Sunday, December 23, 2007
Pocket Queens Pre-Flop
In the continuing saga of my venture into MTT online, I have run across the problem of what to do with QQ pre-flop. Let me clarify first of all that this thought process refers to what to do with QQ pre-flop IF you are in a position to have a choice. Obviously if your stack has dwindled to anywhere near 10x BB, you are in no positon to be choosy. At that point, you are going to push with QQ pre-flop even if you are the third over-shover. But what about when you don't NEED to push? Can you lay QQ down pre-flop? Should you? If so, when?
Let me give some background first of all. Over the last week and a half or so that I have been playing MTT online, I have taken QQ all in pre-flop and run into KK or AA about seven times. In each of these cases I have asked myself...could this have been avoided? The most recent incident was yesterday and things went down like this: I was playing in the $15K Guarantee with Rebuys (which, if you look at my stats, you will see that I have been moneying in quite frequently...look up stats for any player at http://www.officialpokerrankings.com/ My screen name is BricktopUS) and I was well above average chip stack after the first break. The action was opened by another large chip stack two under the gun for 5x BB. This seemed like a weird size raise to me since there were no antes and he was opening. It was mucked around to me. I was in the Horn (the position right before the Cut Off) and I looked down and saw QQ. So naturally, I re-raised to about 3x his raise. Everyone mucked back to him and he shoved. So, at this point, if I muck the queens, I still have a slightly above average chip stack. Of course, if I double through him, I am a monster chip leader and can probably coast to the money quite easily. I thought about it for a long time and then called. He had KK and I was out of the tourney.
Now hindsight being what it is, it's really easy for me to look at the situation and speculate as to what the right play was. But what if he had had JJ or AK and my QQ had held? Then I wouldn't be so quick to question my decision.
I'm really in a quandry about this one so I went for advice to three poker buddies...Devo, Bear, and Happy Donkey. Devo noted in a reply to my email that he felt that there WERE certain situations in which you could fold QQ pre-flop, but probably only 1-3% of the time. Bear, on the other hand, pointed out that when you re-raise or call a re-raise all in pre-flop with QQ, you have to reasonalby expect to see AK a lot of the time (in which case you are still coin flipping) and sometimes you will see KK or AA. Of course AQ or JJ would be the best scenario, but those are probably going to greet you in that situation less than one third of the time. Bear further pointed out that if you are not in a situation in the tournament where you are ready to put your life on the line on a coin flip, you might want to consider laying down the QQ. Happy Donkey and I discussed it further and we came up with the additional observation that QQ really is CONSIDERABLY weaker than KK. I would probably never or only in some very rare, bubble type situation lay down KK pre-flop. Why? Because the only hand that beats it is AA. KK not only beats every other hand, it DOMINATES every other hand. QQ on the other hand is dominated by two hands...AA and KK, and it is coinflipping with another...AK. So we decided that AA and KK are in a league of their own, and there is a rather large gap there in strength between KK and QQ.
Ultimately, after seeking out everyone's advice on the topic, I reached the following conclusion: It seems to me that during MTT you have three distinct portions of the tourney...beginning, middle, and end. During the beginning portion, everyone has roughly the same amount of chips because only a few people have doubled up yet or become short stacked. As a result, you do not have a chip cushion to protect you from having to put all your chips in the middle on any given pot. You are going to have to risk your tournament life, most likely, at least once in this period in order to double up, which is usually critical. Also, perhaps more importantly, everyone else at the table is in the same mind set...they are all looking to double up and grow their chip stack, so they are more likely to put all their chips in with slightly less than pristine holdings. (I am speaking here only of MTT online with mid size buy ins...large tourneys online, and even more so live, play totally differently in the beginning stages from what I hear...much more conservative as no one wants to be knocked out in the first few rounds.) So at this point in online play, we should probably be willing to get all our chips in the middle pre-flop with QQ most of the time and take our chances...we need that opportunity to double up. Once we move to the next phase of the tournament, however, things change. During the middle phase, which I would define as beginning somewhere between 1.5 hours and 2 hours into the average MTT, stack sizes begin to spread out. There become noticeable groupings of short stacks, average, and chip leaders. During this phase, we are looking to grow our chips by picking on short stacks and using position plays. At this point, we want to gain as many chips as possible while facing as little resistance as possible. We are not so much concerned during the middle stages with our cards as we are with finding places to steel blinds and antes. During this middle phase, we should play much more cautiously pre-flop if we find ourselves in a raise, re-raise confrontation with another big stack. In the example I cited above, I definitely now believe that I should have laid the queens down. Finally, once we reach the money, we enter the late stage or end game of tournament play. At this point, blinds and antes tend to accelerate quickly and people start, once again, playing more aggressively. At that point, I think we go back to being willing to gamble a little in order to build enough chips to compete at the final table. I probably would be unwilling in most situations in late tourney play to lay down QQ pre-flop.
I would be very interested to hear anyone else's take on this topic.
Until Next Time...May your days be merry and bright, and may all the fishies at your table bite!
Let me give some background first of all. Over the last week and a half or so that I have been playing MTT online, I have taken QQ all in pre-flop and run into KK or AA about seven times. In each of these cases I have asked myself...could this have been avoided? The most recent incident was yesterday and things went down like this: I was playing in the $15K Guarantee with Rebuys (which, if you look at my stats, you will see that I have been moneying in quite frequently...look up stats for any player at http://www.officialpokerrankings.com/ My screen name is BricktopUS) and I was well above average chip stack after the first break. The action was opened by another large chip stack two under the gun for 5x BB. This seemed like a weird size raise to me since there were no antes and he was opening. It was mucked around to me. I was in the Horn (the position right before the Cut Off) and I looked down and saw QQ. So naturally, I re-raised to about 3x his raise. Everyone mucked back to him and he shoved. So, at this point, if I muck the queens, I still have a slightly above average chip stack. Of course, if I double through him, I am a monster chip leader and can probably coast to the money quite easily. I thought about it for a long time and then called. He had KK and I was out of the tourney.
Now hindsight being what it is, it's really easy for me to look at the situation and speculate as to what the right play was. But what if he had had JJ or AK and my QQ had held? Then I wouldn't be so quick to question my decision.
I'm really in a quandry about this one so I went for advice to three poker buddies...Devo, Bear, and Happy Donkey. Devo noted in a reply to my email that he felt that there WERE certain situations in which you could fold QQ pre-flop, but probably only 1-3% of the time. Bear, on the other hand, pointed out that when you re-raise or call a re-raise all in pre-flop with QQ, you have to reasonalby expect to see AK a lot of the time (in which case you are still coin flipping) and sometimes you will see KK or AA. Of course AQ or JJ would be the best scenario, but those are probably going to greet you in that situation less than one third of the time. Bear further pointed out that if you are not in a situation in the tournament where you are ready to put your life on the line on a coin flip, you might want to consider laying down the QQ. Happy Donkey and I discussed it further and we came up with the additional observation that QQ really is CONSIDERABLY weaker than KK. I would probably never or only in some very rare, bubble type situation lay down KK pre-flop. Why? Because the only hand that beats it is AA. KK not only beats every other hand, it DOMINATES every other hand. QQ on the other hand is dominated by two hands...AA and KK, and it is coinflipping with another...AK. So we decided that AA and KK are in a league of their own, and there is a rather large gap there in strength between KK and QQ.
Ultimately, after seeking out everyone's advice on the topic, I reached the following conclusion: It seems to me that during MTT you have three distinct portions of the tourney...beginning, middle, and end. During the beginning portion, everyone has roughly the same amount of chips because only a few people have doubled up yet or become short stacked. As a result, you do not have a chip cushion to protect you from having to put all your chips in the middle on any given pot. You are going to have to risk your tournament life, most likely, at least once in this period in order to double up, which is usually critical. Also, perhaps more importantly, everyone else at the table is in the same mind set...they are all looking to double up and grow their chip stack, so they are more likely to put all their chips in with slightly less than pristine holdings. (I am speaking here only of MTT online with mid size buy ins...large tourneys online, and even more so live, play totally differently in the beginning stages from what I hear...much more conservative as no one wants to be knocked out in the first few rounds.) So at this point in online play, we should probably be willing to get all our chips in the middle pre-flop with QQ most of the time and take our chances...we need that opportunity to double up. Once we move to the next phase of the tournament, however, things change. During the middle phase, which I would define as beginning somewhere between 1.5 hours and 2 hours into the average MTT, stack sizes begin to spread out. There become noticeable groupings of short stacks, average, and chip leaders. During this phase, we are looking to grow our chips by picking on short stacks and using position plays. At this point, we want to gain as many chips as possible while facing as little resistance as possible. We are not so much concerned during the middle stages with our cards as we are with finding places to steel blinds and antes. During this middle phase, we should play much more cautiously pre-flop if we find ourselves in a raise, re-raise confrontation with another big stack. In the example I cited above, I definitely now believe that I should have laid the queens down. Finally, once we reach the money, we enter the late stage or end game of tournament play. At this point, blinds and antes tend to accelerate quickly and people start, once again, playing more aggressively. At that point, I think we go back to being willing to gamble a little in order to build enough chips to compete at the final table. I probably would be unwilling in most situations in late tourney play to lay down QQ pre-flop.
I would be very interested to hear anyone else's take on this topic.
Until Next Time...May your days be merry and bright, and may all the fishies at your table bite!
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Online Poker Tracking Software
So now that I am getting into playing online, I thought it was about time I purchased one of those online tracking programs that shows you statistics on your opponents as you play. I was planning on purchasing Poker Tracker along with a compatible program that takes the Tracker information and turns it into a Heads Up Display (HUD) that overlays on top of your Full Tilt screen (or Ultimate Bet, Poker Stars, whatever.) This software keeps track of every hand that any of your opponents play while you are at a table with them. It then turns this information into statistics that show you (among other things) how many flops they see, how often they show down at the river, their win % at showdown, how often they attempt to steal blinds, how often they fold to steal attempts, etc. Of course, this is highly useful information. The problem was that since Poker Tracker accumulates and stores all of this data on your computer's hard drive (as opposed to on their servers), you have to have a reasonably proficient computer in order to run it properly. Also, my understanding is, that while you can license the software to run on up to two machines, it does not integrate the data from one machine to the other, so it is definitely in your best interest to accumulate the data and play all of your tourneys from the same machine.
This all being the case, I decided last night to go out and splurge on a new laptop. (I'm fairly certain that the one I was using was a Commodore something.) I bought a nice, new Fujitsu (they told me that these are the best brand) Life Book. I am already enjoying it immensely, and especially enjoying the part where I can play three different sites and not crash my machine.
So this morning, just as I am getting ready to buy Poker Tracker, I remember seeing on Annette Obrestad's website a mention of a tracker software called Poker Crusher. I looked it up on her blog (which by the way is excellent....annetteobrestad.blogspot.com) and it looked like it was even better than Poker Tracker. It gives basically the same statistics, but instead of accumulating them on ONLY the tables that you play on, it taps into a database of millions (supposedly) of hands that have been and are being observed and tracked regardless of whether you are online or not. Plus, Poker Crusher stores all that data on their databases instead of on your hard drive...which is great, since those data files can get really big from what I've heard. The downside is that Poker Crusher charges a monthly subscription fee (which is pretty steep) especially compared to the one time fee charged by Poker Tracker. So, needless to say, before I purchased this, I wanted to make sure the program was all it was cracked up to be.
So I downloaded the 5 day free trial version of Poker Crusher and installed it on my computer. I was super excited to see how it worked, so I immediately opened Full Tilt and sat down in a one table sit and go. Of the 10 players at the table, three had no hand history/stats what-so-ever. Of the seven remaining, only one person showed stats based on a hand history of more than 1000 hands. This seemed pretty odd to me as I know that a lot of these sit and go players grind out several SNGs every day. So I clicked on my own stats to see what's up. They had only tracked me in their database for a little over 300 tournament hands (information current through today's date according to their system.) Since I've played literally thousands of tournament hands per day for the last week and a half, that was pretty disappointing to me. It certainly seemed that they were not tracking nearly as many hands as they led people to believe. I also had some issues with usability and the HUD interface.
I have sent an email to customer service at Poker Crusher asking them to address my concerns. I let them know that if their software can do what they say it can do, then I am definitely interesting in purchasing it, but if not, it's a steep price to pay for what Poker Tracker can do equally well.
Has anyone out there used either Poker Tracker or (more specifically) Poker Crusher? I would love comments on either interface. I know that Poker Crusher is quite new, so I don't know if anyone is on there yet, but if you are, let me know what you think.
Until next time...Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!
This all being the case, I decided last night to go out and splurge on a new laptop. (I'm fairly certain that the one I was using was a Commodore something.) I bought a nice, new Fujitsu (they told me that these are the best brand) Life Book. I am already enjoying it immensely, and especially enjoying the part where I can play three different sites and not crash my machine.
So this morning, just as I am getting ready to buy Poker Tracker, I remember seeing on Annette Obrestad's website a mention of a tracker software called Poker Crusher. I looked it up on her blog (which by the way is excellent....annetteobrestad.blogspot.com) and it looked like it was even better than Poker Tracker. It gives basically the same statistics, but instead of accumulating them on ONLY the tables that you play on, it taps into a database of millions (supposedly) of hands that have been and are being observed and tracked regardless of whether you are online or not. Plus, Poker Crusher stores all that data on their databases instead of on your hard drive...which is great, since those data files can get really big from what I've heard. The downside is that Poker Crusher charges a monthly subscription fee (which is pretty steep) especially compared to the one time fee charged by Poker Tracker. So, needless to say, before I purchased this, I wanted to make sure the program was all it was cracked up to be.
So I downloaded the 5 day free trial version of Poker Crusher and installed it on my computer. I was super excited to see how it worked, so I immediately opened Full Tilt and sat down in a one table sit and go. Of the 10 players at the table, three had no hand history/stats what-so-ever. Of the seven remaining, only one person showed stats based on a hand history of more than 1000 hands. This seemed pretty odd to me as I know that a lot of these sit and go players grind out several SNGs every day. So I clicked on my own stats to see what's up. They had only tracked me in their database for a little over 300 tournament hands (information current through today's date according to their system.) Since I've played literally thousands of tournament hands per day for the last week and a half, that was pretty disappointing to me. It certainly seemed that they were not tracking nearly as many hands as they led people to believe. I also had some issues with usability and the HUD interface.
I have sent an email to customer service at Poker Crusher asking them to address my concerns. I let them know that if their software can do what they say it can do, then I am definitely interesting in purchasing it, but if not, it's a steep price to pay for what Poker Tracker can do equally well.
Has anyone out there used either Poker Tracker or (more specifically) Poker Crusher? I would love comments on either interface. I know that Poker Crusher is quite new, so I don't know if anyone is on there yet, but if you are, let me know what you think.
Until next time...Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!
Monday, December 17, 2007
Back to Back
Quick update on the progress of MTT online: A few days ago, I accidentally entered a Limit Hold 'Em tournament on Full Tilt that I thought was a No Limit tourney. I didn't realize my mistake until I went to raise the first time and realized that I could only double the big blind....ooops! Fortunately, I went on to win my "mistake", so that ended up being a profitable blunder.
The very next day, I took first in the $18 NL Bounty tournament on Ultimate Bet. That's two first place finishes in consecutive days. Hooray!
I should point out that as I am accumulating experience online, I am simultaneously reading Harrington on Hold 'Em (two volumes) and the Full Tilt Tournament Guide. They are both EXCELLENT and I highly recommend that anyone who wants to get into tournaments order and read them.
The very next day, I took first in the $18 NL Bounty tournament on Ultimate Bet. That's two first place finishes in consecutive days. Hooray!
I should point out that as I am accumulating experience online, I am simultaneously reading Harrington on Hold 'Em (two volumes) and the Full Tilt Tournament Guide. They are both EXCELLENT and I highly recommend that anyone who wants to get into tournaments order and read them.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Position Play in MTT
I recently heard about Annette Obrestad (the teenage phenom from Norway) winning a Sit and Go tournament without looking at her hole cards. I thought to myself, "this I gotta see!" And fortunately, you can. The video of the tourney is available on YouTube. I am pasting a link at the upper right hand side of my blog. This is fascinating material for anyone trying to improve their MTT play (as I am.) Look at how she plays position, looking to steal blinds and pick up pots in situations where there is unlikely to be any resistance. This illustrates one of the concepts that I am learning and finding very fascinating about tournament play as opposed to cash play: in tournament play what YOU hold in your hand is not nearly as important as what your opponents DO NOT hold in theirs. Look to pick up chips when there is no resistance to your doing so. Use fold equity to do most of your chip accumulation and then only confront other players when you are certain you have the best of it. As you watch the video, you will notice that Annette often makes moves that are not necessarily correct position play, and she undoubtedly gets lucky several times when she calls someones all in with the worst of it. But if you focus on the many good plays she makes as opposed to her suck outs, you will still learn a lot.
I guarantee watching it will improve your understanding of chip accumulation in tournaments and proper position play. The quality of the video is pretty poor so I suggest that you do NOT blow it up to full screen, but you can still see enough of what is going on to gain valuable information. I suggest that as you are watching you just let the video play until Annette enters a hand then you pause it and note the chip stacks of the players that are already in the hand, how many limpers there are, if there was a raise in front of her, etc. Then continue on.
I guarantee watching it will improve your understanding of chip accumulation in tournaments and proper position play. The quality of the video is pretty poor so I suggest that you do NOT blow it up to full screen, but you can still see enough of what is going on to gain valuable information. I suggest that as you are watching you just let the video play until Annette enters a hand then you pause it and note the chip stacks of the players that are already in the hand, how many limpers there are, if there was a raise in front of her, etc. Then continue on.
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Online MTT...What Fun!
My experience with online poker thus far has been very limited. I tried a few different types of cash games, but never really did well, and honestly didn't really apply myself. I enjoy live poker so much, and I am lucky enough to live in Vegas, so I've never really felt the need to play online. Until lately. I have to admit that the lure of tournaments is starting to suck me in. The internet is such an efficient way to gain lots of tournament experience in a very short time. I consider myself a true student of the game in all regards and I strive constantly to improve myself as a cash player. If I want to branch out into tournament play, what better gateway than playing online?
The first night I played online, I entered six tournaments and didn't cash in any of them. The next night, I cashed high enough to pay for my entries, but basically broke even. The third night, I made around $200 total and then last night, I entered five tournaments, moneyed in four out of five, and placed third in the $11,500 guarantee. That netted me about $1400 for the night. Not a bad start to my online tourney career.
That having been said, I know that I have a lot to learn and a long way to go. I am really having fun, but I also recognize that tournaments are going to be a very big new challenge for me and that they can also be extremely frustrating. Working for hours to get yourself in a great position only to be sucked out on for all of your chips by some random donkey is extremely annoying. Time will tell whether I will have the skills or patience for this type of play.
Until then...watch out for BricktopUS on Full Tilt...I'll be donking it up at a table near you!
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Donkey, Donkey, Who's Got the Donkey?
Last night while playing at Binions (where the $1/$2 games can sometimes play more like $5/$10 games since there is no max buy-in) the following hand came up:
I was in the big blind with K 5 of clubs. The pot was unraised with about six other callers. The flop came K 9 6 with two clubs. The small blind bet out $15 and I smooth called behind. (At this point my hand is not worsened by more callers behind me so I am trying to build a pot rather than isolate against a hand that is probably ahead of mine at the moment.) Unfortunately, no one else called and the turn came off a 4 of diamonds. The SB again bet out, this time $50. At this point, I was fairly certain, based on my observations of the player thus far, that he had a king with a better kicker. The obvious play at this point would be to flat call with my hand and hope that a club or a five came off on the river. But there is a better play, in my opinion, that has a lot of upside and very little downside.
Here's what I did: Instead of flat calling the $50, I raised to $120. This raise accomplishes three great things: First, by raising into a board like that, it is very hard for the bettor to put me on anything less than two pair. This means that against a tight aggressive player (which this guy appeared to be), I have instant fold equity. I would imagine that K 10 and possibly even K J will be folding to that sort of raise. Second, if he doesn't fold, it is extremely difficult for him to bet back into me on the river, so I am most likely going to be able to check behind him if I don't hit my re-draw. This is important because had I simply checked behing him, and had the flush draw not appeared, he would very likely have bet back into me on the river. And at that point, depending on what he bet, I might have been getting enough pot odds to make it necessary to call with naked top pair, even if I suspected that my kicker wasn't good. Lastly, and most importantly, raising on the turn set me up for a bigger payoff if I did hit my re-draw. As it was, he did call my raise on the turn, I hit my flush on the river, he checked, I bet $140 for value and made it so that he was almost pot committed to calling me based on the size of the pot. He did and I got paid off. Had I simply smooth called his bet on the turn, he would certainly have noticed the flush possibility on the river, would have checked into me, and I could probably have only squeezed another $60 or so out of him, because I would have defined my hand so clearly by calling two streets that he would have a hard time putting me on a hand that did not beat him.
Ironically, after the hand was over, I got a little bit of trash talk from some other players at the table about how badly I had played the hand. They acknowledged that I had flopped a monster, but couldn't understand why I would raise on the turn when I was (by that time) not a favorite to catch my re-draw. Had they considered the above factors, perhaps they would have thought differently. Fortunately, I don't mind being considered a donkey. It's my favorite table image of all.
Until next time...HEE HAW!
I was in the big blind with K 5 of clubs. The pot was unraised with about six other callers. The flop came K 9 6 with two clubs. The small blind bet out $15 and I smooth called behind. (At this point my hand is not worsened by more callers behind me so I am trying to build a pot rather than isolate against a hand that is probably ahead of mine at the moment.) Unfortunately, no one else called and the turn came off a 4 of diamonds. The SB again bet out, this time $50. At this point, I was fairly certain, based on my observations of the player thus far, that he had a king with a better kicker. The obvious play at this point would be to flat call with my hand and hope that a club or a five came off on the river. But there is a better play, in my opinion, that has a lot of upside and very little downside.
Here's what I did: Instead of flat calling the $50, I raised to $120. This raise accomplishes three great things: First, by raising into a board like that, it is very hard for the bettor to put me on anything less than two pair. This means that against a tight aggressive player (which this guy appeared to be), I have instant fold equity. I would imagine that K 10 and possibly even K J will be folding to that sort of raise. Second, if he doesn't fold, it is extremely difficult for him to bet back into me on the river, so I am most likely going to be able to check behind him if I don't hit my re-draw. This is important because had I simply checked behing him, and had the flush draw not appeared, he would very likely have bet back into me on the river. And at that point, depending on what he bet, I might have been getting enough pot odds to make it necessary to call with naked top pair, even if I suspected that my kicker wasn't good. Lastly, and most importantly, raising on the turn set me up for a bigger payoff if I did hit my re-draw. As it was, he did call my raise on the turn, I hit my flush on the river, he checked, I bet $140 for value and made it so that he was almost pot committed to calling me based on the size of the pot. He did and I got paid off. Had I simply smooth called his bet on the turn, he would certainly have noticed the flush possibility on the river, would have checked into me, and I could probably have only squeezed another $60 or so out of him, because I would have defined my hand so clearly by calling two streets that he would have a hard time putting me on a hand that did not beat him.
Ironically, after the hand was over, I got a little bit of trash talk from some other players at the table about how badly I had played the hand. They acknowledged that I had flopped a monster, but couldn't understand why I would raise on the turn when I was (by that time) not a favorite to catch my re-draw. Had they considered the above factors, perhaps they would have thought differently. Fortunately, I don't mind being considered a donkey. It's my favorite table image of all.
Until next time...HEE HAW!
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Weird Tactics
Last night I was playing with some friends at Ceasar's and I ran into one of the resident annoyances that lurk around the lower stakes No Limit games. His name is Fisher and apparently his MO is to sit at a table, play for half an orbit or so, then get up and walk for almost an hour or until he is about to get picked up. Then he'll come back and sit for a few minutes, take his blind, and then get up and walk around for another ridiculously long period of time. He does this for no other purpose than to annoy the other players at the table. Last night, he was warned that he was third man walking, and even though the entire table called floor over three times to get him removed, we had no list so they wouldn't pick him up.
So he comes back to the table, sits down, and decides to start in on my friend and I. We were sitting next to each other at the table so he began commenting to the player next to him (and anyone else that would listen) that we were colluding. A few minutes later he got heads up with my friend and pushed all in for about four times the pot. As my buddy is thinking, this old guy starts heckling him. Then he looks at me and says, "What's wrong, cat got your tongue?" He continues, "Nothing to say now?" So being the calm, cool, collected, ultra-zeny chick that I am, I ask him if he'd like to take it outside right now. I told him that I was pretty sure I could take him, even without the help of my buddies. For some odd reason he pretty much stopped talking at that point.
Anyway, one of my personal pet peeves is people that try to use cheap tricks to knock other players off their game or get some kind of advantage. I mean if you can't win on the strength of your play, just lose peacefully and let the rest of us play cards.
The game itself was incredibly soft. I think I took down somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 pots on bluffs and semi-bluffs and only got caught once. Unfortunately, although I was super successful taking down medium sized pots, it seemed like everything I got involved in big pots I either failed to win my races or got sucked out on. So I ended up logging a small loss for the night, which was especially frustrating given how well I felt I was playing. Ah well...there's always tomorrow.
Until next time...remember, if your table mates annoy you, there's sometimes no substitute for a well timed bluff.
So he comes back to the table, sits down, and decides to start in on my friend and I. We were sitting next to each other at the table so he began commenting to the player next to him (and anyone else that would listen) that we were colluding. A few minutes later he got heads up with my friend and pushed all in for about four times the pot. As my buddy is thinking, this old guy starts heckling him. Then he looks at me and says, "What's wrong, cat got your tongue?" He continues, "Nothing to say now?" So being the calm, cool, collected, ultra-zeny chick that I am, I ask him if he'd like to take it outside right now. I told him that I was pretty sure I could take him, even without the help of my buddies. For some odd reason he pretty much stopped talking at that point.
Anyway, one of my personal pet peeves is people that try to use cheap tricks to knock other players off their game or get some kind of advantage. I mean if you can't win on the strength of your play, just lose peacefully and let the rest of us play cards.
The game itself was incredibly soft. I think I took down somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 pots on bluffs and semi-bluffs and only got caught once. Unfortunately, although I was super successful taking down medium sized pots, it seemed like everything I got involved in big pots I either failed to win my races or got sucked out on. So I ended up logging a small loss for the night, which was especially frustrating given how well I felt I was playing. Ah well...there's always tomorrow.
Until next time...remember, if your table mates annoy you, there's sometimes no substitute for a well timed bluff.
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