|
|
Here’s a hand from a PokerDome satellite I played today.
Blinds are 75/150 and I have 2250. I am dealt Ah Ad on the button. Lovely. A middle position player who has about twice as many chips as me raises to 300. A fantastic minimum raise. I strongly suspect he doesn’t have aces here, and if he does well that’s just the way cards are falling for me lately.
I reraise, making it 900 to go. If he’d made a proper raise I could think about smooth calling here in position, but I can’t let the blinds see a cheap flop. So far so good I think.
He makes the call and I see a horrible flop: Jh Qd Kc.
The only good thing I can say about this flop is that it’s unsuited. It’s still about the worst flop ever for pocket aces in a pot that saw two raises pre-flop. All those big pairs that you had crushed have suddenly caught up. I figure two Kings would want to apply more pressure pre-flop, but can’t count on it. Two Jacks could get away from this but, in the hands of a big stack, could very likely wait for a low board before hanging themselves.
There are also legitimate two-pair threats, and I haven’t been paying enough attention to know whether this guy would call a reraise with KQ, KJ or QJ out of position. You’d hope not. Of course, what I’m really hoping for is to run into AK here, but there’s only two aces and three kings left. It’s unlikely.
There’s even the possibility of a maniac with KT who is not going to go anywhere, and would be just about correct to call for pot odds if I move all in. I’d still be a 2-1 favourite, but I wouldn’t like it. TT would have a hard time folding here too, figuring he may have 10 outs, when in fact a ten is no help and two of his straight cards are in my hand. Of all the likely hands that just got much stronger, TT is probably the least dangerous. But you’re still going home against it one time in four.
The stacks are nowhere near deep enough to have any chance of finding out where I stand. And not only is the other guy wearing shades, he’s also playing on the Internet – no tells here. I have one pot-sized bet left in me, which I think is probably going in the middle whatever happens. So I’ve decided I’m not folding. I mean, really, how can I?
Villian checks the scary flop. Doesn’t matter. He checks if he’s strong. He checks if he’s as scared as I am. There’s no more information to be had.
Now here’s the reason I’m posting this hand. I’ve don’t ever remember being in this situation before, and if I have been I certainly didn’t think about it this way. I’m in position, with a hand that could very well not be best any more but unable to find a way to fold. I check, and check with a reason. I’m ever so briefly a little bit smug. If I’m beat I’m beat. I’m losing my stack. If I’m winning and I move all in here, he’s going to be able to fold anything I beat, except maybe AK. He’s not folding anything that beats me, but will also be hating that board with any strong hand. By checking I bring on a free card that probably won’t matter, and encourage him to bet the turn. Which he will now probably do with any hand that pisses on mine, but me may also take the opportunity to push with that AK, which suddenly looks more attractive, or bluff with an underpair or a straight draw, or perhaps AQ or AJ.
I’m not saying this thinking is perfect. It probably isn’t. I need to find a way to get away from my aces if they’re no good, and maybe I could have controlled the pot size pre-flop better in order to be able to do that now. I’m also not saying that I put him on a hand I beat and checked to induce a bluff. That’s not possible here. All I can do is make sure that I get as many chips in the middle the times I’m actually ahead as I do the times when I’m toast.
It’s the wrong decision. He moves all in on the turn (couldn’t be more of a brick: 2s) and I call. He flips KQo, I hit a second deuce on the river and survive. I eventually bubbled.
I’m going to be thinking about this one for a while. It’s a peculiar decision with a reason that’s based on a negative attitude. The decision is not that unusual really. It’s easy to check there out of fear, just as it’s easy to shove your chips in out of panic.
I don’t ever recall being in such a horrible situation and having a clear plan. Now I just have to figure out whether the plan was any good. Feel free to chime in anytime.
The timing couldn’t be worse. Harrah’s have announced that the series will being on June 1st with the final table of the Main Event on July 17th. There’s no specific schedule information at this point in time, and I guess they don’t actually know when it will start yet because nobody can qualify online anymore.
But still, there won’t be a poker table in sight at the World’s Most Vacuous Poker Room when we land on July 22nd for Summer O’ Poker III. I’m still undecided whether this time it will be in 3D.
I keep finding three chips in my pocket that I came away with from The Vic last week. A reminder to actually write down what happened on my first visit there, I suppose.
I usually play the 1 rebuy tournament at Gutshot if I’m in London on a Wednesday but the last week in each month is now the Team Gutshot satellite. I didn’t qualify for any bonus chips (awarded for playing regularly or finishing on a final table) so essentially I’d be starting with a crippled stack
So last Wednesday I went to the Vic and played their £30+£3 freezeout. I handed over two twenty pound notes and got a £5 and two £1 chips as change. Naturally, I never cashed these in before I left.
Although I did actually forget I had them after I busted out, I may well have bottled it anyway for the sake of £7, hoping that I’d go again soon, get more change in chips and eventually have something resembling an amount worth cashing in. Not that I’d feel quite right about even bothering to cash in £7 of chips there. It’s a very swanky joint, considering it basically occupies the attic above Woolworths on a street of tower blocks. Too much for me – I ran straight back outside after registering and found a nice cosy McDonalds.
With their scratchcard promo I won a McChicken Sandwich for next time. You have to scratch off two panels from four to win (a 1 in 6 chance of winning, assuming there are only two symbols the same). The card I won with had the matching symbols behind boxes 3 and 4, as did another I lost on. I’ve since seen another three scratchcards which all had their winning symbols behind doors 3 and 4, but have just decided to try to lose a stone before Vegas (let’s see how long it lasts this time) so probably won’t get chance to see whether this is always the case. I make it 1295-1 to find five out of five with the winning symbols all in the same position. I’m sure Claire will correct my maths if I’m wrong…
Back to The Vic. Back through the revolving door, and God forbid you push the door round yourself – they have someone to do that for you (this place is wasted on me – all I could think is how much they would save by investing in a door motor). Back upstairs to try and find the other half of the cardroom. The one I’d found, and registered at, had tables with numbers nowhere close to the one I was meant to be sitting at. It turns out there’s more tables on the second floor, where I’d accidentally stumbled earlier to be greeted with stares of "you don’t really know where you’re going, do you?" from someone in some kind of uniform at the top of the stairs. Ha! Turns out I was meant to be there after all.
Regular tournaments are limited to 72 players. That’s 8 tables of 9. The worst way I can think of to describe the shape of the tables is like a 50p coin, but with two more sides. The correct word, I always thought, was nonagon, although I’ve since discovered that enneagon is also acceptable. I’d never heard that word before, and I’ve also never seen a poker table like these. Not only were they an unusual polygon, they also had chip racks embedded in which everyone was using. Stacking and riffling chips was possible, but I didn’t want to be the only one doing it.
The tournament kicked off very slowly, with 1500 chips each and 25/25 blinds, moving to 25/50 and 50/100 after 20 minutes. Then it went mental, taking nearly ten minutes to remove all the 25 chips (I nearly said "green chips" instinctively, but of course they were some other colour that I can’t remember, but probably different to anywhere else) without stopping the clock and jumping straight to 100/200 for the remaining half a level then on to 200/400.
Double, double, double them blinds. And so the crap shoot began, and I stayed lucky long enough to make it down to the last two tables, along the way apparently forcing 99 to fold on a very low board when I moved in with my pocket 8s. KQo called me with his overcards though. Can’t ask for much more.
Then with blinds at 600/1200, rising to 800/1600 within a couple of hands, and a stack that had dwindled to 4900 after a couple of rounds with no opportunities, I felt I needed to push with any two cards when it was folded around to my small blind. For Harrington fans, my M is less than 3, and with 14 players remaining, the average stack of 7,700 was still in the red zone. I ended up in very bad shape with my Q2 racing against QT and not finding the miracle it needed. The poker in this tournament was long gone, and I didn’t quite get lucky enough.
And they’re still looking after another seven quid of mine.
I always expected the reception I’d get at Stoke Grosvenor would be frosty. This is a regular haunt for many of my former so-caled friends and other ex-poker buddies and I knew that whenever I went odds would be that I would bump into at least one of them. Tonight for the £20 freezeout it actually took until level five and my second table move until I came face to face with any of them across a card table. As expected, they were ignoring me just as hard as I was ignoring them.
Allow me to introduce some characters: James Welsh, my estranged business partner on a poker-related venture and the mastermind behind UK Poker Info – a forum from which he has subsequently banned me for posting a strategy article with only the slightest hint of superiority – busted out a couple of hands later, moving all in without looking and tabling garbage that thankfully didn’t improve. Jim Fryer, the former owner of an illegal poker club that is somehow no longer running, and who still owes me ninety quid for a table, was riding high with about 40k in chips allowing him the freedom of only playing every other hand whilst running backwards and forwards to have a smoke. Negative expection on two counts.
I never got to play a pot with Jim, and only contributed to only two hands at that table before I went home. I’d raised once with AQo and folded to a reraise all in, then made a squeeze play with AJ against an early position raiser and a caller. I still quite like the move, even though I ran into a squeezee (I need to know if I’m the first person to use that word) with AQ. I had a chance to nearly double my stack uncontested, which was fairly likely given the extreme tightness I had shown, and the prospect of taking a race with 4.5k in dead money wasn’t too shabby. It’s only real bad when you are dominated – and he calls. Which it turned out I was, and he did, thinking he was behind.
Earlier though, I had a confrontation with "Deadly" Darren Sutton. Daz is not someone I know well at all. I can really only remember one time I’ve spoken more than a passing sentence to him, which was actually at Nottingham Gala on the same day I discovered that my so-called friends from the saturday night game I have such fond memories of were a bunch of ignorant back-stabbers. Let’s move on.
Darren comes over to tell me how nobody likes me, and then how I owe various people an apology and how I owe James some money. He tells me "you and him need to sort it out, or I will sort it out". Whether or not he has a point doesn’t much matter – none of this is any of his fucking business, but he obviously loves the action. I am brought up to speed as he walks away. "You don’t know me. I used to be a minder. I look after people".
Another person he is looking after tonight is Rob Ho, although I doubt this is with his knowledge or consent given that Rob is a martial arts expert and could cripple me as soon as look at me if he wanted. On the very rare occasions we had a saturday game without him, we would gossip around the table about how he is likely connected, a Triad probably. I owe him an apology, I’m informed, because of how I insulted him on the forum – by which he can only mean the "strategy article" I mentioned above. As I walk to the bathroom at the first break, Rob actually yells up from his cash game at me "Hey Chris, are you winning?". I’m so startled, I don’t really know how to respond and mumble back god knows what before running away to take a piss. Unless it’s part of an overly elaborate and highly doubtful good cop/bad cop routine, then Rob isn’t holding a grudge. And I would have gone back to talk to him too, if it wasn’t for those meddling kids.
Deadly Daz followed me into the bathroom. He followed me into the fucking bathroom! He stood next to me, and carried on with a routine which I pretty much ignored, trying instead to concentrate on whether he specifically was the reason I couldnt go, or just that there was another gent right there who was more interested in me than his own bodily functions. That would usually do the trick. As I left (he was done before me, and didn’t wash) he was waiting near the door to keep yelling across to me and point out exactly where Rob was sitting. I don’t know why he was yelling. I didn’t stop to see who he was with, whether it was even anyone I’d ever met before. Or whether they were impressed. I just kept walking. I don’t know – nor did I care to find out – whether he was all talk. But I was glad to be back on the casino floor. As far as I know, there’s no cameras over the urinals…
So there we have it. I was threatened and intimidated – twice – by a guy I hardly know in my friendly neighbourhood casino. Just one contribution to a general air of violence in the Grosvenor Stoke where threats, fights and beatings appear to be an everyday occurrance. When the cash game was announced, some cheerful soul piped up "will there be a punch up tonight?". Apparently there was yesterday, and it sounds like the crowd loved it. And I heard two guys at my table very openly discussing how they might teach someone a lesson. "Careful though, he’s the kind who’ll run down the cop shop first chance he gets", says one. "Yeah, but what’s he gonna do with a fucking broken neck?", came the reply.
I asked whether it was in fact OK for casinos to bump up the rake, and if so whether there was an upper limit.
Thank you for your email.
Casino guideline 3 sets out the advice for running card room competitions including the permitted fee for the competition.
There is also provision under the Gaming Clubs (Hours and Charges) Regulations 1984 for a casino to charge an hourly rate for the use of the facilities. This could be in addition to any fixed charge. There is no mention of a maximum hourly amount in the Act.
At Leicester Gala the £20+£2 tournament on Wednesday is now a £20+£7.
That’s a 26% rake!
Well, no it’s not. That would be illegal. Instead, there’s a £5 "session fee" that you have to pay before you can register for the tournament. And apparently they not only have the backing of the Gaming Board to do this, Gala is piloting the scheme for them to see if works well enough to use at casinos across the country.
The fee does cover you for as much as you want to play that night, however. Whoopy doo. If you’re very unlucky you could perhaps fit in two sit-and-goes (I have no idea if that’s the correct way to pluralise it) but if you do well, or have no intention of playing anything else after you bust it’s another five quid on top of a twenty quid tournament. You effectively get taxed more when you win, than when you keep on losing.
The terrible thing is that people are already paying this. Even worse is that last night those people included me. Well, I’d driven an hour to get there and if I’m prepared to drive a 140 mile round trip to play in that game it does seem a little on the stubborn side to go straight home once I’m there. Won’t be going again though. Numbers were down, with 40 runners compared to the usual sell-out 56, but the night before they’d still managed to fill the room for the, effectively, £10+£6 tournament. If they owned up to what the charge really was, that would be a 38% rake.
Las Vegas Advisor maintains a list of the poker tournaments in town with their respective percentage paybacks. Only Sunset Station and Sams Town are this greedy, which actually surprised me a little. Even the quick and nasty tourist tournaments on the strip are 80-85% payback.
Geoff and I spoke to cardroom manager Steve, who was obviously disappointed that he had to do this, knowing that it would drive away many of the regular players. However this seems to be exactly what those higher up are trying to achieve. You see, the Play and Party Poker Zone is not really a cardroom. The casino is not interested in developing poker players or creating loyalty, because they do not generate any profits until they are either paying their 10% on three-figure buy-in tournaments or generating hourly seat charges in cash games. And whilst a £100 tournament would attract a handful of gamblers who fancy a shot at a big prize, it’s something that takes more effort to promote than a regular game, and not something you can do every night in a provincial casino. So it’s quantity over quality, and they just want to get as many players through the door as possible hoping that if you throw enough suckers in the direction of a roulette table then some will stick.
So why am I so upset about this? I guess mostly because of the stealthy and semi-legal way in which it’s been done. The Gambling Commission’s Guidelines for the Casino Industry document states that a registration fee may be no more than 10% or £50, whichever is greater. Simply calling the charge a "session fee" doesn’t cut it, and I just can’t see how this is legal.
The casinos who have put pressure on the Gambling Commission to take action against borderline-illegal clubs – who take a "service charge" out of every pot, don’t anyone dare say the word "rake" – are hypocrites. Now is a time when poker desparately needs a new way of being regulated to protect the player from an inevitable undesirable element. If indeed the GC are behind this scheme, as Steve suggested, all they have managed to come up with is a way to allow the regulated venues to charge an unlimited rake and legally fleece their players. Well, I guess that’s what casinos have been doing for years, just not quite so blatently. Meantime the clubs that do cater for those that just want to play some cards (there’s no blackjack, no roulette, just a 10% rake – let’s call a spade a spade here) are still waiting to hear whether they will get shut down.
Played at Gutshot on Wednesday this week, back to the £30 + 1 rebuy tournament. Everything went so right in the first 20 minutes that I knew I was doomed to not get very far. With pocket kings twice and hitting at least 2 pair on most of the flops I played I was up from 1500 to over 4000 by the end of level 1. Even when I hadn’t hit the board, I was betting and picking up more pots than I thought would be possible in one round of a super-fast tournament.
I’d never actually counted my chips up to this point, for once taking note of Kenny Roger’s advice, but had to take stock after losing with TT against a desparate all-in AT. The all in was about 1200, and it left me with about 3000 afterwards. But things never recovered after that. I peaked way too early and by the time the crap shoot came into effect my timing had become just dreadful. Seeing KTs in mid position I moved in for my remaining 2500 – blinds coming round were 250/500, and there were still 40 players remaining. "I have to call that" is never a phrase you wanted to hear, especially when it leaves the caller obviously pot-committed. Yet someone puts in a third raise and I’m left calling for clubs with something of a whimper when they flip over KK and AA.
Hooray for me winning through to the Sunday Poker Dome final on Mansion. If I get 1st or 2nd in that bad boy then I’m on my way home to Vegas, to play on TV and in front of a live audience in a converted movie theatre. I’m on a semi-mission with this one. I’ve wanted to play the final for a few weeks but haven’t had many opportunities to get in it. Had considered buying direct to the $215 final but decided not to, but there’s only one freezeout satellite each day at 8:15pm, which I seem to forget about and miss the start much more often than not.
The final four played very cagey for a long time, with not many hands going to a flop. I was stealing plenty, even before that. Much more often than I usually do, but I’d recognised the need to build a big stack when only two players were going to get anything. The players eventually started to notice my relentless stabbing at blinds and began to fight back. "Quit raising the blinds" said one. Well, I’m sorry, it’s been working well for me so far. But hey, now I know you’ve finally caught up so it’s time to change gears.
Well, first it’s time to get lucky, picking up KK against JJ and leaving us three handed. And I have a decent chip lead now too.
With blinds at 150/300 Mr Please-don’t-raise-me pumps it up to 900 from the button. I have AQ on the big blind and about three times his stack. Here’s where I still haven’t decided whether I played the hand like a muppet or a genius. Instead of putting the pressure back on him, I decided I was far enough ahead to get a bit tricky and try and end the thing. I just call his raise, and the big blind folds. The board brings J88 with two clubs. I check and immediately call his 900 bet on the flop. I’m not sure why, but I guess I could be ahead, or I could try and outplay him anyway. I consider whether I actually have the balls to put him all on in the turn regardless of the next card but there’s hardly time before the turn brings another J and I move all-in.
Again, this is either stupidity or genius, and I’m still torn between the two. I may well have the best hand, using the two pair on board and my ace high. But there’s also a high chance I’m splitting, and so the bet is only good if he will throw away the same hand or one that beats mine. He may fold an ace here, but it’s unlikely, and I’m almost certainly getting called by any hand that beats me, unless he is extremely tight and puts me on a J, then he might throw away a small full house or a bigger two pair. But can I check-fold this hand now? I don’t think I can, so I may as well bet it just in case I can get him to fold a winner.
The screenshot below tells the bizarre story. I was ahead the whole way. Therefore it was genius. Clearly.
Back from London and I played the Thursday night freezeout at Gutshot again. It’s looking like I’m going to be down there Thursday and Friday for the foreseeable future, which in terms of having a poker tournament to play in the evening should be just about perfect.
However I’m already starting to get frustrated with it, and I’ve only played it three times, cashing once and coming close the other two. Last week there were three tables left when I busted from just of 90 runners. This week I finished 17th from 98, with 9 getting paid. One coinflip can make the difference between money (and having to decide just how much you should tip the dealers in a self-dealt tournament) and just finishing early enough to get the last tube back (Barbican station closes at 00:30, and I was running through the barrier at 00:15).
For a £50 tournament, the structure is surprisingly oppressive. With a starting stack of 2500 and 20 minute blinds, you get an hour of poker followed by three hours of racing off random cards and trying to get lucky. When the blinds were 600/1200, the average stack was little more than 6000. It never really gets any better than this. Players drop fast, with an all-in on almost every hand. There’s almost never a smaller raise than the whole lot, even for the chip leaders who will only end up playing against a crippled stack that actually represents a fair chunk of their hard earned chips and leaves themselves crippled when a miracle four hits, or something.
I went home after facing a situation that I don’t think could have played out any other way. I hope someone will correct me if I was a complete donkey here. I am on the big blind with 6600 left, which is now falling behind the pack, but I haven’t had any kind of stealing opportunity for two rounds and playing 8 handed the blinds are eating me faster than ever. My blind is 2000, leaving me with 4600. A player makes a minimum raise to 4000 and everyone else folds. I look down at J9s. If I fold, I have a small blind of 1000 to post next hand and 3600 more which won’t do any damage, which would be a sorry option to take if my hand was completely hopeless, but in this situation J9s is much too good to let go. The only choice is whether to push all-in right away or call and move in on the flop regardless. I plumped for the latter, although I can’t really see the extra 2400 into a pot of 9000 ever getting any hand to fold. Maybe if the board comes AKQ I could force a small pair to pass. Unlikely though.
After fighting for nearly 3 hours to stay alive against the madness that was happening, my fate was sealed by a queen-high flop to give my opponent’s KQ an almost certain winner.
Obviously three of these is not enough to judge whether I have any kind of long term edge. Although there are some very good players there they make up only a fraction of the field of nearly 100 players. The dilemma I have is that I actually feel quite confident about playing this again, it’s just such hard work in the later stages – AND the middle stages! – that I just don’t know if it’s how I want to spend my evening when I’m working away from home.
Played the EPT Baden satellite today with the W$ I cashed in from not playing the Dublin satellite last weekend. Very tough game. I raised once and folded to a reraise and after that they were all over me – two players in particular, both Scandinavian if you think that’s relevant…. Couldn’t get any respect and couldn’t pick up any pots uncontested, and never saw a hand to do any real damage.
Whittled away I end up losing a race in the most frustrating way. Can you believe the board didn’t pair?
Preflop: Hero is BB with Js, Jd.
6 folds, SB raises to t300, Hero raises to t1445 and is all-in, SB calls t1145.
Flop: (t2890) Jc, Kc, Ts (2 players)
Turn: (t2890) 5s (2 players)
River: (t2890) Ac (2 players)
Hero has Js Jd (three of a kind, jacks).
SB has As Qs (straight, ace high).
So I’m not going to Switzerland and I’m also not going to Vegas. 4th in tonights Poker Dome qualifier on Mansion. Which was much softer by the way, but you’d expect that for $22 instead of $475. I had aces cracked early on, fought my way back, ran into quads with a full house, managed to not go broke and almost recovered before finally going out 4th with 2 getting seats. A good performance considering the beats, but not enough to put me on the road to anywhere.
|
|
Comments