Borgata bound

The damage so far: 1 stained lacoste shirt, prognosis poor but Dawn may save it; a 10 replacement ken cole tee; a 2.75 atm fee; and about an hour lost travel time. As usual, a crazy clueless someone is sitting behind me, calling harrahs and asking random questions of the switchboard. And he’s liable to talk the entire way down. I suck.

 

Don’t Ask

Certain establishments in NYC have bizarre taglines. John’s: No slices. Ess-A-Bagel: No toasting. I don’t read mandarin, but this is Chinatown’s equivalent.

 

Jerry, I’m a good O8 player, right?

Do I Stink?

Brutal, brutal weekend at the Taj last weekend.

Well, the second half of it.  It’s not the amount of money lost; I’ve lost that sum before.  It was the relentless, unidirectional rapidity of the loss. I scooped ZERO kill pots in 12 hours. Zero.  I’m not sure how that’s possible.  Three pair and four pair coming out of every orifice.  An A high flush run down by a straight flush.  Fish who chase every single damn low draw and they get there against me and no one else.

I want to say it was just a bad run but Omaha 8 is supposed to be low variance and here I am getting rocked harder than any 10/20 game I played by average-to-terrible players.  And no one in the posse plays O8, so I’m free to delude myself about my ability
as much as I want.

Anyway, played about 1000 hands on FTP this week and all seems normal.  I’ll give the live game ONE more try.

 

AC in AC

Hitting AC for the weekend. Uneventful (ie good) train ride down.

Atlantic City, or Chechnya

Latest sign of the Taj’s active neglect: there’s a soggy spot about 2 foot wide next to the air conditioner. I don’t particularly care since its in the corner and easily avoided, but these guys stopped trying a while ago. Chilling with some 5/10 O8. Ill decide on whether or not to donkament at showboat later.

 

Downfall

I last until the very, very, end of Day 1, Level 8, when blinds were at 500/1000. No fatal hand especially, just a matter of not growing your chip stack relative to the blinds, which soon leads to picking a spot with which to double up, which soon leads to gimme a hand I can shove with, no matter how speculative.

Some key hands of the tournament:

Omaha This was early, and I probably made the right play but it annoyed me for about an orbit. The first family pot at the the table, and I’m BB so I’m stuck with playing 8-8-T-Q with two ♥– total garbage. Of course I flop the joint, rainbow no less. I bet, middle position raises, cutoff calls, I reraise. The turn pairs the 9. Fuck. Check, check, bet. Now what. I shut down, middle calls. River brings a third heart, 9JK♥-9♥-6 ♥ . They check it down, and split with the same straight I had. Steam.

Razz Not much to say about this one, but since it was the first hand that took a chunk out of my highwater mark of about 10,000 in chips I’ll mention it: took seventy-six to the river against seventy-five, and I pretty much knew he had it, but we both made on fifth street so I had to pay him off. Fucking razz.

Stud I don’t lose all of these. Was able to limp into a four-way with split 5s. Fourth street brings a third five. I make it two bets. One caller. Continue to bet out, villain raises me one time, and on seventh street puts me all in, which is great because I just filled up, pairing my fifth street 4. He had kings up the whole time so I was always ahead.

Stud8 rolled up 5s — something about 5s this tournament — which is beautiful because a shortish stack takes a shot since he’s thinks he’s pretty good for hi with KKx, and it sure looks I’m betting the low. we flip on fifth street and he sees the bad news.

Hold ‘em I can’t remember any hold’em hands of mine worth discussing — I think I squeezed kings once, but got no action. Kid Poker — I got moved to his table around 2AM to watch him play about five hands — made a good hold’em read, even in defeat: on a K 6 3 two ♦ board, he doesnt put opponent on the King, so he thinks at worst he has overs. turns out opp was on a flush draw and KP was actually ahead, but the flush came.

Here’s the hand I when down in flames with — pretty ordinary omaha-wise.

Me: A♦ A♣ 6♦ Q♥
Him: A♠ 2♦ T♠ 5♦

Board Q♠ 7♣ 4♠ – T♥ – 3♠

Frankly I never saw the flush, I was too focused on my AA holding up for a split.

So, a 220th finish out of 770 runners. Winnings, nil. Not an overwhelming experience though. Can’t wait for another chance.  ♠♥♦♣

 

Break 3. Getting pricey

I went from 6400 to 9500 to 2500 to 5700 at the break. Going to war with your hand at this point costs you half your stack when you lose. Uncomfortable.

The retiree to my right who is pretty good has about 22k now. He also crippled me in a hand of razz. Bet call bet call bet call and suddenly you’re down to 2500.

But then stud to the rescue. Split 5s and I get to see 4th street cheap. Its another 5 and everyone leaves except one donkish player who proceeds to call every street. helpful.

Something about me and 5s tonight.blinds are gonna be 200 400 next. Half the field busted out 400 of 770 left.

 

Break 2 – America, fuck yeah

6400 going into dinner break, ill totally take it considering where I was 2 hours ago. Having rolled up 5s in studE against the short stack all-in didn’t hurt.

 

Break 1 – shortish

Out of 4500 in starting chips and I have 3200ish which is pretty much the short stack for a table. The next 2 hours will start sweeping some players aside, including me if I’m not careful. If it wasn’t for razz of all things I could be toast already.

 

A Refresher

Hello.  You may know me from some home game instructional Dvds such as as “Don’t be a Pussy” and “Will Puts Me On Tilt, So I’m Glad He Lives in Russia Now.”  Tonight, I’ll be entering Event 31 of the 2009 WSOP, $1500 HORSE.  For those of you (all of you, apparently) who only play No Limit, here’s a brief rundown of the structure of these LIMIT games.

H – Hold’em. Probably the first game you learned, before you found out that NL was the cool game.

O – Omaha High-Low. a “split-pot” game, meaning there’s a high hand and a low hand pot each hand.  Win both and you scoop.  You get counterfeited a lot in this one.

R – Razz.  Stud backwards.  The “lowest” hand wins the pot.  A2345 is the best possible hand.  Only drifters from St Louis like this game.

S – 7 card Stud. 2 down, 4 up, 1 down. Used to be popular, now it’s only played within 50 miles of Boston.

E – Stud H/L. The “E” stands for eight-or-better, meaning you need at least an eight low to win the low pot (as in Omaha H/L.)  Like the “O” game, except with the stud structure.

The tournament starts at the ungodly hour of 8pm Eastern/5 Pacific.  No idea why.

At some point I’ll clue you in on my poker shenanigans over the past year — they are few and far between.

 

Wordle this

In lieu of actual content — more of which is Coming soon — a wordle of this embryonic blog. I’ll try this again in a few months.