Channeling Joe

Playing poker for many years with "Curly Haired" Joe, he sometimes would make notes on every hand.  When asked about it, he would show his notebook where he would list every pair he was dealt and whether he won with it or not.  I found the idea interesting and have tried it on occasion.  Sunday decided to kick it up a notch and record every hand I was dealt in omaha.  It was pretty distracting, depressing, and difficult.  I did it for almost 3 rotations, 23 hands, until I went broke on my first $120 buy in.  I usually noted whether the hand was single, non, or double suited, what the board was, and my financial loss ( I did not win even one half pot).  Like I said, depressing. 

So, it was a disastrous session, no high hands, multiple rebuys.  Very frustrating.  Meanwhile I chose not to play in the big ($350 buy-in) end of month tournament with 117 players and first prize of $13k.  I would have saved money.

Lessons learned.  First, I played much looser than I should have.  Only dealt 2 A/2 hands but played 13 of 23 hands.  Granted some were in un-raised blinds, but others were trash hands with pairs (did fold quads once).  I have got to avoid those, particularly small pairs.  Later folded a high hand quad 3's, but low pairs are trouble hands.  Made sets with them only to lose to bigger sets or bigger full houses or straights or flushes.  My biggest losses came on missed draws and a flush that hit but lost to boat.  No wins with my premium hands all day with several great starting hands missing flop or river.

Yo Yo Me, not Yo Yo Ma the famous musician

This week's poker has been up small and down small.  Total net loss around $30. While this does not represent much money, less than the normal tournament buy-in, it is still very disappointing for the number of hours, 16, that were played.  The game Sunday was a donk fest, with almost a full table seeing every flop, and several "river" players who would chase any draw all the way.  One could argue that the pot size justifies the odds, and that is true to some extent.  However, doing it every time invites disaster to your chip stack as you cannot catch lucky often enough.  They just never seem to learn this.

Watching the big plo table next door was grateful for the small chip losses and minor swings.  One player lost a $5000 pot with over $2,000 of his own money in it.  He immediately reloaded for another $1500,  then tripled that stack, much of it coming from the 1st guy he lost to.  Guys that had several thousand in front of them left broke.

Another subject.  Push-pull.  Sometimes in my omaha game I want to pull players in by calling.  Others times it is better to push them out of the hand by raising.  Examples of this include calling while on a draw or with a monster made hand.  Yesterday I flopped the nut full house playing 8/8 on a flop of 6/6/8.  Obviously when the first player bet he either had a 6 or was representing it, or had a low draw.  The straight draw may call as will a variety of low draws.  I was in mid-late position (hijack).  With a caller or two and 2 more players in position I wanted to encourage all draws to enter.  It could be argued that I should raise here but with the bets at $4 wanted to wait for turn and the $8 bet to raise.  Sure enough the original bettor continued, and with a small card brought in the lows.  My raise was called in multiple spots and the river bet by me was called in at least two places.  It was a nice big 1/2 pot. 

À situation often arises when two players hit the nut straight on the turn.  What nearly always happens is a ramming and jamming with sometimes multiple players calling a capped pot with sets and two pair hands, sometimes also flush, redraw to higher straights, and low draws.  This is a classic scary, big, potential suck out pot that is push,push, push.  Imagine this flop.

7h,8h,9c

Here are the players hands:

Player 1, 9h,10h,Js,Kh he "only" has a pair of 9's, but look at his redraw potential, straight flush, king high straight, 2ND nut flush draw.

Player 2, 5h,6h, Ac, 2c. Interesting.  He has a made straight on the "dumb end", nut low draw, open ended straight flush draw, backdoor nut flush draw in clubs. He also loves this flop and will call any bets to the river.

Player 3, Ah, 3h, 10h, Js.  Made nut straight, "nut" heart flush draw, 2nd nut low draw.  He is also river bound.

Player 4, 7s, 7c,8c, 9d.  Interesting as well with bottom set, backdoor straight flush plus two over pairs.  What could possibly go wrong?

It is possible for other players to have oversets, over pairs, nut low draws, and higher straight re-draws.  What a landmine field to walk through!!!  Yet, this scenario happens time after time in Omaha games with the losing players folding their sets and low draws in disgust.  No wonder we describe it as the game we love to hate.

I will often see players jamming this flop as it is usually proper to make the draws pay dearly.  We know that despite our efforts to thin the field that it never works.  Nut flopped straights seldom win in this game and cost a bunch.  Much better to have re-draws to fall back on.

Yesterday

Another High Variance Game

Sometimes you immediately know when it is going to be one of those crazy, high variance games.  That was yesterday's game.  Two "big game" PLO players were seated on the newly opened game.  Predictably all of the pots were jammed and rejammed preflop.  Figured the game would settle down after the PLO game started.  How wrong can you be?  Turns out there was a crazy guy who literally played every hand, raising 97% of the time.  Also, he was seated next to very aggressive older player who would re-raise almost every time.  A dealer on a heater added to the jamming.  The kid rebought more times than I could count, the older guy did too, and ultimately busted out.  It would have been wise to move to another table but with good cards that unfortunately lost and $200 pots did not excercise that option.

 A couple of "run bad" examples for you.  Playing pocket aces, the flop comes J/8/3.   It gets bet, raised and called multiple times.  The turn is an ace.  My turn to ram and jam.  River is a 3, filling me up with the nut full house.  More jamming.  Turns out that flop was set over set, 8's and 3's.  River gives the worst hand quads.  This happened again to me with my flush losing to quads on the river.  Also at least 3 "under-full" houses, including one runner runner queens. 

The only bright spot was a high hand (AAAJJ) worth $200.  If not for that the loss would have been much more severe.  Lesson learned:  request a table change when running cold on a crazy table.  

Stuck at Last

After a really good and long run at the table, I finally got stuck good.  Not any really bad play on my part, not a crazy table, just missed virtually every draw and some real bad luck (think under-full houses, bumping into straight flushes, quads, and rivered nut low killers).  I was probably overdue for a spanking.

On a totally different topic, a couple of weeks ago we found an Italian espresso machine, a La Pavoni, at a garage sale up the street.  We paid $20, which turns out to be a great bargain except for the fact that I could not get a good espresso shot.  So, we hauled it to a shop in Seattle and the owner checked it out, explained how to properly operate it and cranked out two of the best drinks I have ever had.  It requires some work, but not too expensive, around $120, and turns out used one runs almost $400.  Great purchase and looking forward to picking up next week.  Loves me my Americano!!!

It is a beautiful machine, it is displayed at the museum in Milan.  Classic Italian design.

Seat Change? Really?

Arriving fashionably late to the casino on Sunday I immediately signed up for seat 9 in the omaha game.  I was first on the list.  Sitting comfortably at an empty table, realized that the game was already in progress.  After a short time the guy in 9 gets up with a couple of trays of chips.  My name is not called, so eventually I enquire.  Seat open, and it is my favorite!!  Buying in for the usual $100, I am seated next to a couple of cute ladies who I later find out are visiting from Canada.  They are both rapidly burning through American dollars, one claims to be stuck $280, the other probably close.  Then one catches fire, collecting 3 high hands for over $400 and accumulating lots of chips.   Then the other starts piling up chips.  Me?  I steadily add to my stack, never dipping below $80, and eventually cashing out for $376.

When I racked the chips, the high hand lady requested my seat.  I said really?  You are in the hot seat.  She had burned through most of her chips, including the high hand money.  Did she really think the seat change would make her play better?

Poker players can be a superstitious lot (based on my view that seat 9 is lucky for me), but could not understand leaving a seat that was catching so many monsters.  Do fisherman leave the spot where they catch a few lunkers to move to a place where a more skillful guy is pulling in more small frie?  I would think not.  So tell me, do you have a lucky seat?  Do you move to a seat vacated by a big winner?