StudioGlyphic

I call him Colonel Tseng.

Not sure what kind of Toyota it is; it looks like a cross between an early nineties Celica and a mid-nineties Camry, so I’d say it’s probably something from that era that we never got stateside.

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Two hands I won last night on Empire’s 3/6 tables with stuff I remembered from Hank:

No non-pair hand is that big of a dog to another non-pair hand, so defend your blind. Getting 10:1 for my gutshot is good odds, and clearly the implied odds makes it even better.

Again, no non-pair hand is that big of a dog. While the express odds are not great for my hand, if I make my draw on the turn, I’m probably getting better than 10:1 in implied odds. I was also counting on getting another call or two behind me (didn’t happen). If I just improve my draw, I get one more shot at making the winning hand with improved odds.

Still, I’m on thin ice on this one. There are two flush cards out there, and it’s easy to go broke drawing to the sucker end of a straight, especially if someone out there has already made the better straight. The better play here might have been to check-raise the turn.

It’s a thin line between relying on implied odds and being a fish. The beauty, though, is that showing down garbage hands like this, even in the blinds, helped me get action for my big pairs and better draws later on.

And now, a word from our sponsor:

In these two hands I probably netted 15BB. The guide costs just under 7BB. Do the math.

Probably better than Episode III.

You’ve gotta love big short-term results. My flight leaves in less than 24 hours, but I’m happy to report a 70BB profit for the last poker I’ll play on American soil for a while. I caught some big pairs that held up, flopped well, made a number of draws, and got paid off. Which reminds me… I should take a deck of cards with me to China. I’ve never bet in yuan before.

One class to go before I officially get my Master’s Degree. This one’s in Beijing:

While this is ostensibly an academic exercise (the class is entitled “The Future of Xidan Beidajie: Transit Oriented Urban Village in the Beijing Mega-City”), I don’t think any of my classmates are kidding themselves about what we’ll end up doing.

For those of you who visit StudioGlyphic for poker content, there will likely be none until I return in July. However, I’ll have all sorts of gadgetry with me, and will likely post occasional images and blurbs about traveling in Asia.

All images copyright photographers 2003. Source: Lonely Planet World Guide.

You see some of the worst poker at the casino sometimes.

Insanity is…

There was the woman who raised with pocket queens in EP who checked when the flop came AT9. One of the many cold-callers bet at the flop and she called. The turn came a rag and she checked again. The flop bettor reached for his chips and the woman announced, “I know you have an ace. So go ahead and bet.” The river came with no help and she called once again. The bettor flipped over AT for top two and the woman flipped over her queens and said “I knew you had an ace.” She turns to the player in seat 2 and complains, “It’s just my luck, I get queens and an ace comes.” She knew she was drawing to 2 outs, didn’t get lucky, and still paid the guy off. Wow.

What’s his tell?

A man replaced the woman in the 2 seat and won a hand at showdown when he called down the preflop raiser with KK on a board full of rags. At no point during that hand did he raise. Amazing.

The same man cold-called my UTG raise a little later. The flop came 884. I bet with my queens and he called, while everyone else folded. The turn brought an ace. I bet and he called. Now I was a little worried. The river brought a king and with two overcards on the board, I figure I’ll check and see what happens. He bets, and remembering how passive he was with the kings, I opted not to pay him off. I asked him later if he had an ace or a king. “No, I had a flush.” Really? “Yeah, I had 57 suited. I knew you had a big pocket pair, and was going to fold, but they were suited, and then the flop was 84 so I could get the straight.” He probably had odds to call that flop bet, by the way. Especially with that backdoor flush. But I bet he didn’t know it!

Every rebuy is a little death

God bless the woman who paid off my quad aces with sixes when the board came A253A. There’s no way her hand is good against any legitimate hand, but hey, it was her last six chips. Now she can rebuy for another 5BB. It’s just too bad Hollywood Park doesn’t have the high hand jackpots you see at the Aladdin and other Vegas casinos. Those jackpots can be good for $500 or more.

That same woman paid off my QQ earlier as well. I’d seen her go to the showdown with a wide range of hands, so I put in a value bet despite the 3-flush on the river.

The worst mistake I made at that table was not raising with KQ in MP. The board ended up being KJ9Tx and I chopped a pot with the woman who paid off my aces and queens when she hit her gutshot with Q5s. The raise would have knocked her out preflop or added another 3BB to the pot. Either way, not raising was anywhere from a minor to a major mistake.

Blogger table

When that table broke, I got up with my 12.5BB profit (hourly of 2BB/hour including smoke and beer breaks) and wandered around, alternately sweating HDouble at his table and Absinthe and Bill at their table. Absinthe and Bill had a great table. One and a half maniacs, two calling stations, a fish, etc. After a while, HDouble sat and I figured I’d sit as well and gamble with my profits.

Unfortunately for Bill and Absinthe, HDouble replaced a calling station (the same woman who paid off my aces and queens–she’s everywhere!) and I replaced the table maniac (he got up with a couple hundred dollars). Still, the guy in the 1 seat seemed pretty fast and loose with his chips and the guy in the 5 seat was the mother of all calling stations (MCS, not to be confused with MC5).

Oh really now?

MCS won a pot with a decent hand at one point–a hand which he actually bet on the turn. As he stacked up his chips, he announced, “See? I don’t put money in unless I have something.” Let me offer a definition, which some of the other hands he showed elucidated:

Main Entry: ¹some thing
Pronunciation: ’s&m(p)-thi[ng], esp in rapid speech or for 2 ’s&m-p&m
Function: pronoun
1 : runner-runner straight draw
2 : low second pair, weak kicker
3 : pair draw

Color commentary

HDouble’s a good guy to have at the table at 4 in the morning:

HDouble rakes a pot after he bets the turn on a T2xx board: “Super/System.”

I raise pre-flop with JJ after mucking most of my trash hands: “Woah! Who’s this guy?”

HDouble raises in EP: “Okay, I’ve got a good hand this time. Everybody call.”

I win after capping the flop with second pair, ace kicker and the nut flush draw: “That was straight out of Abdul!”

Fun stuff.

5AM rolled around and I was up an additional BB. Time to call it a night.

I am officially over-educated.

Not to put anyone down or anything, but it seems like there’s an excess of melodrama out there. Which isn’t to say that content theft, art vs. commerce, idiot strippers, huge suckouts, quitting poker, poor table manners, etc. aren’t worth talking about, but when something seems to crop up every two months to get this or that blogger riled up, it starts to look like a familiar formula with new dressing. Y’know, like a Goobernator movie. And that’s enough to put anyone on tilt.

Ultimately, none of this shit really matters all that much (and I say this even if some of this stuff pissed me off at the time). So take a step back, clear your head, and hit the tables. The come back and share your thought processes and experiences. Help me become a better player by writing about your own games.

One more thing to think about: It might be a sign that poker blogging’s jumped the shark when you get post after self-referential post about the “community.” Not that it doesn’t exist, or that it’s a good or bad thing, but sometimes it’s just a little over the top.

A few weeks ago I said “[Facty’s] not really a poker blogger, but she’s an amusing read, and that’s almost as good, and sometimes better.”

Well I should have kept my trap shut:

Let’s just say facty outplayed and outlasted a number of LA area bloggers.