It wasn’t Vegas and the World Series of Poker, but with Monday off from work, I made the long, four day July 4th “weekend” a poker tournament playing marathon, including a “midnight’ tournament.
Unfortunately, the Bay Area tournament scene isn’t the greatest for tournament players. First, the daily tournaments that several card clubs run are all at about the same time: 10:00 or so in the morning. As a result, players have to pick and choose where they want to play. I chose Bay 101.
Bay 101 has 9:45 tournaments every day, mostly spread limit, but on Sundays, my favorite: limit. They also recently began a “midnight” tournament two two nights a week. Technically, they are morning tournament, starting Monday and Thursday mornings at 1:45am.
I also played four cash game sessions. My poker playing weekend began with one of those on Saturday night at Casino San Pablo, where I’d never played before, but stopped by on my way back from a day trip to Sacramento.
Here, I encountered something that I’ve never seen before (although I’ve seen close): a player who never, ever folded preflop. While I don’t think this player did it because he had a strategy (like many players, he seemed to do it because by golly he was there to play “poker” and would be damned if he were ever gonna fold two cards that could turn into something), he wasn’t entirely unsuccessful, and for awhile even built up a nice chip stack. But by the time I left with just a small profit), his stack was down to nearly nothing.
It did get me to thinking a bit though. What if a player who excelled at postflop play employed a strategy of never (or almost never) folding preflop? Is it possibly to be regularly enough profitable at the typical loose-passive or loose-aggressive low-limit games with a strategy such as that?
Meanwhile, I had no success in any of the six tournament I played in. I didn’t even come close to sniffing the money, a rather disappointing turn of events. In the regular Monday tournament (not the 1:45am one), I saw one very interesting hand, and then made one horrible play that knocked me out.
I was in seat 9 (of 10) at this particular table. In seat 3 was a very loose player who played nearly every pot. In fact, in the early rounds he frequently raised, but only for double the big blind, a trait common to limit players. His stack was up and down over the course of the first few rounds. We got into round 5 and many of the stacks were close to average.
This player was in the blinds. An early position player made a standard (3-4x BB) raise. I player two seats to my right, on a short stack, raised all-in. The player on my immediate right raised again. The loose player in the blinds just called three(!) raises cold. The initial raiser raised again, this time all-in, the player on my right went all-in too, and then the loose player in the blinds called yet again. He had them all covered.
What did they all have?
The initial all-in player made a good, simply unfortunate all-in raise with pocket nines.
The player on my right had pocket kings.
The initial raiser had pocket aces.
The loose player who just called down all that action? KJ of spades.
All-in-all, three of the four players involved made good plays. Who got rewarded?
Well, the poker gods were not smiling on the ones who made good decisions in this hand. According to CardPlayer.com’s Poker Odds Calculator, interestingly, the loose player actually had, preflop, a 10-11 percent chance of winning the hand (depending on whether one of the nines was a spade, which I don’t remember). Aces is a 63-64 percent favorite. So what happened?
The flop came A-5-2, all spades.
The miracle flop for the loose player left the nines and kings drawing essentially dead (the nines could have gotten runner-runner nines), left him at a 62%-37% favorite, and left the aces only with a redraw to a full house or quads. Unfortunately for the best preflop hands, the nut flush held up (and quadrupled up), knocking out three players with that one hand.
A short time later, the player on my immediate left was under the gun and put in a standard raise. Everyone folded around to me. I was on a semi-short stack; the raise meant that to call, I’d have to put about 1/3 of my remaining chips in the pot. The blinds were escalating fast, with 15-minute rounds, and we were shorthanded. I found AK offsuit and almost without thinking, went all-in.
This was, as I realized afterward, a tactical mistake. This player, I’d observed, was fairly tight, playing mostly only good hands through the first several rounds. In thinking about the hand, he would have raised in early position most likely with only a medium to high pocket pair or a big ace, but probably nothing less than AQ.
So with several possibly e holding, I was in a race, with one I was in a tie, and with only one was I dominating. Naturally, he called, showed pocket jacks, neither one of us improved, and I was out.
What I should have done is just called preflop. I then could have decided what to do based on the cards that came out, bet out, check-raise, bluff, etc. I should have known that my nest chances were going to be a preflop race, and that I should not have wanted to get in that situation at that point in the tournament. I think this stands out in my mind as one of my worst tournament decisions I’ve ever made.
Fortunately, I made up most of my tournament buy ins with cash game play. But I had a horrible Monday session that left me at a net loss for the weekend. I f0und a table with a couple of solid players on my left. I probably should have asked for a table chance, but I had gotten an early impression that it wasn’t a bad table. I was wrong.
In a couple of cases, I think I got clearly outplayed. But it was one bad beat, not a bad play on my part, that sticks out.
The good players, I noticed, didn’t splash their chips about unnecessarily. So when one raised from early position, I paid attention. Still, being the typical $6/$12 game, the raise got several cold callers, including the player to my immediate right. I found a premium hand (after a period of some hand drought) and re-raised. That got one caller as well, and the preflop raiser raised again. All of the initial cold callers called again and I capped. Everyone called.
The flop came 10-8-x rainbow. The initial raiser bet out, a player to his left raised, it got called by the player to my right, and I made it three bets. The initial raiser called, as did everyone else. This was building to be a monster pot.
The turn brought a queen. Everyone checked to me. I bet again. I believe I remember at least one caller, but then the player on my right woke up and check-raised.
Bells went off in my head. Loud bells. Suddenly, I was sure that this player had called five bets preflop with a one-gap connector, the J-9, and had made his flopped open-end straight draw on the turn. How much of a chance, I wondered, did he have AQ or KQ? I didn’t know.
But with such a massive pot, and with me still on an overpair, it because almost impossible to fold at that point. I called him down, and sure enough, my read was spot on: J-9 offsuit.
The initial raiser? AK.
Finishing off the weekend, I tried something new, the spread limit game offered at Bay101. They offer two spread limit games: $4-100 and $5-200. I signed up for the lower limit game.
Bay 101 is an expensive place to play. Not only do they take a $4 rake (instead of the more common $3, plus $1 jackpot, which essentially turns out to be the same thing), the take the drop even if there’s no flop. If anyone raised preflop, they take the full drop. Only if no one raised and the remaining blinds chip do they mitigate the drop, taking “only” $1.
But their spread limit game also takes three blinds, the standard $2 and $4, but also $2 on the button.
I actually did pretty well at this game. I was up early, almost tripling up, then went into a slow spell and lost back some of my profits. One player on my left was very loose and rather inexperienced, and I took several pots from him with strong hands that improved on the flop. When he left, better players came in, and that combined with weaker cards left my play slowing down. Then I had one hand where I go tremendously lucky and tripled up.
I pretty solid/aggressive player had limped in early, a late position player who I’d observed to be fairly loose made a standard raise to about $20. I was on the button and found pocket kings and just called, as did the early position limper.
The flop came Q-x-4 rainbow. The initial raiser pushed her small stack of about $60 all in. I raised the max, but then was very surprised when the initial limper re-raised all-in. I called, which was all-in for me (and he had me covered as well) and found to my dismay that I was third best in the hand. The initial raiser had pocket aces, while the limper had pocket fours and had made a set on the flop.
Then, the miracle. A king on the turn, giving me top set. It held up and I became by far the big stack at the table. I won a couple more hands and left shortly afterward having more than quadrupled my $100 buy-in.
Actually, my cash game play is something I’ve been very happy about. The one session on Monday was actually an anomaly; I’ve made a net profit (sometimes not a very big one) at something like nine of the last ten cash game sessions. And that’s something that I can be happy about. I think I’m learning more about how to play well and am turning that information into profit.
So while my tournament experience over the weekend was disappointing, it was quite an interesting weekend anyway.