I always used to say that it was very dangerous to go to a casino to play poker and not be able to leave until a certain time. It would happen to me only rarely, but when it did I was always pretty stressed out. Like if I had to pick someone up at the airport, or if Danielle was dropping me off and going to see her horse. Propping basically affords you with this clusterfuck on a daily basis.
Tonight should have been good. I played 3/6 for an hour and a half and took some absurd beats (oh my god those people are just so bad....two players at my table really didn't even know the order of operations for checking and betting) but somehow managed to win $30 and not gouge any one's eyes out with a spoon. Then I played 8/16 for 15 minutes and got bludgeoned, and then I sat in a fullish 40/80 for an hour and won a rack. Eventually a list developed and I gave up my seat, happy to be up nearly $1000 for the night and knowing full well I'd be back in the game in less than 60 minutes. I played a little more 8/16, got bludgeoned again for 30 minutes (total time in the 8/16 game tonight was about 45 minutes, and I didn't drag a pot and lost over a rack). At 3:15 I went back into the 40/80, and all signs pointed towards it breaking early. There weren't many players with true all night staying power, and we even got down to 4 handed around 4:30am. But KL reappeared (after claiming he was going home) and we soldiered on 5 handed for the rest of my shift, with another player even showing up at 5:45 so that the game was still 5 handed when I left.
My last 20 minutes, however, were a complete disaster. When you play as high as 40/80 and your desired average win for the day is just a couple hundred dollars, things can obviously go extremely well or extremely poorly, relative to that desired average win, very quickly. This is obviously something I try not to think about at the table, but when you spend the first 6.5 hours of your 7 hour shift winning it's unnerving to pick up immediately after losing $1000, which is exactly what I did tonight. The hands weren't even that interesting.
I open AJhh and a guy I'd rather not name and Lara defend their blinds. He check/raises the J88ss-Tc turn and even though he basically NEVER bluffs I find myself unable to fold the hand because it's really hard to believe somebody ALWAYS has top top beat here in a 5 handed 40/80 game and even if he does the straight I have 4 outs to boat up. So I call down and see Q9ss. Whatever.
In my final big blind the complete maniac on my immediate right open raises the small blind (for the nth out of n possible times he could have open raised) and I 3-bet red KQo. He caps it and I just call, basically planning to call down no matter what. This is the same guy who bet/3-bet a flush draw on the turn (with the board already paired, mind you) then c/r'ed the river when he got there (the other guy had the nut flush it was so freaking awesome). Once it is heads up and he has any possible hope of winning the hand (meaning it is the flop and he has a gutshot or better, or it is preflop and he has two cards) he simply will not stop betting. As an aside earlier in the night he opened the button with 98s and I 3-bet with TT and the flop was obviously T76 and I obviously didn't boat up. I mean really, why would I boat up. So anyway we flop:
KT4hh
He bets and I raise. Had he not capped preflop I might wait til the turn to pop him, but since this isn't a donk and just a c-bet which he'd make with 100 percent of his range I figure he doesn't have that many flush draws that are more appropriately devastated by a turn raise (I did this early to him, waiting til the turn in a blind vs blind situation to raise Q5o on heart on a QJ4hhh-T board). He 3-bets and I decide to just call. Heck he COULD actually have something, he did CAP IT preflop which I hadn't seen him do so far from the small blind.
KT4hh-Td
I was thinking about raising some safe turns, but that definitely isn't one of them. I just call. The river blanks off and I call him again. He shows me T3hh for the frag and a little part of me dies inside.
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2 comments:
I'm more worried about the days where your *first* 20 minutes look like that..
That happens from time to time, but I always take comfort in the fact that I'm going to play for many more hours and I'll likely leave with the taste of something else in my mouth.
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