Back at Beach Poker

Trying to ready the beach house for sale, spent last week there.  The Wednesday game at the Bayway was just 2 tables, but got to visit with friends some.  My cards were rotten and I was eliminated shoving over a raise.  He had j/j vs. My 6/6.  My heart soared like an eagle when I flopped my 2 outer 6, but I was crushed on the turn when he hit his 2 outer jack.

Moving on to Friday action at the legion, pretty card dead all night and went out with 7/7 vs. A/Q When the board runnered 8/9/10/J, giving him the higher straight.  Cest la vie.  Worked pretty hard, towing a full 5 x 8 trailer back, great to see some poker buddies.  I am planning on going back next week for more house projects.

One Thin Dime

I must make an admission.  I pick up money from the ground.  My grandmother, Jetty (cool name huh), walked the same path to the grocery store for many years.  She would pick up coins that she found and put them into a jar in her closet.  After she passed away we found her jar.  It probably had a hundred dollars of face value inside.  But, the real value was in the very old dates.  There were Indian head pennies in there! She was from an era where pennies matter.  My mom had a collection as well.  She was a child of the depression, when pennies really mattered.  When she passed away, my brother and I divided the coins.  Some of them were really old and valuable.

So, I am a child of a child of the depression and I don't save the coins I find, but willingly will stoop to pick up a lost penny that most today will walk right over.  Side note:  why the heck are we still producing pennies today?  There are estimated to be several hundred billion in circulation, with 4 to 8 billion produced each year.  Most of these are in jars.  The cost of producing a penny today is 1.5 cents, or 50% more than its value. Crazy, huh?

 Which brings me to poker yesterday.  Claiming my seat in the 4/8 Omaha game, I looked on the floor and there was a dime!  Well, if I will pick up a penny, sure as hell gonna pick up 10 of them!  I nicknamed it "my lucky dime" and placed it atop my starting stack of $100 in blue poker chips.  Was it lucky for me?  Well, i did manage to hit a king high straight flush and claim the high hand for $200.  Sweet.  Unfortunately it was a day of suckouts, losing several big pots on the river.  After 7 hours of play, I cashed out for exactly my buyins and left with a total profit of...........10 cents, the dime I picked up.

Home (in) On The Range

A key skill is figuring out a preflop player's raising range.  What cards would he raise with in which position?  Some players are easy peasy because they play such tight ranges, others not so much.  I regularly play against an older fellow who cagily, he thinks, always min raises in early position with aces.  Have seen it several times.  It is so great to call in position with a wide range and either fold on the flop or get it all in when you hit big like two pair or a set.

 My nemesis described in a previous post was again sitting to my immediate right in a tournament last week.  Shit!  His range is pretty much any two cards.  So, after he survived two all ins with crap (did i mention he is very lucky too?), this hand came up.  He raised from the big blind.  I had limped utg with 6/6, doing me some set mining.  There were 2 other callers.  The flop was j/j/5.  He put out a "c" bet of maybe 1/3 pot size.  I called, the others folded.  At this point i felt i had him as no way is he betting trips here, but had to worry about the other players.  The turn was a queen and he looked warily at me and checked.  Trapping or squadooch?  I checked back giving myself the opportunity to fill up.  The river was a 9, and he bet almost pot size.  A bad call cripples me.  Our table had just broken and the tournament was on hold awaiting my decision.  I tanked and considered his range for way out of position preflop raise.  All pairs, A/9, A10, AJ, AQ, AK, 10K, 10/Q, 10J, JQ, JK.  What could I beat here?  Probably only 2s, 3s, or 4s.  Finally I folded as my stack was just o.k. and he flips over A/3.  Given his range, I was a little upset but not as much as when he knocked me out later with his A/Q call of my 9/10 suited shove.  He would not have had enough chips to do so had I made the earlier call.

Quick side note on my shove.  In a turbo with only 6 blinds, this is definite late position material.  I much prefer this over weak aces and small pairs. Yesterday in the Omaha game won $100 high hand with it, making a king high straight flush😎

Set Over Set

Probably the best or worst flop you can get vs. one opponent is set over set.  You are drawing to one out if you are on the bottom end barring random straight or flush bad beats.  This happened to me twice yesterday with the same hands with me fortunately on the top.  What the heck are the odds on that?  The first was in a 3/6 limit game.  I was on the waiting list for both the 4/8 and 3/300 games.  Like most limit games was stuck quickly but recovered some in a big pot with j/j vs.  K/K and A/A.  Capped preflop I hit a jack on the flop and won a nice pot.  Later, playing K/K I created a big pot vs. a good, tight player (he is a dealer at this casino) when he raised preflop.  Flop was K/8/x and we capped it.  He was playing pocket 8's. Nice pot.

Moved to 1/3/300 game and had the same situation.  Pocket 8's raised, I re-raised with kings.  Flop K/8/x .  This time we got it all in and I doubled up.  Strangely enough had pocket kings twice after that, taking one raised pot down preflop, losing the other on an ace high flush board. Overall a good but not spectacular day winning $127 in about 3 hours of play.

Aggressive players

I wrote earlier about aggressive players.  I would like to expand on that thought.  While aggression is an important part of poker, it's judicious use must be considered.  In Hold'em it is a key factor in winning, including stealing from late position, taking the lead in pots, bluffing, and raising for value.  Aggressive players are usually winners while passive ones are generally not.  Which brings us to the reasons for raising.

1.  To reduce the number of players competing for the pot. By raising we eliminate random but weak hands that can "flop lucky".  All cards play better heads up rather than in multi-way situations.
2.  To gain positional advantage.  Knocking out players who would act behind you is never a bad thing.
3.  To "take the lead".  The tendency is to check to the raiser so this can work well to either bluff the callers, gain value when you hit big, cover later bluffs, or check behind on big draws.
4.  I almost hesitate to even mention this one, but it is the main reason many weak player do it.  To build a bigger pot.  I will elaborate on this one in reference to limit games and more specifically Omaha hi low.  When you raise in a limit game you do not elicit many folds.  Players with premium hands will play back at you while hands that would have folded to one bet will certainly fold to two.  Earlier limpers will always call, building a pot size that is "protected".  If there is $50 in the pot, no one is folding for a $4. flop bet.  The pot odds have given everyone good odds to call with any draw and gives strong made hands future equity and even reason to re-raise.  The problem continues to the turn, with the only folders on river misses.  The best oh8 starting hand is said to be AA23 double suited, however a low hand only  happens 60% of the time, we all know about flush draws, and a pair of aces is only a single pair.  So, your super premium hand will sometimes win, but often fail.

It gets worse for the straddler, playing random cards out of position in a swollen pot.  Since super aggressive raisers often straddle, this compounds their problems.  I wrote earlier about my success against this type of player who was seated on my immediate left, so Sunday a similar player was seated in the 7 seat while I was in the 2.  She bought in for 4 or 5 hundred which is ridiculous for starters, even commenting about how she planned to use them.  True to her word, she raised the first hand and most of them afterwards.  The saving grace was that she was losing and frequently leaving the table for 20 to 30 minutes.  After a couple of hours I commented about her raises quietly to the player next to me (who was killing the game plus one high hand).  Her bat ears picked it up and she began mouthing off to me about her many premium hands.  I ignored her.  Not long afterwards she racked up $250 and left.  I ultimately cashed up $42.

One more concept about raising.  Pot control.  When you raise big, you put pressure on your hand for subsequent streets.  If you raise 50/100 blind to 250 and get one caller from the sb, there is now 600 in the pot, making your continuation bet of 1/2 pot size only 300.  If you had raised to 450 instead, your continuation (and I hope you are nearly always doing this) would now have to be 500 to bet a 1/2 pot.  The pot has more quickly grown into a monster that you may not be able to get away from with your pair and 2 over-cards showing.

One last raising comment.  In my oh8 game I seldom raise for deception purposes.  By raising only with super premium hands I would announce my hand to the table.  By calling, more players enter, my hand is well disguised, leading the k/K and A/3 hands believing they are best.  This nets more money on the river, particularly from 2nd or 3rd nut low hands.

Fiddy Cents

Wrote last post about "earn rate".  This is an important concept for both recreational and more serious players.  Our time is our life, and the time spent playing poker should hopefully show some return on investment.  Playing poker yesterday started out in the $60 Sunday "no chop".  About 80 entries, so not too daunting a field.  Hated my table (as usual?) because of one loud mouth obnoxious player, arriving late and immediately attempting to become "table captain".  When I have described this player to dealers and other players, they immediately say their name, so I am not the only one.  Said player went on a heater, very aggressive, but lost most of them, then bounced back.  So, since player raises frequently and was the middle position, the raise was an easy call for me and 2 others, the loose big blind, the hijack and me, the button, playing A/10 of clubs.  Flop comes 10 high with 2 hearts.  When checked to me I shove $4300 into the $1600 pot, surely enough to get folds from over-cards and flush draws one would think.  I am called by the big blind who shows A/9 of hearts.  We all know what is coming and I hit the rails.

A seat opens on the Omaha game and I play for 3 hours.  I show a net profit in the game of $42.  When you subtract my tournament buy in of $40 (I used a $20 freeplay to lower cost), ended up netting $2.00 for 4 hours of play, or $.50/ hr.  Fiddy cents earn rate.  Oh yeah, also got another $20 coupon for future tournament play (paid for 2 hours cash game play after tournament).  So there, $5.50/hr. I feel better now, over 1 big blind per hour earnings.

Mixed results

My poker game has been yielding mixed but mostly bad results lately.  One tournament cash for $220 out of maybe 6 played, including a $290 buy in giant.  Had a terrible seat, to the right of a good but talkative player.  Another player owned me when I turned 2 pair vs. His A/K, then was counterfeiters on the river.  He later got the rest of my chips on a 5/6/7 flop, me playing 7/8 while he had 8/9, 2 spades, turned the flush to ruin a possible chop.

Have played few cash games, last Thursday my first win in a bit in 4/8 Omaha hi/low.  Again, bad seat.  The player to my immediate left straddled constantly, raised every hand.  Fortunately, my cards were running good and was able to hog several big pots.  Still prefer a more passive omaha game as there are so many flops that destroy good starting hands and like to see them cheap multi-way.  The aforementioned player was stuck over $300 while I cashed out for a $174 profit after only 3 hours of play.  It was a great earn rate of $60 an hour, and phenomenal 15 Big blinds per hour. 

To finish this post would like to quote Sir Winston Churchill (just watched "The Darkest Hour").

  "Success is not final, failure is not fatal.  It is the courage to continue that counts".

And one more, for you fellow senior citizens.

"When youth departs may wisdom prove enough."