Posts Tagged ‘pot limit omaha’

« Newer Entries
Older Entries »
h1

First Red Dragon Trip & 15/30 Live Blog

April 26, 2019

I’m not going to lie, I’ve been feeling a serious lack of motivation while I’ve been slumping through my second losing month of the year. It’s April? The fourth month of the year? I’m sitting here with less than 20% of the winnings I had by this point last year. Granted, I had an epic February in 2018 and followed that up with a $25k+ series in the Muckleshoot Spring Classic. Winning one of those tournaments can’t be expected to happen every year.

It’s not really even the losing that has gotten me down. The local game selection has been depressing. Even though we moved in late 2018, Palace is still the closest poker room to my house and where I prefer to play, but the games I’ve relied on for my bottom line have dried up substantially. The 15/30 was running almost every day in April of last year and now Friday nights are the only day I know it’s going to go and even then it’s started to feel shaky lately. PLO was running twice a week and used to be mind-boggling good action. That game has gotten progressively worse, to the point where it’s almost all regulars (and multiple pros) and last week it was dead before 9 PM. I couldn’t even jump in an 8/16 game to get a full day of work because that game was dead already too. PLO has basically zero chance to survive the summer when a number of the players keeping it alive disappear to Vegas for the WSOP. I didn’t even bother showing up this past week and I might shift my priorities elsewhere on future Wednesdays. I mean… I want to do my part to keep it alive, but I don’t have much interest in locking horns with some of the best players in the area for a couple hours every week, hoping some live ones will sit down with us.

Last Thursday I did something I’ve been wanting to do and checked out the Red Dragon poker room in Mountlake Terrace, a few exits north of Shoreline. I was extremely impressed. It’s a nice, cozy room and they were super busy. The real reason I went out there is because I heard they had a 20/40 Mix Game that spreads quite regularly. Ducky and I made the trip and pretty much as soon as we walked in they fired up the 20 Mix game. We started off with a mix of Deuce-to-Seven Triple Draw, Omaha Hi, Razz, Badugi, Omaha 8, Stud 8, and Double Board Omaha. Later, we added Big O and Ace-to-Five Triple Draw and removed some of the other Omaha games.

I don’t consider myself a mixed games wizard, but I was astonished at how soft that starting lineup was. I knew I was the best player in the game and I couldn’t even find a variant I thought someone might be better than me at. That might sound arrogant, but I like to think I make honest assessments. Part of the reason I’ve lost interest in the PLO game at Palace is because I know there are always multiple players better than me in it now. Anyways, almost the whole table in this mix game was playing exceptionally loose and the one guy I thought might be competent before the game started seemed like he was going out of his way to play horribly, particularly against me – like he wanted to put a gross one on me. I’m talking cold calling raises and drawing four cards kinds of gross. Fortunately, that bad beat never happened and I basically had that guy’s number the entire session.

I raced out to a +$2500 start and that wasn’t hurting my confidence any, but while I knew I was running good, I could also see the plethora of horrendous mistakes everyone else was making that helped get me to that lofty cushion. My heater extinguished, however, and I eventually got ice cold and the game got progressively worse throughout the night. It seemed like every time someone left or busted out, they were replaced by a better player and by the end of the night, I was looking around the table and thought everyone was mostly competent. So Ducky and I took off and I had to settle for a +$997 day.

I am looking forward to going back and plan to make a trip to Red Dragon at least once a week as part of my regular routine – even though it’s an absolutely brutal commute.

Last Friday I booked a -$1236 in a good 15/30 game and then I finished 16th in the Main Event of the Little Creek spring series on Saturday. That was yet another deep run that didn’t amount to a cash. Maximum amount of time wasted. Goodness that’s getting old.

I’ve come to the realization that I have a mental game weakness when it comes to busting out of tournaments. If I played 11 hours of 15/30 and lost $560, I wouldn’t be happy about it, but most of the time, I can just chalk it up to a poor day at the office and shake it off. But when I spend 11 hours playing a tournament and don’t cash… well, I find that EXTREMELY upsetting.

Or maybe it’s just because I haven’t been having any good results.

I have now fired 22 bullets in 17 tournaments this year and I have two cashes to show for it. Sort of. One of those cashes was in a tournament I fired two bullets at and I ended up with a net loss. The other cash was in a daily tournament… at a bowling alley… and I have to include that because if I don’t, then I haven’t cashed for a profit in a single tournament in 2019. I am currently down almost $7300 in tournaments this year for a sexy ROI of -91%.

Could this be the year that I finally lose money in tournament poker?

That reminds me… who wants to buy my World Series of Poker action?

Seriously. I’ll be selling a package here shortly when I get a better idea of what my schedule will look like. Uhm… I’m due?

Saturday was my last day playing poker in a casino, so that’s pretty much it for poker updates.

I posted some movie reviews yesterday. I’ve also been updating my TV Show Ratings and 2019 Album Ratings. It seems like most people have no idea what new music to listen to, so check that out if you want to stay up to date on good new content. ScHoolboy Q released a new album last night, so that’s what I’ll be listening to today.

I saw Avengers: Endgame last night. I’m going to see it again on Tuesday before writing about it, so here’s my quick, no spoilers thoughts: it was fucking awesome.

I will be live blogging my 15/30 session tonight, but it will also be the MLB debut of Vladimir Guerrero Jr., so I’ll be watching the Blue Jays game on my iPad while I’m playing for the first 3+ hours of my session.

Starting Lineup: Megaphone, Chief Wiggum, Part-Time, Ducky, and four non-regs

4:23 PM: I’m on tilt already. First off, Palace’s WiFi connection is fucking worthless. I can’t even watch Vlad Jr.’s debut on my iPad because it won’t connect so I’m watching it on my phone… which means I can’t type at the same time.

  • Also, first hand of the session, Wiggum straddles on the button, I 3-bet AK of spades from the big blind and somehow six of us wind up putting in five bets each before the flop.
  • The board runs out A76sTsT and I wind up losing to someone’s T8 offsuit after flopping top top and turning the nut flush draw. That same player CRUSHED me last week and hit and ran the game for around $1500+ in less than 90 minutes. She’s well on her way to doing same shit today. Pretty cool.
  • So… instead of winning a $700+ pot on the first hand of the day and having a nice cushion for my first Coast-to-Coast performance, I lost this monster pot to someone that is probably going to jet before 6 PM.
  • Sigh.

    • 4:40 PM: And I just lost to her again: flop top pair with JTdd, turn a flush draw, and lose to bottom pair. I have literally lost ten pots in a row to her, dating back to last week, and I don’t think she outflopped me in a single one of them. Wtf.

    5:23 PM: Ducky opens, the lady crushing me 3-bets, I call from the small blind with two jacks, and it’s 4-way action.

    Flop is 982 and it checks around.

    Great start.

    Turn is a king and I think that’s a card I should send around and it checks to my boss and she bets. I’m content to show this down with passive action so I call and that leaves us heads up.

    The river is a jack! I check. She checks. And shows ace fucking king. Holy shit. How is that a thing? It’s not like she’s giving me air. She bet heads up in the last pot, so… wtf? It’s just the Poker Gods randomly messing with me? “Even when you win… you lose.”

    5:49 PM: Raise some limpers with KJ of hearts and then c-bet 4-handed pot on T93 rainbow.

    The turn is a queen and I’m pretty stoked when Megaphone check-raises me since we are in Overs now and I get to make it $150. He calls.

    The river is another ten and that’s not cool, but when he checks it over, I go for value and he just calls and then mumbles about how “gut shot was his only out,” which could only be true if he had, uh, 93?

    Anyways, after spotting them a rack immediately, I’ve been given a reprieve on my session after these last couple hands and get to start fresh.

    6:31 PM: This game is flimsy already. We already have an open seat and no list and half this lineup could up and leave at any moment.

    On the bright side, Flea finally decided to make a return to red chip games.

    7:45 PM: Here’s a list of hands that its impossible to win a pot with: AK, AQ, AJ.

    Megaphone is at his Megaphoniest. He’s been running extremely good and garbage hasn’t stopped spilling out of his mouth for hours now. One time, he was rambling and I looked up to see that not one player was listening to him and then I caught the dealer looking off into space like “lawd, save me” and I burst into laughter.

    Nothing exciting to report. I’m getting a decent amount of big aces and losing with all of them. That sums up my first four hours so far. Currently sitting near -$500 again.

    7:54 PM: In related news, my phone is almost dead, I don’t have a portable charger, and the USB ports at my table aren’t working.

    8:53 PM: Here’s how good I’ve been running the last three months:

    I come back from a break talking to my wife on the phone and see like $600 in chips sitting between me and seat 9 and then Taz comes over and says “these are going here” motioning to me and I’m wondering if someone thinks I won a High Hand or something… and then he says, “I should just leave them here” and I respond, “I don’t get it” and finally it dawns on me that those are his chips and he’s making a joke that I’m going to win them from him anyway so why waste time and I’m like “bro, you haven’t been around here for a while, huh?”

    9:49 PM: Someone limps, I raise KK, there’s a call, button 3-bets and I cap this 4-way pot.

    I bet flop and turn on QT53 and still have three opponents when another queen hits the river. I don’t think any of them have one, so I go for value and get called in two spots! My hand is good and I have sugar for the first time today.

    Not bad. I was -$800 less than two hours ago.

    10:12 PM: Heater alert! I followed that KK hand up by flopping top set with AA in a multi-way 3-bet pot and then flopping a full house with 82 suited from the small blind in a limped pot and getting way too much action when my hand seemed pretty face up.

    Suddenly I am up $700.

    11 PM: Welp, this game is on the ropes. We are now 5-handed. Nice surprise from that aces full hand from earlier. It went up for High Hand with 19 minutes to go so I forgot all about it and it held up! Send an extra $400 my way.

    I’m not going to try and blog and play short-handed so I’ll post a final tally when we wrap things up here.

    Final Score: +$2085

    Short-handed was good to me, even with Ducky getting a J32 flop with JJ vs my 33 in a blind vs blind hand when we were 4-handed.

    Feels good though. Good enough to put my month back in the black.

    Posted in poker | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

    h1

    Cali Trip Report and PLO Hands

    February 13, 2019

    img_5847

    So I’ve basically been in Los Angeles for three weeks straight with a little mini-trip home for a weekend in between.

    To illustrate, I’ve played 5.5 hours at Palace (my home court) since January 18th.

    I’ve been gone a lot. And I feel discombobulated. Unorganized. Tilty even?

    I was playing on Global Poker last night and after establishing a new record number of bullets fired in the $7K rebuy, I actually had to unregister some tournaments because I knew I was in total C-game mode. Somehow I managed to take 3rd in the $5.50 PLO rebuy to almost salvage my night.

    I’m totally off my routine and I have to admit it’s throwing my shit off completely. I’m excited to get back into the routine of normal life and start being productive again.

    But first! A recap of my Cali trips:

    • 1/20: +$135 in 5 hours of 20/40 LHE @ Commerce
    • 1/21: 18th of 186 for -$120 in $350 Omaha 8 tournament @ Commerce
    • 1/22: -$350 in Triple Stud tourney @ Commerce
    • 1/22: +$69 in 1.5 hours of 20/40 LHE @ Bike
    • 1/22: +$161 in 3.5 hours of 20/40 Mix @ Bike
    • 1/23: +$1945 in 10.5 hours of 20/40 LHE @ Bike
    • 1/24: -$350 in Stud 8 tourney @ Commerce
    • 1/24: +$4 in 2.5 hours of 8/16 Stud 8/Big O @ Commerce
    • 1/25 to 1/29: back in Washington
    • 1/30: -$700 in Limit Hold’em tourney @ Commerce
    • 1/31: -$350 in HORSE tourney @ Commerce
    • 1/31: +$1235 in 5.5 hours of 40/80 LHE @ Commerce
    • 2/1: +$5035 in 11.5 hours of 40/80 LHE @ Bike
    • 2/2: -$350 in NL HORSE tourney @ Commerce
    • 2/3: -$9 in 1 hour of 20/40 LHE @ Bellagio
    • 2/3: -$2177 in 2 hours of 40/80 LHE @ Bellagio
    • 2/4: -$570 in Omaha 8 tourney @ Commerce
    • 2/4: -$555 in 2.75 hours of 7 Card Stud @ Commerce
    • 2/5: +$1708 in 10.25 hours of 40/80 LHE @ Bike
    • 2/6: -$2060 in 8.25 hours of 40/80 LHE @ Bike
    • 2/7: -$570 in HORSE tourney @ Commerce
    • 2/8: Day off
    • 2/9: +$20 in 9 hours of 20/40 LHE @ Bike
    • 2/9: +$184 in 4.75 hours of 40/80 LHE @ Bike

    Cash games: +$5695 in 78 hours

    Tournaments: -$3360 in 48 hours

    Meh. You can do the math there. It was an okay trip, but when you factor in expenses it basically equates to a huge waste of time… except one thing! I got a lot of experience at the 40/80 level. That is valuable.

    Actually…. if you erased that insane trip to Las Vegas from my results ledger, it would look a whole lot better. Not amazing… but I could probably at least label it a good trip.

    Gosh damn Flipper.

    The tournament side of things was a massive disappointment. I cashed only one time in eight events – which is only slightly below average – but I was in two bullets when I cashed and still managed to lose money in the event. More annoyingly, I never made an actual interesting run in any of the LAPC events. I never had a stack at a stage of the tournament where I really thought I had a chance to do some serious damage.

    Sometimes it makes you wonder… why bother?

    Sigh. Next year!

    I’m back at Palace tonight for some PLO. I’ll jot notes and post some hand histories later and probably publish tomorrow (Thursday).

    Starting Lineup: Kitsap Reg, 8/16 Reg, Part-Time, Charlie Hustle, Hit&Run, JOKER, Lee Markholt, Crypt Keeper

    Notable Pots:

    I make it $15 with AAJ2 with a suited ace in clubs and get 5-way action to the Q54 rainbow flop. I start with a check, Hit&Run bets $75 and everyone else folds. It’s not a great spot, but I’m against a player that can have a hand as weak as a pair of queens with no draws here. Plus I do have a gutshot and a club is on the board. It’s not much of a hand, but I think I have to continue here.

    The turn is the king of clubs, giving me the nut flush draw and another gutshot, and I have a very easy check-call when he makes a weak-looking bet of $125. I can’t remember what the stack sizes were at this point, but there’s probably some merit to check-potting here. His bet size seems like weakness, so I think I might have a decent amount of fold equity here and I have a lot of outs when I do get called, but Hit&Run makes some super marginal calls and he’s not the kind of player I’m trying to get to fold better hands. I just call.

    The river pairs the 4 and he makes another bet in the $125 range and that card and bet size gives me the snappiest of calls. That sizing was already weak on the turn, so it’s pathetic on the river. He shows QJ75 (with bad clubs) and the 4 counterfeited his two pair and gives me a winner. Like I said, that’s a hand that should be folding if it gets raised to $425 on the turn and I honestly don’t think he’d make that lay down so that’s why I just check-call instead of trying to exploit the weakness I was sensing.

    I believe I limped along with the TT86 with clubs in this hand and bet $10 when it checked to me on the Tc9c6s flop. I had top set, a gutshot, and a bad flush draw and the 8/16 Reg check-called. The turn brought the only club I wanted to see – the 7 – and gave me a straight flush. I bet $20 and he check-called again. I remember sizing down in this spot because I had just played a hand against the same player where I took a much stronger line and thought he might incorrectly smell weakness here. The river brought a blank and I decided to pot it and he folded.

    There’s a series of limpers and Part-Time makes it $30 on the button. I call with KQT9 with a suit and most of the others call as well. Flop is Q86 rainbow and it checks around. The turn completes the rainbow with a ten and gives me top two pair. Despite the lack of flush draws, the board is pretty coordinated here, so I send it around again and the Kitsap guy bets $125 and everyone else folds. It’s not a great spot and I think folding might actually be best here, but I decide to see another card. The river is a blank and we both check. I show my top two pair and then five minutes later he shows me top set.

    There’s a raise from early position and multiple callers and I defend the big blind with AQ52 single suited with spades. The flop is K43 with two spades, giving me a wheel wrap and a queen high flush draw. I decide to start with a check, the PFR checks, Joker bets $50, it folds to Part-Time in the small blind and he calls, and with somewhere around $600 in front of me I’m going with the hand and pot it. Joker makes what looks like a painful fold, but Part-Time almost immediately puts me all in. He has a set of fours and only wants to run it once and the turn card pairs the board and just like that I am felted.

    I reload for $800 and it doesn’t take long for me to raise it up to $30 with AAK6 single suited with hearts and get it all in again with Part-Time on the T73hh flop. I bet $125 on the flop and by doing so, I knew I was committing myself to seeing all five cards, so we ran it once again. Part-Time has a set of 7s this time, someone says they folded three hearts, but somehow I river a flush anyway. Not that it matters. The board immediately paired on the turn and I’m felted again.

    I was having a pretty middling session up to that point and just like that, in about 15 minutes, I lost around $1500 in two hands. I took a lap around the building and decided that I couldn’t possibly quit at 9 PM, three hours into my first session back in Washington, so I reloaded another $1000.

    I make it $20 with an AA hand and can’t recall either of my side cards. Maybe because the flop was A82 rainbow and I didn’t them? I bet $20 and both Part-Time and the Kitsap player call. Turn is the ten of spades, opening up a flush draw and a lot of straight draws, so I pot it this time and only one player calls. The river brings in the flush, but it’s a 2! I’m pretty sure my remaining opponent has a hand he can call with so I bet $200 and he does call… and shows a set of 8s and the nut flush. Yikes! It’s nice to win a pot here, but after the hand all I can think about is how I would have doubled up if Part-Time had his hand.

    By now, Aquaman has made a very surprising appearance in this game and he gives me a very kind assist in this next pot. Someone opens to $15 and I call with JT75 double suited from the blinds. The flop is K96 rainbow, but has one of each of my suits on board, plus I have a sneaky double gutter that only makes nut straights. I check, there’s a $75 bet, Aquaman calls, and I’m happy to continue here as well. The turn completes the rainbow with a blank-looking 3, but that card actually gives me the elusive triple gutshot! I check, the flop bettor fires $200 on the turn, and Aquaman calls again, leaving himself with just under $300 behind. The fact that Aquaman just calls here instead of jamming leads me to believe he’s on a draw, so he probably has at least one of the same straight draws as I do. Still, I don’t see how I can fold here so I call and I’m desperately rooting for a 4 on the river because that card will look like a total brick. I’m planning to check-raise 4s and lead with 8s and queens. The river is an 8, I bet $300 and they both end up folding. Later, Aquaman asks if he would have potted the flop or turn would I have called and says he had a set of 9s. Uhm… hell no, I wouldn’t call.

    There’s a series of limpers to me in the big blind and I make a pot sweetener raise to $20 with AKJT double suited and they all call. The flop is an incredibly sexy AQ8 with two clubs and a spade, giving me ALL the draws… plus top pair. I bet $60 and get calls from Charlie Hustle and Joker. The turn pairs the 8 and that card is a bit annoying to me because if either of these guys has an 8 it basically destroys my hand. However, my hand still looks like it could be AA, so I bet out $125 and Charlie Hustle immediately calls. Sigh. I’m done with it. The river is a ten and that gives me a straight and I am not planning to call a bet here. Part of me is tempted to pot it if he bets (since I can still have AA) but even though this guy has a lot of nitty tendencies, I don’t ever see him make big folds. We both check and he shows A8. I can’t remember his exact side cards, but I ran a sim on this hand and my equity vs his A8 on the flop is over 70%. Pretty disgusting.

    I had a -$233 showing while playing 8/16 before PLO started and finished PLO at -$394. Considering I was stuck $1700 for the day one point, I was pretty happy with that end result.

    Posted in poker | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

    h1

    LAPC Schedule @ Commerce and some PLO hands

    January 16, 2019

    I haven’t posted in a week, so I guess I should do some updating. My last live blog was on Friday and I returned to Palace on Saturday for some more $15/$30 and did something that doesn’t happen too often to me: I turned +$1000 into a losing day, finishing at -$114 for the day after just under seven hours of play. I got off to a pretty good start, even hitting a High Hand, but I lost every pot I played for the last 2-3 hours of the day.

    With the Santa Claus Game officially dead at Palace on Mondays, I decided to make my first trip to Fortune in 2019 and I was pretty distraught to arrive there and see only one $20/$40 game in action. When I left my house their app listed two $20/$40 games so that was an unpleasant surprise. I endured over an hour of $4/$8 before they started a second $20 game. I’m happy to report I didn’t have to wait until September to book my first win at Fortune this year! I finished at +$1053 after 6.5 hours (and -$9 in 1.5 hours of $4/$8).

    The game was mostly bad, so I was pretty happy to book a two rack win. I happened to run pretty good in the brief window when the game was kind of juiced, but Free Throw and Sandman showed up and sat on my left and the game went right back in the shitter.

    That brings me to Wednesday’s PLO game. When I showed up there were 14 names on the list, but we started with 8 players and it did not look promising at all. The lineup was Part-Time, Charlie Hustle, The Crypt Keeper, Hit&Run, an aggressive regular, myself, a random and one of the floors at Palace. So the game wasn’t full and half the players were either hit and run artists or very non-regular and not likely to fire multiple bullets.

    My first notable pot came up when Hit&Run made it $15, I 3-bet to $40 on the button with AA44 single suited, it folded back to him, and he capped the preflop betting at $125.

    Flop comes down Q93 with two clubs and he pots for $250 and only has $154 behind, so we go ahead and get the rest of his stack in and run it twice. Turns out he has AA also and the first board runs out a chop, but he makes Broadway on the second one and gets 75% of the pot.

    We did get a full game around 6:30 but it wasn’t destined to stay that way for long.

    My second notable pot there were multiple limpers and I had a pretty ugly QJ54 single suited in the big blind and it cost me $2 more and my hand is so weak multi-way that I didn’t even want to flick it in there… but I did.

    The flop is AJ9 with two hearts and the player on my left (a very green PLO player) bets $20, the random guy calls, and I decide to take one off here with a queen high flush draw because I don’t think either of these guys understand hand values very well in this game.

    The turn brings in my flush and I check and overcall $40 this time. I actually love my hand here as a $40 bet is pretty weak and a call is even weaker. I think it’s all transparent enough that I can maybe even make an exploitative raise, but my standard play is to be cautious in these spots, so that’s the route I ended up taking.

    The river is a clean king of spades and this time I’m facing another super weak bet and call of $50. Again, I make the safe play with what is obviously the best hand and just call and sure enough the bettor turns over a small flush and the caller can’t even beat that so I win the pot.

    Here’s a weird one: I limp along with a junky KJT6 single suited and decide to bet $20 on the flop when the board comes down AT9 with one diamond (my suit) and three players call me, including one on the button. Whoops. This flop bet is a rare bluff with air from me in a multi-way pot, but I thought I just had to get through one player on the button and, well, that was a bad read.

    Turn is the jack of diamonds, giving me a king high flush draw and two pair, and Hit&Run leads out for the full pot of $115. This may be precarious as I’m not drawing to the nuts in any direction, but I feel like I have too much equity here to fold, so I make the call. Button also calls but the fourth player folds.

    River is a queen and I’m pretty shocked when Hit&Run checks because he’s supposed to have Broadway when he pots the turn. Well, I have the nuts now, so I don’t see any reason not to bet even though it seems likely I’m splitting with one of these yahoos. I bet $130 and they both fold! That’s when the Palace floor says he flopped a set of nines (and folded the turn) and the button says he had a set of tens. Wow.

    Part-Time opens to $15, Slimer calls, I call with AQJ3 single suited and some others tag along also. It checks to me on the AT9 two diamond flop, so I fire $60 into $100 since I have top pair, the nut flush draw, and an open-ended straight draw. The Crypt Keeper check-pots it for $320 and it folds to me, so I put him all-in and we run it twice. When he asks if I have a set and I say no, he suddenly looks like he hates his hand because he must be on a draw that I have crushed. I make two pair on the first board and the nut flush on the second one to scoop a $1200 pot.

    As expected, the game fizzled quickly. Hit&Run booked it with over $2k and multiple players quit early, including Part-Time with basically all the chips (over $4k!)

    That left 6 of us at 9 PM and by 9:18 the game was 100% dead. Geez. I’m a little concerned about the Palace PLO game. The Thursday game is basically dead already and I don’t care about that too much, but I would be pretty devastated if the Wednesday game also dried up. It is typically pretty decent, but this is a really bad look considering I’m a key player and I’m going to miss the next three Wednesday sessions as I’ll be in Los Angeles playing in the LAPC. Plus The Man is claiming he’s not playing any poker in 2019.

    Fortunately, the big pot against The Crypt Keeper gave me a solid +$980 for the night and made the super short session much easier to swallow.

    Speaking of the LAPC… here’s what my schedule looks like:

    Monday, 1/21: $350 Omaha 8
    Tuesday, 1/22: $350 Triple Stud
    Wednesday, 1/23: $20/$40 on Live at the Bike
    Thursday, 1/24: $350 Stud 8

    Wednesday, 1/30: $350 Limit Hold’em
    Thursday, 1/31: $350 H.O.R.S.E.
    Friday, 2/1: $350 T.O.E.
    Saturday, 2/2: cash games
    Sunday, 2/3: cash games
    Monday, 2/4: $570 Omaha 8
    Tuesday, 2/5: $570 Stud
    Wednesday, 2/6: cash games
    Thursday, 2/7: $570 H.O.R.S.E.
    Friday, 2/8: $570 2 to 7 Triple Draw

    I have some tournaments I’m interested in playing later in February also, but this is already a lot of time away from home for a non-WSOP event so I’ll have to really be crushing it to justify flying back a third time. Commerce does have extra prizes for not only overall Player of the Series, but Mix Game Player of the Series as well and they pay out a lot of spots. So if I’m in the running there, maybe I will be back for the $1k events.

    I intended to play poker today (Thursday) but my wife and I went hiking this morning and when we got home we were both so wiped we basically lounged around all day, alternating between falling asleep and watching six episodes of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, an excellent show on Amazon Prime about a housewife in the 1950s that stumbles into stand up comedy when her marriage falls apart. Rachel Brosnahan plays Mrs. Maisel and unsurprisingly she has won the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Television Series – Music or Comedy for two years running. She is spectacular! The show is a strong recommendation from me as I near the finish line of season one.

    I will be playing $15/$30 at 4 PM so expect another blog at that time.

    Posted in poker | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

    h1

    First Blog of 2019: PLO @ Palace

    January 2, 2019

    Amazingly, we still don’t have internet in our new home. I could go on a rant about my recent experience with Dish but I’m guessing a decent amount of people have had terrible experiences with the various cable companies (Dish isn’t my first run in – 🖕🏻Comcast!).

    Allegedly, we are scheduled for installation (activation?) tomorrow, but since this is our third scheduled install, I’m not exactly holding my breath. It’s also the last chance for Dish to remain our cable company. I’m hoping they come through because even though it repulses me to keep giving them our business at this point, I really don’t want to have to shop around and go even longer without internet when I already own a Dish modem/router.

    Needless to say, I’ve been without a connection in my home for almost two weeks now. That makes things… difficult. I can’t type these blogs on a keyboard – I have to do it on a phone (as I am right now) and that’s why I’ve gone off the grid during this transition. I just don’t feel like typing these long preambles on my phone.

    It’s also annoying because all my spreadsheets are connected via the net between all my various devices and Excel functions much friendlier on a PC than a mobile device. So I feel like I’m behind on all my accounting and just disorganized electronically altogether.

    Plus, after putting in more cash game volume in the first three weeks of December on Global Poker than I had in any other month in 2018, I have played a grand total of one hour since my internet disappeared on the 21st.

    While we do have unlimited data with Verizon, we don’t seem to get a great signal in our house – it is usually one bar and peaks at two bars. Not good.

    But I’m powering through today, even though I don’t particularly like live blogging PLO cash games. As I’ve said many times before, it’s a lot of sitting on the sidelines and watching – more so than in limit hold’em.

    So… my last post was on the 21st of December, huh? Eek.

    I have played four live sessions since then and it has been a rather miserable experience.

    After finishing -$1323 in my last post and taking four straight days off for Christmas celebrations, I was back on the grind last Wednesday for a -$1303 showing in 6.5 hours of PLO.

    It’s pretty rare that I can walk away from a session and confidently say that I was playing my C-game but this was one such occasion. I already felt like I was off beforehand, but when I mistakenly 3-bet with A4J9 (single suited to the jack) thinking I had AAJ9 (single suited to an ace) and found myself calling down (for $800 total) on AT8(rainbow)2A, I knew something was wrong. I recognized my mistake before the flop came and it was frustrating to see The Crypt Keeper lead into five opponents on that flop (when I’m supposed to have aces!) and then feel like I need to call down because we wound up heads up after the flop action. I think my postflop play might be defensible (TCK had AT here but he’s capable of having all the various straight draws also), but I also know I lost $850 on a hand I would have folded preflop if I knew what I fucking had.

    A while later, I opened on the button with a marginal hand and realized I was actually calling an under the gun raise. I mean… what am I doing with my life? I didn’t stay much longer than that. The game was good, but my game was not.

    Emergency ejection.

    I took Thursday off and was eager to be back in action Friday for some $15/$30 limit hold’em.

  • I got smacked. I wasn’t super active but I lost what felt like every pot I played, missing whenever I was drawing while they never seemed to miss no matter how thin they were drawing. I was overwhelmed with accumulated tilt and quit at 8:30 PM on a Friday after 4.5 hours of play.
  • Yikes.

    • I finished at -$1334, the first time I’ve ever posted three straight losses of $1000+ in my entire poker history (and mind you, this was actually three straight of -$1300+).

    I have started working on my 2018 results post and I’m thinking about my 2019 goals and it’s pretty clear that while my mental game is substantially stronger than the average player (especially in this area), there is still so much room for growth and learning. It will be an area of focus for the new year because while I think quitting when I recognize I’m not playing well for whatever reason (i.e. my PLO quit above) is a good thing, quitting because I’m upset about variance is simply unacceptable. While it’s better to leave than sit and steam, possibly hemorrhaging chips, I should have a better grasp on the concept of variance and it should have little affect on my mood – it’s just part of the game.

    Saturday seemed like another good time to take a breather but The Man informed me that he wants to spread $15/$30 on both Fridays and Saturdays at 4 PM and if that’s his desire I sort of have to the first in line to make sure it happens.

    I clocked in for some Saturday $15/$30 and was happy to see the game start and stay solid until I left. I booked a feel good win of +$585 after 9 hours of play.

    Sunday was another day off and I wasn’t sure what Monday was going to be. Being New Year’s Eve, I wasn’t positive the Santa Claus Game was going to go and it didn’t come close to starting… for the second straight week… granted, both days were holidays of sorts (Christmas Eve the week before), but I have a feeling the coup de grace has arrived. If it doesn’t go next Monday we can officially proclaim it deceased.

    With no $10/$20 straddle, I ended up playing $8/$16 and I was very non-committal about it. I really wanted to ditch the game and go watch Aquaman but the theater where I’m an A-List member was sold out and while I was tempted to actually pay to go to theater next door, I resisted the urge and stayed put.

    But I did leave when my wife got off work and booked a +$35 in 6 hours in my last session of 2018.

    So here we are in 2019. I’m anxious to share my 2018 results and post my goals for the new year, but it’s not going to happen until I can sit at a computer and do some typing. Hopefully that issue will be resolved tomorrow. If not, it’s probably going to be another week or so.

    There are currently 17 players signed up for the PLO game start at 6 PM. I will be back with a starting lineup around that time and hopefully lots of interesting hands to post after that.

    Happy 2019 ya’ll. Let’s get it.

    Starting Lineup: Guy I know from Kitsap, Part-Time, PLO reg, LHE reg, Charlie Hustle, Hit&Run, 8/16 reg, and Lee Markholt

    I think there were 20 names on the list when I got here and that has been whittled down to a full game and 4 players waiting. One of the no shows was Big Baby. 😞

    I give this starting lineup a C+.

    6:23 PM: Some funny hands:

    One hand after I pot Lee on the K84 rainbow flop with KQJ8 single suited in a raised pot (he folded), he raises from the small blind and says, “let’s try this again.”

    Flop 873 with two diamonds and Lee check-calls a pot-sized bet from Part-Time and then does so again on a black ten turn. River is another straight card and Lee check-calls $300. Part-Time tables KQT9 for the nuts and Lee says “you have no idea how lucky you got,” while tabling Ad8d8, and then mutters quietly, “you fucking…”

    And I start laughing out loud because it’s funny to hear someone so accomplished cursing at a Palace regular. But then I feel bad because no one else heard him curse and it seems like I’m just laughing at him losing a big pot.

    I call $15 on button with J987 single suited and bet $60 on a 942ss flop when everyone checks to me. I have top pair and a weak flush draw here, which seems good enough to stab with. Part-Time and Charlie Hustle both call.

    I’m already basically done with the hand… unless I make top two on the turn… which I do. They both check-call a $270 pot-sized bet. Yikes. I have spades, but I don’t want to see one.

    River is the king of spades. Part-Time checks, Charlie Hustle bets $300 and I snap-fold my flush. Part-Time goes into the tank, but really he’s just waiting for me because he didn’t realize I folded so fast. When prompted he quickly folds also.

    Charlie Hustle turns over one card – the ace of spades – and says, “you like that, Lee?”

    Lee responds, “you gotta show more than one card if you want people to think you’re bluffing.”

    I gave it zero thought because he’s literally never calling $270 on the turn hoping he can represent a flush if a spade hits on the river… in a 3-way pot.

    Some people might have that kind of creativity and gumption… but Charlie Hustle is not one of them.

    6:59 PM: Charlie Hustle just called a big river bet and stood up and cheered after he won the pot.

    Oh how the fibers of my being loathe him.

    He is the worst.

    7:33 PM: Charlie Hustle is up $1500 already so obviously he’s out of here. Weird how that works out. His wife is always hurrying him out of here when he wins big early. I’m not a big fan of the hit and run artists, but people are welcome to do whatever they want with their money… but don’t insult our intelligence with your bullshit. Just get up and leave. We don’t need to hear an excuse every time.

    Seriously. Fuck that guy.

    He is replaced by some dude I don’t think I’ve ever seen before… sitting down with $200.

    9:01 PM: Random blind on blind violence from the blinds between me and Lee. We both see the flop for $5 and I have an ugly JJ84 triple suited (three clubs) but get the KJ6 rainbow flop. Lee leads out for $25 and I make it $80 to go. He calls pretty quickly.

    Turn is the 5 of hearts and he check-calls $210, which surprises me.

    River is a queen and it looks like he’s going to bet it but ultimately checks. It’s tempting to go for value but really I’m targeting 66 only – that’s pretty narrow. He’s not going to call me with two pair (on the turn even – unless he picked up a flush draw). If he didn’t have a set he probably has a big straight draw and that might have come in. I don’t think he would check river with straights very often but I also don’t think he’s calling often enough to go for max value, so I check back and he does have 66 (with a jack blocker! And the nut heart draw!)

    10:51 PM: Card dead here and this game is fizzling early tonight. We are currently 7-handed, with Part-Time absolutely crushing the game and Twinkie has joined us.

    Speaking of Twinkie, it’s time for a name change. I hate it. I always have. Someone suggested Scarecrow to me and I loved it… but I somehow ended up going with… Twinkie? Huh.

    No. Sorry buddy. You are The Scarecrow. Embrace your Bat-villainy. Not many people get to be part of my actual Rogue’s Gallery. It’s okay. We are still friends.

    Since I’ve sat back down at the table Scarecrow has put multiple hundreds of dollars into basically every pot I’ve witnessed so far. He’s certainly worthy of a better name than Twinkie.

    11:19 PM: Someone said I haven’t been updating much but this is what most of my hands have looked like: raise to $20 with AKJ9 single suited to the ace, get four callers, check-fold 877 flop. That’s basically been the gist of it.

    But here’s one: I open AKQJ single suited and get two callers. Flop is KQQ and since I’ve checked the flop after raising like ten hands in a row, I go ahead and stay consistent with the new norm and check this one as well. It checks through in a 3-handed pot.

    Turn is a blank and the big blind leads out for near-pot. I call, other player folds.

    Seems like the jig could be up here but he still leads for $150 on a blank river. I make it $400 and he folds.

    That’s it.

    12:28 AM: Same opponent and this time I have QJJ5 double suited and he leads $30 on J77. I make it $125. He calls.

    Turn is a 6 and he check-folds to a $200 bet from me. I thought playing this hand fast might confuse him into a payoff – if he has a 7 – but alas, $125 is all the action I could muster.

    1:29 AM: Ugh. What timing. I open AJ97 double suited and get 3-bet to $50.

    Four of us see an A86 rainbow flop and I lead out for $110. The PFR calls and so does another player.

    Turn is a jack and I bet the $300 max and now the PFR raises another $300. Gross. The third player stacks off for less than $300 total and I call and then call for another $200 when I make three pair on the river. He has AA.

    And I was planning to leave soon anyway, so I player another orbit or so and cashed out for a final tally of +$16.

    Wonderful. Nothing like losing all your profit at the buzzer.

    Now I go home and pray for internet tomorrow.

    Posted in poker | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

    h1

    PLO @ The Palace (11/28/18)

    November 29, 2018

    I’ve come to the decision to stop live blogging my PLO sessions. Interesting situations just don’t come up often enough. Most hands are pretty cut and dry. There’s a preflop raise and then there’s a flop bet and the hand is over.

    Last night was a prime example of why I quit writing during PLO sessions. The game lasted a whopping 3.5 hours and I only played three pots that I thought worthy of jotting down.

    I’m surprised the game broke so early in the night considering it started out full and strong enough. Starting lineup featured Part-Time, Charlie Hustle, Twinkie, Lee Markholt, one other PLO regular, and three randoms… plus a list.

    Later in the night, Kate Hoang made an appearance in the game. That’s notable because we suddenly had a combined 11 World Series of Poker final tables in the game – and that’s just the ones I know about: Lee has 6, Kate has 3, and I have 2. I’m not positive about this, but I’m guessing that’s a Palace record for a single game.

    Anyways, here are the only interesting hands I played on Wednesday:

    Lee limps in, I make it $20 with AKQ3 single suited, a regular calls and so does Lee. I’m not stoked about isolating Lee with this hand, but it’s definitely a hand I’m trying to play with a suited ace and I don’t really think I should be limping it.

    Flop is A64 rainbow, I bet $35 and only the regular calls.

    Turn is a ten and my opponent is pretty sticky. My hand isn’t all that great, but I do have a gutshot to the nuts, so I go ahead and take a free card.

    The river is a jack, giving me the nuts, and he checks again. There’s like $130 in the pot and he doesn’t seem strong at all, so I bet $25, hoping to either get paid off by a weak hand or maybe even induce a raise. He just calls though and I win the pot.

    Yes, that was one of the three most interesting hands I played all night.

    This is the very next hand and I open to $15 with KQJ5 double suited, there’s a call, and the regular from the last hand is on the button and quickly makes it $60. My hand doesn’t qualify for Tommy Angelo’s Waiting for Straighters strategy, but I decide to call anyway because I didn’t read that article until after I got home. The other player calls as well.

    Flop is QJ7 with two diamonds which are not one of my suits. I do have a backdoor flush draw though. I also have top two. I’m honestly not sure what my plan is when I check on the flop. The player in between donks out for the full pot of $185 and the regular on the button folds. I have to admit I was pretty lost here. I think I had about $625 behind and I believe he had me covered. I suspected I probably didn’t have any fold equity and it was pretty brutal not having any diamonds in my hand, but I did have a king for a straight blocker at least. Holding top two, it was pretty unlikely I was up against one of the big sets and I saw this player check-min-raise with middle set earlier, so I felt like I probably had the best hand. The question was, did I want to play a $1400+ pot with a naked top two on a super wet board? Honestly… not really. I tanked for quite a long time, but ultimately I decided I had to go with and made it $485, leaving myself with around $140 behind. I’m still not sure about it, but apparently it was the right decision at this exact moment because something really unexpected happened: he folded.

    This is a 3-bet pot to $60 preflop and I have double suited KKJ5 in the small blind. Five of us see the flop so there is $300 in the middle when the A42 with two clubs board rolls off. The ace of clubs is on board, so I have the nut flush draw here. I’m in the worst position and I’m deep with some of the remaining players, so I start by checking, the next player pots for $300 and Kate goes all-in for around $225. It folds back to me. The other player has around $100 behind, so this is just a math problem. I tanked for some time at the table trying to figure it out.

    There was $300 in the middle before the flop and the flop action added another $525. It costs me $300 to continue in a pot of $825, but technically, if I’m going to continue with the hand, I’m going to put the other player all-in since I’m never folding on the turn, so my actual pot odds are $400 to win $925, or roughly 2.3 to 1. That means I need to win around 30% of the time to break even here. For the sake of simplicity – especially at the table – I use the method of multiplying the number of outs I have on the flop by four to determine how often I improve my hand. This isn’t exact, but it’s close enough. For example, if I have nine outs to a flush, I’m going to improve to a flush by the river roughly (9×4) 36% of the time. That would make this a clear call. Unfortunately, things aren’t that clear. It’s probably safe to assume that I don’t have the best made hand at the moment. The real questions are, how live are my set outs and how likely is it that at least one of my opponents has a flush draw? Since neither of these players 4-bet before the flop, I think it’s safe to assume a set of aces is not out there. I’ve never seen Kate play PLO so I don’t really know what her range looks like, but I think the other player can show up with the small sets here and maybe even a straight. He seems loose enough to put $60 in preflop with those hands. If I had to guess what I’m up against exactly though, I would guess someone usually has aces up and someone has a flush draw, possibly with a little extra equity. If that’s true, my kings are live, but I could be missing up to three flush outs. That would give me around eight outs twice and a roughly 32% chance of improving to a set of kings or a flush by the river. Add in the fact that I’m going to backdoor a straight some percentage of the time and I think I’m supposed to call here, but it’s very close. If a straight and a flush draw are out, it’s arguably a fold, but my backdoor Broadway and full house draws make it pretty close.

    In the moment, I decided that I needed to improve and that I was almost certainly missing flush outs and thought I might not be getting the right price, so I folded. The board ran out with two clubs that didn’t pair the board and Kate won with a jack high flush holding JT86. I never got to see what the other player had.

    I would love to see someone actually figure this spot out, but now I’m guessing it’s probably a call – and not just because I got there.

    That would have been a nice $925 extra to cash out at the end of the night, but for a 3.5 hour session, I wasn’t mad about finishing at +$527 considering I had very few favorable situations and no big confrontations.

    My current plan is to combine both PLO sessions on Wednesday and Thursday into one post, but I’m not optimistic the game is going to go tonight so I’m just going to go ahead and publish now. There are currently three names on the list and I heard one of those players say he was going to Muckleshoot tonight. Plus the PLO game hasn’t gone for the last three Thursdays. I thought it was a stretch to try and spread this game twice a week and my intuition looks spot on. It definitely hasn’t helped that The Crypt Keeper has been in Vietnam for the last several weeks, especially since a couple of his friends also stopped showing up when he left. I think PLO can flourish spreading it once a week, but starts to get spread thin if you try to do it more than that. Lakewood just doesn’t have the player pool for it and while the game has drawn in a decent amount of outside players, I don’t think there is enough interest to spread it multiple days a week.

    Just look at the 15/30 game. It started off super strong, going once a week on Mondays, then we started expanding it to the point where it was running almost every day… and now it has reached a point where it is reliably running zero times a week. It is dead. With that said, there was discussion with The Man last night about trying to revive it, with the plan of spreading it on Friday nights starting at 4 PM. That makes a lot of sense to me. I think it would do well there as a once a week game.

    It’s looking like this will be the fourth straight Thursday that the PLO game doesn’t run, so I might need to find a new option for this night of the week. I can’t really justify waiting around until 6 PM to see if the game is going to go or not. I think Thursday nights are usually good at Fortune, but I also might opt to stay home and play online… what I’m going to try not to do is play 8/16 when I know I really don’t want to.

    Note: Just to be clear, I’m still going to blog about my PLO sessions, I’m just not going to do it while I’m playing like I do with Hold’em. I will take notes and write about it later like I have been doing for the past couple of weeks.

    Posted in poker | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

    h1

    Heater is Official: Pot Limit Omaha Hands

    November 23, 2018

    Wednesday didn’t start out all that promising. The PLO game at Palace was 6-handed to start and stayed that way for quite some time, with multiple players on the list initially passing on coming over.

    Starting lineup was Part-Time, Charlie Hustle, Lee Markholt, Hit&Run, a mega nit, and myself.

    The First Hand

    I sat down with $700 on the table and on the first hand dealt, I picked up the AKdd63hh and decided to limp along. This is a pretty marginal hand but playing 6-handed if I’m going to play it, I should probably raise it. Honestly, I should probably just be folding it. I guess I wasn’t in the rhythm of things yet. But against very predictable opponents, I think it can be okay to limp along with some weak hands with nut potential and try to play cheap pots in position. This hand would look a lot nicer if it was double suited to the ace and the king. Action gets to Hit&Run in the big blind and he makes it $15 to go and all us passive limpers call.

    Flop is KQ6 with two diamonds. I have top and bottom pair with the nut flush draw. Hit&Run leads out for full pot and Charlie Hustle calls. Charlie Hustle has some pretty massive preflop leaks, but postflop he plays a very nitty style. When he calls here, he probably has a very strong draw and he may have a strong made hand. Hit&Run started the hand with just over $500 and Charlie Hustle had $1000. I definitely have enough hand that I can raise and get it in here and maybe I should, but I opt to just call and see what develops.

    Turn is a total brick, Hit&Run bets the max of $300 and Charlie Hustle calls. I just called again, but in retrospect, I think this is a pretty clear raise. Hit&Run had less than $200 left after his turn bet and at this point, I think it’s safe to assume that Charlie Hustle is on a draw. It would be strange if he was near-nutted on a wet board and decided to call twice when it was obvious that I was probably drawing. But then again, Charlie Hustle does not look comfortable in huge pots. This guy’s entire sessions are based around making $500 in the least turbulent fashion possible. I could already see that this situation had his breathing accelerated. But I have seen him show up with very big hands when he was clearly nervous. Still, it seemed like he is more likely to be drawing here than to have a made hand better than mine and since Hit&Run has like $150 left and I can’t imagine many rivers I’m going to fold against him (if Charlie Hustle folds in front of me), I should just make it $600 here to create a side pot with Charlie Hustle and also increase the chance that he pays me off if he has a flush draw and we both make diamonds on the river.

    But I just called and the river was the 9 of diamonds. They both check to me and I go $300, Hit&Run folds, and Charlie Hustle goes into the tank. It seems like I’m probably not going to get paid off here. Not only do I have the nut flush, but I also have the king of diamonds in my hand, so the best hand he can have is a jack high flush. I was wondering what I would do if I had a hand I could arrive on the river with holding the naked ace of diamonds in my hand. Honestly, I don’t think I’d bluff with it. Not when Hit&Run has $150 left in a pot that has reached over $1000 and not when it seems like Charlie Hustle was drawing, most likely to a flush… so I don’t think I’m ever bluffing in this spot. But the longer he takes and the faster he starts breathing, the more I realize this pompous nit is actually going to give me another $300 with the third nuts (at best). It’s a really tough spot for him because if he calls off $300 here and is wrong, he might actually have to stay and play a session and that would be a real shame. He does stick the $300 in and I’m up over $1000 after one hand of poker.

    I messaged The Joker and Radio Mike and told them I was on for The Coast-to-Coast Challenge with a massive head start, but I was informed that The Challenge is only relevant in limit games.

    Okay, fine.

    Bluff Catcher or The Nuts?

    There are limpers and I raise to $30 on the button with a single suited AA53 and get three callers. Flop is T92 rainbow with one of my suit and we all check. Turn pairs the 2 and puts a flush draw (not mine) on board. Part-Time leads out $100, someone else calls, and I call also, planning to re-evaluate on the river and probably call bricks if the other player folds. But the river is an ace and I don’t have to make any decisions. They both check to me and fold when I bet $225. Considering I thought it was very likely I already had the best hand, that seems like some pretty bad sizing on my part. I can and probably should go as small as like $60 here. That’s a tough sizing to fold to if they have anything remotely decent.

    The Dark Knight vs Lee Markholt

    I raise one limper to $20 with a single suited QJT9 and Lee makes it $70 on the button. The small blind calls and I call also. Lee has at least 200 big blinds to start the hand.

    The flop is KQ4 with two clubs and I think I should just be taking the lead here since I flopped a wrap and a flush draw. Lee is going to have AA a lot and if he does have that hand, he’s going to hate this flop and check back a lot. He might bet AA combos that have the nut flush draw, but mostly he will be checking back. He’s also not going to be 3-betting very many KK combos before the flop. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but he will be calling with most of his KK hands so the chances that I get raised on this flop by him are pretty small, plus I have enough hand that I can stand a raise anyway. However, I decided to check and Lee did check back.

    Also, for all that analysis, it’s worth noting that this is a 3-handed pot. I’m trying to envision who the third player in the pot was, but I can’t recall. There were only a couple reasonable players in the game though and none of them were sitting in the nine seat at any point in time, so when the small blind calls $70 cold here it isn’t too alarming and probably represents a pretty wide range still.

    The turn paired the king and, again, I can justify betting here when the small blind checks and maybe it’s mandatory at this point, but I checked again and Lee bet $140. The other player folded and I tanked for a while before calling. I thought it would be super unlikely for him to have two pair on the flop and have a boat now and there was 0% chance he flopped a set.

    River is the 2 of clubs, giving me a queen high flush. As played, there is really no sense in betting here. Lee is not going to call me with any worse hands. I don’t think we have enough history for him to even consider that I’m ever bluffing here. He will, however, raise me if he does happen to somehow have a full house and he will certainly call me if he rivered a better flush. Also, my range seems to be pretty capped here. I would imagine he assumes I never have a full house the way I played this hand, so maybe he will bluff worse hands when I check, but with the $300 max bet, he will probably just check back when I have him beat and that’s okay. He does check back and my flush is good. He shows me the AAKx with the naked ace of clubs and says he didn’t think he could get me to fold a flush since I probably didn’t believe he had a king… and he was right.

    I don’t hate my line in this hand, but I’m guessing leading out on the flop is probably the correct play.

    Minimizing with The Nuts

    I open AAJ7 single suited from early position and two players call. The flop is A82 rainbow. I bet $30 into $45 and the next player, a non-reg in this game and a weak player in hold’em, min-raises me to $60. The other guy folds and this board is as dry as it gets, so I just call. Turn is a king and we both check. Well, that’s annoying. I just let this rookie free card play me in pot limit Omaha when I have the nuts… on a board where no one should ever be raising for a free card. River is a queen and I decide to check again because now the nuts have changed and if he has something I figure he might bet facing a another check. He checks back… with QQ in his hand and who knows what else. I haven’t played PLO with this guy before, but I was pretty shocked to see him check back a set after I check to him twice.

    I have no idea what was going on there but I’m obviously not a fan of my line. This dude takes very unorthodox lines in hold’em so I shouldn’t be surprised when he min-raises flop here with nothing and then checks a lot. It makes no sense but this player has never made sense. I’m not sure what my maximizing line is here against him, but I’m guessing small raises and bets are a good way to get more money in the pot even though I have the deck crippled on the flop.

    Someone is Winning a Monster

    There are limpers and I make it $25 from the small blind with AKK6 single suited to the ace. They all call. The flop is KQ3 with two hearts and one diamond, giving me top set, a backdoor nut flush draw, and an ace, which is not insignificant, as it is a straight draw blocker. I decide to start with a check as I will be checking the flop very frequently when I raise from the small blind and I want to balance my checking range with some strong hands. It may not be necessary for me to balance my ranges in this particular game, but I did it anyway here. It checks to the button and he bets $85. I make it $300 to go and that’s when things start to get crazy. The initial limper in the hand now calls $300 cold and the action is on Mr. Plow and he’s admiring the action going on around him, chuckling about the insanity of it all and that seems like a prelude to folding, but then he says, “I don’t see how I can fold here” and jams for ~$470. Action is back on the button and he asks, “can I raise?” and the answer is yes. Technically, the $470 is not considered a raise of my bet. I made it $215 more and Plow’s all in is only $170 more than my bet and needs to be at least $215 more to be considered a raise. However, I reopened the betting to the button with my initial raise to $300, so he can still raise. If he called though, I would not be able to raise because I’d technically be raising myself and that is not allowed. Confusing? The button does raise, going all in for over $700 and with one raise left I raise again to make sure the other player has to go all in to stay in the pot also. I have everybody covered and my three opponents are all in for ~$800, $470, and $730, respectively.

    There is around $2900 in the middle and while I have the nuts, my hand is very vulnerable to straight draws and flush draws here, so I’m happy to run it more than once, but that gets shut down pretty quickly and everyone only gets one shot at a piece of this monster pot.

    The turn is a 3, immediately pairing the board and hopefully giving me a lock winner. I say hopefully because this crowd is certainly capable of punting with bottom set in this spot and if you follow my blog you know I’ve taken that beat before. Fortunately, no one has quads and my hand holds up to win everything. One of the players flashed a set of queens, but I didn’t see what anyone else had.

    They are Punting

    I raise with KJT8 single suited and get some callers. The flop is QT9 with two hearts and one diamond and since I’m out of position against two opponents and I’m deep with one of them, I decide to check and see what happens. While I do have the nut straight and a backdoor flush draw here, my hand has minimal chances of improving and this board is very wet. I’m not looking to play a massive pot here. Someone bets after I check, the deep-stacked player folds, and a shorter stack calls. Okay, with the deep-stacked player out, I don’t mind playing for stacks now. I pot it to $135 and they both call.

    The turn is a wonderful black 4 and I make it $300 which is enough to put them both all in and they stack off.

    The river pairs the 9 and not only do I not lose on that card, but I’m not splitting with anyone either. It’s another $1000+ pot my way.

    But… I have Blockers!

    There are limpers again and I raise from the big blind with AKJT single suited to the ace and everybody calls.

    Flop is AKJ and this is not a great flop for me, even though I did pair every card. I start with a check, someone bets $25, and everybody else folds. I am pretty happy with that result, as I’m now heads up, and his bet of like 30% pot doesn’t exude strength. I can easily have the best hand here. I call.

    Turn is a ten, so I now have the ever elusive four pair. We both check.

    River pairs the jack, which gives me the third nuts. I’m only losing to AA and KK and that’s not much of a consideration since this player limped in preflop. I also realize that the way this hand has played out he either had total air when he bet on the flop or he probably has a full house now, so I bet full pot and then something inexplicable happens: he raises the maximum. What. I start tanking, but quickly stop myself because it’s absolutely silly. I’m never folding here with all the blockers that I have and knowing that I only lose if he limped in with AA or KK. I call. He does have KK! What in the world.

    My Worst Hand of the Night

    There are multiple limpers in this hand and I complete from the small blind with QTss88.

    The flop is AKJ and all spades. It’s a pretty decent flop for me as it gives me a Royal Flush. I check and it checks to the button. He bets $25, I call, and so does Charlie Hustle. I think this flop line is reasonable, but…

    …the turn is the 4 of hearts and now I should be leading out. When Charlie Hustle calls on the flop, it’s clear that he at least thinks he’s drawing to the nuts, or maybe he flopped a flush also. However, he’s not going to bet either of those hands and after getting called twice on the flop, the button is not going to continue firing with many hands. It’s a total botch job on my part and I practically throw up in my mouth with immediate realization when it checks around.

    The river is a red 7, I lead out $60 and both players fold. I showed my hand and that was pretty dumb because now the other two players can make up hands they had that I missed maximum value against. Charlie Hustle claims AK and the other guy says he had a set of kings. Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t, but either way, my line in this hand is absolutely horrible. I think checking on the flop is defensible, but checking the turn is absolutely horrible. There’s really no excuse for it. It’s pretty impressive to flop a Royal Flush and have end wind up as the worst hand you played all night.

    Final Score: +$3690

    Yep. I’m on a heater. That cash game downswing I was on? Firmly in the rearview now. I can actually see the full scope of it. It stretched from October 12th to November 8th, 113+ hours of pure torture, to the tune of -$5832.

    Since that last session on November 8th, I have been absurdly hot, starting a different kind of streak. For one, I have won eight sessions in a row. More impressively, I have had a +$1000 upswing in every single one of those sessions, even when I was playing 4/8!

    All in all, I am now on a torrid +$12k heater over my last 8 days of poker.

    Insane.

    Posted in poker | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

    h1

    $1$/$3/$5 PLO – Notable Pots (11-14 and 11-15)

    November 17, 2018

    So my plan was to note some hands during my live PLO sessions on Wednesday and Thursday, but for whatever reason, the game didn’t go on Thursday night. I know The Crypt Keeper will be in Vietnam for a few weeks, but none of the newer regs showed up on Wednesday and they weren’t on the list for Thursday either. I checked on Bravo all day and I didn’t see the list grow past two (myself included) until after the designated 6 PM start time, so I took my name off and stayed home to play online instead.

    Here’s the starting lineup from Wednesday’s game: Twinkie, Part-Time, nitty baseball guy that will leave if he gets up $500, two 8/16 Regs that don’t play this game, Lee Markholt, another nitty non-reg, and Hit&Run

    I keep referring to this PLO regular as the nitty baseball guy that likes to hit and run and that’s a mouthful. He plays the PLO every week so I need to give him some kind of name. I’ll just call him The Collector from now on since that seems to be his main hobby.

    Edit: Someone suggested the nickname Charlie Hustle after I posted this. It’s perfect. It fits both the baseball theme and the hit and run theme. Credit to Kyle Barkus for the great suggestion.

    After spending a lot of time studying PLO and really improving my game over the past week, I was excited to play live again and try out some of my new tricks, but it ended up being a pretty disappointing session. I was very card dead for most of the night and didn’t have much opportunity to take advantage of my newfound knowledge and then once the game got short-handed – where all my study has been focused (for 6-max games) – the game broke pretty quickly.

    Here are the key hands from my live session on Wednesday:

    I limp along on the button in a multi-way pot with KK62 single suited to a king. This is a pretty shitty hand to raise in a game where none of the limpers are folding preflop because this hand is going to flop very poorly. I’m basically looking to make a set and that’s about it. So the K74 with two clubs flop was pretty nice. A bad player leads out for $30 and I make it $105 to go. That gets us heads up. The turn card is a 7, filling me up, and he check-calls $110. The river is a ten and he check-calls $155 and shows a set of fours after I table the winner. I expect this player to blast off with sets, so I was pretty surprised to see his holding, but I didn’t think he could be very strong here and that’s why I didn’t go for max value.

    There are a series of limpers in front of me and I make it $20 with AA86 rainbow and they all call. The flop is AQ9 with two hearts and by this time The Man is in the game and he donks the flop for $65, I make it $250 to go and… everyone folds… including The Man as he flashes 99. Ugh. Not much I can do here but play my hand face up. This board is way too wet to get cute on in a multi-way pot. I suppose I could gamble by calling and see what happens. Maybe someone else will raise? That would be sexy. However, there are going to be some turn cards that will be really difficult to navigate. Maybe there is some merit to calling in this spot. Something to think about.

    Sandman has made a surprising appearance in Palace by this point and this is the one of the first hands he gets dealt in. I wasn’t involved so some of the details are missing here, but most of the key elements are accurate. For instance, I know for a fact that Lee Markholt raised one limper to $20, Sandman 3-bets on the button to $70, The Man and Charlie Hustle call it cold from both blinds and Lee also calls.

    I completely missed the flop action on this hand but I was tuned back in when The Man and Sandman managed to eventually get 200bb each in the middle by the turn. The board was AQxx and The Man had AQxx plus the nut spade draw and Sandman had KJ83 double suited (what) which was a king high spade draw and a gutshot. As far as I know he had three outs: the non-spade tens. They ran it once and Sandman somehow drilled the ten and won a $2500 pot on what sure looked to me like a massive punt attempt. Sandman said something about having 6 outs, but that doesn’t really make any sense. Maybe there was an 8 or a 3 on the board that gave him two more outs. Regardless, it was a pretty shocking hand and an unbelievable result.

    I felt bad for The Man. He was around 90% to win a $1000 gift from Sandman and… nope. So gross. Even more shocking was how tight Sandman played after this pot. KJ83 double suited is a really ambitious 3-bet here and the postflop play was pretty wild also. After seeing that, I was expecting to see him playing a wild and aggressive game all night, but he locked it down. I don’t really get what was going on here.

    Sandman makes it $15, two players call, and I squeeze to $70 with AQJ6 double suited. This hand is notably better than the one Sandman 3-bet in the previous hand as I have two big suits and I block 4-bet ranges by holding an ace. Lee Markholt calls it cold (annoying), Sandman folds, and one of the weaker players calls.

    The flop is 443 with two clubs, giving me a queen high flush draw. I’m not too sure about this spot. I’d like to know what the solvers suggest here. Generally speaking, if you flop a flush draw in a 3-bet pot starting with 100bb you are committed to the pot. However, I’m not sure if that applies if the board is paired. I would imagine when the board is 443 it is less of a concern, but I’m not sure. I can’t remember exactly how much I started the hand with but my stack-to-pot ratio was at least 3 to 1 and I know this because I decided to bet $130, Lee folded, the weak player check-raised me, and I decided to go with my draw, getting him all in for $613 total. We ran it once and he had a triple suited (meaning three of one suit) Q984 (so gross) and I was drawing dead when the queen on the turn filled him up.

    This is definitely a hand I want to look into further because I’m not 100% on my 3-bet pre or my flop action. I could have played it perfect or it could be a total punt. TBD…

    Two players limp and I make it $20 with a single suited KQT8, Lee calls from a blind, and both limpers call. The flop is TT8 and I do something atypical and decide to check back. The turn is another medium or small card (meaning I still have the nuts) and Lee leads out for $30, a random makes it $125 and there’s no sense hiding information any longer (if I call Lee is still going to be done with the hand here), so I make it $325, the other player calls and then stacks off for ~$150 on a river card that still has me nutted.

    I raise a limper to $20 with AAK4 single suited to the king and we go multi-way to the A76 two heart flop. I flopped top set and the nut flush draw. It is quite sexy. Since I have the deck pretty crippled here, I decide to size smaller and bet $20 into $80, picking up two callers. The turn is a black king and now I go full pot and one bad player calls. The river is a 9 and for some reason I decide to bet $200 instead of the max and he pays off pretty quickly while grumbling that I always have him beat. This time he shows a set of sixes. This dude is a massive punter and this is now twice he’s shown a lot of restraint against me with a set.

    By this point, the game has fizzled out quickly and we are down to 4-handed for this last pot. The guy paying me off with sets opens to $15, I 3-bet from the small blind to $40 with AQT3 single suited to the ace and he calls. I lead $60 on the J94 rainbow flop with one of my suit on the board and he calls.

    The turn is the 8 of clubs, giving me the nut straight with the nut flush redraw. I felt my opponent was going to bet a lot of the time if I checked, so I went with that line and he fired $160. I max-raised to $460 and he called.

    The river paired the board with a 9 and I decided to go for a check-call here, but he checked behind, making me think I won the hand, but he also had QT in his hand. In fact, he had AQT9 (no clubs). I think this is a pretty easy river bet for him. It should be fairly obvious that I have the nut straight here, so firing a $300 bet on the river is basically a freeroll for him, especially since he actually has the board-pairing card in his hand. This was the third time I had the nuts in a massive pot against the same hand and the second time I was freerolling for the whole pot and bricked.

    I wrapped the session at +$465 and I was pretty pleased with that result considering I spent most of the session down around $500-$800 and I was still stuck when most of the loose money was gone.

    As a bonus, I will include some of the sicker hands I played at $100 PLO 6-max online this week:

    This is such a sick hand. I open 3.5x from cutoff with AKJ5 rainbow and the big blind defends. The flop is QT6 rainbow, which gives me a Broadway wrap. With a stack-to-pot ratio of over 40 to 1 (we are both 300+bb deep to start the hand), I go ahead and bet full pot and he check-raises me to 22.5bb. We are way too deep to play for stacks here, so I just call. The turn is a 5, putting two spades on board, and he bets 73% of the pot and I call. The river is a red ten, giving me the nut straight, and somehow I get him to put 252 big blinds in on the river with a hand that isn’t AK. Wow. That’s a mind-boggling punt on the river. This was the biggest pot I won online this week.

    I thought I might be punting on this hand and maybe I was, but let’s see. MP opens to 3.5x, button calls, and I have AK54 triple suited to the ace in the big blind. Solvers say this hand type (unpaired, single suited, disconnected A-high 2-card broadway, suited ace) is calling 24% of the time and folding 76% of the time in this exact spot and since I’m triple suited and have two small cards, I’m clearly in the folding bucket. So that answers my first question: this is a punt. I’m not even supposed to be in the hand, so whatever happens afterward is just compounding my original mistake. But wait! It gets better! The flop is Q54 with two diamonds. I have bottom two pair and the naked king of diamonds in my hand. It checks to the PFR and he bets full pot. The other guy folds and… I decide to see the turn. Yikes. The turn is the ace of diamonds, so now I have three pair and the nut flush blocker. I bet out full pot and then something insane happens: he min-raises me. My turn bet was $33 and I have $52 behind and I am utterly flabbergasted. With the king of diamonds in my hand it really doesn’t make much sense that I’m getting raised here. If he had a flush and decided to go with it, you’d think he’d just pot it. Well, I have three pair and I’m confused, so I decide to go with it and jam the rest in. He calls… with… AT63 no diamonds. Unfortunately, the river is a 6 and he makes a bigger two pair and wins this 200+bb pot.

    Well, now I know that guy is a total maniac and by the time this next hand comes up (not that much later) he has turned a 435bb stack into an 83bb stack. I open the button with KJ98 double suited and he 3-bets the big blind to 11bb and I call. The flop is AA3 with two spades, giving me a jack high flush draw. He leads out for full pot. As I mentioned earlier, you generally have to go with it when you flop a flush draw in a 3-bet pot and start with 100bb, but it becomes a serious question when the board is paired… and when the board is paired with two aces, it’s probably suicidal. However, this dude is a proven lunatic, so I pot it and he stacks off for 72bb on the AA3 two spade flop with… a single suited 8775 and no spades in his hand. I have nothing on an AA3 board and I am a 55% favorite. It’s insane that he’s 3-betting that hand preflop. It’s insane that he’s potting the flop. It’s insane that he’s getting 76 big blinds in on that flop. It’s absurd that I have no fold equity on the flop and actually have to win a show down. Fortunately, the turn is a jack and that holds up to scoop the pot. What a maniac.

    Last night we went to Palace and I played 8/16 all night. Most of the 15/30 regs (Joker, Radio Mike, Flea, Mighty Mouse) were MIA, so the bigger game never got off the ground and I’m beginning to accept the fact that 15/30 at Palace is no longer something I can rely on… even on Friday nights. Somehow I managed to turn a brutal -$600 start into a +$1040 finish – a ridiculous +$1600 swing at the 8/16 level.

    Including last Sunday, that puts me at a very strong +$3776 for the week in live games. I’m still a few thousand dollars short of my previous peak, but I’m definitely trending in the direction of finally busting out of this slump.

    Today I will be biting the bullet and returning to Fortune for some 20/40 action. For the year, I sit at -$6870 over 46 hours there and I think it would be cool to try and focus on getting that number back in the green before the year ends. I definitely haven’t been making playing at Fortune a priority this year, but with the 15/30 game at Palace all but dead, I need to start pushing myself to drive to Renton. It’s hard to justify spending my Friday nights playing 8/16, no matter how good the game is.

    I will be in 20/40 action by 4 PM today, but I won’t be blogging. With my goal of turning my results at Fortune green for 2018, I want to give it my all and that means focusing on every hand, rather than typing on my phone when I’m not involved.

    Posted in poker | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

    h1

    PLO Wednesday Highlights (Live Blog)

    October 31, 2018

    This is going to be tough. I almost sliced half my thumb nail off last night while doing the dishes so I have multiple bandaids holding it in place. I’m fine, but the bandaids make it harder to type on my phone because I use thumbs to type and my keypad doesn’t register when I touch with the bandaid. So I got some weird typing going on.

    I spent Sunday traveling home from Lincoln City and I tried playing in The Santa Claus Game (more on that next week) at Palace on Monday, but after six hours of coughing into my shirt, blowing my nose constantly, and clearing my throat repeatedly, I felt bad for even being in the building. I called it a night as a -$85 loser – my 7th straight losing day at Palace (for -$3050 in total), a streak I am very much hoping to end tonight.

    In fact, even after the month-saving score in the Big O event at Chinook Winds, I’m only up a few thousand for the month, so this could be a real make-or-break-it session as far as the arbitrary time frame of October 2018 is concerned.

    Today’s starting lineup: Twinkie, solid reg, Crypt Keeper, nit, Lee Markholt, nit, aggro reg, His Airness

    Not the greatest, but His Airness automatically makes any game good.

    6:21 PM: So here’s something cool that happened to me today. This little guy was outside by himself rolling around in the autumn leaves on the ground, long after our other dogs had ventured back inside:

    Next thing I know he’s at the front door whining hysterically and my first thought is that he was scared because I left him out there on his own (although he stays behind by himself frequently with no problems) so I picked him up to comfort him and felt a sharp pain in my finger and involuntarily dropped him on the ground.

    I saw that he was covered in those helicopter leave things that have a bit of sharpness to them so I started picking them out of his fur, figuring that was the problem and also what poked me… but when I was done he was still whining incessantly.

    So I started looking again and that’s when I saw a yellowjacket stuck in his fur, crawling around on his belly… and everything made sense.

    *shivers*

    I hate bees. HATE them. I stepped on a hive when I was a young child and got stung many, many times and I’ve probably been stung more than average since then.

    This removal was going to be a two-human job. I pinned him down and my wife grabbed the wasp off him with a paper towel because no way in hell am I touching that thing again.

    Our dog seemed a little off afterwards so I called the vet as a precaution but they just told us to look for swelling and I never saw any. He doesn’t seem like he’s in any pain.

    But I’m sitting here reading about how yellowjackets can sting multiple times and inject poisonous venom, so… it’s a bit concerning, but my wife assures me he is doing just fine.

    So yeah, I got stung by another bee today.

    Super cool.

    7:04 PM: Notable hands so far:

    Lee Markholt opens to $15 and Twinkie and I both defend our blinds.

    I have the T974 double suited so when the flop comes J65 with two clubs (my suit), I bet out $30 when it’s my turn. Lee folds and Twinkie calls.

    The turn is a red 8, giving me the nuts with multiple redraws. I bet $80 and he calls again.

    The river is an ace and he check-calls $125 this time.

    Solid start to my night.

    Nit raises after limpers to $20 and multiple players call, including me with AKdd77 on the button.

    The flop is J74 rainbow and The Crypt Keeper leads out from the big blind into the entire field for $150. The nit calls, which is super alarming, and Twinkie calls also.

    I am totally lost. It seems like I have a big hand, but something feels off. I’m obviously fading straight draws here, but TCK and the nit have sets of jacks in their range. I think I can safely rule that holding out of Twinkie’s range. I’m tempted to punt in a $450 bet and I’m tempted to call, but I’m confused. I don’t know what to do and since the consequences of this ending badly for me are my whole stack, I just fold it.

    The turn is a 5 and it checks to Twinkie and max-bets $300. Crypt Keeper folds but the nit calls.

    River is a ten and now the nit leads for the max of $300, which is almost all in for him.

    Twinkie says, “you have the nuts, right?” and ends up folding (what is later revealed to be 8665).

    I honestly don’t know if my flop fold is good here, but one thing is for sure, both of the players that saw the river ended up with better hands than I had. I think I would have called the flop if there was a diamond, but I’m really not sure what the best approach is there.

    7:24 PM: The aggro player just raised the river with 99xx on TT299 and then folded face up when one of the nits 3-bet the $300 max!

    So sick. The nit courtesy showed the quad tens.

    It’s such a sick fold, but is really super easy if you take 60 seconds to think about it. The dude is a total nit, so he’s only 3-betting the virtual nuts on the river and with all four nines accounted for the only logical hand (that isn’t quads this dude could even feasibly 3-bet with is T2 and he is literally never doing it with a hand that weak. He has quad tens. Every time.

    So… amazing fold… but it’s pretty routine if you can calm your emotions enough to realize that you have quads and you’re never winning.

    Well executed.

    7:38 PM: Crypt Keeper just won a 4-way all in pot with top set and now has almost $3000 in front of him and the nit with quad tens also has nearly $2500, so this game is trending poorly and I’m only up $100 or so at the moment.

    7:47 PM: I limp along late with a junky KKJ4 subtle suited and all I need to do is a fade a patented annoying button raise from Crypt Keeper and he obliged by limping along also. Both blinds check.

    Flop is AK2 rainbow and I bet $30 when it checks to me. Everyone folds but His Airness comes through with a check-raise to $105 at the last second. Bless him. He has a little over $200 so I put him all in. He wants to run it twice but his set of 2s can’t run me down on either run out.

    8:02 PM: I complete with JJ86 single suited from the small blind in a multi-way pot.

    Flop is 754 with two hearts. I flopped the nuts. I have clubs and no hearts in my hand so I start off with a check. Lee bets $25 and three players call him.

    I fold.

    BOOM.

    8:28 PM: Pretty sure this is a disaster, but I dunno. There’s a raise of $15 and some calls in front of me. I call with AA64 no ace high suits.

    Flop is A43 all hearts and it checks all the way around.

    The turn is a blank and Twinkie bets $70 with only me and Crypt Keeper behind him. I think this is probably a fold. He’s betting almost full pot and there is only one card to go. I suppose he could have the naked king of hearts here but he probably has a flush and I’m not likely to call a pot-sized bet unimproved on the river. But I put in the $70 and now Part-Time check-raises all in for $215. Twinkie folds. I take a little bit of time to math but if I’m willing to put in $70 I should be willing to call another $145 now that the pot is substantially bigger.

    I’m getting 3 to 1, so I need to win about 25% of the time and I’m winning less than 20% of the time since I’m blocking one of my outs (the 4). Plus, as an added bonus, there is no more money to be won on the river when I get there.

    The Gods don’t bail me out and I lose to Part-Time’s king high flush.

    9:11 PM: Ugh. We are 7-handed now and with His Airness gone the action has really died down. It’s just after 9 and I’m already thinking about calling it. The game just isn’t good anymore. Two of my six opponents are better than I am and another two are total nits. And a fifth player folded QUADS. On top of that, all four big stacks are on my left.

    I’m not sure any of these conditions are ideal for powering through.

    9:31 PM: Here’s how good this game is. Heads up pot, one player bets pot on QT8 and the other guy folds QQT8 face up. Or something of that nature. He had a set and the other two pairs also. Just done with it.

    Same opponent. I have A883 double suited and I bet $100 on K839 with a front door heart draw present. He calls. River is the king of hearts and I check to him because maaaaaybe I can get this guy to bluff one time, but also for pot control because the dude is a fucking nit… and he checks back with 33.

    YAWN.

    10:22 PM: Game actually went down about 45 minutes ago. I guess everyone thought it was as bad as I did. Lee racked up to leave and as soon as he did that Part-Time took off and another player announced he was done. I already was over it so I wasn’t about to play 4-handed.

    On the bright side, my Palace losing streak is over.

    Final Score: +$145

    Posted in poker | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

    h1

    $160 Big O @ Chinook Winds (Stack Updates)

    October 25, 2018

    First Big O tournament of my life. I’m excited! It should be fun and different. I will be surprised if I only fire one bullet in this thing. The $600 NL bounty is still open for 1.75 more hours so there’s some chance if I bust quickly in this I will hop in that.

    Starting stacks are 12k with 30 minute levels and blinds starting at 25/50.

    I have never cashed a tournament at Chinook Winds so it would be cool to break that streak sometime this trip.

    With my phone records dating back to August of 2014, Chinook Winds is my 4th worse location and bricking every tournament here would make it my all-time worst. Only places I’ve lost more money at during that span are Commerce, Tulalip, and Aria.

    Commerce is my worst during that stretch which is crazy considering I have a $5000+ cash there. Yikes.

    1:00 PM: Cards are in the air!

    1:55 PM: I see a flop of J65ss with AsQsJ92 with 5500 in the middle already and a player all in. I bet 3500 and one player on the side calls.

    Turn is the ten of spades, giving me the nut flush and I still have the nut low draw. I go all in for 6800 and my remaining opponent tanks for a bit before calling it off with…

    AQT32 with no spades. Lol. What a torch.

    River is a 4 and he escapes with a quarter of the pot. Other player busts.

    Up to 19k.

    2:33 PM: Last hand before break:

    Open to 425 at 75/150 with AK442 double suited and torcher from last hand is my only caller.

    Flop is 854 rainbow and I bet 1k and he calls again.

    Turn is a king that completes the badugi on board and he folds when I bet 3k.

    That puts me at 22k during first break.

    3:24 PM: Pretty sick one here:

    I look down at AA83 and only sweat the suit of my fifth card. It is a diamond, which gives me a suited ace and weak hearts. There is an open to 600 at 100/200 and I make it 2250 and I still haven’t looked at my last card. He calls, leaving himself with over 12k behind.

    Flop is J44 rainbow and he checks to me. I bet 4k and he jams on me. Uh. Guess I better look at that last card.

    It’s the 4 of diamonds. Wow. I snap.

    He has AAK73.

    The turn is a king for a minor sweat, but I fill up with an 8 on the river to scoop the pot.

    It really makes me wonder what I would have done if I didn’t look down at a 4. I would probably be inclined to put him on a 4 or jacks full. But before looking, my initial thought was that I probably have to go with it anyway so I think I wind up calling. But what a sick Sarge* card!

    *Sarge card is a term coined after a famous PNW local Omaha player that routinely doesn’t look at his last card until he absolutely has to. In this case, I had a premium hand w/out even looking at my fifth card so it didn’t affect any of my decisions until I got jammed on.

    I have just under 50k now. Next biggest stack at my table is 23k.

    4:02 PM: Eek. 3-bet with AT532 double suited to 3k and big blind and original raiser call.

    Flop is J64 rainbow and they both go all in in front of me; one for 9k and the other for 9600. Easy call here.

    Board runs out J6479 and my opponents’ hands are A6442 and AK852, so I end up getting 1/6 of the pot while the guy with the worst equity on the flop gets 2/3.

    Just got to second break with 51.8k and paid $80 for another 10k, so I will be over 60k coming back to 300/600 blinds.

    4:35 PM: Last hand before the break is worth mentioning. There are two limpers at 200/400 and the button pots it for 2200 and she has less than 1500 behind, so when I look down at AJT32 I make it 5000 to isolate and see all five board cards, but the second limper ends up calling!

    We check it down on 852QQ and he shows… 86542, which blew my mind. I got half of the whole pot with the nut low and the all in had a queen for half of the main pot.

    But wow at that call. 🤯

    5:03 PM: Registration is closed.

    154 entrants

    74 add-ons

    ~84 left

    $26,656 prize pool

    27k avg stack

    I have 84.6k

    Not sure how many cash, as the prizes haven’t been posted yet.

    5:17 PM: I lead 2k from small blind on AQ7cc flop with AQ852 and a torcher calls

    Turn pairs the queen and I bet the full pot. He snap calls again.

    River is the 8 of clubs. I put him all in and he calls with KJ532.

    They are trying to punt hard in this thing.

    6:09 PM: Third break: 82.7k

    Twinkie is busted.

    7:05 PM: I bet 6000 on the flop with AKQT9 double suited on a flop of K92 with two clubs, giving me top two, the nut flush draw and a gut shot. The lone limper in the hand calls and the other blind jams for 11,800, leaving me with an option to call only, so that’s what I do. Other guy tries to jam but is told he can only call.

    Turn is an ace and since I’m never folding here and the other guy only has about 30k left, I go ahead and lead pot, putting him all in, because if he folds here I will be happy about it.

    He tanks forever and does fold.

    The all in has a set of deuces and a low draw but the river pairs the 9, giving me a boat and a monster scooper!

    Sick thing is if I sized slightly less on the flop this lot would have been 60k bigger.

    Short while later, I end up getting all in 3-ways on 864 with AT973 vs A7544 and A883x…. and the board runs out ten and jack and I get 3/4 of another monster pot.

    114.7k

    48 players are left and average stack is 47.5k. $6864 up top for 1st and 18 players will cash.

    7:53 PM: 121k on dinner break. 42 left. 54.3k is average.

    9:13 PM: Yuck. I just got switched from a soft table where I had a dominating chip lead to a table where I’m third in chips and have the only WSOP bracelet winner in the building on my direct left.

    Chip lead at my table has like 350k! 😮

    I have 127.5k with 33 left. Average stack is 69k.

    9:29 PM: Busted someone. 178.5k with 25 players left.

    TORMUND SIGHTING!

    9:47 PM: 20 players left with 18 cashing and someone just folded AQ532 with a suited ace to an open because “I’m not going out in 19th or 20th.”

    10:08 PM: We are hand-for-hand now and the floor gets done saying that anyone that gets up and watches another table gets a one round penalty and as soon as the first hand is done two players at another table get up to spectate and are given a one round penalty. 😂

    10:39 PM: Cashed it! 17 players left. Everyone gets at least $350.

    11:32 PM: Busted someone. 12 left. 161k. Average is 215k. GTD $498.

    11:45 PM: Peaking at 221k with 11 left.

    11:53 PM: Stacked another player. My AQ932 double suited makes a wheel vs his AAQJ9 double suited.

    Peaking at 312k with 9 left.

    12:14 AM: It’s official! I have final tabled the first Big O tournament I’ve ever played!

    Peaking at 330k and GTD at least $914 now and get this gem:

    Looks like I’m tied for 3rd in chips. Unfortunately I have the chip leader (and best player as far as I can tell) on my immediate left.

    Note: I’m slightly above average with 16 bigs, but the stacks smaller than me all have between 8 and 12 bigs, so it’s not like I’m at a big advantage right now. I could easily be the next player out.

    12:33 AM: I don’t blame the staff for having a tip box by the payouts but… I imagine most players did the $10 dealer appreciation (6.25% of the initial buy-in) plus they are taking out an additional 3% for the staff from the prize pool.

    That means that if no one leaves an extra dollar, the staff will be well compensated anyway… more so than your typical big field tourney staff.

    1:10 AM: Players are busting in SICK fashion. There are 5 left. I am second shortest. $1716 GTD now.

    1:25 AM: Sick double. I defend a min-raise with Q5532 with spades and three of us see the Q83 two spade flop. I only have 135k so I jam it in with my two pair, queen high flush, and bad low draw. I get called by a player with A64 with nut spades, so I’m in pretty rough shape but somehow the board runs out A and 4 and I scoop with a wheel.

    So sick!

    Just busted another player when my AQ762 makes queens up and nut low to crack his AAxxx hand.

    We are currently looking at ICM chop and I have the most chips at the moment.

    Nope. Game on!

    I could have locked up $4900 if everyone agreed there, but someone decided to play.

    4th is currently $2290.

    1:43 AM: ICM chopping 3-ways and I have the chip lead. I’m taking $4999 for my efforts today.

    We reassembled my piece of cheese game changer, but I can assure you I did not have four spades in my hand!

    Leggo!

    Posted in poker | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

    h1

    My Nightmare Week of Poker

    October 22, 2018

    “And it just continues…”

    That’s a quote from Dave Niehaus, long time radio guy for the Seattle Mariners, during their epic run to the playoffs in 1995.

    I swear every time I lose a hand I can hear Niehaus saying that in my head. But it doesn’t have the same good vibes. Not even close.

    I’ll dig a little deeper into what’s going on later, but I have already done some research to see when the last time I had four straight losing sessions of -$450 or worse and I had to go all the way back to January when I was at Commerce and the negative variance drove me away from poker to a day at Disneyland by myself instead.

    So yeah, it’s once or twice a year level downswing going on.

    I know I had a miserable WSOP this year, but tournaments are tournaments – you are going to go through insane cold stretches. Cash games are much more consistent. Plus I did well in the cash games while I was in Vegas and that helped ease the pain.

    I decided to take a break from live blogging in the hopes that I could turn things around by increasing my focus rather than constantly writing between hands. I took notes though so I could post some of the more interesting and critical pots.

    Thursday I went -$82 in 4/8 LHE while waiting for PLO to start.

    We started PLO short-handed so this first hand takes place 6-handed.

    Aggro player opens to 10, I call from the cutoff with KJhh55 and 3 of us go to the flop.

    I flat his 20 lead on the AT5 with two clubs flop. The PFR is overly aggressive so he isn’t heavily waited towards sets here, but I don’t want to play a massive pot with bottom set. If we end up getting a bunch of chips in, it will basically never be a very good thing for me. So I call.

    Turn is an offsuit 7 and now he bets $25 into $70. That’s way too weak not to raise. I make it $80 to go which is pretty small also but I’m sort of gambling here, hoping to keep him in the pot and planning to navigate the river well. He calls.

    No need to worry about tough decisions on the river because a queen gives me the nuts. He check-calls $150 pretty quickly. I have to imagine my set was good but I’m very curious about what he had here. Maybe AQxx?

    Someone makes it $15 and I call from the small blind with AKQT double suited. It’s a hand I can 3-bet with, but my recent studying argues that you should prefer to keep the pot multi-way before the flop, so while I could make a small raise here and probably still get multiple calls, flatting here guarantees everyone will call and reveals almost nothing about my hand strength, so I just call and we do see the flop multi-way.

    The flop is K54 with two diamonds, so I have top pair with the nut flush draw and three good kickers. Sets on this board are unlikely; I’m blocking KK and 55 and 44 shouldn’t be in many hand combos, although some of this guys are absurdly loose. I don’t mind playing a big pot against straight draws or kings up here. I lead out $35 and I’m willing to play for my whole stack here, I think. Crypt Keeper and the worst player at the table call.

    Turn is a jack, so now I have top pair and a MASSIVE draw: a broadway wrap and the nut flush draw. I bet $150 and Crypt Keeper makes it $450. Other dude folds and I started the turn with just over $700 and I’m never folding, so I stuff it in there.

    He immediately hates it. How could he? Let’s examine this situation: there is around $1325 in the pot and it costs him $261 more to call. He’s getting over 5 to 1 to call with a hand he thought was worth raising the turn. He only needs to win about 17% of the time to break even here.

    So obviously he folds. What a gift. Can you even imagine what kind of hand he would take this line with? I haven’t run any sims but I doubt there’s a hand he could possibly do this with that doesn’t have at least 17% against my exact hand.

    Just crazy.

    I call $15 with 6544 double suited (so there are some hands that produce small sets) and it goes multi-way to K84 with two clubs. There are a couple players that have position on me, so I check and it checks around.

    The turn is an ace and a tight player (that wasn’t the PFR) bets $55. I call and so does Crypt Keeper.

    River is a 3 and they both check to me. The flush draw missed and the only straight is 52, so a bet feels pretty mandatory. It’s hard to imagine either of them playing a bigger set this way, but I’ve seen the player that bet the turn make some ridiculously tight river checks, so I do consider knuckling back… but I can’t do it. I bet $100, TCK folds, and the nit calls with KK.

    Sigh.

    Joker makes it $20 after at least one limper and I call on the button with AQ86 with clubs.

    I believe five of us see the T42 with two clubs and a spade flop. I have a naked nut flush draw here, which isn’t much of a hand, but when they all check to me on the button, I bet $80 because it seems unlikely I won’t be able to barrel my way to victory here with this much weakness in front of me. I’m quite surprised to see Joker call. You’d think as the PFR if he had any semblance of a hand he’d probably bet the flop and if he has a draw I know it can’t be much of one. Another player also calls.

    The turn is the 7 of spades, so now I have a double gutter to go with my flush draw. It’s a pretty good card because it gives me extra equity, but it does open up a spade draw. This time I bet $300 when they both check to me. My line makes sense. If I had a good made hand here I would want to charge the max to draw out on me. Joker calls again.

    The river is the 3 of spades, leaving me with ace high. I’m not sure what I would do here if Joker checked it – the backdoor flush and some straights got there – but he decided to lead out for the $300 max. It’s a decent spot to bluff in. How much do I like a set of tens now? Not much. But it doesn’t matter because I have nothing, so I just fold rather than torch $600 trying a potential rebluff.

    Those are the only hands I thought were worthy of sharing, but I was basically ice cold all night long. Even with the $450 gift from The Crypt Keeper I finished -$498 after nearly nine hours of play.

    Friday I was hoping to show up to Palace around 4 and get the 15/30 game off the ground. I ended up getting there around 5 and 15 minutes later I was pulled out of an 8/16 seat because Flea agreed to play 3-handed with Radio Mike and me to help get the 15 game off the ground and hope seats would eventually fill up. There were probably four or five other guys that play 15/30 in the building but none of them like to play short-handed. They’d rather sit in small games than play short-handed for 15 minutes so we can get a bigger game going. It’s honestly pathetic.

    Well, Flea did play with us. For about 30 minutes. I managed a small profit, but Radio Mike was stuck $600 and Flea had basically all of it. So he smacked us for +$600 and then said he wanted to take a break. He disappeared for about 15 minutes and then sat back down and acted like we were all waiting for more people to sit down before we started playing again. No, motherfucker, let’s go. I’m not going to lie. I started lighting him up, saying how I gave up my seat in 8/16 because he said he wanted to play 15/30 with us and now I’m sitting there with my thumb up my ass sixth up on the list instead of playing poker. I was pissed. More so for Radio Mike. If I was the one stuck $600 and he abruptly quit on me like that… man… I can handle bad beats, horrible variance, people being idiots extremely well – at least externally – but stuff like this I cannot abide. It’s a total chickenshit dickhead move. Just when Flea was starting to seem like he might not be a total scumbag, he pulls this move.

    So since we are sitting there and not playing and Palace only has one open table left, The Man brings over a bunch of a blue chips and asks if he can start an 8/16 game. I’m fine with it because we obviously aren’t going to play red chips and no one was filling seats. I just want to play poker. But as soon as Radio Mike and I agree to the 8/16 game, Flea starts saying he wants to keep playing 15/30 and acts like Radio Mike is the reason we aren’t playing anymore.

    Then he says, “fine, I’ll just play Mike (that’s my name) heads up.”

    Yeah fucking right buddy. Sure you will.

    So that 8/16 game got off the ground and I got absolutely pummeled to the tune of -$600 before switching tables twice and making a comeback. The Leak and I had something come up and ended up leaving after only four hours and I somehow managed to finish at -$12 which felt like a miracle and ended my stretch of $450+ losses.

    When you consider -$12 as a turnaround, you know things have been going bad.

    Saturday my motivation was seriously lacking. My plan is to alternate between playing 20/40 O8 at Muckleshoot and 20/40 LHE at Fortune on Saturdays and this past weekend it was time for a Muckleshoot appearance. However, as late as 2 PM there was no one on the list and only a couple players on the list just after 3, so I took the easy route – like I do way too often – and went to Palace in the hopes of playing in the 1/3 no limit hold’em game.

    What I didn’t know was that the game started at 5 PM. I thought as soon as the list got long enough they fired off, so when I got there at 3:15 PM I was informed that it would be almost two hours before that happened. Ugh. So I ended up playing 4/8 for almost two hours. Gross. I won exactly $1.

    Here are some of the notable hands from my NL session:

    Lady opens to $20 and another player flats. I have QQ on the button. I don’t know any of these players well enough to know their tendencies, so I can’t think of many good reasons not to reraise with QQ here. I make it $75 to go and I will not be folding to jams and it would have to take some serious evidence for me to fold after the flop. They both end up calling. I started the hand with less than $300 and they both had less than me.

    Flop is 872 with two diamonds and they both check. There is around $225 in the pot and I have $190 left, so a jam is reasonable here. I’m not sure it’s the most profitable line. I actually can’t make any reasonable bet on the flop without making the turn extremely awkward, so I size very small at $50 hoping to get some action and taking my chances that I might get outdrawn. The lady check-raises to $100 and the other player calls. Woah. Wasn’t expecting that. But as I said earlier, I’m never folding, so now I have a clear jam spot and ship all $190 in and they both call!

    The turn is a diamond (I have the queen of diamonds) and the river is a queen, so I end up with top set. The lady turns over KK and the other guy mucks, but eventually claims he had AA. He never showed his hand to anyone, so who knows. Everyone else at the table seemed to take his word for it, but I find it very hard to believe – especially after his opponents table KK and QQ. Most people are going to show their AA when they get cracked at these stakes, but even more so when KK and QQ are both out in the same hand. Mark me up as a nonbeliever.

    This hand caused quite a stir at the table, with some of the players acting like I just successfully landed on the moon by winning this pot and the lady looking at me like I’m the biggest idiot she’s ever laid eyes on. Meanwhile, I’m sitting there wondering if I’m the only one that’s ever played poker before. What am I supposed to do with QQ on an 872 after getting called in two spots pre with less than a pot-sized bet left after the flop? It’s about as standard as standard gets.

    Don’t worry, folks! Punts incoming.

    It was basically all downhill for me from there. I lost almost every pot I got any resistance in and I doubled barreled with QJ after checking back the flop as the PRF on the 965T2 board. I bet a little less than pot on the river so it stung a bit when I got called by JT.

    And just as they were starting a 15/30 game, this hand came up:

    I open to $10 with A2hh and the player on my left makes it $20 and everyone else folds. I suppose I could play chicken here and repop it but I’m happy to play a flop for such a good price.

    The flop is K32 with one heart. I check and he bets $25. I have enough that I can’t really fold here, but I don’t think my hand plays very well as a check-call. I have bottom pair and every card that isn’t an ace or doesn’t pair the board is going to be an overcard to my hand. I think this is a good hand to bluff with, especially on this board. I have found that attacking king high, disconnected boards is a good strategy in no limit hold’em. Think about what hands he can 3-bet with pre that are happy to call a check-raise on this board. AA, KK, and AK are the top ones. I suppose he can have some KQ and maybe KJ in there. Even hands as strong as QQ are going to have a hard time calling. I think that’s a pretty narrow range of hands that are happy to continue. Meanwhile, I’ve shown that I’m capable of having hands like K2 suited here. I make it $80 to go and he does end up calling.

    I think that weights him towards a pair of kings so I’m planning to give up on the turn when I don’t improve or pick up outs. The turn is the 4 of hearts, giving me a pair and a straight flush draw. The pot has just under $200 in it now and his stack is slightly bigger than that. I put him all in. I think I’m going to get a lot of folds here, maybe even from hands as good as AK, but even when I do get called, I’m going to win the pot around 25% of the time by making two pair or better. He ends up tanking forever and I really think he’s going to end up folding, but he finally calls it off with KQ and the river pairs the 4, so I end up turning an early +$500 start into a -$349 finish.

    The 15/30 game was AMAZING. There were no less than four players having a competition to see who could torch off their chips the fastest and in the most hilarious fashion. It was a total zoo. I won a large pot with KQ on a QJTccXXc runout where I had four opponents on the river and somehow still had the best hand after the flush got there and I won another decent one where I rivered a straight with AK. The rest of my time in this game was pure torture. I loosened up a little in some spots to play pots in position with the spewers, but for the most part my starting hand selection was pretty rigid and basically every time I played a pot I flopped absolutely nothing. When I flopped something as good as a gutshot it felt like I had a set. Not really, but I was just excited to have some piece of the board. I kept getting quality big ace hands (AJ+, ATs+) and all they did was cost me chips. I’d put in four bets before the flop, pay one or two bets to see the turn in a bloated pot when I flopped nothing, and just fold, fold fold folfdlfa=ffold fol! It was brutal.

    Also, this happened:

    Someone sent me that video and I wish they had let roll a little longer because I was seconds away from saying, “uh, I’m not leaving.” Like I’m going to leave $2500+ in an abandoned poker room because someone burnt some toast. Pffffft.

    This hand pretty much defines my week:

    I open with A7dd, there’s a call, Joker 3-bets, spewer caps on the button and we all call.

    Flop is 743 with two spades and one heart. It checks to the button, I raise, one fold, Joker calls two cold, and the button calls.

    Turn is the 9 of hearts. I bet and they both call.

    River is the 7 of hearts. I bet, Joker almost looks like he’s going to raise, but ends up calling and the other guy folds.

    I roll my hand and he rolls the AQ of hearts. I don’t really understand the flat call on the river and when he does call, it makes me think my hand is good, so it felt like a mini-slow roll. It’s pretty obvious the button doesn’t have anything so there’s no reason to go for an overcall. While I’m capable of showing up with sets of 4s and 3s here, I think rivering the nut flush still warrants a raise in this spot. Anyways, it’s pretty sick to flop a 7, make him call two bets cold on the flop, hit another 7, and still find a way to lose to AQ. But that’s my gift lately.

    I finished that 15/30 session at -$674, which put my total losses for the day over $1000.

    So this is what my last 8 days look like now:

    10/12 -$790
    10/13 -$1440
    10/14 OFF
    10/15 OFF
    10/16 OFF
    10/17 -$449
    10/18 -$580
    10/19 -$12
    10/20 -$1022

    -$4293 over an 8 day stretch. I’m not 100% positive about this, but I think that’s my worst week of poker ever, as far as cash games go.

    I’ve been studiously tracking my results since June of 2011 and even though I had a day job until fall of 2016, I’ve basically played full-time hours for 7.5 years now. The worst month I’ve ever had was -$4219 in August of last year. I’ve only eclipsed -$2000 one other time. So that kind of puts this past week in perspective. This last week was worse than the worst month I’ve ever had. That is pretty sick.

    This is what October cash games look like:

    I had a +$2k PLO session earlier this month and I took second in that tournament on Global last Tuesday, so it hasn’t been all bad. I currently sit at -$1100 for the month so I’m not in serious jeopardy of challenging my all-time worst result.

    Also, when I go through stretches like this, it’s important to remind myself of the bigger picture. Here’s what that looks like:

    This brutal stretch is just a little blip on the radar of the poker life.

    I will be headed to Lincoln City, Oregon tomorrow though and I’ll be playing in about $1500 worth of buy ins, so I have a chance to save the month of October or keep piling up the negative results.

    Posted in poker | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

    « Newer Entries
    Older Entries »