Taking a Shot

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Programming

To bring you this breaking news announcement....Yesterday I posted the biggest win (dollar wise) of my poker career. I shipped a $6800 win in the 40/80 game, and even stuck around for almost 4 hours after my shift ended to round out the last few racks. It was top to bottom just a fantastic day, the kind of win that makes you remember why you're doing this.

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Suggestion Number 1; Other Games

This is the first suggestion I received, so I'm going to write about it and see if it turns out to be interesting:

What non-LHE games have you picked up since you moved to LA? What was your motivation for playing them? Rate how good you are on a scale of 1-10 at each of them. Favorite? Least favorite?

To be honest, I have been completely remiss in attempting to learn other games, mainly because they simply don't exist out here. In my current situation I often have occasion to play a few hands of random other games with other casino employees (meaning mostly other professional poker players) and I haven't really been too gung ho to do that. But the total list of games I have played is pretty staggering:

NLHE

Stud 8

Omaha 8

Stud Hi

Razz

Badugi

Deuce to Seven Triple Draw

Badeucey

Badonci (invented my MikeL and I)

Razzledugi

Razzdugi

Chinese Poker

The list goes on and on and on. Like I said, most of the games have been played short handed with other professionals, and we usually pick one based on how we're feeling and tend to go through phases. For example we used to play a ton of deuce, but got bored and started playing Razzdugi, and are currently in a phase of Chinese (13 card) poker. From a practical point of view I have put almost no effort into improving at any game other than deuce (for which I read some posts, listened to some Death Donkey podcasts, and watched a few videos), and even that has kind of trailed off for now. If I was interested in playing NL I could probably get myself into games more often than I do, but I simply find the game unfathomably boring and slow. The small games I see, however, tend to be filled with just awful players who simply don't understand one or two very basic things, the primary one being that if the blinds are 2-3 and somebody raises to 20, calling with pocket 4s is probably not a good idea when you have $130 in your stack. And that weakness pretty much sums up how I play the $100-$300 buyin (2-3 blind) no limit game. I call plenty of small raises in position (when people raise to like $9, or some such, and get 3 callers) with hands that make monsters, and make larger than standard raises with my premium starting hands. That's about it. I know lots of players who have played lots of nl, and they generally concur that everyone is terrible and that good thinking players can get a lot of bang for their bankroll buck. Many of the props I see basically serve as an existence proof that the games are super soft; there is no way these guys are beating the 20/40 game, so they must be hiding out in the nl games turning a small profit.

Wow OK so that basically turned into me pontificating on nl cash games. To answer your question I am reasonably ok at them (I'm sure I could beat the small games) but hate them. I also really don't like stud games because they have no flow (mentioned previously), also suffer from being slow, and require me to pay lots of attention. I do however find Razzdugi to be a very fun 3 handed game, and in general like the draw games quite a bit (deuce more than badugi) because I think they are actually somewhat rich in (at least to me) interesting decisions and are just plain fun. You get FIVE CARDS and can draw as many as you want THREE TIMES! It's just....fun. Also there's lots more room for creative bluffing, etc. Or maybe it's just all shiny and new to me so I like it, I dunno. While I enjoy these games a lot more than nl, I'm confident I'd have a very easy time putting myself into profitable nl spots while I could have a hard time getting into a deuce game where I wasn't one of the worst players, simply because so many bad players play nl, but anytime a deuce game goes professional seem to flock to it. So I guess I'm not going to answer your question rating myself from 1 to 10 because I'm not really sure what the scale would be based on, but I will say that I'd love to play draw games 40 hours a week but would probably lose my ass, and I'd hate to play nl 40 hours a week but could probably grind out a small profit.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Taking Suggestions

I just received a 2p2 PM (to which, BTW, I am severely allergic) from a friend offering suggestions as to things I should blog about. His ideas were:

1. What non-LHE games have you picked up since you moved to LA? What was your motivation for playing them? Rate how good you are on a scale of 1-10 at each of them. Favorite? Least favorite?

2. Describe your new house. Likes? Dislikes? Pics?

I think both are good, and I'm opening up the floor (or comments section in this case) for more requests. What do you want me to write about? It can be informative, funny, or really anything you want. I'm listening.

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Blogging is Getting Hard

Like, I just don't feel like I have that much to talk about these days. I do the same thing, over and over and over again, and some days I win and some days I lose but on the whole not that much interesting happens. I have the sense that I may be playing kind of badly, at least on occasion, but that's probably because I'm actually trying to make some drastic adjustments to some of the unique characters I deal with on a day to day basis. For one thing today I tried to work on playing hands out of rhythm when the situation dictated it. MikeL impressed this on me one day when we were playing Stud Eight....I said something to the effect of "there's a lot of donking in this game" and he said "it's not donking...there is no flow here...it just...is" He probably said it a little more elegantly than that, but the point was made. So there are some guys I play with who tend to have monstrous pre flop ranges, and this ends up creating a lot of big multiway pots against people who basically don't have anything. These guys are animals preflop, but they aren't idiots; they aren't going to cbet the 76o they just 3 bet on the QT4 flop after 4 people check to them; they're going to take a free card and see if they can catch a straight draw, pair, or some other conceivable reason to make it to showdown. So you end up doing a lot of shit that just feels flat dumb. I've been calling way more hands in the small blind when these guys raise in late position (I try to keep them on my right, so this comes up again and again) and then have to realize that they aren't going to bet the flop nearly as often as I'm accustomed to, since they have so many shitty hands in their ranges. So like 3 times yesterday I found myself donking in a 5 way pot from the small blind with a hand that normally shouldn't have even taken a flop.

I've seen some hilarious stuff the last few days, but I just don't have the engery/desire to blog about it. My KJ chopped with 72 on an AAJ flop, where my opponent c/3-bet the flop. This same guy immediately challenged me to step outside when I laughed at his assertion that I should never have called him down with "that hand" after he "make(s) that play" which IMR how the fuck am I not supposed to laugh hysterically that's high comedy the only reason I called him down instead of re-raising wasn't the fear of an ace (which is like zero) but the fear that he'd stop barreling off and I wouldn't collect the full value. When the final board read AAJ-A-J I also started to laugh out loud. Maybe I should laugh less.

Today is a freelance day, and I think I'm going to head to commerce since that's the only place that will have any games at this early hour. So once more into the breach with me.