I had a good night playing poker Friday night. I lost $125.
These two statements might seem incongruous, but they in fact correctly assess the night. That’s not to say that I’m happy about a losing night. But with one exception, Iplayed well all night. I just didn’t get cards to play very much.
That one exception was one bad call that I made that cost me an additional big bet, so it didn’t have a significant effect on the night overall. What the night was about was patience, and that’s what limi poker is all about as well.
Within the first 15 minutes of sitting down at the $3/$6 table I recognized that that table was about half-full with gamblers. One or two others, I think, were fairly new to the game, but acted as if from the book. Or a book. The gamblers were mostly to my left, though, so I knew I might be in some trouble.
What it takes to beat gamblers is good cards. And so it takes a bit of luck to win, not just skill. Bluffing simply doesn’t work because gamblers will call just about anything. They won’t raise, mind you, and they won’t lead out unless they hit their hand. I’m learning to recognize this and am saving some bets.
But it takes, as I said, good hands. Good hands begin with good starting cards, and those just weren’t coming.
Let’s look at a little bit of the math that I can go here, and the numbers that I know. The first number: a pocket pair happens about 1 out of evey 16 hands. Because there are 13 possible pairs, a specific pair will come up every 16 x 13 hands, or about 1 in every 208 hands. That’s to say, on average, you shoudl get pocket aces once in every 208 hands you see.
That doesn’t mean every 208 hands. Sometimes they will happen more often, sometimes less. It’s all in the random distribution of cards.
Some more numbers. I’m guessing that, with the shuffling machines, about 35-40 hands per hour are dealt. One measure I use for this estimate is how often the rake chips are replenished, 20 at a time. Almost always, each dealer dos this replenishment once per half-hour shift. One rake chip is dropped per hand.
So I played Friday for 3 1/2 hours. Over that time, I saw about 125-160 hands. On an average night, I will see about 10-13 pocket pairs.
This night, the rate was much lower.
But that, too, is the random distribution of cards.
In that 3 1/2 hours, I won exactly one pot.
One good thing about having several gamblers at the table is that it gives the right odds to limp in with about any pocket pair or any two suited cards. The odds of flopping a set when you have a pocket pair and the odds of flopping at least two of your suit when you hold two suiited cards is about the same: 8 to 1 against. When 6 or 7 or even 8 other players at the table limp in, you’re getting the right odds to call, even with a hand such as J6h.
You’ll often hear the refrain coming from some player “But they were suited.” At a tight table, any two suited cards usually isn’t a good play. (Then again, at a tight table, you can run bluffs and semi-bluffs successfully.) At a loose table where everyone is gambling, two suited cards are a potential well-disguised bonanza.
This night, however, getting two suited cards was about as easy as getting a pocket pair. That’s to say, not easy at all.
One move I was able to practice a lot this night was folding when the flop didn’t hit my hand. When the low pocket pair didn’t flop a set. When the flop contained everything but the suit I was holding.
At one point, a bit more than an hour after I sat down, a player sat down 2 seats to my right, bought in with a $100 bill, and began raising everything pre-flop. If no one raised before it got to him, he raised. If it was raised to him, he re-raised. If someone raised after he did, he re-rasied again, or capped.
The aggression worked, sort of. He won some pots post-flop when he bet out and everyone else folded. But it was not long before that $100 buy-in ran out. He pulled another $100 bill from his pocket and continued.
I tangled with him twice. The first time, I had a good hand and pushed it. What I failed to recognize was that the river card made a straight possible, and that’s indeed what he had. He raised my river bet. I failed to identify that this meant, for a gambler, that he had made his hand and called, which enabled him to take down a nice pot. The second time I also had a good hand and pushed it. He never played back at me, meaning that the board cards didn’t help him and this time it was my pot to rake in.
It wasn’t much longer before the secon $100 bill ran out. He got up and walked away, asking that the seat be held. But, to show that his personal skills are at the same level as his poker skills, he never returned, leaving the table with an empty seat for 3 rounds.
I had identified the players I wanted to play against. I just wasn’t getting the cards to play against them. So I waited. And I watched. And i made good decisions almost all night long. I just didn’t get the cards (that random distribution thing again) to play out and so I walked away with a net loss. I was disappointed in the results, but not in my performance.