The other night a player sat down and immediately started to play a lot of hands. Let’s call him VPIP79. This is one of several hands I played against him:
Party Poker 5/10 Hold’em (10 handed)
converter
Preflop: Hero is MP1 with Jd, Js. CO posts a blind of $5.
1 fold, UTG+1 (VPIP79) calls, UTG+2 raises, Hero 3-bets, 6 folds, UTG+1 (VPIP79) calls, UTG+2 calls.
Flop: (11.40 SB) 7s, 9c, 2h (3 players)
VPIP79 bets, UTG+2 folds, Hero raises, VPIP79 3-bets, Hero calls.
Turn: (8.70 BB) 4s (2 players)
VPIP79 bets, Hero calls.
River: (10.70 BB) 9s (2 players)
VPIP79 bets, Hero calls.
Final Pot: 12.70 BB
VPIP79 has 7h 2d (two pair, nines and sevens).
Hero has Jd Js (two pair, jacks and nines).
Outcome: Hero wins 12.70 BB.
Call me a lemur, but it’s hard to fold an overpair while heads up against a loose player, especially when the pot’s that big. Of course, when the top card paired on the river, I figured I was dead, but I’d see what he had. It never even occurred to me that he had bottom two pair on the flop. I mean, who the hell plays seven-deuce offsuit?!
Then again, maybe he was bored.
When I’m bored, I prefer raising, and I prefer connectors:
Party Poker 5/10 Hold’em (10 handed)
converter
Preflop: Hero is UTG with 7s, 6s.
Hero raises, 7 folds, SB (VPIP55) calls, BB (VPIP25) calls.
Flop: (6 SB) Jh, 5s, 8d (3 players)
VPIP55 checks, VPIP25 bets, Hero raises, VPIP55 calls, VPIP25 calls.
Turn: (6 BB) 4h (3 players)
VPIP55 checks, VPIP25 checks, Hero bets, VPIP55 calls, VPIP25 calls.
River: (9 BB) 2d (3 players)
VPIP55 checks, VPIP25 checks, Hero bets, VPIP55 calls, VPIP25 calls.
Final Pot: 12 BB
VPIP55 has 4s As (one pair, fours).
VPIP25 has Jd Qh (one pair, jacks).
Hero has 7s 6s (straight, eight high).
Outcome: Hero wins 12 BB.
The flop raise was definitely an attempt to see the turn and river for the price of 1SB. But all the pieces fell into place and I got my straight. The SB remarked that he didn’t put me on that hand at all.
I guess that hand made an impression, since someone cold-called a later raise with A2o. The SB from the hand above saved me some money by 3-betting with his flopped boat (he had T7s in EP) after A2o raised. I mucked and the two players went to war. A2o busted and left the table.
Phil Gordon went to a charity event for the Cancer Research and Prevention Foundation and did a little gambling:
They had a raffle for some brilliant prizes, and being the sorta guy I am, I decided to take a shot. Raffle tickets were selling for $25 a piece until you go to the $500 donation level when they went for $20 a piece. At a $1000 level, you get 100 tickets ($10 a ticket). Everyone seemed to be buying $25 tickets, so I thought what the hell, lets make a nice sizable donation…. I bought $2000 worth and got 200 tickets in exchange. Then, I found out that I bought them from the “wrong girl” and that there was a contest going on whereby the girl with the most tickets sold got a prize. So, I ended up buying another $2000 in tickets. $4000 in tickets purchased in all. By my calculations, I had about 1/3 of the tickets in play.
To make a long story short, I won the top two prizes:
Two round trip tickets to Sydney on Qantas in the “sleeper” seats plus 6 nights at the Sydney Harbor Marriott. $25k value.
and…
Two round trip business class tickets to anywhere in Europe courtesy of American Airlines. $18k value.
$43,000 for $4000. Not bad. My girlfriend was extremely happy as well, as you might imagine.
So if he had 1/3 of the tickets in play, and we assume the other 2/3 were purchased at $25 per ticket, he contributed 20% of the donation pool for a 33% chance of winning at least one prize and ended up with an ROI of 1075%. Not bad.
Read more at his MySpace blog.
Four Jobs I’ve Had In My Life in LA:
Product Manager
Product Manager
Product Marketing Manager
Program Manager
Four Movies About LA I Could Watch Over And Over (in fictional chronological order):
LA Confidential
Chinatown
Heat
Blade Runner
Four Places I’ve Lived All Over L.A. (With Food Memories From Each):
Beverly Hills: Mulberry Street Pizza
West LA: Cacao
Culver City: The Outdoor Grill
West LA: Hurry Curry of Tokyo
Four LA-Themed Shows I Love(d) To Watch:
Three’s Company
The A Team
The Tonight Show
Eye On LA
(ok, so I don’t really watch TV anymore, but when I was a kid, I watched a bunch)
Four Places I Would Vacation At In LA:
Beach
Mountain
Casino
City
Four LA-Based Websites I Visit Daily:
Bill Rini
WWdN
The Obituarium
Curbed LA
Four Of My Favorite Foods Found In LA:
The last or second to last chicken dish at Havana Mania
The chicken supper at Uncle Darrow’s
Fatburger
Korean food
Four Places In LA I Would Rather Be Right Now:
In Bed
Asleep
Not working
Relaxing
Tagged:
Screw it.
In case you are wondering, I raised to steal the blinds, flopped a boat, bet the flop, called the check-raise, raised the turn, and bet the river. He had 55.
Fastr is a fun five-minute game where you try to guess the keyword that brings up a series of photos on Flickr. Photos appear one at a time–the faster you correctly guess the keyword, the more points you get.