PEACHFRONT SPEAKS

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i play small ball, the real men play hardball 2010-05-16 - 12:17 p.m. Peachfront's Note: Don't forget to check out my Seattle to Whistler trip report starting right here. I might have a new poker player reading my page, so I guess I should attempt to do a better job of separating the poker content. In other words, if you want to read my "regular" entry for this morning, you should click right here. But I'm not sure that I recommend it. As for poker, I tried two of the four 2/5 NL tables, and they weren't real good, full of the usual rocks, nits, and wanna-bes. I was wondering if the donkeys had already lost all their money, but IMOM assures me that the real donkey fest was taking place at his table. Oh well. I can do small ball, and it sure as heck reduces variance. I started with one $350 buy-in, and was literally never down, because I had a decent win on the very first hand. I had only three all-ins in 10 hours or so of play -- twice, I pushed, and my opponent folds; once, my opponent puts me all in, I hold my nose and call, and I pick off a semi-bluff with top pair top kicker. Here are three hand-- two from each table I played, and one that I observed the day I played with Ima Notable Authority Too (INA2). Hand #1: Sometimes You Just Know You're Best This is the first hand I played at my first table yesterday. I notice the Wily Old Dude from Friday night but otherwise we're talking a field of unknowns. Actually, I got pretty excited, because I thought it would be a loose table -- lotta limpers, I limp in somewhere in the middle with J ♥ J ♦ and the Asian youngish man on the button raises to $30, and everybody calls. Cool. $210 pot, and I've invested $30 to see it with the fourth-best starter. Flop: Q ♥ Q ♦ Q ♣ Everybody checks to the button. Standard. He bets $50 at a $210 pot. $50!!! That's just plain disrespectful, sorry, dude. The small blind calls the $50, and we now have a $310 pot, and when it folds around to me, I have $320 remaining in front of me. The button has position and the obligation to C-bet, but either Hollywood lost a great actor in him, or he hates life and his hand. The small blind has a pocket pair. Well, OK, it's possible that one of them has a hand like AQ or KQ and is slow-playing in hopes of enticing a bluff-raise or crying call, but oh well. Three Queens are already gone, so I don't feel like worrying about it. The only pocket pairs that beat me are AA and KK. If any of these hands are out, the money's going all-in anyway. So I'd also like to collect some extra money, if it's humanly possible, from such hands as TT and 99. I shove all-in. Both fold. Button says he has AK, and SB says he had TT. After I observe the table a little longer, I believe both of them. I had no chance of getting any more cash out of those clowns. But that's what happens when you play with unknowns. It was just a weird, wacky fluke that the first pot I played and won happened to have seven players to the flop... Hand #2: Addicted to the Semi-Bluff Multi-Level Barrel I got a table change to a second table, which probably wasn't much better than the first, except that the trash talker from the other day had joined my first table, and I didn't feel like spending the next several hours listening to how D. and I are the biggest donkeys in poker. Quiet nits and wanna-bes are a vast improvement on loud nits and wanna-bes, I guarantee. Anyway, a guy joins our new table who has a strong physical resemblance to an old friend that I haven't seen in many years, only of course, it looks like him in his early 30s instead of the way he'd look now. I'll call him OF (short for Old Friend). There are so many nits, rocks, and people who pride themselves on their hand-reading skills, that it becomes obvious to me that OF is one of these guys who takes every flush/straight draw as a license to steal the pot. I'm not talking about the odd check/raise on the flop with your flush draw. Hell, every donkey who can read knows about that. I'm talking big raises or check/raises, with large follow-up barrels on both the turn and the river. Of course, I can't be CERTAIN that's what he's doing, because my table mates fold, over and over again, when he shoves on the river. So he never has to showdown a hand. But I can look at the board, and I can look at the frequency at which he makes the big turn and river shoves, and I'm gonna draw my own conclusions about what's going on. I had a run-up where I put over a number of successful bluffs myself, but then I went on a small downstreak again, so I had only about $440 or so remaining in front of me. OF had thousands of dollars -- he bought in deep and had already stolen half the nit money on the table. I was well-covered. If I'm getting involved in a hand with him, I believe I have to be prepared to call down light. So anyway, it's an early nit limps, OF limps, folds to me in the small blind with A ♥ Q ♥ and I have to make a snap decision. Honestly, I'd rather just steal the big blind and the limps and not get involved with OF when he has position on me. I could see a cheap flop and control the size of the pot but, as I just said, I only have $440 remaining, so if I screw up and make a big mess of my hand, then at least I won't be donating a lot of cash to the cause. In other words, I pass up the opportunity to see the flop for $3 and instead raise to $35. If the nit folds, OF will fold. I've had it work for me several times before.... Well, the big blind does fold, but the nit (much to my surprise) calls. I guess he thinks he's gonna set-mine my huge mind-blowing $440 stack?* Now OF is priced in as well, especially since his whole plan is to use position to steal the pot, which is now $110. Flop: Q ♦ J ♣ 3 ♦ Well, there it is. I have $305 remaining, so the stack to pot ratio is around 3. I have top pair, top kicker, on a heavily connected, flush draw board. If the nit hangs around, I'm done. If OF starts barreling at the pot, I really feel I have no choice but to hang on and hope. When out of position against skilled players, I check a lot with both good hands and bad hands. Let 'em wonder if a fold or a check/raise is in the works. I check, nit checks, and OF is now honor-bound to bet $75 at the pot. It's my last chance to think it through. Do I really want to get pot-committed when I don't know yet what the nit will do? What if he has a set? I'm screwed! Then I looked at the board again. An early position nit is often too scared NOT to open-raise with QQ or JJ. If he has a set of 33s, so be it. I still think he's holding a pocket pair, which means it's highly likely he missed. But if he's holding a suited connector that caught a piece of the board, I can't smooth-call and price him in. I decide to raise to $200. Nit folds. OF calls. He's in position, he figures he'll pick up the bloated $510 pot later. Turn: 9 ♠ Well, ain't that special? If he's on the straight draw, I'm probably screwed, but I already had to make a plan, and my plan was to slow down (in the highly unlikely event he lets me) if the flush comes. I decided not to sweat the straight possibilities. So...I bet a small teaser amount that I forgot to write down -- although he probably should have guessed from the size of my remaining stack that I was inviting him to shove -- and he does shove and I call. River: 4 ♣ "I didn't improve," I say, as I bat my eyes at him from behind my dark glasses and wait for him to show. "I have a pair of fours," he replies. He doesn't mean a pocket pair of fours and that he backed into a set on the river. He flips over T ♦ 4 ♦ for exactly what I expected -- some bullshit flush draw that he uses as the extra secret hidden license to steal. So I double up, and I finally get the guy to showdown a hand, but I would have felt like the donkey of all time if he'd shown up with KK here. The funny thing is, a couple hands later, the guy right next to me, in pretty much the same situation, and he's ALSO short-stacked open-folds a flopped set of sixes to OF's river all-in shove. Since nobody at the table is using the information except for me anyway, and he already knows I know, OF flashes that bluff as he scoops the pot. I'm shaking my head. Why even play 66 against that dude if you're going to fold your SET???? Hand #3: Revenge -- A Dish Best Served Cold OK, I'm typing fast because I'm getting called to lunch. If I break off suddenly, just come back and ready the story later. I wasn't in this hand. It involved INA2 and a guy I'll call Army Brat, a wanna-be who frequently plays in Biloxi. When I joined the game, Army Brat (AB) was already constantly ragging on INA2 about, "Where's that chapter in your book about live straddles, buddy, because all the books I've read say that's a donkey play?" and "You play every hand and try to win every pot, interesting strategy you got there," yadda yadda yadda. Both guys were deep. INA2 was either blissfully unconcerned by AB's bullshit, or he knows how to keep his feelings to himself, because he was the perfect, polite gentleman at all times. I don't think he would have even mentioned his book if AB and other players didn't keep bringing it up, every time he made an unorthodox play or, pretty much, any time he freakin' breathed... So, to the hand... Limp, limp, INA2 raises to $35, a late position player calls, AB now raises to $200. Let me inject here that in the short time I've been at the table, I've twice seen AB smooth-call with KK, so I figure AA and KK to be a very small part of his range here, and I'm guessing INA2 thinks the same. Most of the time, this is a hand that just wants to take down what's already out there, such as AK or maybe JJ. Anyway, it folds to INA2 who calls. Aha. Everybody else gets out of their way, and it's heads-up to the flop with around $450 already in the pot. Flop: J 3 4 rainbow INA2 checks, AB C-bets half pot of $225, and INA2 calls. Turn: 8 of whatever Check, check. River: 6 of whatever Check, AB bets $200, and INA2 goes all-in. AB agonizes but eventually shoves in his remaining $1,300. Result: AB had an overpair of Kings, and INA2 showed down a turned set of 8s to win the pot. Now, I can't read minds and tell you what INA2 was thinking, but despite AB's screaming and yelling about how INA2 made the donkey flop call of all time, I'm pretty sure I can figure out the reasoning. Let's take it step by step. AB prides himself on his deceptive play and frequently smooth-calls with AA and KK, so they appear less often in his blind raising range than you would expect. Very often, the hand he holds here, as a "thinks he's good" player, is AK. So INA2 figures that he's often ahead when he calls the large raise with his 88. And when he isn't, oh well, there's some overlay in the pot, plus there's always the chance to flop a set on a guy who doesn't respect your play. The flop is pretty dry. If AB made the play with JJ, then INA2's in bad shape, but there are still way more AKs out there than JJs, so he's pretty much got to call this flop heads-up and see what develops on the turn. When AB checks behind on the turn, INA2 has to make a decision about how to get more money in the pot. A set of Jacks is no longer a concern, because AB assumes INA2 likes his hand after he calls that flop, and it would be kinda silly not to try to collect a turn bet here. So INA2 has to consider the other likely hands. If AB has AK, then probably all he's getting is that final bluff. If that. But maybe he's playing pot control by checking that turn and he does have an overpair. If INA2 shoves now, AK is not gonna call and is not gonna have the opportunity to bluff, either. Give the big mouth a little more rope... So INA2 checks, and AB puts his foot in it by betting, and now he feels obligated to call the shove if he has an overpair (which luckily for INA2 he does) because, "Man, I have too much of my money in that pot already!" Well-played, sir. Even though AB turned the air blue for the next ten minutes with his creative Army curses. * Do you see my error here? I should have raised a minimum of 11% of effective stacks (my stack in this case) to deny the nit set-mining odds. Considering that he can expect OF to multi-barrel bluff, he is getting extra implied odds from OF to flop a set, so I really need to make my pre-flop raise even more to get him out...a $50 raise might be standard, and an $80 raise might have actually got the job done. back - next All Rights Reserved, Copyright 2002-2017 by Elaine Radford