PokerJobber

So I played HORSE for the first time ever in a World Poker Blogger Tour(WPBT) event. I was the first one out! That’s right, my $10 went to waste pretty quickly. I don’t think there is a booby prize (previous first out prizes were copies of Gigli!). I didn’t even get to the S or the E…I went out during the first round of razz which I had never played before…but by this time I was already crippled and was soon out. I really took a huge hit in the first round during limit hold ‘em… I got about half of my money in a pot with vs after 3 babies came on the flop…oh well. This was my first WPBT event and probably won’t be my last. Hopefully I’ll last longer than 26 minutes next time!

Tuesday night was poker night at the Brrrnt household. NLHE cash game with a $10 buy in with $0.10 and $0.20 blinds and an unheard of 11 people…this was and awesome game compared to the last debacle I played at Brent’s place. I’ve never been to a home game this full unless it was a multi table tournament. This meant two things, A) There would be at least one complete poker n00b, if not more and B) I would need to play extra tight preflop and be very selective, and be extra aggressive pre and post flop to avoid 8 player pots. As it turns out, a few others were being extremely aggressive (even if they didn’t know it) by betting between $1 and $3+ preflop in unraised pots! What this means is after I find a hand I want to play, I’m going to have to flip the tables and be hyper aggresive and pick up pots early, especially when they start out between 20% and 50% (or more) of my initial buy in pre-flop!

Unfortunately I did not take my own advice in my first big hand. I had most of my initial $10 buy in minus a couple blinds. I was dealt and raised to $0.60 preflop. One caller to my left and another caller in the big blind (Danny The Wangmeister) for a total pot of $1.90. The flop came . Danny checks, I bet $2 hoping to pick up the pot right then, the player to my left folds and Danny check-calls. Danny is usually a very tight player but I have noticed the last few times that we have played that he does bluff now and again. The turn is a . Danny bets $2 into a ~$6 pot. At this point when I still believed Danny had nothing I should have raised hard but instead I called. After all Danny showed weakness with his check-call and smallish bet on the turn, but in the back of my head I thought he could have pocket 7s or 8s, I should have went with my first instinct. The river was the . Danny again bets $2 into the $10 pot. Thinking I may be beat or a possible split hand I call the $2 getting 6-1 on my money that Danny is on a complete bluff. Danny shows for the nut straight that he caught on the river. He was bluffing and I was and 84% favorite when I called the turn until he caught one of his seven outs! I’ll get him back next time. BTW - The Wangmeister was the big winner of the night cashing out with I think $44.

After this I was crippled and forced to re-buy if I wanted to win my money back. The rest of the night I felt I played well using my strategy mentioned before being very selective and then hyper aggressive. This won me a few pots preflop with raise, call, call, situations that I would reraise to win $3 or $4. This started building my chips pretty quickly. One hand was raised to $1, re-raised to $2 by a weaker player (I’ll call her C) would would raise any ace. I had position and re-re-raised to $6 with , everyone folded and C smooth called. The flop was …C checked and I thougt for a few seconds…she was calling decent raises with nothing even after the flop “hoping to get a pair of aces”. The pot was over $13 at this point so I pushed all in…probably about $18 or $20 (she had me covered)…I wanted to end it right then to take a sizable pot and avoiding an ace. She folded took it down.

The bad beat of the night came at poor Robin’s expense. She held and called a preflop raise from C (the girl in the previous paragraph). The flop came jack high. Again the girl bet and Robin called. The turn was , again the girl bet and Robin raised all in, the total pot was about $15. Robin shows her and the original raiser shows her - Robin being more than a 93% favorite of course lost when C catches a queen on the river…ouch.

I ended up cashing out for $34 up $14 after buying in twice for $10 each…not a bad night of poker.  We got pizza from a place I think was called Pizza Roma…I will need to order from them because it was some good pizza.  C and her boyfriend kept kissing at the table…this should not be allowed.  Poker tables are not for kissing, cuddling, rubbing, or spooning…unless you are doing said acts with your chips and/or prize money.

Still to come is my belated Bahamas final post with pictures from the WPT Final table and any stories that I forgot to tell before (including near death!).

When my sister first told me about this blog, one of the things she said that Brandon wanted to do is review poker books on the site. So in that spirit, I present a review of Theory of Poker by David Sklansky.

OK, first things first, this book is an encyclopedia. Both in terms of the amount of stuff in it and the way it is written. Every sentence matters. Sklansky is credited with doing the most research on poker(and gambling in general) and coming up with his theories based on that information and his personal experiences. The whole book revolves on what Sklansky calls the Fundmental Poker Theorem, which is you should play every hand like you know what your opponent has and everytime you do not, you lose. At the same time, everytime an opponent plays differently from the way he/she would if you could see your hand, you win. It is basically summed up as everytime you say “I would have played that differently if I knew what you had”, you’ve screwed up on a larger scale.

In particular, I really like Sklansky’s system for making decisions. He counts outs, divides by the number of unseen cards, then has you figure out what pot odds you have. Then he takes this principle and has you factor in your real pot odds(which include future as well as current bets), whether or not your hand will win if you make it, and a bunch of other factors. It forces you to think long term.

Overall, I would definatly recommend this book to anyone who wants to get better at poker(and not just hold ‘em, Sklansky’s book deals with most card games). You might need to read over the course of a few days or weeks to get everything and keep your sanity, but it is well worth it.

They say with every bit of good news there is a bit of bad. And because Brandon seems to be doing pretty well down the Bahamas, I figured I share the tale of Dan’s worse beat in recent memory.

If you read any poker book, most have a section about how a losing night is inevitable due to the laws of mathmatical expectation. However, most leave out exactly how frustrating it can be. I had one of those nights this past Sunday. All night it seemed as though the universe was against me. KQ suited, AJ suited, AK off suit, all of them turned into nothing. And worst of all, these hands could not even win the pots where everyone calls, then checks to the end, mostly because someone’s bad kicker became low pair at some point but there were enough scare cards out to keep people from betting. The ultimate example of how the universe decided to tinker with me that night came toward the end where I was down to about 2.30 of my second five dollar buy in. I was in middle position and was dealt 64 offsuit. Noticing the rags in front of me, I folded. A few people called the .10 blind and the later .30 raise. I was happy that I did not lose my .10 because I knew I could not call a raise of any kind. Flop comes: 6 6 4. My heart sunk. The only flop that made my hand worth while and there it was (1 in a million probably). And the worse part is NO ONE would have seen the full house coming. Well hind sight is 20/20 and everyone has those hands, but it still sucked royally.

But bad luck is only part of why I sucked so badly the other night. As of Monday I have sworn off internet poker. Because I don’t play for money online, I was always in the play money or freeroll sections. And despite my best efforts to keep my online play separate from the real time play sections of my brain, it happend. It wrecked my hand reading, position play, and I was not respecting anyone bets. So I’m done with that for awhile.

Overall I took a pretty hard beat of $10 for the night. Which took me from $8.50 of profit over three weeks to -$1.50 over four weeks. I’ve taken a beat or two like this before I have come back. So I start the comeback trail on Sunday and will hopefully be able to take advantage of the fact that our game is now a full 8 people to make back what I lost.

I gotta admit… I think he did a better job on his costume. And he said his was a real beard! I can’t compete with that.