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I hate small blind vs big blind situations. That’s how I managed to bust out last night at Binions, after playing solidly enough to keep up with the pack the whole way through, and recovering from two crippling beats where I had the other guy dominated with my AK. In fact I thought it was going to happen again, as I moved all-in with AT for a little more than a standard raise. One guy goes to call but only calls the blind. Pay attention dude – your call is binding. But I survive against his A6s and I’m back in it.
Then I’m on the BB for 1200, and only the small blind calls. I check my Q7o and catch top pair on the flop – QT5, all different suits. When he checks to me I bet 1500 and he agonises and calls. I don’t believe he’s acting, and is weak but thinks I’m full of it. He checks the offsuit Jack on the turn and I know that if I check behind here I’m pretty much giving up the hand, with top pair. That’s kinda weak, and I don’t have enough chips to do anything else so I have to move all in.
There’s a lot of popular limping hands that beat me now, QK, QJ, QT, JT have me crushed but my pot sized all in bet will be big enough that KJ, J9, T9, A9 would be making a mistake by calling with their draws, but might consider doing so anyway. Will I only be called if beaten? No – even AJ or AT might think they are winning. Can I call a river bet if I check here? Probably not. Am I likely to be winning? Yes, so giving a free card is terrible. It’s a horrible horrible situation because it’s so marginal and I have almost no information about my opponent’s hand to help make a better decision. I don’t like the all-in move, and just wish I was never in the hand to start with, but I can’t see a better option.
Can I really fear a straight here? The board shows TJQ, but AK would probably not have wanted to give me a free play. 89 or K9 might be around, but would be making a very questionable call on the flop, getting less than 3:1 and poor implied odds with my remaining stack size. But that’s exactly what happened – K9 made the gutshot straight and I was busted playing a hand that I wanted to give up preflop. Someone please raise me next time! Anyone!
And of course, once again I survived just long enough to be too late to get in any of the 11pm tournaments. Three days left. Three tournaments at most… I think I need to stay another week!
I played like a bleeding demon tonight, and look where it got me. Up to 12k chips (three times starting stack) by the first break, finding plenty of opportunities to gather small pots and maintain. And then this happens. With blinds at 300/600 and a 50 ante I’m dealth JTo in the small blind. There’s one limper and I complete the bet. Big blind checked. The flop comes down a fantastic 89Q with two hearts. I have the Th so I have the nut straight and I know nobody else can have a straight with a flush redraw. I check and the BB kindly bets 1400. The other player raises to 4000 and so I move in.
The big blind calls in a flash, but the other player goes into the tank for a while and eventually folds and shows his top pair, top kicker AQ. The big blind shows J9 hearts for middle pair, an inside straight draw and the second best flush draw. He had about 5000 left so the pot was so juicy he had to call. The Kh fell on the river and I was crippled.
Later I agonise over whether calling here is better, but either calling two raises or putting in a third raise screams “monster” and I probably won’t get any more action from the other player, plus if a heart comes on the turn or the board pairs, do I back off now? I don’t think there’s any reason to get tricky here, I made sure I got my chips in with the best of it and there was plenty of money to pick up even if I don’t get any action. I was at least a 2:1 favourite against any hand to not go broke at least (a hand with a J or T will split the pot about 10% of the time.).
So left with only 5000, the blinds jumped up to 400/800/75 and I had to move all in with any two cards when it was folded to me in the cutoff. 5h6h was plenty good enough, but not against JJ. The flop couldn’t have been any kinder, bringing two hearts and a 6 so it’s essentially 50/50 at this point. I reminded myself to get it quietly when one of my 14 cards came, but it never did and I was out just before 11pm. Which is a crap time to go out of any tournament because it was too late to run up the strip to Caesars or down to Sahara for their late night efforts.
This was so frustrating. This tournament seemed like it was going to be the one. The conditions were perfect for getting a win under my belt – a small field (49 players in total), a fairly slow structure (30 minute levels is about as good as you’ll get here really, although the Mirage during the day has 45 minute levels) and the chance to gather a decent sized stack early on. We were down to two tables before I’d broken a sweat, I hit the nuts and watched lots of chips work their way to the pot without me even having to do anything. Then went home in 13th place.
Seriously, I can’t play any better than this. 🙂
I have to get over this hump of coming close and not cashing. Tonight I’m out 18th in the Caesars 11pm tourney. There’s 84 in and 10 get paid. I lose with KK all in preflop against AJ. A few nights ago in the same tournament I finished 14th. I was 3 places off at the Strat, and 5th in a stupidly fast sit-and-go, if that counts. I’ve decided to avoid SNGs for the sake of sanity for the rest of this trip.
Seems I’m constantly coming close but not quite getting there and one pot would usually make the difference. I figure that means I’m doing OK, just not doing great. I’m surviving long enough and progressing deep enough that I have some decent equity in the tournament just before things start to go random. When the crapshoots start going my way I’ll be smiling, but it always seems to come down to me either having to make a move with a mediocre hand or falling victim to someone else who has to play non-premium cards and gamble.
I need the confidence boost of a money finish though now, plus it would help me justify buying into the tournaments I want to play at the Mirage and Wynn…
I’d decided to go and scope out some of the tournaments at the center-strip casinos, particularly because I’d liked the sound of the Caesars tournaments but couldn’t find any information online any more. I know it definitely used to be out there somewhere, otherwise I wouldn’ t know that I wanted to play it.
I hate driving on the strip, and I’m sure there must be a quicker way to get to Caesars without having to face the crawling traffic and the lights on the Flamingo Road intersection that seem to be on a fifteen minute cycle, but I haven’t found it yet. Once you’re in the hotel complex though, it’s impressively well organised. I flew around the service road and dumped the car in the Colosseum valet instantly. Celine Dion is on holiday and Elton John isn’t back until October so I imagine it’s usually busier here.
We’ve seen both of these shows. Celine Dion features lots of people walking round the stage slowly during most songs, for which the art value is lost on us. Elton’s show on the other hand is so good we’ve seen it twice. His show features lots of enourmous phallic inflatables and a big pair of breasts. Much better.
I finally arrived about 20 minutes before the start of the 7pm tournament so I paid my $120 and got 1500 chips. There’s one $100 rebuy allowed which gets you 3000 more chips and as most of the players at my table took the rebuy before the first hand was dealt I thought it would be a good idea to do the same. Things started well with a very loose payoff when my AK hit a flop of K33 – it was hard to see anything beating me here, I didn’t believe his check raise and got them all in against 99.
I was up to about 9k at the first break and then 25k at the second break thanks mostly to hitting a big hand against a big bully and letting him hang himself, but until then I’d recognised the need to steal pots once the running ante kicked in, and I seemed to have enough respect to maintain a stack this way.
The Caesars card room is really nice. It’s deteched from the casino and pretty big, but was busy enough to somehow keep a casino vibe. It feels odd to say this, because I felt that playing at the Rio Conference Centre, which was much bigger and much busier, was a really sterile environment. Caesars, on the other hand, felt just as classy as I’d imagined. Despite being a new room, the dealers were all very experienced and kept the game moving quickly. Little touches, like coffee being served in a real mug, went a long way too.
The biggest problem is that finding somewhere to eat on a 20 minute break is impossible. I just wanted some kind of sandwich or burger – very easy at places like the Plaza or Stratosphere – but the best I could find that wasn’t a restaurant with some kind of celebrity chef was a can of Pringles and a Twix. I’d seriously consider a packed dinner next time …
So at the second break I have over twice the average stack, there’s still about 70 players remaining and 20 get paid. I certainly don’t have enough to sit tight to money, and besides the difference between 20th place ($395) and 1st (over $12,000) makes it worth playing. I decide that with the blinds beginning to get oppressive to many players that I’d be looking for opportunities to take 50/50 or better shots against short stacks and hope to get lucky when the downside of losing is not that severe, rather than sit tight and get crippled.
With the blinds at 400/800 with 100 ante, I’m on the big blind and the button raises all in for about 8000. I’m looking at A8 and decide this is probably a better than 50/50 shot. It will never be much better than that, but against a random blind stealing hand, I’m probably slightly ahead. In fact he has A9 and I don’t improve. I’m still in two minds about this call. On the one hand, it looks like a steal, I have a better than average hand and I have enough chips to push a probable edge. On the other hand, I’m never going to be way ahead here and the button was not so short stacked he had to push in this situation. I still haven’t decided if this was a good call and a situation that I usually play too tight when it’s important to keep winning chips, or that I’d decided to gamble too much.
But it did all go pear shaped after that. I lost half my remaining chips to a hand I dominated, found a couple of big aces but got called by the exact same hand both times, and finally lost when I had to push with A8 and the big blind woke up with AQ. I finished fifty-something out of just over two hundred.
The tournament is excellent for the first three hours, and then goes a little mental. Some of the players were talking about the structure as the first break approached and I didn’t believe them at first, but someone decided to rip out the 300/600 level and that makes quite a difference. Even if you are way ahead, there are enough players struggling at that level that this is still about the time that you’re going to have to enter some coinflip confrontations and ride a lucky streak in order to make the money.
They have the same structure in the afternoon for $80+$50 and a faster tournament at 11pm for $70. I think I’ll be back for one of those.
The huge poster inside Binions poker room asks the question “Why play poker at Binions?”. Then answers itself immediately: “Because it’s fun”.
Valid as this is, there are better reasons specific to Binions itself. For a start, this is the real home of poker. Screw the Rio and it’s huge, sterile exhibition hall. For all of Harrah’s money and recently acquired powerhouse brands they just can’t compete with the real deal. The real Horseshoe, which made a name for itself instead of buying one, oozes history in it’s large, detached cardroom. It’s the quietest room in town, close enough to the casino that you can still tell you’re playing in a gambling den but not so close that you’re hearing to “Wheel … of ….. Fortune” louder than the guy next to you announcing his raise.
It’s great to see people coming back to Binions too. The casino has been pretty dead the last few times we’ve been here, and even last summer with the “free beer and keep your points” promo that kept us in Budweiser for four weeks it didn’t really feel like a buzzing casino. You can’t walk in with a suitcase full of cash (plus a second empty suitcase if you plan on winning) and set your own limits any more, but that was never really part of my travel plans this time.
I played in the Sunday night tournament with a $125 buy in. There’s a $25 optional dealer add-on, which isn’t really optional – it makes the difference between 2000 and 3000 starting chips. There’s also one rebuy or add on allowed which again isn’t really optional. You get 2000 chips more for $50. For my total investment of $200, I was playing in a field of 108 for a first place prize of $5800, plus a seat in their “tournament of champions” freeroll.
Even though the weekend tournaments with a higher buy in ($125 instead of $60) give you a few more chips and slightly slower levels, the structure still hit a wall with about 60 players to go. The leap from 100/200/25 to 200/400/25 blinds turned everyone into granite and by 300/600/50 the game became push or fold poker. I managed to push three times before going broke – losing with 55 against 22 leaving me with about 2500, picking up the blinds when it was folded to me on the next hand (I had 97o, not that it mattered) and then getting caught out at the 400/800/75 level when I didn’t really have time to wait, saw QTs in middle position and went for it. A6o called me almost immediately and I was done.
Seeing as I’m going to be in town for the Tournament of Champions on August 6th, I need to have another crack at a Binions tournament, but if entry into that freeroll is the target, an earlier tournament (in Feb the 10am tournies were struggling to fill 2 tables) would be an easier route in.
And yes, it was fun, and the ipod and shades count was low. Always a bonus.
Let’s start positive. I was responsible for sending three people to the rail in WSOP Event 37, $1500 NL Hold’em. My ace high flush crushed a ten high flush, a short-stacked AK was disappointed to find me with AA pre-flop and I made a broadway straight to crush two pair.
That wasn’t nearly enough though in a field of over 2800 players. Playing 11 handed (which wasn’t too bad really, the tables were nice and big, and pretty comfortable) there were still over 30 tables of alternates. The floor were struggling, and even made the announcement "Players can you play a bit tighter please, we are getting behind". I found this amusing, even if some thought it was inappropriate. Lighten up guys…
When my KK ran into QQ, the poker gods decided to let me go with a brutal Q on the flop. There was a raise ahead of me and I moved in pre-flop. QQ put in the third raise, putting himself all in and the original raiser got out of the way. I’d be in trouble with this hand, even with bigger stacks or without the third raise. Playing KK out of position on a Q high flop against a set of queens – I’d be losing a chunk here even if I can manage to not go broke.
There’s no shame in losing as an 80% favourite with 3-1 pot odds (when you include the blinds, antes and the first raise) – what better opportunity can you get, particularly when you don’t really have enough chips to isolate the raiser but someone else does it for you?Â
So generally I think I did OK, and could stand a fair chance when the cards go the right way – you need a mighty amount of luck to survive in this field.  If I’d won an earlier coinflop with AJ vs KT, who was all in from the big blind for less than double my raise, and then had my KK hold up I’d have been in very good shape. I didnt try anything fancy, but I didn’t really need to, or ever have the ammunition to. The same went for the other players – whilst I didn’t notice anyone who I’d say was particularly bad, nobody really stood out as taking control of the situation or playing a consistently impressive game.
After four or five hours, the boredom was starting to get to some, for instance QTo raising and calling a reraise all-in, but I managed to stay patient. Considering this is the fastest structure in the WSOP (after they gave the $1000 event $1500 chips, which is just wrong) I just can’t comprehend how slow the main event would move….
Last night I went to play the tournament at The Orleans. This wasn’t a great idea as I was still very tired and it’s a large field tournament. In fact I don’t know exactly how many players there were as the screens were out of action but at $45 to enter, $20 rebuys and over $4000 for first place, there were probably 150-200 runners.
I really only did this because I needed to stay awake to try and adjust so I could sleep a little bit later and not be falling asleep if I survive past the first few hours in my WSOP event today. It kinda worked, because I slept right through to 5.30am today!
However last night I just wasn’t in a good state to be playing. The flops looked blurred and I just wasn’t concentrating well. Somehow (a one-card flush with QQ helped me to beat the mighty KJ after it made top pair) I hung on until there were about 60 left when most people were playing with very short stacks.
This was not an enjoyable tournament (although it probably would have been if I was alert, even with the gobby Hawaiian woman to my right, for whom everything in life seemed to be wrong), but hopefully it has helped me to kick the jet lag much better than staying in and snoozing in front of a movie would have done, plus I got the chance to play like a donkey when it didn’t matter quite so much as it will later today. I knew it wouldn’t be easy – the Orleans is one of the toughest card rooms in town – but it was nice to get back in the saddle.
I’m leaving shortly – gl me 🙂
Finally I manage to drag myself out of the house for a live game of poker and whizz along the A50 towards Leicester. For some reason, my sat nav keeps telling to turn round. It wants to take me on the M6 to the M69 for some reason. This way is never used to be the quickest even before the A50 bypasses (bypi?) were completed and it’s never tried it before. I think the heat was getting to it.
Getting to Leicester early is essential. It frequently sells out well ahead of the start time, plus they do a very nice range of burgers. I had the Texan burger this time, which comes with bacon and cheese. This was a change from my usual Stilton and Bacon Burger, which as you might expect comes with bacon and a different type of cheese. There’s definitely a pattern, but I haven’t been disappointed yet.
I register for the game at just after 7pm, for an 8pm start, and there’s already 27 players in, which isn’t bad as you can’t register until the night of the tournament. In total there were 49 players when it kicked off, with seven tables of seven. The usual capacity is 56 (8 tables) but I think this might have been a sell out at 49 tonight as they were short of dealers. My table kicked off without a dealer and Old Steve (not me being rude, it says this on his name badge!) the cardroom manager had to deal for a few minute whilst they borrowed someone from a roulette table. Not even a mention of us having to go self-dealt even for a while.
It’s a pretty uneventful night for me, and I think I’d underestimated how fast this tournament moves, having enjoyed reasonable success with it in the past. Although I couldn’t remember if the 150/300 blind level used to be played, or I’d just gotten lucky early on when I’d played before. They coloured up the 50 point chips after level 1 of (50/100) – and then stormed up to 100/200 then 200/400 before things start to settle down.
I survived a potentially early bath when I folded 89 on my big blind after a raise and a call. I just didn’t think I had the chips to defend with a very mediocre hand. When the flop comes TJQ I’m thinking I’d be screwed if the raiser had AK. In fact he had QQ but the other player wouldn’t lay down AT and the turn K made him the nut straight.
Apart from one situation, where I was fairly pleased I had the balls to make what I thought was the right move, nothing particularly exciting happened. Sitting on the big blind with 1800 chips left, the player to my left min-raises to 400. One mid-position player calls and the small blind calls. I look down at 77 and I really want to call and hope to catch a set, which is probably the best value play. But looking at my situation I decide that it’s worth a crack to try and take the pot down right there. I figure the two callers are probably weak, and I have enough chips to stand a chance of pushing them off a mediocre hand by making it 1600 each more to call. My worry obviously is the min-raiser to my left and I don’t yet know what that means, but being left with 1600 after a call and not hitting a set – 1500 after the small blind – and blinds going up to 200/400 soon this feels like a perfect opportunity to pick up some dead money. If I don’t run into a bigger pair and barring some really manic overcalls, I’m either taking down 1400 uncontested (almost doubling my stack) or going 50/50 with a decent overlay.
So I move in, and all three players fold. I’m back in the game.
Briefly.
I can’t get enough chips to deal with the oppressive 200/400 level. I see AJ and raise, to end up racing with a short stack. His K6s gets there and I’m left with 1400.
Then I’m left facing playing the next hand or putting in half my stack in blinds. I take a quick peek and feel that QJ is good enough. The player to my left instantly calls 1400 cold, and the big blind also calls. After they check a flop that doesn’t help me, the player who called 1400 preflop bets at the dry side pot and I figure I’m done. He actually has A4 and hasn’t paired yet, so I’m still alive but drawing thin and I don’t make it. The vast majority of times he’d be doing me a huge favour here with the donkey bet, but as the big blind told me she’d also folded QJ it made no difference.
On the way home at 9.15 – not great, but that’s the way it goes I guess..
You just can’t beat free money from Party Poker! Their reload bonuses are very easy to clear even at the low limits, so when a 20% up to $100 bonus popped up on my account yesterday I got busy.
I decided to play for this bonus using $25NL only. I wanted to see how no limit compared to fixed limit hold’em as I’ve mostly played $1/$2 to clear these bonuses so far. Because the wagering requirements are based on a number of raked hands, regardless of the actual amount of rake paid, the limits do not really matter. In fact a quirk of this system is that you have to play less hands at $1/$2 to clear a bonus than at $2/$4 – although you pay more rake in total, $1/$2 games are raked in 25c multiples, whereas $2/$4 is raked $1 at a time.
I thought you would probably need to play more hands at $25NL than $1/$2 as there would be fewer flops, but really this doesn’t seem to be the case – I’d usually bank on slightly more than 50% of hands being raked at $1/$2.
Stand by, stat fans – here’s how I did 🙂
Hands played: 1540 (for 1000 raked hands)
Hours played: 23.63 (approx 6 hours @ 4 tables)
Rake paid: $30.10 (so Party Poker lose $69.90 on this promo!)
Amount won: $35.52 (4.61 BB per 100 hands)
Win rate: $5.92/hr
Bonus awarded: $100
Rate w/ bonus: $22.60/hr
Certainly not bad for the smallest game in town. And for those who like even geekier stats, here’s how I was playing:
Vol. Put $ In Pot: 14.29%
Pre-flop Raise: 7.21%
Post-flop Aggression: 3.72
Won $ When Saw Flop: 33.59%
Went to Showdown: 20.99%
Won $ At Showdown: 50.91%
Folded SB to Steal: 87.50%
Folded BB to Steal: 80.00%
Attempt to Steal Blinds: 18.57%
So it’s a fairly small sample size, but the diagnosis looks pretty good – firmly rooted in the Tight/Agressive camp. Poker Tracker gives me a little cash bag icon – result!
If I try to be objective, my blind play looks kinda weak, although 8 times out of 10 is probably nothing to be concerned with. Need more input. When there are a lot of limpers, as you get in these low limit games, there’s not too many opportunities to steal. I could be raising a bit more pre-flop, but again with lots of limpers I’m aware that my range of hands to raise with is tighter than usual, and limping into multiway pots with small pairs and suited aces becomes attractive.
Oh, and I appear to be rather aggressive post-flop. That one really surprised me as I still think I check/call too much on the river. The aggression factor is calculated as the number of times you bet or raise divided by the number of times you call (checking is ignored). A number between 2 and 3 – betting twice to three times as often as you call – is thought to be nicely aggressive.
Grrrr, then.
The good fortune continues. I am H-O-T-T.
Back online this time, and I was logged into Blue Square Poker. I hardly ever play here – most of the tournaments have rebuys and are complete donkfests. Potentially profitable, but very frustrating, and there are many other games I’d rather play. The strong contingent of British players doesn’t help. Makes it a totally different game, and not in a good way. I’m bound to rant about this some other time, so I’ll leave it at that for the time being 🙂
I’d actually logged in to check out the satellites for Poker 6, which sounds like a great tournament and I wanted to qualify to have a crack at this. With live qualifiers as well as online, I was planning on having a few attempts. However I’ve since realised I can’t play on the second day (going to see Pet Shop Boys) which would make it all a bit pointless.
Anyway, I sit in their freeroll with a $200 prize pool – eventually I finish up with $3 from this – hoorah! – and an alert pops up for a $100 freezeout about to start. The prize pool is $3.5k guaranteed and there were only 19 players registered at the time. I’m thinking this could be a great way to press up my winnings from the Party Poker shootouts and I just can’t resist. I scramble for my switch card to get enough money in my account to play and just make it.
One of the annoying things about Blue Sq is that you have to do transactions in £ but then play games in $.  I have Neteller in USD, which is not accepted, and two visa cards on USD bank accounts. No good – I still have to play in pounds and be at the mercy of their exchange rates.
At kick off there were 26 players registered, but that’s still a good overlay on the prize money – works out at $34 each and even with a $9 entry fee they are giving me $25 to taking part, which I always like! Top five were getting paid, and the top prize of $1470 was as good as my coveted seat in WSOP Event 37.
This game was amazingly different to anything I’d played on Blue Sq before. People folded. People knew when they were beat. There were some very strong players who managed to not go broke with hands that would cost many players their entire stack. I was pretty impressed.
I was more impressed that I managed to get to the final table with a decent stack remaining.  I was even more impressed that I scraped second place, after being short stacked with 4 remaining. Two of the big stacks went against each other, leaving three short stacks and a big stack who didn’t really want to play any more.Â
I think I had quite a tight image, judging by the dialog between Conbert (3rd place finisher) and some railbird.Â
conbert : im well ***** off
conbert : lucky donut mr i need a hand to raise
conbert : n sumhow gets thru
SammyArry6 :Â maybe luckydonut is better?!
conbert : win 55 coinflip
conbert : i had the worst cards when it went 3 handed
conbert : by far
conbert : feels well sick though
conbert : luckydonut thinks a rag ace is a fold heads up
Here’s why I’m a bad player too.
conbert : the j9 was turnin point
conbert : bets 288 flop
conbert : 228 flop
conbert : i have 89
conbert : call to trap
conbert : ne he turns j
SammyArry6 : sick
conbert : first time in my life its happened to me
Wow, nice trap with a shit pair. First time in his life someone hit a 3-outer on him without making them pay for the next card? I got real lucky.
SammyArry6 : i’m layin fu muppet at 1/100 to win
SammyArry6 : luckydonut available at 25’s
SammyArry6 : perhaps it should be 10000000000000000000000000/1?
So they don’t fancy my chances. Well the other guy only had a 3-1 chip advantage… It actually lasted just one more hand so he woz right innit.
Seat 5 : LUCKYD0NUT has $10,680
Seat 6 : fu muppet has $41,320
Stakes: 600/1,200 Current level: 9 Level up in: 14 min. Break in: 56 min.
LUCKYD0NUT is the dealer.
LUCKYD0NUT posted small blind.
fu muppet posted big blind.
Dealing Hole Cards.
Seat 5 : LUCKYD0NUT has Qd 9c
LUCKYD0NUT called 600 and raised 9,480 and is All-in
fu muppet called 9,480
Showdown!
Seat 5 : LUCKYD0NUT has Qd 9c
Seat 6 : fu muppet has 5s 5d
Board cards [8c 3c Ah 4h Th]
LUCKYD0NUT has High Card : Ace
fu muppet has Pair: 5s
fu muppet wins 21,360 with Pair: 5s
Anything wrong with the push here?
Anyway, 2nd place got me $875. Total profit from Blue Sq: $766
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