High On Poker

The Limit Omaha Hi/Lo training has been going exceedingly well. Last night, a little over a month from my actual birthday, I went out to dinner with my parents and wifey Kim to actually celebrate. If you recall, I was actually in Vegas for my birthday hanging out with my invisible internet friends, so it was a nice surprise that the parents insisted even a month later to take us out.

Dinner was eaten at a local small restaurant by the South Street Seaport called Table Tales. The place is great, mostly because it is so unexpected. The place looks like a nondescript coffee shop or something. It sure as hell does not look like a restaurant, with the few, mismatched tables. But the food there is so…authentic. And by that, I mean not processed.

After a dinner of Rigatoni in Sunday Gravy (homemade pasta in a meat sauce loaded with shortribs, brisket, sausage and probably more) and a bottle of Pinot Grigio, wifey Kim and I returned home.

It wasn’t long before wifey Kim was watching Bachelor, so I did what any self-respecting future Gambling Anonymous member would do, play poker compulsively.

I started off with a couple of SNGs, one PLO8 and another LO8. The LO8 SNGs take a while to fill up, since most people are not looking for Limit SNGs, let alone split game limit SNGs. So, while I waited, I opened up the tournament lobby to see if there were a smaller field tournament worth entering.

PokerStars often has tournaments with 1000 or more players. If you have 6 hours to kill, have at it. Frankly, though, I don’t have that kind of time, or, more accurately, that kind of stamina, so I scanned the tournaments for games that had a smaller field. I ended up locking into a tiny tournament with only 7 or so players. The tournament had already started, so we were in Late Registration, which I think can last an entire hour. The tournament field was tiny, but with Late Registration, it could balloon easily to 5x its current size, so I decided to look into the tournament a bit more closely.

Limit Omaha Hi/Lo. It was a perfect setup. It’s my game of choice (at least for now), and the amount of players were manageable. Then I realized why. The buy-in was $40+4.

My current PokerStars bankroll (which is frankly my only online bankroll worth mentioning) was at about $180 or so after entering the two other SNGs. Now, proper bankroll management will tell you that risking almost 25% of your bankroll on one tournament is not an intelligent move, but that never stopped me before. It was almost like my hand had a mind of its own as it clicked the Register button. Once done, though, I knew that I had to play well.  After all, it was practice, and thanks to my poor money management, it was practically a must-win situation to keep myself rolled properly to take a shot at the Summer Bankroll Challenge.

The LO8 tournament ended up topping off at a measly 9 players, or one table. I started off fairly slow and tight as I concentrated moreso on the PLO8 SNG, which was in full swing. I was down to probably 5 players in the PLO8 SNG and still had a full table at the LO8 tournament when another window popped up, the $16 LO8 SNG I had registered for a while ago. I had since forgotten it, but it hadn’t forgotten me.

I three tabled for a while, eventually bubbling in the PLO8 SNG when the blinds were ridiculously high. I ended up taking second in the LO8 SNG when blinds were once again absurdly high. That was a funny ending, since it was me and three other players on the bubble, with one player holding over 10k and me and the other two holding something like 2 big blinds apiece. I positioned myself with some well time gambles, always conscious of whether the other players were about to be forced all-in. Eventually, I ended up against the 10k guy, but the chip deficit was just too high to come back.

Meanwhile, in the LO8 tournament, I was playing super tight. Admittedly, the higher stakes had caused me to use this strategy early on, but once the re-registration period ended and I saw the prize pool, I had to shift my strategy. As it turned out, the tournament was Winner Take All with a $360 prize pool. Now, there was nothing that notified anyone ahead of time of the W-T-A format, so I have to assume it had something to do with the tournament setup. It was probably designed with the expectation of a large field, so maybe 10% payouts were set up, or it was set up for 1 payout per table, or whatever. I don’t know the programming, but the point is, the W-T-A format was a real wrench in the works. Suddenly, I had to win the damn thing!

So, I focused. I knew that I could not just wait for the other players to knock each other out before amassing chips and angling for a cash position, like I admittedly did in the LO8 SNG. Instead, I took opportunities to go after pots and make educated gambles. I began to pick out players’ personalities, and more importantly, I kicked up the aggression just as the blinds got to the point where they mattered. I was able to move from 7th out of 7 to 1st out of 5, when suddenly it felt like I was the 10k player and the others were the tiny stacks. It wasn’t quite as pronounced as in the LO8 SNG, but it was clear that I was the big stack and the others were playing for 2nd place. The only problem they had was the fact that there were no second place prize money.

By the time it was down to 3, I was severely abusing my opponents with aggression. In O8, its a general principle that no hand is at that much of an advantage preflop. Therefore, it can sometimes make sense to gamble it up if you are the big stack and can afford to gamble. I used that principle to essentially force my opponents out of pots, increasing my lead for HU play.

One of my two remaining players eventually started picking up hands and took out the other player. Suddenly, we were heads-up, and while I still had the lead, it was a little less impressive. At 7700 to 5800, my opponent suggested a deal. Blinds were at 400/800, so both of us were officially shortstacks.As I mentioned, no starting hand is that far ahead in LO8, so if I were to play an entire hand betting or calling all the way to the river only to lose, I would be out 2400, and suddenly I would be the one in 2nd place. That’s assuming no preflop raise and no re-raising, so you can see how things were not as secure as one might hope.

This is when my opponent suggested a deal. I agreed that we could work something out, and we settled on 200/160, with 200$ for me. Since he actually held 42% of the chips to my 58%, I was actually giving him about 2% equity (160 is 44% of the 360 prize pool), but I was happy to lock in the win, particularly in a game that could easily devolve into a push and pray fest.

So, to recap, I’ve played a lot of online LO8 tournaments and SNGs in the last week and its been largely a promising experience. Now, this all may mean nothing next weekend when I play the LO8 $400 event at the Borgata, but at least it puts me in nice position in the Summer Bankroll Challenge and I’m riding a poker high.

Until next time, make mine poker!