On January 29, the City of Commerce won’t know what hit them. A team of elite bloggers will take on the live poker world for every last chip, and there will be much rejoicing in the blogosphere.

Five of us went on a preliminary mission tonight to locate key access points, the cashiers, and most importantly, the men’s room. It also happened to be the Film Geek’s birthday (Happy 24th!), which was the perfect excuse for some live casino no limit action.

Who was present? The usual suspects: The Film Geek, HDouble, Bill Rini, FHWRDH, and moi.

Check with the others for reports on the no limit home game tourney that started off the night; I decided to get in some nap time before heading out. But I did manage to sit in on a no limit cash game with some of the busted tourney players, beat flopped trips with trips on the turn, and walked out of there with an extra 20BB (it was dime no limit).

At 12:30 in the morning, we figured we’d catch the tail end of the profitable drunken fish phenomenon, but it turned out that we just missed it. I knew that getting a no limit table with five open seats was just too good to be true, and it was. The fish had been gutted, scaled, and deep fried by the time we sat down. Film Geek remarked at one point that it was a bad sign when the players at the table all had been doubled up by the suckers whose seats we inherited. In our short discussion afterwards, we agreed that these guys weren’t necessarily good, but they were fairly good at punishing draws and weren’t willing to pay off your monster hands. And that’s really a recipe for losing your blinds and minimum calls without getting the requisite payoff to get you back in the black. Which isn’t to say that it wasn’t possible. It’s just more work.

I’ll let the others report on the hands they played, won, and lost. For the record, Bill Rini dropped the first hammer, and HDouble dropped the second. Success both times!

Very briefly, here were my significant wins: tens full (on the turn) to double-up, pocket tens with a Q9XJX board, flopped set of nines for 15BB with two scary draws on the board. My best hands were KK (won the blinds), TT, 99, AQ (folded to 3x overbet by smug guy on AT9 flop), AJ (folded to HDouble on QTX flop–he showed AQ). Most of my suited and offsuit connectors flopped gutshots or crap, or were folded to pot-sized bets (maybe I had implied odds, but then again…). My small pockets were outflopped by bigger cards. My non-Ace Broadways flopped an ace and/or a board pair. Blah. Still, I ended up in the positive (half a buy-in), so my bankroll and I are grateful.

By 4AM, we realized it wasn’t going to get any better. It’s like those NL blogger tables: -EV unless you can delta yourself into some unexpected profits. But for the most part, without any contributors willing to go broke with TPTK or second pair, it’s the house that wins. So we cashed in our chips and headed out.

It’s better to hang with the bloggers than play against ’em, but either way, getting together on the 29th should be a lot of fun.

Or how I learned to recycle other people’s content.

Iggy briefly expounded today on the loose-aggressive nature of poker at Party Poker, how it translates into greater variance, which translates into greater potential profits. In other words, you can’t break the bank at a table full of folding stations.

This segues into today’s topic quite nicely.

As I’ve said before, the 6-max games tend to be full of aggressive little monkeys, which makes one wonder if playing the Broke’s Lament can be as profitable as it appears to be for a monkey with the Rage. Well, perhaps if I were a better player, I could play any two cards well after the flop and win lots of money. Since I’m not a better player, I’ll stick to the fundamentals.

But here’s an example of where I’ve adopted some wisdom from a blog.

When you’re sitting on the big blind, the monkeys will almost always take a shot at stealing the blinds. If I’m holding utter junk, I’ll go ahead and fold to these raises. But if there’s a decent chance of flopping a big hand or a big draw (small/medium offsuit connectors and one-gappers), I’ll call the raise. If the raiser is a confirmed monkeyboy, I’ll call with worse hands, especially when there are other people in the hand. As Iggy said by way of HDouble, “You are getting 3.5-to-1 on your call.”

Excellent advice.
Continue reading Calling one small bet liberally →

I know I read a related post by Abdul on RGP about this, but let me throw this out there:

What are the key differences between poker in California, poker in Las Vegas, and poker online?

All three are characterized by terrible players, but there’s a different quality to the horrible play in each arena. This English major can’t adequately describe what that is, but it’s there.

So given the premise that the games are different, and that several of the ideas and strategies that we find in Winning Low Limit Hold ‘Em and Abdul’s postings at RGP and PosEV are primarily based on their experiences in California’s No Fold ‘Em games (4-way showdowns!), what adjustments, if any, are necessary for the transition to the tourist-filled poker rooms of Vegas and the doubly-abstracted, ever-shifting poker rooms of the Internet?

I’ll be thinking about this over the coming year, but if any of you have any ideas, archived posts, or hidden RGP gems on this topic, I’d be quite grateful for a pointer.

I leave you with this: Being ahead when you are actually behind by Andrew of RPS Consulting. “Always keep 12 big bets at the table when there is a 4 bet cap. You may need them.” Amen.

Some time in mid-December I caught the upswing at Party’s 5/10 6-max tables and at Doyle’s Room’s NL tables. Between those sessions and the multiple bonuses I managed to finally break the four figure mark. But in keeping with tradition, I managed to piss away a lot of it by playing above my limits in 2/4 and 5/10. Oy.

Happily, I’m not a complete idiot and managed to check the roll into the ICU before it was too late. I added some padding to take full advantage of the Empire reload bonus and have limited my play to the 1/2 6-max tables. At 80-90 hands per hour per table, clearing the 1400 hands should require very little time.

I’m getting back to basics for the New Year, so here’s some basic stuff for anyone who’s trying to grind it out at the micro-limits.
Continue reading Back to Basics →