The Man Who Never Shows Down a Hand

I left work a little early today to play in the afternoon tournament at Casino Arizona. It's a very convoluted buy in process, but the simple description is I paid $85 for $3,800 in starting chips with the blinds at 25-50.

We started with 90 runners today and I got off to a good start when I raised KQ after two limpers who called. The flop looked innocent so I made a continuation bet and they both folded.

I also made a nice steal in the first level when two other players meekly limped into the pot. The small blind called and I raised on the big blind to 300. They all folded like the weak tight sissies I thought they were.

For most of the first 3 levels, I did not have any great starting hands. All the pots I won were from stealing the blinds or raising preflop and making a bet on the flop to take it down. I believe I had 5,900 in chips at the first break.

While I was heading outside for some fresh air, I ran into my friend Noah at another one of the tournament tables. Noah has had pretty good success in these tournaments and I have been anxious to play with him, to study his play. We said a quick hello and we were back to our separate tables.

Slowly and surely the field was whittling away and we were down to 3 tables. When they consolidated to three tables, I was moved to Noah's table where I noticed that he had a pretty big stack.

Noah played like I expected from our previous conversations. He was very aggressive in that he raised frequently preflop and was always evaluating how to take the pot away from someone. He really does try to play the man more than his cards. That is something I wish I did more of in my game, but it can also come back and bite you in the ass if you are not schooled in some of the fundamentals of the game.

For instance I noticed that Noah would get himself pot committed often when he could have sized his bets differently. He was also raising some strange amounts preflop and I could not figure out if there was a pattern since nobody was really playing back at him.

I ended up doubling up off of him when he raised his AQ into my pocket Kings on my big blind. I was pretty short, so he was going to have to call my reraise with darn near any two cards. I flopped a King so that was a good double up.

A couple of rounds went buy and we ran into each other again. This time he raised in middle position with 66 and I reraised all in from the button with Ace-8. He called and I hit an 8.

Noah eventually went bust with around 25 players left. It was here where I started a very interesting streak. For the next 3-4 levels of play, I was all in somewhere between 10-12 times and not called once! I may have had a decent hand like KQ suited a couple of times, but most of them were well timed raises against players who were tight or it was folded to me at the button or small blind and I just played the odds that my opponent(s) would not have the cards to call me. These were truly some of the tighest players I had seen at a tournament in Casino Arizona.

This strategy kept me between 7 and 13 times the big blind and eventually got me to the final table.

Once we got there we had the inevitable discussion about a chop. The table decided to pool the prize money from 4th to 10th and split it evenly among all of the players. This gave me a guarantee of $342 versus 10th place money of $108.

It was soon after that I finally picked up Aces. I raised to 2.5x the blind and a relatively short stack behind me, raised all in. I called to see his AQ. My hand held up and I finally had a comfortable stack.

It did not last long as the very next hand I raised again with pocket 5's. Another short stack moved all in. I was priced in to call and he turned over Ace-King. I was hoping to win yet another race, but he flopped broadway and I was drawing near dead. A five binked off on the river just to rub a little salt in the wound. I was back to short stack shove mode again.

We lost a couple more players and got down to 7 handed. The players started talking about making a deal again since nobody was a big chip leader. I had chipped up a little to about 10x the blind which put me in 2nd place. This time the amount would be over $700. I was adamant that I was not making a deal now. A tight russian player on my right began to plead with me to make the deal. "$400 is a lot of money...You don't know what will happen....You still have to eliminate 4 other people...blah blah blah". I finally insisted that he shut up because I was not changing my mind.

To make things interesting, I soon had a hand I felt was worthy of a raise. I counted out my chips and the Russian starts chirping again, saying "now there is a big target on you." His bitching did not motivate anyone else to call my raise and I won the blinds again.

I found this to be an interesting psychological dynamic because usually I am quiet and friendly and do not want to draw attention to the fact that I am trying to rape other players blinds. This guy had forced my image out into the open and was encouraging others to take shots at me.

I made a small adjustment and tightened up a little and made sure I only raised hands that I was comfortable calling a reraise with or I just moved all in and hoped they were not frustrated enough to make the spite call. Luckily the Russian was on my right so I was able to act after him during most of the hands and could avoid any direct confrontations.

During this stretch of the tournament I continued to find the right times to raise and win the blinds as nobody wanted to mess with me. We finally lost the Russian when he went all in with JJ and another player woke up with AA.

The blinds were now getting humongous at 2000-4000 and they rolled up to 4000-8000 when we finally got down to 4 players. At this point the chip leader had 135,000 and I was second with 65,000. The other two players had approximately 40,000 in chips. Now I was ready to take a deal. We gave the guy with first place chips $1,200 and the rest of us split up $923 each.

It was one of those tournaments where almost all of my "moves" worked and the other times where I was ready to make a move, someone else would beat me to it and end up saving me money because I ended up folding a losing hand.

I'm sure there was a lot of luck involved, but this tournament really felt like I won it with skill. I was never all in where I was more than a 44% dog and the fact that I was almost never called when I raised says I did a very good job of picking the right spots to steal. The boost to the poker bankroll feels really good.

Have I Finally Found The Golden Goose?

I mostly play on Full Tilt because I have a rake back deal and for the most part it is just as good as Pokerstars. I happened to be exploring over at Pokerstars a couple of weeks ago and I noticed they have "Double or Nothing" Sit-n-Go's. This means they start with 10 players at one table and if you make the final 5, you double your money.

I have been bemoaning the fact that there were not tournaments like this just for cash. I have been decidely plus expected value in my satellite experience because so many players make tournament killing mistakes when they could afford to fold their way into the money.

My prayers have been answered. Apparently they have been running for months and I was ignorantly unaware.

I know it's still a small sample size but I have now played 39 of these tournaments at the $21.60 level and I have cashed in 26. I can play up to 5 at a time without much trouble and today I accomplished the ultimate goal which was to play 5 and cash in all five.

There are extensive posts now on 2+2 about these tables and I'm sure the hard core players are quickly figuring out the mathematically perfect way to play these tournaments. But for now, there are 5-6 fishes at every table and I am happy to take advantage.

In other news, I have finally put together a winning streak at Casino Arizona. The last 3 times I have played, I have left with more money than I started with. To make things even more amazing, it has been in three different games: 3-6 limit hold'em, 1-2 No Limit Hold'em, and 3-6 limit omaha 8 or better.

Still Backsliding

My poker bankroll is all the way down to close to $2,000. I don't know what I am doing wrong. When I play PLO or No Limit Hold'em it seems that whenever I make a good hand, nobody pays me off. I am still pretty good about not losing a lot, but I never win the big pots to get me to a big winning session.

Lets do some analysis of my last few No Limit Hold'em online sessions:

10/2 299 hands won $52.45
Hands won over $20 5 for a total of $202
Hands lost over $20 3 for a total of $161


9/29 339 hands lost $35.75
Hands won over $20 2 for a total of $46
Hands lost over $20 0

9/22 243 hands lost $21.65
Hands won over $20 1 for $39
Hands lost over $20 1 for $51

9/19 574 hands lost $394
Hands won over $20 3 for $84
Hands lost over $20 9 for $417 Ouch!

9/17 329 hands lost $197
Hands won over $20 6 for $184
Hands lost over $20 7 for $300

9/13 100 hands lost $108
Hands won over $20 0
Hands lost over $20 1 for $100

9/12 469 hands lost $125
Hands won over $20 6 for $232
Hands lost over $20 8 for $285

So over my last few sessions I have won 23 big pots and lost 29. So it would make sense to lose less big pots. However I still think that I am not winning enough on the big pots to offset the losses. It also seems like some of the big losses were cold decks or bad beats so maybe I just need to run a bit better as well.

After some struggles with Hold'em Manager I finally broke down my hands by starting cards to see where I was losing money. I have only had Hold'em manager for almost 3 months so I only have approximately 5000 hands. My suspicions were confirmed.

AA 15 times won $22
KK 16 times lost $73
QQ 17 times even
AKo or AKs 42 times lost $152

These are supposed to be very profitable hands. I went back and reviewed the hands and I saw a few minor mistakes but I did not see any horrible misplays. The main thing I noticed was that I five bet shoved a few times with AK and got called with 99 and TT, but I never seemed to get called by those hands when I did it with AA or KK. They usually folded after my first raise. I'd say that's a bad run of cards.

The Casino Arizona is still treating me like shit. I must lose 80% of the time in limit hold'em sessions this year. I am really striving to improve on reading people and choosing my times to bluff much more selectively. However, I can't seem to catch a break when I do have the winning hand on the flop or turn. I seem to be running pretty bad on the river. I know I sound like every other whiner on the internet forums, but since hardly anyone else reads this blog, I'll shout out into the void.

I will be heading out to Fort McDowell tonight for another football promotion. If I can't win the money from the players I might as well try and win it back from the casinos.

It's Official. I am running bad

Here are my stats from tonight's session:
574 hands played in a little over 2 hours

I lose $394.70.

AA twice. Once it's folded to me in the BB and I win $0.50. The other time, I reraise and win $3.

AK 3 times. I net a negative $10.

KK 4 times. 3 times I raise and win the blinds. The fourth time I get it all in on the flop and the other guy has Aces. Net loss with KK = $124

QQ twice. I win the blinds both times for a profit of $2.50

I won three pots over $25 for the night with the biggest being $31.50. I lost 6 pots greater than $25. The biggest was the KK hand.

Here was the second biggest of the night:

Full Tilt Poker $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold'em - 6 players
The Official [url=http://www.twoplustwo.com/]2+2[/url] Hand Converter [url=http://www.deucescracked.com/]Powered By DeucesCracked.com[/url]

[b]Hero (CO): $110.30[/b]
BTN: $102.00
[b]SB: $84.10[/b]
BB: $39.00
UTG: $20.95
MP: $162.10

[b]Pre Flop:[/b] ($1.50) Hero is CO with T:club: T:spade:
UTG calls $1, [i]1 fold[/i], [color=red]Hero raises to $4.50[/color], [color=red]BTN raises to $13[/color], SB calls $12.50, [i]2 folds[/i], Hero calls $8.50

[b]Flop:[/b] ($41.00) 7:heart: 5:diamond: 4:spade: [color=blue](3 players)[/color]
[color=red]SB bets $5[/color], [color=red]Hero raises to $23[/color], BTN folds, SB calls $18

[b]Turn:[/b] ($87.00) 7:spade: [color=blue](2 players)[/color]
[color=red]SB bets $5[/color], [color=red]Hero raises to $49[/color], SB calls $43.10 all in

[b]River:[/b] ($183.20) K:spade: [color=blue](2 players - 1 is all in)[/color]

[b]Final Pot:[/b] $183.20
Hero shows T:club: T:spade: (two pair, Tens and Sevens)
SB shows J:spade: 9:spade: (a flush, King high)
SB wins $180.20
(Rake: $3.00)


So this donkey calls a 3bet in the blind with Js 9s preflop. Calls my cbet with nothing but a runner runner flush draw. Calls the turn bet with the flush draw, and gets there on the river.

I am mad about the beat, but not tilted. What tilts me is that in 4 different hands later in the session, I have him in a pot that I am sure he is going to pay me off and he escapes every time. WHAT THE F***!

Win Some, Lose More

After my last post, I waited a day and played some $26 multi table sit and go's. I finally ran like a god and cashed a 2nd place and a 4 th place to clear over $320.

Feeling good about my chances tonight, but the cash games were not good to me.

I have 9cTc on the button in 6 handed .50-1 NL. $104 in my stack. I raise to 3.50. The BB (lilmissdezi) calls.
Flop is 7c 8d 5c. So I have 15 outs with the straight and flush draw and hell maybe the 9's and 10's are good for outs too so that may give me as many as 21 outs twice. I bet $5 and lilmissdezi calls. The turn is 3h. No help but I bet again this time $12. I am called again.

I am wondering if my opponent has an over pair like 10's and is trying to keep the pot small. I have not played many hands with her yet so I don't have a good grasp of her style.

The river is Qd and I miss my infinite draw. I decide the pot is big and the only way to win it is to bluff at it. I fire $23 and my opponent calls with Ac,7s for second pair. Wow!

In another bluff gone awry. I have Ks Ts in the small blind. A new player named nala314 is in the hijack and open raises to $3.50. I call from the small blind and the BB folds. The flop is 3h Jd 7h. I check and nala314 bets $2 into an $8 pot. Since this flop is ragged and $2 looks very weak, I decide to check raise to $8. nala314 calls before I even finish clicking on the bet button.

The turn is a Ts. I think the snap call is a heart draw or top pair, with a weak kicker. This time I bet $15 into a $24 pot and he snap calls again. Now I am leaning towards more of a pocket pair type of hand.

The river is the 8s putting 4 to a straight out. I check hoping for a free showdown. He bets $30 into the $54 pot. I don't think I beat anything so I fold. He shows me a bluff of AsQc. Double Wow!

Last strange hand:

I have AA in the small blind. I have already had to lay down pocket aces once in this session on the turn. My other big pocket pairs have received no action at all. The button raises to 3.00. I decide to smooth call and try to trap. The BB comes along. The effective stacks here were $80.

The flop is 7s 7h Ks. I check again to play it slow. The BB bets $4 into a $9 pot. The button raises to $13. I already hate my hand. I really want to shove and hope they are playing like jackasses, but I fight the urge and just call. The BB then shoves all in for his last $77 and the button calls. Well that makes it an easy fold. The BB has 7d Td and the button has Ad Kc. So the button was an idiot that I could have stacked if I had just re-raised before the flop and knocked out the BB.

I rarely slow play high pocket pairs but lately when I try to mix it up, I get burned.

Session analysis Running into Quads

This will probably be incredibly boring but in order to improve my dismal play lately I am going to force myself to evaluate the biggest winners and losers from each session.

So this was from a 456 hand session of .50-1 NL where I lost $150.

Here are the losers:

Ah6s on the button. Herpes Is 4eva is in the cutoff. He open raises to $3.50 with 30/23/2.8 stats. I reraise to $12. He calls.

The reraise is a bit aggressive but I was in position and I had not done it very much so I expected to win the pot preflop most of the time.

Flop is 2d 5s Ts. Herpes checks and I make a cbet of $18 into a 25.50 pot. Herpes calls. I think the cbet wins the pot most of the time with a ragged flop like that. He calls, so he's either peeling one off with AK, has a pocket pair that he's not too comfortable with like JJ, 99, or 88. Or he's slow playing a monster set.

I am done with this hand. The turn is a 6h so the board is 2d 5s Ts 6h. It's checked through. The river is the 3 of hearts and it's checked through again.

I think this was a good bluff that didn't go my way. Herpes shows down JJ.

Hand #2

I have QQ in BB. Regina in cutoff raises to 3.50. She is 16/12/inf after 27 hands so not a huge sample. I decide to mix things up and just call in the BB. I think I have been getting irritated that I am getting no action with my high pocket pairs preflop so that's probably what led to this slow play.

Flop is 2s Ts 9h. I decide to go for a check raise. Regina complys and bets the pot of $7.50. I raise to $20. She 3 bets it all in for $96.50 total. I call and she shows T 9 for top two pair. I miss my slim draws and she takes $100 off me.

Looking back, I think I can find a fold here. The only hand I am beating that might shove all in is JJ or maybe AsKs. And even AK with the flush draw I am actually behind on the hand. I was happy to get my whole stack in with QQ before the flop, so I rationalized that I can just as well do it on the flop.

Hand #3

I have 7s 7c in cutoff. Hotsauce raises to $3 under the gun. I call the raise instead of reraising because Hotsauce is playing 16/12/2 and pretty tight. I want to try and hit a set rather than reraise and get pushed off my hand if he 4 bets. Pammy824 reraises on the button to $12. The blinds fold and Hotsauce folds leaving me to call $9 into a $19 pot out of position. Pammy is 18/18/inf after 45 hands.

Pammy started with $100 so her stack may not quite be big enough for me to call the reraise hoping to flop a set.

The flop is 6d As 7d. This is a dream flop since you always want to flop a set when there is an Ace in the board since the other player may go broke with a pair of Aces and a good kicker. I check to slow play and Pammy bets $18 into a $28.50 pot. I smooth call.

Turn is the Ac. I check again, hoping to get it all it with my 7's full of Aces against trip aces. Pammy checks behind so maybe she had KK or QQ and is afraid of the Aces now? River is 8d so board reads 6d As 7d Ac 8d. That completes a lot of draws so I should get paid out now. I go for a value bet of $34 and pammy cooperates and shoves the rest in for $70. I snap call and she rolls over AA for quad Aces.

I don'tthink there was a way of getting away from this awful luck.

Marathon at Ft McDowell; Bad Beat Jackpot

Kory turned me on to the football promotions at Fort McDowell casino this year. For the college games they will splash pot $75 on 3 tables for every touchdown and $75 on one table for every field goal. Since Fort McDowell has 1/4 of the tables as Casino Arizona, your chances of hitting one of these bonuses is much higher.

It would seem that the key to winning these prizes would be to pick the highest scoring games. On the preannounced schedule, it would seem that the Oklahoma/BYU game would fit the bill. The over/under in Vegas was 69 points and Oklahoma was favored by more than 20 even though BYU is a top 25 team. We figured this game was good for 8-9 touchdowns for sure.

In a debacle on the scale of last year's Super Bowl promotion, the game was a real snoozefest. Oklahoma's Heisman winning quarterback, Sam Bradford, hurt his shoulder at the end of the first half. This totally ruined any chance of this turning into a high scoring affair. The final was 14-13 with BYU scoring the upset. My table did get splashed once, but I could not find one pair our of all 5 cards on the board and the winner won with a pair of 5's and 7 kicker.

Even if I don't win the promotional funds, I should still be able to pick up some money from the other bad players right? I was down a quick $80 in the first couple of hours with losing lots of small pots where I raise with AK, whiff the flop, bet the flop and/or turn with nothing and give up on the river to see someone calling me down with 2nd pair or worse. In fact I saw one hand where a player actually called on the river with 5 high. Let me repeat that....there were two other players in the pot and he called down with 5 high!

Kory asked me to join him at his table, but I wasn't about to leave my table of horrible players. Alas, nothing went according to plan as Kory had to leave early because of a babysitting issue and I continued to lose pot after pot.

With the game winding down, I was down over $200 and pulling out my last $100 bill. I called Michele to give her a progress report and told her I was about to make my triumphant comeback. She gave me to OK to stay as long as I wanted so I went back to grinding.

I gave myself a couple of artificial deadlines to stop and go home but I managed to find an excuse to stay each time. 9:00 PM came along and I had managed to make it all the way back to only down $20. Since I was so close to making a profit and starting to catch some cards, I figured I would stay and try to get to the positive. By 10:00 PM I was down over $100 again and was too stubborn to leave stuck this much after all this time.

Here is where the miracle happens. A stocky younger man had sat on my left for the last 15 minutes and proceeded to lighten up the table. The proceeding gentleman in the seat was causing tension at the table by criticizing other players and acting as if he was God's gift to poker. We were all glad to see him go. The new guy was a clown, but in a playful way and it was fun to banter back and forth with him as he played any two cards.

He was caught up in a hand with a quiet asian lady in the one seat. The board was 2d-10h-5h. The lady had bet her hand and the guy on my left called. The turn was a 2 of hearts completing the flush draws. Now the asian woman checks and the guy bets. She calls. So it looks like the guy on my left has hit his flush. The river is the 3 of hearts. Now she bets and he raises. They are heads up and start stacking chips for reraises. Since it is heads up there are unlimited raises and eventually they both get around $28 in on the river.

The guy on my left blurts out, "I hope you have 4 twos lady!" and rolls over his straight flush with the Ah4h. She does roll over the the 4 of a kind and the entire table celebrates.

The bad beat jackpot fund was $5,200. That means the 4 of a kind wins $2,600, the straight flush wins $1,300 and the rest of the table split the last 25% only 6 ways since we were two players short. That worked out to $217.

It's been years since I won any kind of share of a bad beat, but I distinctly remember it taking a long time to pay out. I was tired after playing for 7 hours and ready to go home. Sure enough I had to wait until after midnight before we finally got paid.

Knowing that I was going to be there a while, I made a goal to finish strong and at least break even with my initial bankroll before adding my table share. Finally things started to go my way as I hit some longshot draws and bluffed a couple of pots successfully. I managed to get all the way back to down $5 on the day before they called my name.

I went up to collect my winnings. I tipped the dealer $10 and went back to rack up my chips. After a quick late night stop at Jack In The Box, my profit for the night was $199. Poker is definitely a hard way to make an easy living.