I’ve been taking a bit of time off from cardroom playing, partially because I took two big (for me) hits two weeks in a row, and partly because I moved. Moving takes a lot of time and effort, especially when you do all the work yourself (except for the actual move work; I found movers who were both inexpensive and efficient).
The losing shook me a bit, and so I wanted to get back to some basics, re-read some of the poker books I have and get in some more practice. I’ve still been playing, and it’s been both with software and online.
I like using poker software. I find it gives me lots of “reps.” Think of the sports analogy. I play several sports, and softball season is gearing up. My team practices weekly to prepare for the season, and practice involves repetitions of the basic things done during games, repetitions to improve performance. All athletes at all levels do this.
Poker software gives me lots of those repetitions. I don’t have to wait for “real” players to make decisions. I can see more deals, more hands, and the artificial intelligence (AI) of the software isn’t all that bad. The more hands that I see, the more that get played out in a variety of conditions, the better my brain will be attuned to card patterns in real life. As Joe Namath once said: “Practice, practice, practice.”
But I’ve been playing “for real” too. From all the online poker sites, I settled on a newer one mostly because like just about anyone else, I can be lured by a free offer. In this case, it was a new book, Doyle Brunson’s “Super/System 2.” I joined doylesroom.com because it offered this book for free. After playing to earn enough “Action Point,” of course.
Not long after I began playing, I realized that I wasn’t playing nearly enough to accumulate that many points within any reasonable amount of time, not at the level I’ve been playing. I’ve been playing at the absolute lowest level, and those “points’ Accumulate awfully slowly.
Actually, I’ve not done any ring games. Rather, I’ve tacked the one-table “sit-and-go” tournaments, buying it at the very lowest level: 10 cents. Yeah, 10 whole cents, which buys $2000 in tournament chips.
It’s a very interesting dynamic, both the sit-and-go itself and playing at that level. I’ve detected a bit of a pattern: in almost every case, one or two people go all-in within the first couple of hands. By the first round, two or three people have gone all-in and been knocked out. Then the serious play begins.
I had an utterly remarkable and incredibly lucky experience in one of those tournaments last night. The blinds begin at $20-40, and during that first round I was dealt KJ in late position. A few players limped in and I raised $120. There were still a few callers and the flop came K-x-x. Everyone checked to me and I bet out $400, which resulted in everyone folding except one player who went all-in.
I figured he also hit the King, but I believed I had a better kicker. I was wrong: he had KQ and won the hand. But because he’d played earlier, his all-in wasn’t quite all-in for me: I had $60 left with several free hands before I had to post blinds again. A few hands later I found Kd-9d. A couple of people had called the big blind and I decided this was likely the best I’d get before I saw the blinds myself, especially because they were about to go up, so I went all-in. I was one of 6 people to see 2 diamonds hit on the flop, which included a small pair and another small card. The turn paired the other small card and the river brought a fifth diamond. I had made the flush and no one had a boat. Suddenly I had several hundred dollars in front of me.
Just after that I looked at Kd-7d in the big blind. No one had raised but several had called. Two diamonds again came on the flop and I ended up going all-in with a couple other callers. Sure enough, a diamond came again on the river and I was up to more than $2000, in third place. I couldn’t believe my luck and I played a solid game from then on, making down to the final head-to-head showdown for the massive sum of 45 cents.
I had about $10,000+ in chips and my opponent had about $7000+. We went a bit of back and forth before I realized one very important thing: when he had the small blind, he always completed. He never raised, he never folded. But when I raised, often he would fold, whether I was the big or the small blind.
Still, we went back and forth for awhile, then I got 46 in the big blind where the blinds were $200-400 and I had a chip lead of about $3000. He completed and I checked. The flop came Q4, he checked, and I bet out the minimum of $400, planning to fold on a raise. But he just called. Another 4 came on the turn and I was looking at trips. He checked and I didn’t want to run him out, so I bet the minimum $400 again, and he just called.
The river brought the fourth 4. He checked again and I bet out more, $1200, at which point he went all in. I’m glad I wasn’t at a real-life poker table because I could not keep a “poker face” just then. I had managed to runner-runner quads and I had been raised all-in. Naturally, I called and he turned over a queen for a full house.
Amazing.
The win notwithstanding, I found myself a bit annoyed by the web site. You see, it promised then that the book would be available only at the web site. But I was shopping at a local Barnes and Noble Monday night, checked out the poker books section, and what did I find? Yep, “Super/System 2.”
The interesting thing is that it’s really not the same book that was promoted when I joined doylesroom.com late last year. As I’ve read this book it makes mention, for example, of having a chapter written by “2004 Player of the Year” Daniel Negreanu. Since that wasn’t official until January, the book that I bought and was reading could not have possibly been the exact same “Super/System 2” book advertised on doylesroom.com. The book in the bookstore must have had a bit added or changed for bookstore distribution.
Doylesroom.com no longer makes the exclusivity promise though. Might I have gone elsewhere for my online poker playing if I had known that the book would be available over the counter later? Who knows. I generally enjoy the poker playing experience there, although I also know that creating an application that is in essence a web application hosted in Internet Explorer, rather than an out-and-out Windows-based application, carries some potential issues. And some of the user interface design choices leave a lot ot be desired, including the red-on-black text at the bottom of the table window that tells you the current blind structure and how long before blinds increase.
So when do I head back to the brick-and-mortar cardroom? Well, the movers did their thing last Monday, this weekend is final cleanup of the old place, and the following weekend I can get back to a “normal” schedule. So I’m figuring the first Friday in March will see me hanging on the rail, waiting for my name to be called. And I’ll see if I’ve learned anything in the intervening weeks once I get to the table.