10 months ago
Saturday, May 19, 2012
Cleveland Horseshoe "Trip" report
"Trip" in quotes, of course, because Ohio's first casino doors are two blocks from my downtown work parking spot. I woke up to a beautiful warm morning, hopped on the motorcycle, and drove to work. Except I didn't have to go to work, I took a right instead of a left and headed towards Public Square.
One of the more surreal experiences of my life was walking into the room for the first time - living in this town my entire life and then stepping into the neon energy of a completely packed casino in the middle of downtown Cleveland. I would have sooner believed there was a teleporter that brought me to Vegas than there was a casino in the old Higbee building.
Speaking of the Higbee building, I had a total "Christmas Story" moment 15 minutes after I walked into the set of the old movie, where Ralphie and brother Randy went to visit Santa. I walked up to a short line of people standing in line for a Total Rewards card. When I tried to step into the line, a polite casino worker stopped me and said "Sir, this is the start of the line, you have to go back to the end". She pointed to her right, and I saw what looked like an endless single file line of people stretched back along the wall.
"All the way back to Terra Haute", I thought, as I sulked to the back of the line.
No matter - I got my card 45 minutes later and made my up to the top floor. The poker room is separated from the rest of the casino - which helps to dull the din of the slot machines. I arrived early enough to be seated, at a new table, not 10 minutes after putting my name in.
The dealers were a mixed bag. The woman who started our table took her entire shift just preparing the table. She literally didn't deal a single hand. The next dealer wasn't a whole lot better, and my tablemate - a floor shift manager of a poker room in Pennsylvania, noted we were getting dealt about 12 hands per hour. 30-34 is the norm. So there will be a bit of pain before our dealers are experienced enough to play at a reasonable speed.
I won't complain too much about the dealers, though, because one of their mistakes saved me about $45. I held pocket aces and raised to $18. Two players called me, both with position on me. I bet $25 on a king-jack-x board, two hearts. Both players liked the flop enough to call.
The turn brought a nine. Queen ten just got there. I had to act first, and took a few seconds to contemplate my move. I looked down at my stack for a second to make sure a bet wouldn't commit me if I decided to bet-fold. When I looked up, the player on the button had slid $65 across the betting line.
I was about to speak up - "uh, I haven't acted yet in the hand", but before I could, I glanced to my left. My other opponent had already cut out $65 in chips, and had about $40 behind. He looked like he was going to call.
I didn't think I was ahead of both these guys, so I folded instead of arguing. One of these guys had hit their straight. They showed down a river (after shortie got all in) - KJ two pair vs. QT straight. They had both cracked my aces, but the dealer blunder saved me a bet.
I took it as a good omen.
I played well, overall. No mistakes. My few limps were behind several limpers, in position. I punished limpers with weak aces and a few connectors and won easy money with cbets vs. the fit-or-folders. Then my cards dried up for about 2 hours, and I patiently folded (ok, maybe not so patiently, but I kept folding), until the last orbit of my afternoon, where I punished one more time with a raggy ace, and then again on the very next hand, this time with queens. No callers either time. I waited for the blinds to reach me and left, a small but satisfying $71 profit.
Stepping out of the casino, back into downtown Cleveland, was as odd a feeling as it was stepping in. We have a casino in Cleveland!
Friday, May 18, 2012
I blow my nose at you....
..and call your door-opening request a silly thing.
This is me to the poker gods today. They were gunning big-time for me, but I wouldn't give in. Didn't tilt, didn't spew. Kept my play solid and was thrilled with a 20 big blind loss on the night.
Consider the challenge I faced:
Aces cracked in a three bet pot. All club-flop, no ace of clubs for me. I bet big and my opponent calls - I'm 100% sure he has the ace of clubs, maybe top pair to go with it. I'm going to get paid.... until the club on the turn. Easy check/fold.
2 hands later, an Omaha hand, AATT, one suit. Whiff. check/fold. No biggie, it's almost a misnomer to say Omaha hands get "cracked" - there are really no big hands until we see the flop anyway. But it's still fun to say I got aces cracked twice in three hands, so I will.
A four-way pot with pocket sixes, on a JJx flop. A tight aggressive player leads out after I check. I can actually see his cold-calling hand chart in my head - he doesn't play KJ/QJ to a raise. Maybe AJ, maybe JTs as connectors. It is way more likely for me to have a jack than he. He has pocket eights-tens and is clearing the field. I checkraise.
He thinks a long time, then calls the raise. A ten on the turn, we check. I'm not even loving life if my six comes right now.
It doesn't. A rag. I give up, he rolls $45 out there. He has JT, or flopped a boat with whatever card wasn't the jack on the flop with a small pocket pair .
My personal favorite - I raise a limper with a hidden 7cTc and have two callers. Pair on the flop, gutshot+flush draw on the turn, and my flush on the river. Someone leads out for a pathetic $4 into $18, I raise it up to $22. He re-raises to $50-something.
I consider all options - is he value-3betting a worse flush, or the straight that's out there? No way. Nobody in my game is value-3betting worse, or 3bet bluffing the river. It's the nuts. Severe puke-fold for me.
What else you got, bitches? I'm still here.
Cleveland casino "trip" report (it's 0.4 miles away from my work) coming Saturday night....
This is me to the poker gods today. They were gunning big-time for me, but I wouldn't give in. Didn't tilt, didn't spew. Kept my play solid and was thrilled with a 20 big blind loss on the night.
Consider the challenge I faced:
Aces cracked in a three bet pot. All club-flop, no ace of clubs for me. I bet big and my opponent calls - I'm 100% sure he has the ace of clubs, maybe top pair to go with it. I'm going to get paid.... until the club on the turn. Easy check/fold.
2 hands later, an Omaha hand, AATT, one suit. Whiff. check/fold. No biggie, it's almost a misnomer to say Omaha hands get "cracked" - there are really no big hands until we see the flop anyway. But it's still fun to say I got aces cracked twice in three hands, so I will.
A four-way pot with pocket sixes, on a JJx flop. A tight aggressive player leads out after I check. I can actually see his cold-calling hand chart in my head - he doesn't play KJ/QJ to a raise. Maybe AJ, maybe JTs as connectors. It is way more likely for me to have a jack than he. He has pocket eights-tens and is clearing the field. I checkraise.
He thinks a long time, then calls the raise. A ten on the turn, we check. I'm not even loving life if my six comes right now.
It doesn't. A rag. I give up, he rolls $45 out there. He has JT, or flopped a boat with whatever card wasn't the jack on the flop with a small pocket pair .
My personal favorite - I raise a limper with a hidden 7cTc and have two callers. Pair on the flop, gutshot+flush draw on the turn, and my flush on the river. Someone leads out for a pathetic $4 into $18, I raise it up to $22. He re-raises to $50-something.
I consider all options - is he value-3betting a worse flush, or the straight that's out there? No way. Nobody in my game is value-3betting worse, or 3bet bluffing the river. It's the nuts. Severe puke-fold for me.
What else you got, bitches? I'm still here.
Cleveland casino "trip" report (it's 0.4 miles away from my work) coming Saturday night....
Saturday, May 5, 2012
Lack of Fundamentals
"I can't win here", my table-mate TW muttered as he stood up from my cash game table, stacked again. He cursed his luck and made the walk of shame up my basement steps, as he has done a dozen times before.
Tonight's bustout hand was a limp, then calling a raise behind him by the tightest player in my game. So tight, in fact, that this limper-punishing move could only be one of two hands in my estimation - pocket aces or pocket kings.
The flop came all low, something like 458 with two clubs. TW lead out, got raised, then shoved the rest of his stack in. His stack was nothing to write home about - he started the hand with about 35 big blinds. Mr. Tight called and showed his pocket kings. TW flipped over 36, both spades. His straight didn't come, nor did his backdoor flush, and he was left to curse his bad luck once again.
TW has some fundamental mistakes in his game that will prevent him from ever winning in poker. He likes to limp often and see a lot of cheap flops with raggy cards, but he never plays a deep enough stack to win money in those few times that the raggy cards hit.
Fire up your copy of Flopzilla (or go buy it if you're serious about poker and don't have it yet). Enter 63s into the starting hand chart, then click on the green Flopzilla monster to calculate how often this hand will hit the flop. For me, it's registering that it will hit twopair+ about 5% of the time, or 1 in 20. These are the hands that will crack Mr. tight's pocket kings.
What about flush draws and straight draws, you say? Well, true, you can flop a decent draw around 15% of the time. But when you're playing a tiny stack, your draws don't mean much against an obvious overpair. You're going to have to shove your stack in and get called, and then run the cards out to see if one of your outs hit. You might as well shove preflop and get called by the kings. No fold equity, but at least you get to see all 5 cards, at which point you'll crack the kings one time in 4.
So let's do some math. You limp with 36s, get raised by Mr. Tight, and shove your whole $35 stack in just to guarantee you see all 5 cards. He calls 100% of the time (because all he ever has is AA or KK). 20% of the time, you'll win 36.50 (Mr. Tight's 35 and the blinds). 80% of the time, you'll lose $35. So (.2 * 36.50) - (.8 * 35) = -$20.7 on average. A wildly bad play that loses 21 big blinds in the long run every time you play it.
So open shoving isn't going to cut it. Let's try calling the $4 raise and only shoving if we hit our king crackers on the flop. This happens 5% of the time, let's say he never folds when we crack the kins, so we win (36.50 * 0.05) = 1.825 big blinds. We have to fold and lose 4BB the other 95% of the time, for a net of -$3.8. (-4 * .95). -3.8 + 1.825 equals -1.975, or roughly a 2 big blind loss every time we run this play. Not as bad as 20BB, but not positive, either. A losing play.
In actuality, it's even worse than a 2BB loss per hand. We assumed we would auto-double up every time we crack Mr. Tight's kings but that's not going to happen. Sometimes we'll flop a flush, straight, or two pair, but an ace will come on the board, and Mr. Tight won't put his whole stack in with kings. Or maybe the board comes all spades and Mr. Tight with the two red kings or aces simply folds. So we're not guaranteed a double up even when we hit our rags.
Conclusion: there's no way to profit playing a 35 big blind stack and a raggy hand like 36s against a nit who almost always has an overpair. No way at all. My friend TW said "I can't win here", but really, he can't win anywhere without fixing some big fundamental problems with his poker game.
Tonight's bustout hand was a limp, then calling a raise behind him by the tightest player in my game. So tight, in fact, that this limper-punishing move could only be one of two hands in my estimation - pocket aces or pocket kings.
The flop came all low, something like 458 with two clubs. TW lead out, got raised, then shoved the rest of his stack in. His stack was nothing to write home about - he started the hand with about 35 big blinds. Mr. Tight called and showed his pocket kings. TW flipped over 36, both spades. His straight didn't come, nor did his backdoor flush, and he was left to curse his bad luck once again.
TW has some fundamental mistakes in his game that will prevent him from ever winning in poker. He likes to limp often and see a lot of cheap flops with raggy cards, but he never plays a deep enough stack to win money in those few times that the raggy cards hit.
Fire up your copy of Flopzilla (or go buy it if you're serious about poker and don't have it yet). Enter 63s into the starting hand chart, then click on the green Flopzilla monster to calculate how often this hand will hit the flop. For me, it's registering that it will hit twopair+ about 5% of the time, or 1 in 20. These are the hands that will crack Mr. tight's pocket kings.
What about flush draws and straight draws, you say? Well, true, you can flop a decent draw around 15% of the time. But when you're playing a tiny stack, your draws don't mean much against an obvious overpair. You're going to have to shove your stack in and get called, and then run the cards out to see if one of your outs hit. You might as well shove preflop and get called by the kings. No fold equity, but at least you get to see all 5 cards, at which point you'll crack the kings one time in 4.
So let's do some math. You limp with 36s, get raised by Mr. Tight, and shove your whole $35 stack in just to guarantee you see all 5 cards. He calls 100% of the time (because all he ever has is AA or KK). 20% of the time, you'll win 36.50 (Mr. Tight's 35 and the blinds). 80% of the time, you'll lose $35. So (.2 * 36.50) - (.8 * 35) = -$20.7 on average. A wildly bad play that loses 21 big blinds in the long run every time you play it.
So open shoving isn't going to cut it. Let's try calling the $4 raise and only shoving if we hit our king crackers on the flop. This happens 5% of the time, let's say he never folds when we crack the kins, so we win (36.50 * 0.05) = 1.825 big blinds. We have to fold and lose 4BB the other 95% of the time, for a net of -$3.8. (-4 * .95). -3.8 + 1.825 equals -1.975, or roughly a 2 big blind loss every time we run this play. Not as bad as 20BB, but not positive, either. A losing play.
In actuality, it's even worse than a 2BB loss per hand. We assumed we would auto-double up every time we crack Mr. Tight's kings but that's not going to happen. Sometimes we'll flop a flush, straight, or two pair, but an ace will come on the board, and Mr. Tight won't put his whole stack in with kings. Or maybe the board comes all spades and Mr. Tight with the two red kings or aces simply folds. So we're not guaranteed a double up even when we hit our rags.
Conclusion: there's no way to profit playing a 35 big blind stack and a raggy hand like 36s against a nit who almost always has an overpair. No way at all. My friend TW said "I can't win here", but really, he can't win anywhere without fixing some big fundamental problems with his poker game.
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