The Mt. Otis CJ Memorial Game

This past Saturday, I had the honor and the pleasure of being invited back to Mt. Otis for a poker game with those crazy kids from UpForPoker. CJ was in town for a rare visit and Otis had decided that since none of us could find our way north for Bash at the Boathouse, we'd have to have a little Southern get together to compensate.

I arrived right around 8pm as directed and was greeted by a few familiar faces. I got to get a look at mini-Otis who has more hair than I do atop his head. I'm not jealous, I shave mine by choice man, by choice!

The consensus of the poker playing attendees was that we'd do a no-limit ring game with .25/.50 blinds and a max $30 buy-in. Sounded great to me, I'd never played a live no-limit ring game and I anticipated loads of fun.

Very eary on, and I mean very early, I became an early big-stack having nearly doubled my buy-in through both getting some hands and a few key bluffs. Readers of UpForPoker may recall this little post:

Didja Know?

As per my master plan, I'm dealt the Hammer and raise the blinds to $3 and get a cold call from Otis and another player. The flop is K-high junk with no cards matching my monster. Undeterred, I bet out $5 and Otis goes into the tank for a bit. He mucks as does the other player and I proudly show my Hammer. What did Otis muck? The Hiltons. He said he put me on A,K and folded. A small bit of revenge that I had to blog about. I'm sure he understands.

To his credit, you can't bluff out bad players and Otis, I believe, finished the evening way up. Recall on one of the WSOP episodes when Thunder Keller got bluffed out of his Hiltons by Sousa who held crap. Keller went on to win that tournament, so I offer my kudos to Otis who easily finished the night better than I.

How did I end up fairing? Um, not so good. I had two all-ins go awry, getting beat by the only lady player at the table. The first hand I called Tracy's pre-flop raise w/K,J hearts. The flop was 9,T,J rainbow and she bet out $5. I raised to $10 and she came back all-in for only an additional $3 or $4. She showed her A,Q giving her an outside straight draw. The turn brought another J which removed her K outs. Well the river brought an 8 and I grabbed my wallet for another buy-in.

The second buy-in went to Tracy too as I was all in with A,Q on an A-high flop. TeamScottSmith was also in the hand up until the turn. He ended up folding his A,Q when the board rivered a 3rd heart. Tracy held A,7 hearts and took another decent-sized, BadBlood-filled pot.

My third buy-in was going to be my last. I actually was able to build the stack back to close to $80 but began whittling it away in a series of horrible pre-flop calls. The cards went totally dry and when I was down to my last $25 I hadn't seen a flop in what seemed like an hour and a half. The last hand came for me in the big blind holding Q,2 off suit. The board showed 5,5,Q,5,T and I was put all-in by Otis' brother Jeff. I called and was totally blown away when Jeff showed down K,K. He didn't raise the pot pre-flop as we were only 4-players at that time. It was a great play on his part and I bid my farewell at 2:30AM.

TeamScottSmith was the massive chip leader when I left. I have to commend his play as well as Otis' as Otis didn't allow an early bad beat and my Hammer bluff to get him off his game. Meanwhile, I had a total blast. Losing $90 is no big deal when I had so much fun, it was worth it. It was good to see CJ again too, we didn't tangle too much during the night but it was fun talking poker with him.

I brought my cellphone in anticipation of a call from the Northern Bloggers partying it up, but alas that phone call never came. Perhaps AlCantDial was predisposed with more important things, I can hardly blame him :)

Runner-Runner Contest #1

Well, the world of limit hold 'em is filled with tales of bad beats and lost hopes. They are unavoidable, at best you can only hope to survive through them and make it back to the world of the sane again with your bankroll intact.

To celebrate BadBlood's return to limit (albeit just temporarily), I am running a kind-of sort-of contest. In this contest you will see my starting hand, my opponents starting hand and the flop. You must correctly guess the runner-runner cards that were flipped to crush my hand. I think it should be pretty easy.

The prize? I can't offer cash. Well I can, but I'm not going to. I'm kind of a cheap bastard with my poker bankroll. What I will do, however, is send to the winner a custom 15 track CD of their choosing. The following list of mp3's can be used as source material. You need only tell me the 15 you want on the CD and I'll burn it and mail it to you. Free of charge.

MP3 List

For the first contest, you must correctly guess TWO, yes TWO, runner-runner hands. I will of course mention when suits are or are not important.

Hand #1 (Suits NOT important)

BadBlood holds K,K
Opponent holds Q,10
Board: 8,J,3

Hand #2 (Suits NOT important)

BadBlood holds K,K
Opponent holds A,J
Board T,3,4

Good luck. Contest ends October 2nd, midnight.

Change of Pace

Grinder, looking for meat.... - Halford and Co.

Did a little two-tabling of $1/$2 limit on Party last night. Like I had mentioned, I purchased Ed Miller's SSHE book and read about the first 60 pages. For whatever reason, after a bit of reading, my poker playing discipline seems to be at its highest. It's almost like I'd be letting down the authors of whatever book I'm reading if I played poorly and against their recommendations.

I think I played pretty well, but also had some cards to go along with my luck. +74BB total for about a 2.5 hour session.

I had my share of suckouts. I lost KK to 55 with a rivered 5. Happens. I also lost to a 1-outer. Those are rare. I had A,K and a player holding K,K capped the pre-flop betting. With an A on the flop, he was down to his lone remaining K to beat me. Nailed it on the river. I also lost K,K to A,A once but that is always expected at Party, isn't it?

I was told I sucked and was crazy by the other players on the table after playing the following hand:

I'm holding T,T in EP and pre-flop raise it. It's re-raised by MP and it folds all around back to me. I call. The flop is K,J,x and I bet out. MP simply flat calls, which is odd. The turn is an A and I bet out again. MP flat calls again. I'm now putting him on perhaps a smaller pocket pair, perhaps 9's or 8's. The river is a Q and my broadway straight is the nuts so I bet out again. This time MP raises, I re-raise and MP caps. MP shows Q,Q and the vitriol ensues.

After MP was all said and done, I reminded him that he was only flat-calling me w/Q's with a board showing 2 overcards. Considering I pre-flop raised, you'd think perhaps he would have considered he was beat by either the A or K and laid his hand down. He claimed he "knew" I was full of fecal matter. If that were true, why not raise me post-flop or post-turn? I grant that I got lucky, but based on the betting and board, his play was less than stellar. He claimed I was lucky he had to leave or he'd have a lot of fun taking all my money. Yeah right. I love the "tough" talk of these jokers online. Makes me laugh every time.

Miscellaneous

I have a question. If you had a player on your softball team with these stats, where in the lineup would you put him?

AB	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	AVG	SLG
8	5	1	2	1	5	0.625	1.625

How about 8th? Not a great managerial decision there coach. I almost hit for the cycle last night, but only had 3 at bats. I was left standing on deck as we made the last out in the 7th inning. Yeah, we won, but that's not the point.

I'll be attending Otis' home game this Saturday night. I anticipate at least some dial-a-shots phoned in from the Northeast blogger convention being held in Philly that same night. Should be real fun. If it isn't, one guy from my normal home game is throwing a 50th birthday party for himself at his subdivisions clubhouse. I may not make it there until real late since I don't think any strippers were hired. Yet another bad decision.

I got decimated in my return to Hold 'em last night at PokerStars. QQ, not good enough. JJ, not quite good enough. Trip 9's on a flop, can't beat a flush draw. Oh well, it happens.

I won $15 playing the South Carolina State Lottery last night. Woo-freaking-hoo. I may look into buying the new poker book making the rounds in the blogger community, Ed Miller's Small Stakes Hold 'em. I have the Lee Jones book, it should be interesting comparing the two. I've kind of lost a bit of interest in the no-limit games for whatever reason and am pondering going back to limit for a while just to mix things up a bit in my brain. Not that shit's not already mixed up in my cranial cavity.

Tournament of Champions

I, like many of you, watched the ESPN WSOP Tournament of Champions last night. I, like many of you, have thoughts and opinions on the show. Without further ado, here they are:

Doyle's chiding of Phil Hellmuth was amusing. I have a theory on Phil that states he is a master marketer. Granted, he's a fine poker player too; but I maintain that much of what we see of Phil is an act, put forth on the viewers to ensure his personality continues to make him additional money. Paul Phillips disagrees with me on this, but you know what? Fuck him. Kidding :)

Raymer's play near the end was a bit suspect. I know it's his style to be aggressive, but either he was on a bit on tilt or just got unlucky when he chose to push. Still, I was rooting for Greg because he's shown nothing but class during the entire WSOP.

I applaud both Annie Duke and Howard Lederer for playing against each other as if they were not brother and sister. When Daniel Negreanu pre-flop raises and Annie puts him all in with a re-raise, we see that Howard has K,K. He goes all in, just as he should. Not only is Howard a great player, he obviously has much respect for the game.

For this next thought, I'm donning my flame-retardant suit. I know a bunch of you really like and are fans of Annie Duke. I'm not so sure I fall within this camp. To me, she's simultaneously somewhat of an arrogant player, yet at the same time plays up the "I'm just a girl schtick." For whatever reason, that rubs me the wrong way. I grant that she's a fine player and have no problem with her being at that table. It's just that some of her personality gets to me. I'm sure she really cares about what I think of her too.

A co-worker brought up an interesting point. Both he and I believe that given this tournament's payout structure, there HAD to be deals made to share the prize money. Who made deals with whom? I have no idea. But it was interesting that Raymer seemingly gave away his chips to Annie on some rather suspect plays. It was also interesting to note that while Annie and Daniel were in a big hand, Raymer rather uncharacteristically chimed in with his "Is this a bad time to ask you for your autograph?" question. Was he trying to throw off Daniel a bit in an effort to help Annie? This is all very much conjecture, but I would not be surprised if there were deals made between any of the players. It's just too much prize money to ignore that possibility.

I have to admit that was the most entertaining tournament I've watched in a long time.

Giving Free Outs

The other day I was walking back from my company's fitness center towards my desk when I saw another co-worker walking down the hall towards me. It was on the late side, around 7pm, a time when most of the employees at the building where I work have left for the day. So it wasn't unreasonable to expect that nobody else would be walking these halls at this time.

So when I looked up at the fellow co-worker, I noticed that he had one of his fingers buried knuckle deep inside his nose. He was concentrating so hard on this excavation attempt that he didn't yet see me coming the other way. This was by no means a minor dig. This was a Schwarzenegger-in-Total-Recall-Removing-The-Tracking-Implant-Effort.

At this point, I gave away a free out and continued to let my co-worker draw to a hand. I looked down pretending I hadn't yet seen him go spelunking up his nasal cavity. I gave him ample time to sense my presence and withdraw. After what I thought was a reasonable time, I looked up again to see that he had finished his job, and greeted him with a friendly "Hello."

Had this been at the poker table, I would have pushed him all-in by greeting him with "Hey Paul, pick me a winner!"

More Than Just Hold 'Em

As other bloggers have been finding out of late, there are more poker games out there than just Texas Hold 'em. I decided to throw my hat into the ring for a little 7-card stud hi/lo action this weekend and see what would happen.

However, it would be silly to enter a new battle without the proper ammunition.

How many of us either own or have read Doyle Brunson's Super System? I'm guessing most of us have. Well, have you looked at the other sections that aren't Hold 'em related? Perhaps, perhaps not.

Super System does have a section on 7-card stud split featuring strategy tips from David Slansky. I believe Slansky needs no introduction.

In a nutshell, he recommends not playing any hands that aren't capable of scooping (i.e. winning both halves) of the pot. He notes that there are not many high hands that can also win the low hand by virtue of acquiring more cards, but that is not the case with low hands.

A great low hand can develop into a high hand by filling up a straight or flush. It is these hands where profits are made. Slansky points out that if 3 players are in a hand that will eventually be split, your dollar is only earning a potential 50% rate of return. However, if you go on to scoop the entire pot, it's earning a 200% rate of return - that's 4 times as large for us math wizards out there.

Because these type of hands would be somewhat uncommon, I logged into a full table rather than a short-handed one so that the antes wouldn't eat into my buy-in too quickly.

By following the above general strategy, I made 66 BB in a couple of hours. This result was greatly helped by one hand in particular where I had 2,3,4,5,6 for a made low and high. I took down a $72 pot with 2 other players calling and re-raising my raises the whole way. I got the wheel (A,2,3,4,5) two other times for decent sized pots too. You will be amazed at the chasers at these tables. There were a couple of people who just never seemed to fold.

Don't worry though, there will be suckouts going on at this game too. You'll get your A,2,4,5 suited in the first 4 cards, then get hit with K,J,Q bricks and have to fold. Slansky says there's not much you can do there. He also claims that by following his strategy, you'll have a 7 or 8:1 chance of coming away with a winning session. That's purty damn nice odds if you ask me.

So I may just try this for a bit, and let my Hold 'em cells regenerate.