It’s been a while. I’ve been really busy over the past two months with Thanksgiving, a trip to Vegas, group projects, finals, and now Christmas. During which I was having my usual swings in poker.
I guess I’ll start with the Vegas trip. I headed out with Matt, although we didn’t time our trip very well. We headed out during all the huge fires in California, but we got pretty lucky. We didn’t have to detour at all on the way there or back, although some of the freeways we used got shutdown while we were there. I have to admit, sometimes I run good at life.
We ended up staying at the New Orleans, since we had a comped room there. They didn’t have any good sized games there, so I didn’t play much the first night. The next day, I headed out to the strip to hit up the bigger casinos there. I started with the Venetian, but didn’t end up going anywhere else
I played a tournament at the Venetian and busted out relatively early when I lost a lot of my stack against a player who I didn’t realize was quite good. He made an extremely good call on an interesting hand.
The blinds are 50/100, and he has about 25k in chips. I cover with almost 33k.
I open UTG+1 to 275, and I get called in the small blind by the good player.
The flop is Ad Kc Th. He checks, I bet 350, he raises to 900, and I call.
The turn is a 2d, he bets 1200, I raise to 3000 and he calls again.
The river is an Ah. He checks, and I bet 5000.
He calls me with KT.
I was very surprised. I didn’t think he was good enough to call with a counterfeited two pair there, but I hadn’t been playing with him for very long. He wasn’t a calling station at all. He was just good. I thought about for hours, figured out his thought process and then decided I probably shouldn’t have bluffed against this guy.
I never have three aces there. It’s a straight, full house or nothing. I should’ve thought about it longer myself, but I was pretty sure the river card bricked him/was a bad card given his physical reaction to it. However that doesn’t mean he can’t still call.
Can’t see why? After all it’s only a pair of kings. I’ll go into a detailed process of what I think his thought process is.
When I raise preflop in early position, I personally don’t think his call with KTo out of position is very good, but it’s not terrible either. It really depends on how good your opponent is, and he doesn’t really have any reason to assume I’m a good player, other than I have a big stack.
When the flop comes out AKT rainbow, your first thought should be how to maximize value vs. AQ, while not getting stacked by AK. That’s a harder task than it first appears, because it can be very hard to distinguish which hand I have on the early streets, and by the later streets, you might be pot committed with two pair, to look up a large, but not huge bet compared to the pot size. This final bet could be a significant percentage of your chip stack, and it could cripple your chances of being a big stack for the length of the tournament.
Anyways, he flops bottom two pair and goes for the check raise. That’s standard, as it obtains solid value out of most hands while protecting your still vulnerable hand. Bottom two is up against 5 out draws from top pair immediately, and also has to dodge running board pairs. Regardless it’s quite strong, so check raising is a good way to get value. When I call, his hand range for me should be most aces, probably with a gutshot draw, and maybe two pairs, sets and the broadway straight. I might float with two random cards here, but that would be pretty rare. It’s what I did though lol. Gutshot straight draw + backdoor flush draw FTL!
So when the deuce of diamonds hits the turn, it’s a pretty big brick. Only a backdoor flush draw improved. (I had clubs, not diamonds.) So when he bets, and I raise, I’m repping a HUGE hand now. Two pair at least. I never have just AQ or AJ here. Why would I raise with huge stacks into a hand that he is clearly saying is a strong holding? I’ll never get called by worse. So I basically have to have AT, AK, KT, QJ, AA, KK, or TT. That’s not too many hands and since he has KT, I’m basically saying I have AA or QJ, as all the other combinations are somewhat discounted by his own cards. His call here is still somewhat questionable versus an unknown player as most unknown simply aren’t capable of making a move this advanced, but he may call just to see if I give up and showdown a bluff or if I am some terrible player who raises just a bare ace here.
When the board pairs the Ace, my first thought was great, now I can legitimately give a ton of hands a huge scare card. However, in retrospect, the only change is that a straight now loses to a set, and I don’t think a straight would fold the river for a 5k bet, even though it is now only a bluff catcher, or maybe owning someone who value bets three aces her.
This is the important part for him. When I bet 5000, he has about 3.5:1 odds to see if I’m bluffing. On the river, I can’t have just three aces unless I’m terrible and would raise the turn with AK AJ. I could have AT, AK, or maybe even A2, all of which would probably play similarly. I could have TT, or KK, but those hands might’ve 3balled (3bet) the flop, which somewhat discounts them here. However, if I had a bluff… I would probably play it exactly the same way.
And that’s all he needs to know. He makes the call and I show down J8c. Nice hand sir.
I make all of my money back and then some playing the 2/5 game at the Venetian. At 6PM, Matt and I went to the new show called The Real Deal at the Venetian. The only poker based show on the strip you can actually play with the live pros which is sick. It’s pretty neat, although from the perspective of a poker mindset, the game setup is basically just a crapshoot on who gets luckiest. But whatever, it’s still cool. I watched Jen Harman suck out on Eli Elezra’s AA with the 95c. Definitely seems like a role reversal lol.
I bought a Gucci wallet at the Forum in Caesar’s Palace. $250? Wow, I am so good at lighting money on fire. But I really needed a new wallet, and I had money burning a hole in my pocket. To be fair I don’t do stuff like that often.
Back in L.A. I’m back to my usual stuff. Play poker live, online, at home games and so on. Usual swings, with some interesting occurrences.
I got invited to a home game in Cypress by Gianni, one of my friends from LMU. I brought Mike along, just to find out two interesting things.
First, they play dealers choice. I didn’t know that, and Mike only knows how to play No Limit Hold’Em and Stud.
Second, apparently Omaha Hi, is also played No Limit, in some circles, despite the popularity of Pot Limit Omaha.
I cleaned up the game because I’m a much stronger Omaha player than most of the players in the games. I also won a big hand vs Gianni where I made a straight with 76s vs his JJ. It wasn’t all good, since I also made a HUGE laydown in Omaha, which was wrong. =/ My reads are usually right though.
One night, I was playing at the Hollywood Park big game, which is $5/$10 blind, $500 minimum buyin with no cap buyin. I was up about $500-800, when the game started to break. We were 4 handed and I was about to leave, when a mega fish sat down. He didn’t actually say this, but I’m guessing he is worth tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of dollars. Gino had his own posse, seemed extremely self confidant, (but not arrogant) and seemed brand new to poker. I think he was being entirely honest when he said he just lost $100,000 in blackjack and wanted to try his hand at poker for the first time.
Gino bought in for $2,000 after asking the guy on his right how much he bought in for. I knew he was either the most amazing hustler or he was just a huge fish, when on the 4th hand, he decided to open shove $2k into a $40 pot with 3 opponents. With bottom pair. It was at that time, I decided I had better stick around for a while.
A bit later I get QQ, he limped in, I raised to $100 and he calls me. Normally a 10 big blind raise is a very big raise, but I know he doesn’t know that, and I want to play heads up with position on him. He calls and we take the flop heads up. It comes out J62 rainbow, and he checks to me. I bet $400 and he calls. The turn is another 6. He checks again, and I bet $800 this time, and he moves all in on me. I hate it, but I have to call with my overpair as there is so much money in the pot I have to call because sometimes he’ll have Jx, or some random bluff. He turns over A6 for trips and wins a $4k pot. =/ On the other hand, this hand practically proved to me that he is simply a bad player, for no hustler would ever commit so much money in a spot they are clearly beat. While most hustlers aren’t very good, that’s the kind of mistake only true beginners make. They don’t connect the size of the bet with the strength of the hand, and in doing so find themselves constantly winning small pots and losing big ones. Gino is a smart man though, and he gets a lot better throughout the session, although by the end he is still terrible and severely outclassed.
I’m sitting on his direct left, and I notice when he holds his cards, sometimes he flashes them to me. There are two schools of thought on this. The first is that revealing that you can see their cards is an ethically good move and having a reputation that you won’t take advantage of this kind of stuff will help you get action in the future from people who know you play straight up. There is also the value of simply making the most ethical move.
On the other hand you are sacrificing immediate gain for future earnings. If you never play with these people again, your choice to take the high way will cost you money. Normally I tell people that I can see their cards, but if my opponent is going to make me make decisions for thousands of dollars on nearly every hand, I want to get every edge I can.
Funny how life works sometimes. Maybe it’s karma, but that information ends up costing me. A bit later, he looks at his cards and I see the three of diamonds. I have AQ myself, and he limps in. I limp behind trying to keep him in and see if I can get him to make a big shove somewhere. The flop comes out K Q 7 two spades and he checks. I check it back. The turn is a 8, and now he open shoves. It’s $1800 to me and now I have to decide whether he has a King as his second hole card. I think about it for a long time, and decide there is a good chance he could be bluffing again, and I call.
He has K3. I just got owned.
Gino gets me again when he flops a full house and I turn a straight. =/
He ends up winning nearly $10,000, and walks out really happy. I leave at the same time stuck five grand. “On any given day, any amateur can beat any pro, no matter how much better one plays than the other.” (paraphrased) Poker is such a sick game.
I won $7k getting 3rd in a $10 rebuy, so I won all of it back later in the same week. Shrugs, as long as I’m in the black at the end of the month right? I’m pretty good about not letting a single bad day get to me.
Jeff has been playing me heads up and is running super hot against me. He also plays good and possibly better than I do, which isn’t making it any easier. To make it worse, he even runs good against me in games where I KNOW I have an edge, like when I host three card poker as the house versus him. At least I’m losing it to a friend. He’ll give me a chance to win it back too.
I’m playing 100nl online right now, even though I’m rolled for higher. I’m thinking about playing 400nl by the time January rolls around. We’ll see. I’ll talk to John and see what he thinks. Speaking of John, his 21st is coming up. I can’t wait, cause the whole group is going to Vegas. It’s gonna be awesome. John says he plans to spend ten grand. LOL WTF, that’s so ridiculous. It’s gonna be a blast. I feel like I’ve gotten a lot better lately too, so I hope I have a solid takedown while I’m out there. I might be the only one playing poker, but whatever.
I had wanted to write a strategy post as a kind of Christmas present, but it’s not happening. Maybe later.
I’ll see you across the felt.
Bryce
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