Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Squeaky

So for some reason I found myself playing 30/60 at HG on Tuesday night. The Bike 40 was terrible (and I have another story entirely here about how exactly we went about giving Wayne another iPad as he put on a fucking laser show to win 42 pots in 5 hours of live at the Bike) and the 20 was meh but I had some scouting that declared the HG 30 juicy and it's on my way home so one thing led to another which led me to Squeaky.

I sit down in seat 3 and immediately met with bitching from the entire table about how long seat 4 has been lobbying. "He's been gone an hour, at least" says seat 8. "How long?" asks the floor, "really"? The next response comes from seat 1 who says "Not an hour, more like 3 or 4" which gets a good chuckle. I can't resist and say "Actually he's over at the Bike" and we all have a good laugh. As the floor pads off to find our player I ask John the nice white prop who has been there for a long time who we're bitching about and he informs me that it's the one, the only....Squeaky. I look John dead in the eye and say "How do I run THIS bad?" and he laughs hysterically. I mean really, it's pretty awful luck to show up at HG basically on a whim for the first time in almost 8 weeks (I checked my books) and be seated next to perhaps the single most irritating player in all of Southern California. Squeaky, you see, is a fucking freak show. Every pot is a contest to see how slowly he can play it, and how much attention he can draw. It's just a disaster, really. The only reason he plays anywhere but Commerce, I think, is that he frequently winds up barred for days or weeks at a time (which I can assure you takes some serious effort).

Sure enough Squeaky returns and the shenanigans continue as if he never left. He's betting and raising a lot (Squeaky is a decent player when he's at his best, which fortunately for the rest of us seems to be almost never) and I can tell things are just a little a miss. Some small pots happen, with him making a show of it all, showing one card to random people at the table (who usually, but not always, are not not in the pot), saying all manner of ridiculous things, gesticulating wildly as he slings chips into the pot, the works basically. Then two pots "of note" transpire in quick succession. The first is innocent enough...to a point.

Kim (aka the machete aka howmany's ex aka the girl who silver medaled a wsop event this year who has never been anything but pleasant to me) opens late (ish....for Kim really anything other than UTG is late) and I make it 3 bets with an ace and a 9 of the same suit in the small blind. Squeaky is upset....he declares that it's personal between him and Kim, this robbing of each other's blinds, and this is the 3rd time I have interfered and unsurprisingly (as he did the first two times I interfered) puts in another raise. Kim calls, I call, we flop:

654r

Come to think of it, I probably should have just folded this flop, but I knew Squeaky was go going bananas and well I'm not really sure what my plan was other than what it always is at HG which is to peel light then get blown off the potentially best hand because I suck at poker. And I probably had flopped a set of diamonds, which is as good a reason as any to continue, so we get to the turn for one bet a piece:

654r-A

Ding ding ding. I check the Squeakster fires Kim calls (at this point I'm putting her on just utter silliness....but even I end up surprised here) and I put in the raise. Squeaky is out of his chair 3 betting me declaring "UPSTAIRS ONCE MORE WE GO" and Kim just eats two cold instantenously and I'm sitting there pretty sure I'm beat but staring down a 15+ bet pot and decide I'm going to spike a 9 and it's going to be fun and call.

654-A-2

That looks harmless enough. I check, he fires with a great flourish and Kim raises without even a second's hesitation. I fast track my hand to the muck (which arguably could have been done two streets and 3.5 bets ago) and Squeaky declares "So sick. Did you take all that heat with pocket 3s? That's so sick" and calls. Kim's response is "It's way sicker than that" and rolls the Q3s for the head shot. Squeaky goes ballistic, ranting and raving about the fact that that's exactly how Kim did so well in the tournament and how he had the chip lead at the final table (which Kim later confirmed meant he came in "about 30th" which I agreed was about how far I downgraded his statement) and I decided it was basically worth the 6 bets I spent on the endeavor.

Hand 2....will be posted tomorrow. I promise. It's time for bed.

2 comments:

Shaman said...

Sounds like Kim! Hope she is still doing well. As far as Kim's position awareness, I would agree with you that anything other than UTG is late enough to raise any hand that she is going to play. Even still, her UTG opening range, is shall we say WIDE.

jesse8888 said...

You could drive a fucking truck through there, but in general yeah she plays pretty good and definitely wins and like I said has never been anything but super duper nice to me and I found out she's a huge dog lover also so that's a big plus in my book as well.