I get this hand in the first five minutes of play. I have 55... Flop = 569. I bet, he raises, I re-raise, he insta-all in's. The only hand I'm beating is two pair. If he has a straight, it's not bad EV for me, but, to be honest I didn't even think long enough to figure out if I'd be getting positive value on calling against a straight. No, in fact, I didn't think at all, insta-call and say “I call, I have a set,” thinking he'd be cowed. But he says nothing and turns over his 9's. So, I'm drawing to the last 5 in the deck which doesn't come. Well... nice.. nice...
So, I'm down $2k in about five minutes. Put the next $2k on the table. The must move to the main game comes soon after, where I'm sitting next to this fat 40 year old mother, who isn't too horrible of a player, but constantly talking. I might have found her material acting to me charming during a winning session. She asks “are you a pro?” I guess the constant, and somewhat advanced chip tricks I do give me away, or maybe it's my demeanor in general. I've been answering this question lately with some bullshit line about how “I'm a computer programmer, but usually make more when playing poker,” as I used to actually program for a living I can bs about it with anyone. Anyway, the table is rather passive, there's maybe one aggressive player on it. It's mostly people who are bad at math and have skewed ideas of risk/reward. This unaggressivness and people calling with too many hands makes it very profitable to take a lot of shots at little pots on the flop. So, as long as I don't do it too often, I can take pots for like one 50% of the pot sized bet on the flop. And so I work and work, and inch my way back to being only down $500 or so after maybe two or three hours... Then then.. wow..
88.. flop a set with 2 clubs out there. Three people in the hand. Bet the flop, all players call. Bet the blanked turn, all players call again!! So going to the river it's a $2k pot. And the river of course brings the third club to an unpaired board. I check to a tight, older Asian man, who takes out a big handful of hundreds and carefully counts out thirteen of them. The dealer, then counts them out again and lays them out on the table in that neat way that dealers have of doing. Every bone of my body knows he's got the flush, but I'm so pissed that he retardedly called pot sized bets on every street, and got there anyway, and man, does that cash look good. I think for a minute, look at my cards, take a couple of breaths. He casually moves from being hunched over the table and looking at me to leaning back and to take a few spoonfuls of the soup he has behind him. I know that he has it, I mean, I know he has it. But, I can't stop being pissed at that card. And so I come up with this stupidity... the reason that he's acting so casually now is because he must be bluffing he has it. Yes! It must be! What a good read I just put on him!!! So I call, and yes, of course, he has it. As the chips are being pushed to him Mother starts telling me how I should have shown him my set and folded. About how “he's going to keep drawing out until you teach him a lesson.” I was steaming before, and I'm just kind of going nutty from her lecture, and feeling so bad about wasting the past two hours of work to just blow it on this stupid fucking call.
Still steaming, trying to calm down, meditate... literally two hands later I'm in the BB, where I have T7. I flop the nuts on a 689 board. I check, and the four guys in front of me check too. Turn = 5, so I still have the nuts. I make a pot sized bet of $100. Which is raised to $300, and then again to $900!!! Wow. There's two to a flush, there's no pair, and I still have the nuts. I've got like $1200 left in front of me which I shove in, and get called in by both raisers!!! Wow... I want to puke when the river is another 5.. but neither guy has a set, and both guys show a lone 7 for the 2nd nut straight!!
Wow.. ok, so, I'm feeling better for the 10 seconds it takes me to take the pot in. Until I start thinking about how folding the river on the 88 hand would put another $3600 in my stack now, as both these donkeys had me covered, and neither could have folded their straights for a million dollars. I count my stack and realize I'm right back to where I was before the 88 hand of being down $500, and think that I'd have $3k of profit now if I'd folded. And then Mother starts saying pretty much what I'm thinking about the $3600 that I'd really like to have.... “You know if you'd folded the river...” Yes, yes, you stupid fucking cow, I fucking know. I nod, I say nothing to her. I sit and I steam, and I think about how that call $1300 call turned out to be a $3600 mistake.
Next orbit, in my small blind I have 53, pot is limped, I call the $10. Flop = 46T, rainbow. It's checked around to the only guy who seems to have any level of aggression at the table, who puts out a pot sized $100 from the cutoff seat. Mother calls from the button, I call, and the Asian who beat my set of 8's calls too. Turn = 7!! Hey, I have the 2nd nuts, and 58 is so unlikely at this point that I'm pretty sure I'm winning. So, I bet $800. Mother, says “did that make your straight?” Which is unbelievably shitty of her to say, as there's two other players in the hand and the action isn't even to her. In thinking about it now, I should have called the floor over and at least gotten her kicked off the table. That comment really was utter bullshit, and I'm getting pissed just thinking about it. But I say nothing, as I'm so shocked. So, Asian folds, Aggressive Guy calls, and Mother looks at her cards, and is like “well, I guess I have to call now.” Ok, so gigantic pot, and the river brings another 6, and I unleash a fire-hose-strength stream of projectile vomit over the entire table, and check. Aggressive Dude goes all in. And mother thinks and thinks, keeps going on about “what do you have? Hmm, what do you have???” And calls. I roll my eyes, and muck the straight face up. Mother, has T's full of 6' (so 2 pair until the river), Aggressive Dude flopped a set of 4's and now has 4's full. As Mother is taking the pot in, she goes on explaining how “after you both put all that money in the pot I had to call.” Let's see.. she has 4 outs on the river, and let's even say that she knows that I have a straight and we eliminate those cards from the denominator makes it 4/44 = about a 10 to 1 shot for her to boat up on the river. So, she needs to be making $8k to make that call on the turn right. She made a little under $4k on the call.
So, I feel good about the way I played the hand, but of course when I start to count my stack and am $900 poorer, it's not a good feeling, but, at least I know I'm played it well, and which always feels good eventually. But I'm still steaming. I mean, how can anyone not steam after this progression?
But, then.. wow.. this is the best one... I get AQ a few hands later, so I'm in later position. Bet out $80. This very tight, older Mexican at the end of the table calls. Flop = Q89. He checks, I bet $100, call. Turn = T, check, bet $150, call. River = 6. He checks, check, hold my cards up, and when it takes him a second to declare what he has, I start extending my arms to take the chips in. Then he's says, in his broken English, “I have straight!” And shows T7 of hearts. Nice.
The fucking thing about this is that dude hadn't played a hand for like an hour, and then decides to play his T7 for $80 against me? As he's raking the pot in, I say nothing, he says “I don' usually play thos' card. But, I have feeling dis han'.”
So, yeah, if I wasn't steaming before, I now feel like smashing every player's head in with a sledge hammer. I want to throw a grenade under the table, I want to burn their houses down, I want to rape their mothers. I get up and walk around. Walk outside, check my email on my phone. Look at the desert night sky, think about variance, and wonder if I can play more.
When I get back to the table, I sit and meditate. I do my best to not do anything stupid. Mother sees the look of being pissed on my face and doesn't say anything to me for awhile. She pays my time the next half, which I'm still trying to figure out if it was a gesture of compassion, or if it was just to entice me to stay at the table and throw away the $1500 I still had in front of me. I don't play another hand for almost an entire hour. I don't say a single word during this time either. I just sit and meditate.In the games I play back home there is a posse of tight tight asses who have this complete gloom and doom mentality. They'll sit and not play a hand for a half hour, get a big hand, play it, lose to some donkey playing something completely retarded. During the half hour until they play another hand they'll complain incessantly about what horrible luck they always always have, and how it's impossible to beat rich donkeys because they'll always suck out on you. If their next hand goes the same way, they'll take this as more proof that there are cosmic forces at work against them and go on super-tilt, and wind up throwing away all the money they have in their pocket. Whenever they see me winning (60% !!!) they constantly go on about how I'm the luckiest man they know. Yeah, yeah, well... no, no... First of all, I can actually do the math where most of them can't, which gives me a huge advantage. But, second of all, cards, or any random systems, are like the universe, in that it looks the same from anywhere, from any direction you look at it from.. or from any seat you're sitting at... The random system of numbers and variance are the same for everyone, and in the long run it will pretty much always work out. And the long run is only about sixteen hours, (take note scientists... I've done the required research on this figure, and you can now use "the long run" as a unit of measurement). I am not lucky, I just do my best to not steam, to be happy with dudes calling me with bad T7. Obviously, it sucks when they win, but them winning hands like that are what keeps them coming back. And yeah, when you're losing it's is often impossible to keep this perspective. But, after learning the basics, it's what separates good players, from consistent winners... I'm getting better at it.
Eventually I get J3 in the BB. The hand is straddled, with like 3 limpers, in front of me, so I call the $20, straddler checks. Flop = AJ3. Check, one limper bets $200, cut off seat calls. I go all in. I have like $1500, am pretty sure my two pair is ahead, but it's bottom two, and I'm just fine taking the $600 pot. Folds around to cut off caller. Who hemms and haws, and then calls. He has AJ for top 2. I'm dead to a 3, which doesn't come. Wow. Well... just wow. I shake my head, shrug to the table, say “I guess it's not my night,” and leave.
It is a long ride home. I keep thinking how it's absurd that I'm still up $200 for the trip, and that I played pretty well. But it is of little consolation. I take two Benadryls and drink a bunch of beer to make sure that I fall asleep quickly
1 comment:
WAWAWAWAWAWAWAWAWAWA
Post a Comment