So I awaken Sunday morning, after precious few hours of sleep, in order to check out of the Mandalay Bay. (I really need to establish a goal of getting a place in Vegas at some point, so as to avoid these unnecessarily early wake-up calls…) After the standard procedure of packing and getting everything in the car, I headed back to the Mirage in an attempt to reverse my fortunes of the night before.
From my arrival at 1:00 until roughly 5:00 or so, the fates did not appear to be with me. My run of cold cards continued, and while I did not suffer any difficult beats, my hands were simply not getting there. My $500 buy-in was pretty much down to the felt, save a paltry few $5 chips (and the few hundred dollar bills that I tabled in the unlikely event I were to participate in a lucrative hand, lol…). I was resigned to booking my first Vegas weekend loss in some time – to the tune of $1,300 - and decided to play one final orbit before getting up to leave for the drive back to Los Angeles.
Then, a remarkable turn of events occurred. Under the gun (and the last hand before my planned departure), I picked up pocket aces, and managed to win a few chips against the big blind – enough for another orbit. Then, during the subsequent orbit, I picked up pocket aces again – and won more than a decent pot when I flopped trips against what I imagine was a strong ace. Back in business on Blue Star, baby…
Sitting two seats to my right was an older gentleman – a local I’ve played with before who has a very proper, composed demeanor (his beverage of choice at the table is green tea) – and who appears to have been a staple of the middle limit game for some time. My read on him wasn’t absolutely thorough, but he seemed to play the game fairly competently. He was about to become my unwitting benefactor over the course of three hands – including one truly remarkable hand – that we played together in the space of roughly one hour.
On the first, Green Tea was in late position, while I was in the blinds with pocket 9s. I don't recall the specific preflop betting; I just remember that he had either raised or reraised - and the flop came a king with two rags. He bet the flop and turn in position, and I simply smooth called both. Although I thought he likely had a king, I also thought he might be capable of betting through with air, so my nines might be good. When the river came an ace, I led out, representing that I had paired it... and he said something like "you made your blackjack, huh?", and reluctantly folded what I think was a king... or, perhaps, a pocket pair better than my nines. I did not reveal my hand.
On the second, Green Tea had open-raised from late position, and I three-bet him with pocket 6s on the button to isolate. The flop came A-2-2; he checked and I bet. The way he called, I figured he had an ace and wasn't going anywhere, and was likely looking to set up a check-raise on the turn. So I just checked the turn behind him, with the intention of calling the river. Lo and behold, the river came a sweet, beautiful 6, giving me a boat... Green Tea led out, and I raised him, getting the crying river call – with my contrite proclamation of how lucky I had just gotten. This time he was more visibly upset, thinking he had just been rivered twice in a row.
Then came THE hand, one I probably won’t forget for some time.
I was in early position with pocket jacks. I raised and got three callers in the mid and late positions, with both the small blind and Green Tea in the big blind accommodating my request for elevated stakes. Six players at this point, with $120 in the pot.
The flop came KJ6 rainbow, giving me a sweet middle set. The blinds checked to me, and I bet; everyone called except for Green Tea, who then raised out of the big blind. I simply called in an attempt to retain my customers, and everyone behind complied - so we still had six players, with $240 in the pot.
The turn is the case jack – oh, baby. The mortal nuts, unless Green Tea is sitting on pocket cowboys. I had anticipated a continuation bet from Green Tea, in which case I would have simply called to encourage continued participation from those behind who were drawing dead. However, he checked, which could have indicated a strong hand on GT’s behalf – a set becoming a boat – but it could have also indicated a relatively weak hand (KQ, K6s, etc.) and the realization that one of the five players behind him was likely holding a third jack. Regardless of his rationale for checking, I couldn’t run the risk of the field checking behind me, so I bet - and everyone folded, except for GT, who check-raised me. Ah yes, the boat. With no-one else remaining in the hand, I reraised, and GT called – resulting in a current pot of $360.
The river put another 6 on the board. Could it be? Could he have had sixes full on the turn? GT bet, I raised, GT reraised, I reraised... and at the Mirage, at least, there's no limit to the betting in a limit game once it gets heads-up. So GT continued to reraise until he was out of his table stakes - which, unfortunately, was only about $160 more after the turn. So, we each got about another $160 in on the river, making for a total pot of roughly $700. Obviously, he had quad 6s.
Quads over quads, the poor guy. He thought he finally had me. I had no idea what to say, so I muttered something like “Wow, that was absolutely brutal” in as sympathetic a voice as I could possibly muster at that point. To his credit, Green Tea simply stood up, tossed his lone remaining $1 chip to the dealer as a tip, and walked away from the table without saying a word.
In stacking Green Tea’s chips, it became clear to me that, with the preceding hands (as well as a few other wins interspersed throughout), I had recovered about $1,200 of my previous $1,300 deficit – all in the space of about a couple of hours. It wasn’t too long before I had pulled ahead for the trip by a modest amount – but unfortunately, I was so giddy that I thought, LA be damned, it’s time to start ordering Sammy’s and playing some cards!
Yeah, well… in going on reverse tilt, as it were, my overconfidence resulted in a significant loosening of my opening hand standards, in connection with my repeatedly mixing it up with a couple of solid locals in attempts to steal what were ultimately unstealable pots. Given a return to prior form of my dearth of preferable holdings, I ended up giving back a few hundred before departing at about 11:30 for smoggier and more plasticine pastures… but I was eminently satisfied with my recovery, when all was said and done. I had been winning at the rate of 3BBs per hour over the course of the last several trips, which is, I would think, tough (if not impossible) to sustain over the long haul – so I was realistically due for a loss. But the final result was, at the very least, much better than dropping $1,300…
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Monday, September 17, 2007
A Tale of Three Johnnies (Part I)…
Just returned from my semi-regular weekend appearance at the Mirage in Vegas. Because I was staying with some friends who were in town for the weekend at Mandalay Bay, I didn’t actually get to the Mirage until 2AM on Saturday – and much to my chagrin, the 10-20 and 20-40 games had already broken up for the evening. Are you freaking kidding me? This is supposed to be Vegas, baby, and a Friday night… too many damned poker rooms open in more exotic locales, such as the Wynn and the Venetian, I suppose… but I’ll still take the Mirage any day.
So I needed to wait until later in the day Saturday to get my poker fix. And get my fix I did, playing for roughly 17 hours – from about noon until 5:30 in the morning on Sunday, with an hour break for dinner somewhere in the middle.
What an interesting day. Until later in the evening, I played pretty much even, getting up as much as $300 and down as much as $200 at different points… but it was a phenomenally underwhelming session in terms of both cards and action. Things started to change, however, as the evening progressed – owing primarily to the presence of two extremely loose action players.
The first was a tourist who flew in from somewhere and was scheduled to depart early on Sunday – he planned to play through the night until take-off. His modus operandi was, quite literally, to play any two cards from anywhere. And being sooooooted wasn’t a requisite qualification, either. I’m fairly certain the bottles of Sammy’s I drank outnumbered the hands he folded before the flop.
He was a generally passive player (except pre-flop, where he raised his fair share of hands), as I imagine one would need to be in playing any two cards under the sun. But he stuck around until the river on most hands, meaning a couple of things for the rest of us: (1) the starting hand criteria could go down somewhat, given the greater number of players desirous of taking flops with the guy, and (2) a hand was actually required to drag most pots. Normally, this is great for the game… except he was catching cards disgustingly well. And he was winning a lot of our money.
The second player, a local, didn’t materialize until after the midnight hour. He played lots of hands, too… but he played uber-aggressively through to the river, regardless of the extent to which his hole cards were coordinated with the board. His level of intoxication only added to his reckless style of play, as well as his consistent taunting of the bitter foreign immigrant sitting to my immediate left who had earlier, regrettably, commented that intoxicated local “didn’t know shit from shinola”. This ultimately provided for some much needed comic relief over the course of at least the next couple of hours…
I, unfortunately, had not been getting an enviable run of cards. I was happy with the fact that I stayed disciplined in folding a great deal of trash, was playing position well, and stole a pot here and there when the opportunity permitted. And because of this, I was actually up a little bit when my first set of jacks relevant to the current diatribe appeared…
I was sitting in the big blind when a young, aggressive local raised from middle position, only to be cold-called by a local female who seems to play fairly well after the flop, but who also seems to play too many hands (as this scenario will demonstrate). In this case, I elected to simply smooth-call the single bet with my pocket jacks, in part to disguise my hand, and to make it easier to depart the hand if the flop did not come well for me.
But come well for me it did, as I flopped top set. I checked, MP bet, LP called and I raised. I then led out the turn (another relative rag – although the board was beginning to get a bit coordinated), only to be raised by MP, and called by LP. At that point, the smooth call should have alerted me that something was amiss, but alas, I was focused on aggro-boy – and decided that LP was along for the ride with a slim draw of some sort. So I reraised aggro-boy’s presumed premium pocket pair, and was called by both.
The river came another harmless card, so I bet out – only to be raised by LP. What the… in taking a closer look at the board, I knew with certainty what she had - the T8 of purple horseshoes (I read that in Bluff or Cardplayer or something, and thought it amusing). How she could call a raise with T8 offsuit, I have no idea. But it gave her a straight, and sent my stack on a downward spiral from which it wouldn’t recover during the remainder of the evening. (It also sent aggro-boy on a tilt-inspired verbal assault on the girl, which was somewhat entertaining for me – in light of the fact that he hadn’t stopped to realize that if she had folded her hand, he would have lost precisely the same amount of money to my set of jacks, as he ultimately folded to her river raise. But being the gentleman that I often pretend to be, I admonished him, resulting in the redirection of his wrath in my general direction…)
The downward spiral continued until what, for all intents and purposes, was my penultimate hand of the session, shortly after 5AM. Stuck several hundred at this point – largely the result of several bad beats that even prompted a solid local to recount during the next night, unsolicited and with appropriate sympathy, how bad things were running for me during the course of the session - I again found pocket jacks, and again connected with the flop for top set.
In this case, the villain was player #2 (intoxicated local) referenced above. Because loose tourist and a couple of other players were along for the ride in – again – what should have been a relatively uncoordinated board, I decided to wait until a few bets were already in on the turn before raising. Which I successfully did, prompting all players to quickly depart the hand, with the exception of villain – who proceeded to three-bet me. I of course made it four, and saw, to my chagrin, that he only had enough funds in front of him to cover $15 of that final $20 bet.
I turned over my pocket set, and he was dead to a ridiculous gutshot draw. Of course, he hit it – to stunned silence at the table (with the exception of a couple of audible gasps). I mustered poise I didn’t think humanly possible, rapped the table, and said “nice hand”. He responded by announcing “Is everybody paying attention? You better call me with anything you’re playing…” How profound of him. I folded a few more hands so as not to appear defeated, watched intoxicated local eventually depart penniless and then headed out to the car at about 5:30, stuck just shy of $800…
Part II to follow shortly…
So I needed to wait until later in the day Saturday to get my poker fix. And get my fix I did, playing for roughly 17 hours – from about noon until 5:30 in the morning on Sunday, with an hour break for dinner somewhere in the middle.
What an interesting day. Until later in the evening, I played pretty much even, getting up as much as $300 and down as much as $200 at different points… but it was a phenomenally underwhelming session in terms of both cards and action. Things started to change, however, as the evening progressed – owing primarily to the presence of two extremely loose action players.
The first was a tourist who flew in from somewhere and was scheduled to depart early on Sunday – he planned to play through the night until take-off. His modus operandi was, quite literally, to play any two cards from anywhere. And being sooooooted wasn’t a requisite qualification, either. I’m fairly certain the bottles of Sammy’s I drank outnumbered the hands he folded before the flop.
He was a generally passive player (except pre-flop, where he raised his fair share of hands), as I imagine one would need to be in playing any two cards under the sun. But he stuck around until the river on most hands, meaning a couple of things for the rest of us: (1) the starting hand criteria could go down somewhat, given the greater number of players desirous of taking flops with the guy, and (2) a hand was actually required to drag most pots. Normally, this is great for the game… except he was catching cards disgustingly well. And he was winning a lot of our money.
The second player, a local, didn’t materialize until after the midnight hour. He played lots of hands, too… but he played uber-aggressively through to the river, regardless of the extent to which his hole cards were coordinated with the board. His level of intoxication only added to his reckless style of play, as well as his consistent taunting of the bitter foreign immigrant sitting to my immediate left who had earlier, regrettably, commented that intoxicated local “didn’t know shit from shinola”. This ultimately provided for some much needed comic relief over the course of at least the next couple of hours…
I, unfortunately, had not been getting an enviable run of cards. I was happy with the fact that I stayed disciplined in folding a great deal of trash, was playing position well, and stole a pot here and there when the opportunity permitted. And because of this, I was actually up a little bit when my first set of jacks relevant to the current diatribe appeared…
I was sitting in the big blind when a young, aggressive local raised from middle position, only to be cold-called by a local female who seems to play fairly well after the flop, but who also seems to play too many hands (as this scenario will demonstrate). In this case, I elected to simply smooth-call the single bet with my pocket jacks, in part to disguise my hand, and to make it easier to depart the hand if the flop did not come well for me.
But come well for me it did, as I flopped top set. I checked, MP bet, LP called and I raised. I then led out the turn (another relative rag – although the board was beginning to get a bit coordinated), only to be raised by MP, and called by LP. At that point, the smooth call should have alerted me that something was amiss, but alas, I was focused on aggro-boy – and decided that LP was along for the ride with a slim draw of some sort. So I reraised aggro-boy’s presumed premium pocket pair, and was called by both.
The river came another harmless card, so I bet out – only to be raised by LP. What the… in taking a closer look at the board, I knew with certainty what she had - the T8 of purple horseshoes (I read that in Bluff or Cardplayer or something, and thought it amusing). How she could call a raise with T8 offsuit, I have no idea. But it gave her a straight, and sent my stack on a downward spiral from which it wouldn’t recover during the remainder of the evening. (It also sent aggro-boy on a tilt-inspired verbal assault on the girl, which was somewhat entertaining for me – in light of the fact that he hadn’t stopped to realize that if she had folded her hand, he would have lost precisely the same amount of money to my set of jacks, as he ultimately folded to her river raise. But being the gentleman that I often pretend to be, I admonished him, resulting in the redirection of his wrath in my general direction…)
The downward spiral continued until what, for all intents and purposes, was my penultimate hand of the session, shortly after 5AM. Stuck several hundred at this point – largely the result of several bad beats that even prompted a solid local to recount during the next night, unsolicited and with appropriate sympathy, how bad things were running for me during the course of the session - I again found pocket jacks, and again connected with the flop for top set.
In this case, the villain was player #2 (intoxicated local) referenced above. Because loose tourist and a couple of other players were along for the ride in – again – what should have been a relatively uncoordinated board, I decided to wait until a few bets were already in on the turn before raising. Which I successfully did, prompting all players to quickly depart the hand, with the exception of villain – who proceeded to three-bet me. I of course made it four, and saw, to my chagrin, that he only had enough funds in front of him to cover $15 of that final $20 bet.
I turned over my pocket set, and he was dead to a ridiculous gutshot draw. Of course, he hit it – to stunned silence at the table (with the exception of a couple of audible gasps). I mustered poise I didn’t think humanly possible, rapped the table, and said “nice hand”. He responded by announcing “Is everybody paying attention? You better call me with anything you’re playing…” How profound of him. I folded a few more hands so as not to appear defeated, watched intoxicated local eventually depart penniless and then headed out to the car at about 5:30, stuck just shy of $800…
Part II to follow shortly…
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