendy’s money, and I had most of Zale’s.
After returning from Oregon on Monday, I spent a day sleeping off the effects of a sleepless redeye flight that took the painful Portland-Dallas-LaGuardia route. Tuesday, however, brought the prospect of poker in my old neighborhood. A poker room opened up a mere three blocks from my former apartment - and a little over a mile form where I live now. Asphnxma wanted to write a review of the joint, so we decided to meet at Boudoir Bar for my audition and then head over to the room.
Brooklyn Player’s Club
I’ll let Nixma tell you about the room, because I couldn’t get a game. I didn’t feel comfortable playing no limit ring because of the quite painful last time I sat down to play no-limit ring. The 3/6 limit game never materialized, so I just sweated Nixma’s action for a while. He was better than the table and if he didn’t feel like leaving after an hour, he probably could have taken some serious coin. He still finished up ~$45, net of tips and time charges.
Above Malibu
The next night was another A.M. tournament. Again I was late, this time because I had a 9PM spot at NYCC. (You can read about the spot here.) The tournament was mostly uneventful for me. I folded and folded and folded some more. And then I folded a little bit. And then I limped and folded to a raise. I should have just bought in, left and been blinded away. It wouldn’t have been so embarrassing. Shortstacked, Moug kept rereaising all-in from the big blind, and I never had cards to call. OK, once I had the cards to call. I didn’t really know what kind of a player Moug is. I’ve never been at his table for more than a few orbits, so I gave him too much credit. Embarrassingly, I laid down A♥Q♥ when I should have known better. KQo folded behind me, and was equally despondent about tossing in his cards. In exchange for T25, Moug showed me K♥2♥. Fuck. But if I’m going to be a pussy, I shouldn’t expect to win.
Eventually my tournament ended when the blinds got up to 25a/150/300 and I was dealt KK in MP. I went all-in for my last 525, expecting a bunch of callers, since the raise was so small. Not only did CO and the button fold, but the SB folded as well. That left the BB who was essentially forced to call because the price was worth it - I didn’t even make a complete raise off of the 300 he already had invested. He turned over Q2 and caught a deuce on the flop and a queen on the river. Good night, folks, I’m out of here. 15th place of 28, and I played worse than that. And then the fun began.
I wanted to keep playing, so I bought into the .25/.50 no-limit hold ‘em game in the Loser’s Lounge. A $20 buy-in is standard in the LL games, so I didn’t figure to lose too much money. Money was hardly the point at this table. When I sat down, JCatz was in the middle of an extended Scotty Nguyen impression. Well, except for all of the losing. He was raising like crazy, and serenading the table with all of Scotty’s greatest hits from the WSOP, including “If you call me you gonna lose” and “You can’t beat these cards.” He called a preflop raise in the dark. And then called a post-flop all-in on the same hand in the dark. And announced to the table that he was open-ended. Which, oddly enough, he was. With flush outs. But the turn and river were unkind, and MattPack took the stack. The Nguyen accent disappeared for a minute or two while he recovered his wits after taking the pounding. It didn’t deter him, though. After reloading, and building his stack up to $35, he called an all-in with JJ - and ran into Wadell’s QQ. He caught his J on the flop, but Wadell hit another Q on the river. Still not afraid, he reloaded again. I’m pretty sure that he didn’t finish up for the night, but he did make a nice recovery during the last hour.
I played tight and well. The highlight of my game was a check-raise when I hit a set with my 44. I got called and when the turn was a brick, went all-in. I wanted a call, but will take the fold. Otherwise, my night was uneventful, though I finished up $15 for the ring, and therefore $5 for the night.
The non-played hand highlight of the night was when JCatz insisted that some random gutteral noise that Stony made was an “all-in” declaration, which he quickly called with top pair. The table agreed that JCatz was crazy (Stony folded K2o), but when we went rabbit hunting, the turn was a 2 and the river was a K. There was serious consideration given to making JCatz pay up, since he was the one insisting that Stony had gone all-in in the first place.
The real highlight of the night, however, was asphnxma’s near-meltdown. He describes the hand in his own recap, so I’ll leave the nitty-gritty to him, but he didn’t give you the visual that we all saw. All we heard was asphnxma yell “I lost both pots! I don’t believe it.” I think he may have cussed. I know that he threw down his hat and then, for good measure, threw down his shades (an experiment to test the strategy for when he plays in the WPT event at the Borgata). I’ve NEVER seen Nixma lose his shit before, and I’ve seen him take some brutal beats. He still had chips, though, and made it to 4th place.
Another good night Above Malibu. I even got a parking space right in front.
Blogger news
I should have done this a while ago, but I’ve added Poker in the Weeds to the blogroll. Derek is Pauly’s brother, so I doubt that this will be a significant boost in his traffic, but he deserves a link and he gets a link. When is this kid going to play at the Blue Parrot, anyway?
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