I have been absolutely slammed over the past few weeks, with family travel and a tight-deadline ghostwriting project. I write best early; my best hours are 8-12. I can’t even attempt to put in proper poker playing hours while attending to my professional obligations. So I haven’t even attempted to find a game over the past few weeks.
Come early October maybe I’ll take a trip to AC. But till then, no poker.
For those who are interested, the topic I’m working on is dry, but I love writing. It’s time well-spent, especially when the alternative is running bad.
-j
Also, I don’t normally comment on important issues of the day, politics and such, but I do have strong opinions. I agree completely with this guy:
Very rough nigh last night, which comes in a string of tough nights. I’ve now taken a 7k downswing. This is hardly a disaster, and I think this kind of swing is to be expected in a game this loose.
Overall, I think I’ve been playing pretty decently. I tightened up last night, playing a lot fewer speculative hands and doing a lot less bluffing. I still managed to pick up a few pots that I didn’t deserve, but over the course of an eight-hour session, I didn’t really play a big pot without a hand.
The evening, like many, was decided by bad beats and one impossibly tough hand (flopped second-nut flush against the nuts). As poorly as things went, I feel things have to really be shitty for me to lose two buy-ins in this game, and I’m proud of that.
I could be wrong, of course; I could be playing like a donkey. If you’re one of my tablemates and have noticed this tendency, please let me know.
One other note: I did react to my bad luck last night — but I tried to keep my reactions under 10 seconds. On the final beat of the night, I simply got up and left.
Here’s the final hand for those interested in an entertaining beat:
I raise to 25 UTG with JJ. 6 callers, so there’s $174 in the pot. I have another $300 in my stack.
Flop 9-T-5. I can’t see what bet to make. I need to bet at least pot, and at that point I’m committed, so I just move in.
UTG +1, calls. I figure I’m beat and say it out loud. After all, who’d call this bet with anything less than, say, QQ? He says, “No, I’ve got an up and down straight draw, but my overcard outs are good, right?”
I forgo asking him how he came to that conclusion, when the K hits on the turn.
Last night was a head-searing time. When I arrived at the table, Lauren, a mousy-haired woman in her mid-forties was going about her play while displaying her typical disposition. She curses non-stop, berates dealers and other players, and gripes loudly about her continual bad luck. She’s an enormous fish, but playing with her comes with a cost. Your soul feels a little damaged when you sit next her. At the very least, you feel like you need a shower.
Her griping seemed especially contagious last night. Matt, a decent player who should know better,
bitched continually about his cards, the fact that the dealers weren’t being pushed, and need for a new setup. A gorilla-faced jerk to my right spent hours complaining. He busted out of the $60 buy-in tournament on a bad beat. $60. He then hit a ridiculously hot run of cards, and still managed to complain. In one hand, he had AA vs. my KK; and to make matters worse he was on the button; I was in the SB. I donated a good portion of my stack before he showed me the Aces, at which point I saw that I was getting only 3:1 on a 4:1 call. I folded.
His run continued (twice flopping flushes, e.g., once against a set of Qs), but still he managed to bemoan his fate when he called a rasie from the straddle with J-9. He then lost a fair amount on a J-6-6 board; he was up against Jacks full. He complained about hitting the Jack.
In the later part of the night, I sat next to my friend Brett. Brett got felted after flopping bottom set and top two. Yet he was pleasant. I hit three big pair last night; two of which were up against AA. Yet I didn’t spend my night bitching. Or maybe that’s not quite true; I was bitching about the bitching.
Per Brett’s suggestion, I’m going to take some time off. I’m not playing great — my timing’s clearly off — and I’m getting really worn out by the people I’m finding at the games.
I know there are some good players who read this blog–guys who have spent a lot of time playing. If you’re among this crowd, do me a favor and think about pastime you’ve chosen. Feel free to tilt briefly if you need to. But beyond that, just shut up. You don’t want to hear my bitching. I don’t want to hear yours.
[Warning: No hand analysis. Post may cause drowsiness.]
For the past couple of months I’ve been dragging the Harry Potter books to my club, taking the subway time to re-read the entire series as a prelude to the publication of the seventh and final book. This past weekend I read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and I absolutely loved it.
I won’t offer any spoilers or detailed commentary here. But I had a couple of reactions that might be unique to professional poker-playing writers who are huge fans the books.
As I writer, I have little patience for most of the criticisms thrown Rawling’s way. She is clearly not a great crafter of prose. Her sentence structures are repetitive and her modifiers are often unimaginative. But so what? She does so much so well that this seems nitpick-y. She plots brilliantly. The feat of creating a coherent arch that covers seven long books is not to be underestimated. And she draws her characters with great detail and affection. Those who think she’s done a disservice to kids, need only think about a 10-year-old’s likely reaction to the most recent movie, The Order of the Phoenix. The movie was decent, but any young HP fan is bound to notice how thinned-out the plot is and how shallow some of the characters seem in comparison to the book. Just look at what they did with Hermione. In the book she’s a wonderfully rich character — by turns funny and annoying. In the movie, with all the time considerations, she says little and wears a look of deep concern in every scene. That’s it.
Kids are bound to realize, even if they can’t articulate it, that there’s a richness in the experience of reading that can’t be re-produced on TV or film or anywhere else for that matter. For that accomplishment alone she deserves all the praise in the world.
I’m going to digress sightly now.
The proudest moments of my career have come since the publishing of Hunting Fish. Not many people have read it — probably fewer than 10,000. Some haven’t liked it much. But others have, and they’ve reached out to tell me that the book meant something to them. I won’t get into the details of the emails I’ve received, but I know that I’ve helped a few people in some minimal way.
I believe that’s something a writer can strive for that a poker player never can. I really believe that the best thing Doyle ever did with his vast skill was publish Super/System. That helped people. He’d be hard-pressed to say the same of his accomplishments at the table.
I don’t want to go on too long here. I talked a lot about my difficulties with the ethics of poker in the book. Somehow, reading the last HP book got me thinking about the emptiness I often feel while playing poker. I need the money, so I’ll keep playing, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy it. But I’m not helping anyone but myself while I’m there, and that’s… well…. nothing to be especially proud of.
Last night was the first really miserable night I’ve had since returning to serious poker. I didn’t lose much — just over $1,200, but for the first time in long while, I was very disappointed with my overall play. I got outplayed in two substantial pots. In both, the players put me to tough decisions, and I made the wrong one each time, folding shaky hands, when calls would have been correct.
I can’t discuss the hands in great detail, because if I do, I’ll be betraying how I’ll adapt to these players down the road, and I know at least a couple of the players involved in these hands read this blog. (Yes, you, Amir.)
I’ve hit one set in the last four sessions, and I know that failing to hit flops has played a big part in my recent difficulties. I don’t have the time to talk about it now, but I think card-deadness has a lot of ancillary impacts on one’s play. Simply put, those around you play better and you play a bit worse.
I’m going out of town for a few days and will return to the felt the middle of next week, hopefully with some improved results.
The Fairview reopened last week, and I’ve put in three session since, for a net loss of $1700. I’d sound stupid complaining about my bad luck over the last week. For the better part of two months everything went pretty much according to plan — 3 to 1 favorites held up, semi-bluffs hit often enough when called, etc… I was bound to hit some tough sessions, and I’ll spare my readers the uninteresting details.
Today I want to start talking about the nature of mistakes in big-bet poker. I’m hopeful to start a discussion that helps all 9 readers of this blog.
I’m going to start by taking issue with the Sklansky definition of a mistake. (I trust you all know his theorem.) I’ll make the common arguments against it:
1) The idea that a mistake occurs if you would have acted differently had you seen an opponent’s cards is neither here nor there. You can’t see the cards. There are many situations where you might lose money as a massive dog where you haven’t made a mistake at all. When you lose with a set of 9s to a set of Qs on a Q-9-3 board, you haven’t made a mistake; you’ve gotten unlucky. I could go continue here, but I think you get my point.
2) The Fundamental Theorem says nothing about a mistake’s severity. Obviously, in NL, a few small mistakes on your part are all but meaningless if they force a big mistake by an opponent. This point, too, is pretty obvious.
Recently, I’ve found myself thinking hard about my mistakes. I’ve been very happy with my play, overall. I known I’ve made mistakes, but I’ve left my sessions thinking that mistakes were by-and-large, pretty small. But then I realized that I didn’t have a great way of objectively looking at my mistakes. I didn’t have an exact list by which I could judge the severity of my errors.
I got to thinking about one play in particular, one of my bigger recent mistakes. The hand went like this:
$2-$5-$10 (straddle), I’m in the BB with AK. Two limpers to SB who raises to $40. I re-raise to $135, feeling I had the best hand and wanting to see the flop in position. All fold to SB, who calls. Flop Q-x-x. He checks, I bet $150. He calls. Turn, another blank. Check; I bet $325. Call. Turn, check-check. He shows KQ.
The turn bet is atrocious, a very big mistake. here are some of the problems with the play:
1 — Statistically I’m a huge dog, which I’ve got to suspect, given the flop call.
2 — The chances of this player folding are next to nothing. This guy showed no ability to fold top pair.
3 — The bet’s pretty big, given that this is a $2-$5 game.
4 — There is essentially no long-term value. At the table with those guys, I don’t really need to show the ability to give action. I’ll get calls on marginal hands anyway.
So what else, what other elements are there to this mistake and others? And how do we weigh the factors to come up with a judgment of a mistakes severity? It seems bet size is really important and long-term value maybe less so. What do you think?
Post a comment, or send an email. I’d love to hear some thoughts.
My last session, which I played at a club I will never return to, didn’t go well. I think I played well, getting away from a couple of big hands. My only significant misplay on the night was firing a second bullet against a player who, while displaying some weakness, demonstrated no ability to lay down a hand as big as top pair.
The most interesting hands of the night came in situations where I held decent hands while someone had put on a straddle. In both cases, I think my plays are decent but of debatable value. I’d love some feedback on these hands and my rationale for playing them the way that I did.
HAND 1
77 — LP. $2-$5 with a $15 UTG Straddle. Three limpers to me; I have about $650 in my stack. I limp. BB calls. The straddle then raises to $75. Folded to me. I’m sensing weakness in the raise. Guy seems a little too aggressive– classic strong-is-weak from the straddle. I’m not immediately sure what to do. With my stack what it is, there’s not great value in calling to hit a set, and furthermore, I don’t think the straddle has a really big hand, so I may not get any more even if I hit. But I think I have the best hand.
I raise to $325 and he folds.
HAND 2
$2-$5-$15, I have $600 in my stack (both others in the hand have about the same). I’m in the BB with Ac-Jc. Three limpers to me. I like A-J(s) here; probably the best hand. I limp, thinking it would be just fine to see a flop and go from there. The straddle raises to $150 — a huge overbet. UTG thinks for a long time before calling, very reluctantly). I’m thinking the $150 is very weird. Clearly this guy doesn’t have a hand where he wants any action, and the caller – I didn’t think he much either, he was just so reluctant.
I don’t think I can call. There’s no way I want to call off this amount for the sake of seeing (and likely missing) a flop. I raise all-in.
After much hemming and hawing from both of these guys, they both call. I really thought I’d be getting at least one fold. Turns out I’m against Td-Jd (the straddle) and a pair of 5s (UTG). A T-high flop gives J-T the pot, and makes me kinda tilty. I leave, knowing that the buy-in in my pocket is not safe if I continue.
When I was at the WSOP I saw Phil Laak. I worked with Phil on a project and we became friendly. Phil’s a former New Yorker now settled in LA, and he mentioned to me that he heard about the shutdown of the New York Clubs. I told him how unfortunate that was for me personally, as my berry patch had been trampled on.
Phil went on a typically Laakian rant, telling me how beautiful life was for a a good poker player in LA. He described Commerce as a gold mine, and he told me that I needed to start taking my wife to LA on trips, gradually exposing her to the sunshine and glamor of the place. Our trips there should grow more frequent over time, until we reached a point where moving there was the most natural thing in the world.
I sighed as Phil spoke. I was remembering the high-stakes room at Commerce. It’s airy and clean. They bring you free food–and it’s good, very good. The games are soft and the money’s deep. I don’t like LA much, but life in the Commerce high-limit room is good, very good.
Contrast this with the Straddle club, which I played in for the first time last night. The Straddle is roughly 12-feet wide, with bare walls. Players waiting for games amass in the empty spaces, giving the place a highly claustrophobic feel. The floor men and dealers scream at one another to be heard. As players order food, the place fills with the smells of pastrami, red sauce, and Chinese soup.
I lost last night, but the game was great, and I think I could make a good living there if I put in my time. But I’m not going back to the Straddle. Life’s too short to spend my evenings in that sort of dump. Word is that they’re moving to a better location in a few weeks. I’ll check it out again there.
Maybe I’ll plan a trip to LA in the next few weeks.
Does anyone know of a reasonably comfortable way to get to and from AC, specifically The Borgata? I’m trying to work regular trips there into my schedule. But the thought of dealing with Port Authority and the bus crowd makes me sorta ill. Bonus points if you know how to get there from northern Brooklyn
