What a difference a day makes. I decided to go back again to play Saturday night after my regular Friday night game, and I was also feeling confident (having doubled my stake on Friday) to go up a level, to play $3-6 limit from the $2-4 limit game I’d “graduated” to just about a month ago.
I felt like I was back in a $1-2 limit game.
After playing at the $1-2 level for a few months, and after reading a good low-limit book, I had begun to understand how a low-limit game differs from medium- and high-limit games, and had adjusted my play successfully. I was beginning to win more often than I lost, and was beginning to show a net profit.
I had expected that as the limits go up, the games would get incrementally tighter. The $1-2 to $2-4 move bore that out: not as many people saw a flop, for the most part, in $2-4 as in $1-2, and far fewer people usually played post-flop.
So I was expecting a move to an even tighter game in this first experiment at the $3-6 level. Wow, was I wrong, and it just goes to show just how much this game is really a game of people.
This game turned out to be even looser than most of the $1-2 games I’d played. There were fewer people than I expected for a Saturday night, and I had a seat in fewer than 30 minutes. I got one of my favorite spots too, seat 10. I soon learned that in seat 2 was a player that raised about 90% of the time, and of course, probability being what it is, most of the time he raised with nothing.
Well, technically, he didn’t have “nothing.” In fact, he had…two cards.
And sometimes he’d hit flops, or he’d get draws that he’d hit, and when he did, you’d hear the comments around the table about how crazy it was that he made the draws. I simply tried to tighten up my own game, but I was only partially successful.
Thing was, it was not just him. There were a couple of other players who would take the raise and keep raising pre-flop. About 1 in 20 hands—and it may have been more often—the betting was capped before the flop. Of course, rarely did any of those raisers bet after the flop, and almost never did they raise if someone bet into them.
I remember one mistake I made in reading the hand. I had been folding most of the time pre-flop and suddenly I was looking down ad a pair of queens. I came out raising, and it was re-raised.
Suddenly, I had this old Mavin Gaye song, “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” start playing in my head. This guy was more than a calling station; he was a California raisin. (For those who don’t get it, back in the 80s, a series of television commercials touting California raisins featured clay animated raisins singing that song.)
Problem was, the constant raises meant that I found it difficult, if not impossible, to put him on a hand. (Later I discovered that he reacted when he hit a draw, and learned to lay down if I was in and that happened.) But he wasn’t the only one who had stayed in, and it was that person who had a better had, and bet it correctly. I failed to recognize that, my queens didn’t improve, and I was taken down.
Later I had A♣ 3♣ in the big blind. It was, of course, raised from early position, but no one re-raised, and I just called. The flop was 2-4-blank rainbow. I don’t recall if I had a backdoor flush draw, but I recognize the gutshot draw. It was checked to the early raiser, who bet. When it came around to me I estimated that the pot was giving me about 12 or 14 to 1 for a small bet, so I called the 11-1 shot.
And I got the 5 on the turn. I don’t remember if anyone raised my sudden betting form early position, but a few people stayed in through the river and I raked in a sizeable pot.
I did get burned a couple of times by another player across from me who at times seemed to be sleeping at the table. I had come in a couple of times with pretty strong hands, and he had stayed in as well, and was raising late. I got beaten a couple of times before I realized that he raised when he had made hands. Later, I folded a decent hand when he raised and I read the board for possibly stronger than I had, and found out that I had made a correct laydown.
Meanwhile, I began Friday night, the $2-4 game, badly, and looking back I understand why. I ran into a co-worker who was playing for just his third time, and he was watching from the rail when I sat down. I started play trying to impress him, and entered far more pots than I should. In the first 30 minutes I had lost half of my $100 buy in.
Fortunately, I realized that I was not on my A game (or what passes for an A game for me), and although I didn’t figure out why, I forced myself to stand up and walk away from the table for a bit to clear my head and get focused. I returned about 10 minutes later and settled in as if I had just sat down fresh.
It worked. I played more judiciously. And by the time I stood up for the last time that night, I had more than doubled my buy in.
But there was another contrast between the two nights: the types of pots I won and the amounts in them, which also affected the cost to play. Friday night I played for 9 hours and won 34 pots. Between rake ($2.50) and tips, I figure it cost me more than $110 to play. Saturday night, I played for 6 hours and won 10 pots. I edged out the net win, but the cost to play was also lower: $45.
The reason I won so many pots on Friday is that it was a tighter table. On more than one occasion, aggressive betting on the flop caused the few people who were still in to all fold. I raked in a number of $10-15 pots that night.
Not that I’m complaining. In fact, even with small pots, raking them in so often had, I think, a psychological affect on other players. It seemed as if the more I raked in, the more afraid they were to stay and play when I bet, especially when I raised. When I was in late position, I was able to control, sometimes, just a little bit, the play of the game. And when that started to happen, the profitability of the game went up.
Tale of the Tape
Friday
Level: $2-4 limit
Hours: 9
Start: $100
End: $208
Gross: $236
Net: $118
Saturday
Level: $3-6 limit
Hours: 6
Start: $150
End: $162
Gross: $64
Net: $12