High On Poker

I’ll admit that aside from my utter domination in the Summer Bankroll Challenge – Southern Hemisphere Edition, this year has not been a particularly good one for poker. I am currently down just a little less than $1,000 even though I should be up several grand to meet my 2010 Goal. I’m not terribly concerned at this point, since there is a long road ahead of me, but the losses aren’t exactly pleasant to the eye.

Perhaps even worse, I have barely played any live poker in February, likely a side effect of some bad January results that turned me off of the game for a while, and the SBC-SHE, which has caused me to focus on my online play. My $1200 online win is also probably to blame, since it only encourages more online play.

All that said, I returned to the Tuna Club this weekend for the Sunday $160 tournament. I ended up busting in 10th or 11th after one rebuy. Overall, it was a fun game, but I did not see much in the way of cards early on, which led to my initial “shortstack”. Truth be told, I actually bounced back to the shortstack, but busted when I hit a straight flush draw. There were three players in the hand and I held 9Tc after calling a raise from Asian Mark. The flop was 7c8c8s, so any club gave me a flush (9 flush cards) and any Ten or Six gave me a straight. On the flop, Harris (the other player in the hand) checked and Asian Mark bet 775. I thought for a while and counted up my chips. I had around 4500 behind.

I didn’t want to call because if I missed on the next card, I was likely facing a large bet to see the river. Therefore, a raise was in order.

Thumbing through my stack, I tried to find a good price. I usually would raise 3x the initial bet (around 2400), but that would leave me with even less chips behind for the turn bet/call. I considered a min-raise, but that had the same problem as the call; I would surely get a call on the flop and would likely face a debilitating bet on the turn. So, I pushed all-in. Harris folded and Asian Mark called with JJ. My outs missed and I was busted.

I considered walking, since I hate re-registering late. Re-registering is like rebuying, but you have to repay the fee. As it turned out though, with blinds at 100/200 and around 4500 chips for re-registering, I decided to stay put.

After a while, the blinds went up, as did antes. Once the re-register period was over, the extra stacks were removed from the table and we were down to two tables of 6. This caused me to go through more blinds, and eventually I found myself short again, a little over 10x the BB. I started the push-or-fold routine.

I finally got a decent hand in AQo. I pushed and got folds. On the next hand, I got AQd. I pushed and picked up the blinds. A couple of hands later, I got AK. I pushed and got all folds.

Right around this time, Rafael, who was sitting to my left, pointed out that I had gone all-in a bunch of times and won. Maybe it was a tad later, since I think I had gone all-in 4 times already without anyone looking me up. “You should go for 10.” Realistically, this is a silly suggestion, but I decided to ham it up. The next three times when I pushed, I joked to the table that I was just playing for the 10 all-in wins. Some of the more serious players even cracked a smile, since the goal was so absurd.

I had completed 7 out of 10 of my all-ins when I was in the SB with AJh. The action folded to the terrorist looking dude on my left. The guy was actually pretty friendly and we had chatted lightly during the game. I had noticed he made some aggressive plays with less-than-stellar cards when he saw an opportunity. In one example, he pushed all-in over a late position raiser who he felt was weak. The LP raiser called and showed a very weak AT…but Yusaf Poker had AT too. The other guy almost hit his flush, but Yusaf got lucky.

With all this in mind and a history of pushing from the button in unraised pots, I decided to call when Yusaf pushed. Of course, first I verified with Rafael that calling an all-in and winning would count for my 10 all-in wins. He agreed. This probably wasn’t a real factor in my decision, but I had to keep the goof going.

Sure enough, we actually had some spectators by now, and they along with the rest of the table were commending my call when Yusaf showed 23o against my AJh. Door card: 3. Nothing else was relevant, and I busted. LEMON!

Before this hand, a chick was watching the game from behind me after she had busted from the other table. I had overheard her talking about how she messed up to get herself knocked out. She had concluded that she should just stop playing poker because she was so bad at it.

When I busted, she told me, “I busted with AJ earlier. So did ____ (some name I don’t remember).” I replied, “Why didn’t you say something 2 minutes ago before I called!” and then laughed to show I was joking. On that same note, when I lost against 23o, I stood up and said that it was bullshit and the game was rigged. Then I looked around the table and saw some of the onlookers with a concerned look on their faces. I mouthed to them and tilted my head to indicate that I was just joking. By then, my tablemates knew to expect some tomfoolery.

Being the nice guy I am (and always one for encouraging bad players), I chatted briefly with the girl. “What happened with your hand? I heard you were pretty down on yourself.” “I was tired of being pushed around by [name withheld] so I decided to call his all-in with AJ. He had AK and I was out.”

“That call isn’t terrible. Hell, I just called an all-in with AJ. Plus [name withheld] is more than capable of pushing with crap cards. Just because he turned out to have you beat, it doesn’t make it a bad call necessarily.”

I may as well have been talking to myself, because stating those words was somewhat soothing. In my case, I did everything right in the last hand, the guy had crap cards, as I expected, and I still lost. As many people have said before, in Poker, you can do everything right and still lose. Truer words have not been spoken.

Once done, I eventually made my way home. On the way, I realized that if I really want to be the poker player I envision in my head, there are no two ways about it: I have to play more.

Until next time, make mine poker!