Observations from the rail

I’ve noticed a few things in poker from merely observing people playing poker. I watch so I can learn. What I’ve learned is that sometimes poker just doesn’t make any sense. I’ve heard many times players say poker is like life because it’s unpredictable, and it could be hazardous to your health, especially when you’re in danger of breaking your hand while pounding your keyboard during your latest horrible beat. You would also think that in life bad things shoud happen to bad people; it’s justice or karma, in contrast it seems like good things happen to bad players in poker. I guess that’s life in the poker world and I’ll take it day by day.

But before I sign off, here are some of my pet peeves:

In MTTs (and cash games for that matter) there’s always going to be that pain in the ass player who’s calling every raise with junk. He’s amassed a huge stack just by being a donkey. You’re salivating at the chance to double up against him and you wait for the perfect hand to do so. Either one of two things are going to happen and both of them ain’t good…either he donks off all his chips to everyone else or you become his latest victim.

Most players overplay AQ and AK. I’ve seen so many shoves or all-in calls with AQ or AK…..and for huge pots. It’s almost like nobody evens knows how to play post flop anymore. Its always, “oh I have AK or AQ I’m shoving no matter what”. I can understand if I’m shortstacked and I see AK/AQ then yeah it makes sense, but I’ve seen players who were deep stacked and get busted off because they couldn’t lay down AK or AQ preflop. An example of this is when I see a guy with 15k in chips and the blinds are 100-200. He’s up against another guy with about the same amount of chips. He raises to 600, the other guy raises to 2k, the guy with AK insta-shoves and poof he’s gone.

Most players don’t understand the concept of value betting. Just the other day I witnessed a player catch quad 9s. He caught it on the turn and there’s a nothing really out there except Q799. So instead of value betting turn. or better yet lay a trap and hope the other players catch up, he shoves and drives off everyone else. He then proudly shows his quads. Everyone types in “nh”, I think to myself what an ass. The guy gets quads and bets everyone out by shoving into a fairly small pot. But then again I’ve seen some players call shoves with garbage so who am I to judge. Even so if you’ve got the nuts, at least try to pry some more money out of the other players. I’ve coined a phrase for this…I call it the premature ejacu-bet.

If you’re going to slowplay a big pair, then you’d better be able to fold them. This is where I win a lot of pots sometimes. You get a weak tight player who limps in with AA or KK. It’s a good move and a profitable move but it’s dangerous also. So I’m playing $50NL, and I’m in the BB with 45. Not bad. EP limper. I don’t know that he has AA. Two more limpers. I check. The flop hits my two pair. I check and the EP bets out. Everyone folds, I check raise him. He shoves. Now there’s about $10 in the pot right now. He puts in the rest of his $30 or so. I think for a bit. Unless he’s got a set I think I’m good. I call. He shows AA and I take down a large pot. He calls me lucky.

You can play a hand perfectly and still lose the hand. That’s poker. This happened to me, I limp in with AA (yes I did….lol) but this time I get a raiser from late position. I re-pop him and he shoves with 99. He hits his set and I reload. $50 down the drain. He tells me I deserved that beat because of the way I played my AA. Funny, I think to myself, I wasn’t the one who shoved with 99 while a 5-1 dog. He had no clue what I had, and even though I lost the hand, I still feel that I outplayed this noob. Oh well that’s poker.

Patience, patience….then bust out.

My satellite went smoothly until one stinking hand. That’s usually the case in a SNG.

We start off with 10k in chips and 20 minute blinds. It’s a fairly deep stack tournament and the blind levels are long enough to play spec hands early on. That’s usually my strategy. See flops for cheap with spec hands and see if I can bust someone out. It’s worked pretty good but for the satellite, I’m playing a different game.

I’m playing tight. Super tight. Tighter than I’ve played in awhile. Tight means no limping and when I come into a pot I’m raising. Tight also means I’m playing maybe the top 15% of the hands. I’m not forcing things, and I’m waiting for good cards. I build my stack to about 13k, when my AQ beats out KQ. I lose 5K when my AK doesn’t hold up against 77. I steal a few blinds and I’m at about 11k in chips at the 300-600 level. I”m up against a player with about 7k in chips. I raise to 1,500 in MP. The button raises to 5k. Ok, I’m pretty sure I’m ahead. The only hand that gives me heartache is AA. The villain only has 2k left behind so I put him all in. He calls so fast that it kind of startles me. I know he has something big. This player is super tight. I mean so tight that if he’s in the hand he’s got something, it’s just a matter of how big is he? I’m hoping it’s AK or QQ, heck I would’ve taken KK but the villain flips over AA and I’m crippled. I’m out soon after when I miss my draws with QJ diamonds. I finish in 5th place.

Oh well there’s always next quarter.

Satellite to the Freeroll and Live Play

I’m playing in a satellite in my poker league tomorrow. I played myself out of the top 8 in the standings when I could’ve sat out and cruised to an easy seat. But that’s not my style. I’m not going to “turtle” my way in like the other players. I’m confident enough that I feel I can continue to win.

Last week during my league I was playing a 20 man tournament. I finished second, to arguably the biggest donkey caller of the group. I had A7 and he had Q9. The flop is A95. He raises, I shove and he calls. He said he knew I had the Ace.

My question to him was if you knew I had the Ace why did you call? His response was “I have a feeling I’m going to win”.

Us poker players live this rationale all the time.

“I knew you had that but I had to call” is the rallying cry for all the fish out there.

But too bad for me he hit his Q on the river for two pair against my top pair. So is life. You take the beat like a champ and move on.

If it weren’t for the “cat who ate canary” grin on this guy’s face, I would’ve left it alone except I couldn’t. So I tell him “so bascially you called knowing I had an Ace (which I don’t think he did) and felt that you were going to hit”. He said yes.

Is this flawed thinking? I think it is. Of course I was hammering him with raises through out the heads up affair, but I’m not stupid enough to call an all-in with the win on the line with anything than top pair at least. Even though he sucked out against me, it’s ok. He’s a losing player in the long run (which his stats bear) and I’m happy with his call. Besides if he didn’t suck out every once in awhile, he probably would stop playing. Which would mean a valuable customer of mine would be lost.

The thing about live play is that in some respects it’s so much easier to play than online. The reason being that you can actually see certain things that tip you off in live play. Online there’s really not much of any tells except perhaps how fast the other player clicks call or raise, and even that is debatable.

In the end I feel that sometimes the cards dictate your play as much as your opponents style of play. It’s never about my cards. I’ve played enough to realize that what cards you hold most hands are of no consequence. It’s what you think the other player is holding and what he thinks you’re holding. Of course most players you come against in the lower stakes aren’t even thinking like that, which brings you back to playing the cards and the odds. If the odds don’t hold up, it’s not the end of the world. It’s just an anomoly, a coicidence if you will. In the long run they will and one can only hope to be on the right side of that confrontation and live to tell about it.

Two Steps Forward and One Giant Step Backwards

I was running hot. Super hot. Then it all crumbled. Like a house of cards. Well specifically it was the cards that did me in. Perhaps it was a bit of my play but it’s out of my hands when the opponent seems to find those 2 – 3 outers on the river against me.

I’ve read somewhere that it’s a lot easier (and faster) to lose what you’ve built up than to grind your BR up. It’s so true. I had been winning and up about $80 only to lose it all and then some.

Then I cracked down and played some strong poker and I’m back up again. So it’s two steps up and one step down. At this rate I’ll never go up the ladder. But maybe that’s a good thing because going up the ladder only means more misery or it could be the way tothe penthouse. Either way I’m willing to try.

The problem is that it took one session to destroy what I built up. So a few hundred hands of poor play/luck evaporated 5k+ hands of solid play. That’s the nature of poker, you win some and lose some. Now if I could only limit the “lose some part” then I’m a happy camper…easy to say but hard to do.

In the end I’m still up and that’s all that matters. I hate it when people say “I should’ve/could’ve been up if it weren’t for so and so hand”….on and on yammering about the bad beat they took. But the truth is that it didn’t happen, that’s poker and all poker players live with that fact.

Even with the setback I’m still at about 4x BB at 25NL. I’m still building BR bit by bit, although I haven’t spent nearly as much time at the tables as I should be in order to make this happen.