The Lucky Donut

Pocket nines.  I’d raised to 600 from early position and been reraised all in by another player who developed a bad case of verbal diarrhea.  Whilst I paused to make it look like my decision was harder than it was, he talked himself into a pokery grave.

OK, in fact it was a closer decision than I first thought.  The all in bet was 1400 more to me, so throw in the dead money from the blinds and it’s about 2-1 pot odds.   It’s just about a profitable call against all but the very tightest players, but in a tournament I almost always fold here.  Unless the other guy just got impatient, he doesn’t have to play here with a worse pair than mine, which typically puts someone making this bet on a strong hand which will send me packing more than half the time.  I actually have a few more chips than him, which gives me 8 big blinds and enough time to try to find a better spot than this one.

Tonight, I called.  I’d like to say it’s down to my superlative reading skills, but really the other guy just threw it away.  Whilst I went into the tank – at first acting, but then actually considering just how weak it was to fold here – he started talking:

"It’s a race against your overcards.  I have a pocket pair".

The more he said, the more I believed him.  I just waited and let him carry on as he insisted that he didn’t care if I called, he’d be in good shape.  A look of horror crept over his face when he finally realised that he should have just kept quiet and given me chance to throw away the best hand.  I called and my 99 held up against his pocket sixes.  I’ll still file this one proudly under "trusting my reads", even though I had significant help.

Three days and two nights in working away from home gave me the chance to play back-to-back evenings at Gutshot.  Not that I would have been able to have a quiet night in my hotel room if I wanted to.  Although I’d scored a surprise ensuite room, it was still a shoebox and had a peculiar separate shower and toilet cubicle arrangement at opposite ends of the room.  Opening the door to either bathroom involved moving some piece of furniture in front of some other door.

The tournament was Tuesday’s "beginner night" with a variable buy-in structure that I’ve not come across before.  I don’t think it makes much difference.  You can choose to pay £5, £10, £15 or £20 to start with 500, 1000, 1500 or 2000 chips respectively.  Nobody on my table started with less than 2000, and I can’t imagine the cheaper options are very popular.  There’s a £3 daily membership fee to get into the club now (this did not replace the raked "donations" at cash tables, but there was no additional collection for the tournament).  A £5 tournament with £3 entry fee really doesn’t sound attractive.

I finished about 20th of over 90 players, after deciding to push with KQs.  There were two limpers and I thought I’d found a good spot to pick up a decent pot, or have a hand with a fighting chance if called.  Naturally the first limper called me with AQ and I was doomed.

On Monday I played the £25-£50 pot limit game and I came real close to breaking my streak, going for two good hours without a sniff of anything at all.  My recovery began with a fortunate mistake.  The player to my right had been raising with all kinds of garbage and raised to £7.  This time I found AK and I immediately reraised the pot.  That was £26 apparently, and the mistake was that neither of us bothered to look at my stack.  It left me with just £17 so my bet size couldn’t be have been much more wrong with that small stack.  I’m not crazy about his smooth call either – decide now: either you’re going all the way or you’re not.

There wouldn’t be many flops thats I could to get away from with so little left to play with, so when it came jack-eight-six in three different suits and he checked, I moved in for a pathetic 1/3 pot bet.  A little bit of folding equity can go a long way: he not only folded, but also announced that he was giving up AK.

I definitely owe something to that game.  I’ve not yet been in a big pot where I’ve had the best hand cracked, and not getting unlucky in a £150 pot is what set me up for a winning night this time.  After limping with 67 in the cut-off, the flop was a gorgeous A67.  I found a player who liked his ace and got a pot-sized call on the flop with the rest following on the turn.  What could have been better than a deuce on the turn?  He didn’t show his hand, but it wasn’t AQ as the river brought a queen and my hand held up.

I lose to any ace or deuce here as well as a paired kicker – it’s only 8 cards from 44, but that means I’m still "looking after" £30 from that pot alone, and there have been several others like it.  When it’s my turn to pay back, it’s gonna hurt.

I have a confession to make.  I experimented with straddling last night.  But it was just one time, and I didn’t inhale, so that’s OK, isn’t it?

I wanted to do something to help my solid-as-a-rock image.  I’d hardly played a hand for an hour, then when I did, I got my entire stack in the middle with nothing less than a flopped nut straight.  I was amazed I got any action even then, but it was only going to get trickier to get a call from anyone who had been playing the slightest attention.

Not only that, the player to my left had remembered me, knew that I didn’t fool around and – like most of the players at Gutshot – couldn’t keep information to himself.  When I first sat down, the dealer asked for blinds and said to me "it’s £2 if you want to straddle".  I declined, saying "not this time".  He piped up, laughing, "yeah, and not any time".  So when I actually did stick my two quid in blind, I got a reaction from him as close to a hi-5 as you could ever expect from a young black Londoner wearing a Full Tilt hoodie and an ipod.

With six players calling the straddle, I didn’t have the balls to do anything other than check my option when I see an offsuit ten-five.  Not a great hand to play ever, let alone multi-way and out of position.

When the flop gave me a dreadfully weak top pair though, could I just check-fold?  I probably should – the board was T72, all different suits – but I found myself needing to be seen to throw some chips around, and led out for £10.  One player re-raised the minimum and another called, so it’s £10 back to me for a pot of £64.  Now, finally, I change my mind, panic at the prospect of losing all my newly acquired profit with a garbage hand and give up.

In fact I would have been up against T8 and 75, with the 5 on the turn giving me the best hand and another player a decent second best hand, so I could have done very well out of my moment of madness.  But that’s just some stray results-oriented thinking getting the better of me.  It would be a very poor call if I could actually see the other players’ hands, and a pretty poor call if I thought I might have as many as five outs.

If I do find a call here, I’m not going to put in another chip unless my hand improves, but I’m still not sure what to do if I do hit a miracle.  If I’m counting getting implied odds with a suckout, I have to know where they’re coming from.  Another ten on board would definitely get me into trouble against someone who flopped top pair, or a flopped set.  Improving to two pair gives me not much more than a difficult decision still to make.

I see the potential for only big losses in my future so I fold the hand.  So much for making myself appear looser.  Now I’m the rock who folds top pair to a minimum reraise, getting better than 6-1 on the call.  But looking at the kind of action I was getting in this hand anyway, I guess I can live with it…

Maybe I can’t actually lose in the Gutshot £25-£50 game.  Five evenings, five winning sessions and nearly £300 up.  I have to be running good, the question is just how good?  I really need a losing session to keep a grip on reality.  I left (relatively) early this evening as I was getting tired (but apparently not too tired to brag in a blog entry) and left with £83 of other people’s money in my wallet. 

It all started off so promising when I couldn’t hit a straight draw in a pot that was just too big to let go.  Along with eight (count ’em) others, I’d called a £3 raise from the small blind holding T8 in spades, and the flop brought J93 with two diamonds.  Sixth to act moves all in for his remaining £28 and the player to my right throws his last £14 into the pot.  It’s £28 to call, to win £74, which I can’t pass up.  I could be drawing to only 6 outs for some or all of the pot, and there’s a chance it could be raised behind me, making me play my remaining £40 for not such a great price.  But there could also me more callers, and if I can beat one of them I can beat them all.

Then things got good just after the tournament started.  Our table had been reduced to three-handed, and after a few £5 pots I somehow managed to win another player’s stack with an ace high flush against a smaller flush.  If that happened online with just three players dealt in, you’d say it was fixed.

After I got moved to the dealer-dealt table, the only way I managed to increase my stack for about an hour was by adding the change from my burger to it.  Tipping waitresses with chips is one thing, but letting them give you chips as change for your twenty feels a little bit funny.  Those chips should never have been in play, but nobody seems to care when you bring more chips onto the table, only when you put them in your pocket.  What can you do?

My big hand came well after the burger was just another juicy memory.  I called a pre-flop raise from the huge stack to my right who had been raising every time he played a hand.  KQs was more than good enough to see a flop with, and I was very happy to see five other players join in – had to double check I wasn’t actually in Vegas!  I flopped the nut straight – ace, jack, ten – and let out a little cheer internally.  With two hearts on board and seven players left in, I wanted to find someone who also didn’t like the possible flush draw to get it all in against right now.  I bet £20 into the £35 pot, and only got one call from the pre-flop raiser.  It didn’t really tell me much, but at least I’d ended up with position.

I willed for a black card, and the turn obliged.  Be careful what you wish for though: it was a king, so I still had the nuts, but you’d expect it to kill my action.  How on earth did I actually get a payoff from a worse hand with AKJT on board?  My customer went into the tank for a good nwhile and eventally called my last £50, saying "I don’t believe you".  He turned over king-ten and didn’t improve on the river.  That king had actually helped me, although I’m still not sure how he could call with a very weak two pair on that board (he didn’t believe I had better than ace-nine?) and I was stacking up over £170 as the bully stood up to leave.  He still had about £200 to take home, but he was clearly wounded.

The guy in seat ten has just £17 left in front of him in the £25-£50 buy in pot limit game at Gutshot when it’s time to pay the £3 hourly donation.  Everyone throws in their chips except him.  "Let me just see if I can win a hand", he says, "and then I’ll pay you".  The dealer shrugs whatever – after all the contributions are voluntary, and he’s only working for tips.  It’s just bad karma to mess with the system.

I don’t remember whether he sat down with the full £50 but he hadn’t reloaded, and I’d be surprised if anyone wasn’t aware that he’d not picked up a hand all evening.  That’s clearly a good enough reason to have a bit of a gamble with the club’s money before deciding whether to donate.  The times he gets lucky, he pays his dues afterwards but keeps the extra profit he won from having that £3 in his stack.  The times he loses, the donation simply gets pushed across the table to another player, who surely won’t think to – or see why they should – pay it for him now.

And so it happens.  Mr Cheap manages to get it all in pre-flop with pocket nines and is called by five other players.  Two others make it to showdown with him, both with undercards to his pair, and 99 ends up the third best hand.  Should his hand – by far the best pre-flop – hold up here, he would be £15 better off than he should be thanks to gambling with his risk-free loan.  Funny how these things work themselves out.

On the other hand, sometimes it seems like they don’t want your money.  Tonight I played for four hours and only coughed up the hourly fee once.  The first time they came to collect – after a new table had been running for 90 minutes – most of the players stood up and went to another table or upstairs to the tournament.  We played a few hands three handed before tournament bustees started to join us (it’s freeroll Monday, so this didn’t take long) but they didn’t come back for a donation for another hour and a half, and after that the next time anyone thought to try and collect some actual revenue from the poker tables, I’d already started to leave.

The player to my right, Chen – a young chinese man who I struggled to understand at times, but due just as much to my cloth ears as to the slight accent adorning his perfect English – asked me how the club could make money.  This was after we’d played for over two hours without contributing a penny, so I explained what should happen.  I’d already told him that soft drinks were free, but tonight they weren’t, so at every available opportunity he’d been turning to me and muttering "one pound fifty!" with a cheeky grin.  Hey, tonight you pay for your drinks but the table time is cheap.

I expect that Chen, along with almost everyone else there, probably did not understand the reason for the new sign on the door: "Operated by Clerkenwell Clubs Ltd".  The former company is – and there’s really no better word to use than this – busto.  The question should be not how they make money, but do they actually make money?

Usually the internet room would bring in some revenue, whether it’s from renting out workstations by the hour or offering them free to play Gutshot’s own online poker.  But right now, it’s all offline because the ADSL is disconnected.  I couldn’t possibly believe that this is because they didn’t pay the bill, when there’s a perfectly good alternative explanation: the change of ownership must have confused their ISP enough to result in a full week of downtime.

Anyway, I’m now four for four (which I just discovered should never be written in words) winning sessions in the £25/£50 game.  I’m due a loss for sure, and tonight should have been one.  I got lucky at the right time to finish up £56 instead of… looks like it would have been £12 down.

Holding a pair of tens, I raised the pot from the big blind after 5 people limped and I got 3 callers. The flop was jack-high with 2 small cards.  I checked as did two others and the last player to act bet £10 into the £26 pot.  He only had another £11 left so I made a minimum raise – thinking this would either get me to a fairly cheap showdown against the short stack or tell me for sure that I’m beaten by one of the other players.  It’s not a great play – I’m still making limit hold’em moves that don’t belong in pot limit games and tournament moves that don’t belong in cash games – but it did what I wanted, even if what I wanted to do was not a terribly good idea.

In effect I was taking just better than 2-1 pot odds on the chance that he holds a worse hand than mine – possibly a smaller pocket pair, or that he’s betting overcards in position as a semi-bluff.  In retrospect, as he would have been pot-committed to any raise he almost certainly had to have at least a jack here.   And he did, but I somehow spiked a ten on the river to ourdraw his top pair, top kicker.  Nice hand me.

I’m not sure how many different B&Bs it took before I started to become bothered by the widely adopted "leave your key at reception when you go out" system.  They always tie the key to a larger than usual key fob to stop you running off with it and yesterday’s blue plastic tag was eight inches long, not much less subtle than a breeze block.  When I returned, it was a different receptionist to the one who checked me in, so I was hoping she’d want me to say a little more than just "room one" to let me back in.  But no.

This was Thursday night, and I’d been to Gutshot for the tournament but stayed for the live action after busting out very early.  I played the hand that crippled me dreadfully, check-calling on the river for most of my stack with just an eight-high flush on a paired board.  I was out of position and any hand I could beat would have been silly to not check behind.  After much palaver over whether one player should deal for everyone – in theory to keep things moving more quickly – but then finding that he was not really that great (beginning with a misdeal on the first hand, and not really improving) we’d reverted back to self-deal just in time for me to bust myself with 22 against AT for what few chips I had left.

So by 8.45pm I was in the £25/50 game.  Played for nearly 3 hours, came away with £99 profit. Yes, triple digits would have been a nice achievement but I wasn’t going to chase it, especially as I wanted to catch the last tube.  I started off buying in for £60 because I didn’t have any tenners, and that’s OK apparently when one of the regulars already bent the rules, topping up a few minutes earlier to £100 because "there’s a lot of money on the table".

I got lucky with QQ early on, turning a set and doubling up, funding some of my future donkishness.  I still have too much of a limit hold’em thinking, but at least I’m recognising that, even if I’m not doing enough about it when it matters.  For example, calling a river bet after the turn was checked through, holding just AJ on a board A7472 with three hearts.  Just because it wasn’t a pot-sized bet doesn’t make it worth the call, like it does in the fabulous $2/$4 games in Vegas.

There’s only really one winning hand worth relating.  It earned me two players’ stacks, as well as plenty of abuse from Goscars "Best Moody" winner Feroz, who had delighted us all with a bad beat story before even sitting down.  I was happy to give him another.  "What a fish.  I hate bad players.  How could you think you were winning?".  After taking his stack, I took great pleasure in simply telling him, "I didn’t".

I have Ace Ten in spades in the small blind, but it’s £1/£1 blinds so it doesn’t even cost half a bet to play.  After four limpers, I just check and the big blind raises the pot – five quid more.  A passive player trapped in middle position calls, so the pot is £21 and it’s £5 to me.  It’s worth seeing the flop for sure.

Ace Seven Four.  Top pair for me, but there’s no spades so I don’t have any redraw and I probably need help already.  The big blind bets £10 after I check, and the middle player calls.  I’m facing £10 for a pot of £41, and though I’m probably not ahead I figure the "worst call I ever saw" is actually worth it here for a combination of reasons.

There is a small a chance I’m actually ahead, against some combinations of pocket pairs, aces with poorer kickers or even worse.  A pocket pair 88-KK for the big blind is very possible, and so I’m more concerned about whether the caller slowplaying something much stronger, or just coming along for the ride with any pair.  I also have a chance to improve to a hand that’s most likely a winner.  It’s only 3 outs at best (assuming nobody flopped a set) but it will make top two pair which should get me paid off by a big ace or a worse two pair.  My call closes the action, and it gives me enough information to tell me how to proceed.  The original raiser would have to suicidal to bet out again with any hand worse than a pair of aces after facing two calls with an ace on board, and I’d have to respect any bet from the middle player.  I can easily fold on the turn without losing sleep if I’m facing a bet, so I think it’s £10 well spent.

The turn does brings a lovely – some might say miracle – ten though, and the big blind moves all in for £24, out of turn and without even looking at the next card.  Really, what does this achieve here, except letting me make the easiest trap-check ever?  The other player calls, which worries me a bit, but not enough.  I’m ahead more often than not here, and the pot is huge.  I push for another £27 and get called, they both table Ace King and don’t improve on the river.  The small flop bet and middle player’s smooth call cost them both the pot – it was just cheap enough for me to get a little bit fishy, so I did.

I make it £160 to me and £8 in "donations" to the club.  Everyone’s a winner.  Nearly. 🙂