Posted by Dr Fro 8:14 PM

Four completely unrelated stories:

#1 The Matador

Hickey and I were playing in the cash game at Harrah's. I raised a pot. I got a caller. Hickey re-raised. The other guy said, "nice sandwich." I said, "What was that?" He said, "like I don't know you two are working together."

Huh? Maybe I am naive, but I don't think there are many cheaters plying their trade at the $1-$2 game at Harrah's. I mean if you were skilled (and unethical) enough to cheat, wouldn't it make more sense to rip off a higher limit game? Problem number 2 with his accusation: why would Hickey and I be talking to each other non-stop for 4 hours if we intended to collude? Wouldn't it make more sense to pretend we had never met? And finally, if he was so convinced we were cheating, why did he stay at our table? Why not leave? What a dufus.

#2 Folding Kings pre-flop

During my marathon session at the MGM, one of my cards was exposed. It was a King. It was shown to the table and replaced. I got a replacement card - another King. I peaked at my other hole card - yet another King.

UTG raised the pot to $20, and I was next to act. I panicked. You know, if you play a lot of poker, you have seen most situations in poker many times. For example, you don't have to count the outs of hitting a 6-outer of 2 streets when a guy overbets the pot - you know you should fold without the math. So here I was in a situation that I had never been in before - holding KK, knowing that the burn card would be a King. I didn't know what to do.

I didn't have much time to think, so my thought process went like this: the value in KK is two-fold: 1) as with all pocket pairs, you can flop a set and win a monster pot and 2) you may miss the flop completely, but still have the best hand unimproved. Obviously, the missing King chopped the value of #1 in half, but it had no impact on #2.

I was completely confused: raise, call or fold? I showed my hand to a bystander and folded. I went to the john and found Hickey and told him the story. He said that I probably made the wrong decision. I got back to the table and talked about it with two other players, both of whom said I made the wrong decision. I eventually agreed. Crap.

Well, not all was lost, I made a big bluff into a pot about 45 minutes later. I am almost certain that the reason I got a fold was that the player was one of the guys that I talked to about folding Kings. I think he folded because he pegged me as a ridiculously tight player (laugh!)

#3 Pokerati and Omaha

There is a discussion of a situation in Omaha on pokerati that I weighed in on. It is a situation that I have been meaning to blog about here, but Dan beat me to it. The discussion is excellent. This comment made me pee in my pants:

However, it's also safe to assume in the regular PLO game that I play in that the two-plus other players are holding no more than the nine of spoons and a cut card.

#4 Damn SBCYahoo

Last night in a $11 SNG on Part Poker, I ran 2,000 up to 7,000 in no time flat. We then completely lost our internet connection. Not even the phone worked. I was livid. I called "Mr. Invincible" (aka "Dave") and asked him to logon to Party Poker and finish my tournament for me. He did, and I (he) won 2nd place for $30. Thanks, Dave. Anyway, the point of this post is to make a public service announcement: If you ever lose your connection in a tournament, you can call a friend and give them your password, and they can finish the tournament for you.

3 Comment(s):

Posted by  Johnnymac, at 11:30 AM, August 29, 2006  

1.) I was playing $2-4 *LIMIT* once at Flamingo with my brother, in his first time to ever play casino poker, and Canonico and got a comment like that from a very bitter guy at the table. Something like, "There's no fair way for me to beat two brothers and a friend!"

I'm not sure if he thought we weren't taking the game seriously enough (an understandable, but bad argument) or if he really thought we were trying to collude and run him over playing LL limit poker at 3AM on a Monday morning.

2.) I think the answer to your KK question depends on the nature of the game and whether or not you think it's likely that someone might call a raise (or two) with any ace (or even with AK or AQ). If that's the case and an Ace comes on the flop then the value of your hand changes significantly with "half" of your outs gone (I am ignoring straights and flushes).

Of course, I have a reputation for being too tight, so it's not surprising that I don't think it was a bad decision to throw it away. I would not have thrown away AA in the same situation though.

3.) The problem with that thinking is that while it's probably true that you usually don't have the worst Omaha HL hand relative to some of the other players at the table, if you don't have the nuts you're still just second best. There is still just one winner and poker is not the olympics. There is no prize for 2nd or 3rd place, even if you're better than 4-10.

4.) Nice

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Posted by  LAYGO, at 12:43 PM, August 31, 2006  

I recently ran into a situation with no internet access before too just 3 hands into 2 SnGs.

One 45 man $1.20, but I tripled (almost quadrupled) up on the 3rd hand. T5300 w/JJ on a 9 high board vs KQ/KJ/Ax. The way I was playing (winning 2 $4.40), I would've won that too.

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Posted by  Dantana, at 5:59 PM, September 01, 2006  

Really, I'm just starting to learn that game.

But to give proper props for the writer of the spoons comment, he can be found blogging regularly at The Batfaces. Pretty funny stuff.

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