Happy Halloween

Sundays, but not today.  Go give yourself a sugar coma sneaking candy from your kids’ treat bags.  That is, after all, what Halloween is all about.

PokerSlut Tour PLO DS

Not only will I be hungover from my Home Game, I will be trashed from attending the Central Illinois Youth Symphony’s Wine Tasting and Silent Auction fundraiser. 

So, come take my chips.

The Situation Continued…

After re-loading for another $200 I had it up to around $260 after one hand by tilting and firing three barrels with air before my opponent folded on the river. Sitting around that amount I picked-up KK and raised to $12 with two callers. Flop comes J102 rainbow. I lead for $25 and get one caller who has about $50 left behind. Turn is a brick 4 and I put him in for his last $50. He calls and turns over KQ and gets up to grab his coat and walks one step away from the table before the 9 hits the river.

I was as low as $140 on my second buy-in when things started to turn around. After taking a 15 minute break I came back and the deck started hitting me hard. I had my stack north of $300 in one lap. I picked-up AA against a loose aggro player who, based on the comments at the table, is a regular player in the 2/5 game there. I raise to $12 pre and he is the only caller. Flop comes KQ7ss. I fire out $20 and he calls. Turn pairs the 7 and I bet $35 and he calls. River is a the 6s and he donks out for $35. I took a good bit of time going over the betting and it didn’t make sense so I called. He had bottom pair. Helped a bit that I had the As as well.

Two hands later I have AK off UTG and limp. The reason I limped is because the player from the last hand was in the SB and I’m pretty sure if we get multiple limpers that he is making a move with his $90ish stack. If he doesn’t and I miss a flop I have no problem pitching the hand. There were multiple limpers to him and he makes it $21 to go as expected. Folds to me and I make it $102. All fold to him and he throws the rest of his stack in saying “I just have low cards.” Board rolls out 543KA and he mucks after seeing my hand.

I played a little while longer and had my stack as high as $540 but dribbled down a bit to $470 when I got up.

Situation #2:

After dinner I came back and bought in for $200 again. I had $230 in front when yet another tough decision came my way.

I have 33 and call a raise to $10 along with three others and we take the flop five handed. Pot is $50 and we see a 632ss flop. It checks to me in MP and I bet $30 and get 3 callers. $170 in the pot and the turn is a bad looking 5 bringing a second spade as well. EP leads for $25 and next to act min-raises to $50. I tank and gamble hoping for the board to pair on the end when a late position players 3-bets to $200. EP folds and next to act is all in for less and it’s back to me.

I took a good two minutes or so and counted out the pot and figured out the odds I needed. Please don’t check my math here with the pot as I am guessing on numbers but I needed to be getting 5:1 to make a neutral EV play and I was only being laid 4:1. Add to the fact that I may be facing a higher set I opted for the fold. When players rolled their hands over one had 74ss and the other hand A4. Unfortunately the river paired the 2 and I would have scooped a $650 pot.

If I end up holding in the first two hands (first one in particular) I am going to gamble it up on the last hand. That’s a total of $1600 in pots that I would have won. I ended up leaving with a $29 profit. A lot of action for a small win.

/ bad beat and cooler stories

Where in the World Is Snuffy Volume 4 – The Situation

Volume 4 is back where I brought you Volume 2, The Meadows in Washington, PA. I made it to the casino in the late afternoon wanting to play some 100 play video poker. Two problems with that as it’s 10x points day at the casino and there were a bunch of busses there meaning the average age was about 80. Both of the 100 play games were taken. Time for some poker instead.

First off I will give you a slight warning that there are some bad beat stories in here but along with it I wanted to talk some strategy with the hands. I sat with $200 and early on won a decent sized pot to get to $280. In the second lap around the table the following hand occurred.

I am on the button with 1010. There is an EP raise along with 2 callers to me. I call along with the BB and we see the flop 5 ways. Flop comes 1082hh. EP leads for $10 and a MP player raises to $25.

Question #1: How much do you raise here?

It’s pretty obvious that you must raise in this spot, I just need to figure out how much. I opted for a raise to $50. Looking back at it I think I need to make it $75 here. With that board texture you need to push out at lease some of the players drawing. EP calls and MP calls. Three to the turn and the board pairs the 8 (non-heart). EP and MP check to me.

Question #2: How much do you bet?

Stack sizes at this point are important. EP has $170 behind, I have $220 and MP covers. Now I’m not scared of anything that comes on the river (except maybe the case 8) and I want to keep all draws in the hand. I opted for $50 on the turn again leaving $170 behind and both EP and MP call.

River is a non-heart king. EP shoves his last $120 in and MP shoves over the top. Action to me.

Question #3: Is there any way you can find a fold in this spot?

I have to call $170 to win nearly $800. I think it’s pretty obvious that the EP player has something with an 8 and I’m 99.9% sure it’s EXACTLY 10,8 (note he was not the pre-flop raiser). What the hell do you put MP on? You can take an 8 out of the equation.

I make the crying call (if you can call the 3rd nuts there a crying call) and MP is the first to roll over the KK. EP mucks and I just got kicked in the junk early and I am on to buy-in #2. I think it’s really hard to put MP on KK considering there was no 3-bet pre-flop.

If I had the hand to play over I think I raise to $75 on the flop but with the board pairing on the turn I still don’t think I shove there. I probably make it another $75 leaving a short-ish $100 river shove.

Since this is getting a bit long I will wrap it with a part 2 later.

Answers on all three questions are appreciated.

PokerSlut Tour XIX Limit Holdem

Yes, it is time for that slow painful death known as Limit Poker. 

Nick Schulamn on ‘World of Jenks'

World of Jenks - MTV Shows

Full Tilt sponsored Nick Schulman talks about being a professional poker player

I took a look at this video today and I had two immediate reactions to the piece. The first one is that I think it fairly portrayed the life of a professional poker player. The second is not as nice.

Every time I see one of these pieces the player has some other kind of outside issues. Schulman indicates that he has anxiety attacks. Even though he has had these since high school, the casual viewer will think ‘yep just another degenerate gambler.

How about one time having a piece on a professional player with a family? Show the rest of the world that us poker players are like everyone else.

PokerSlut Tour XIX Stud

Time to prove how studly you really are….

Only in AC

Seriously this is the type of shit that deserves the death penalty.

Harrah’s New Orleans Report

I was able to get in a session last night in the Crescent City. Harrah’s is nicely situated on the corners of Canal and Poydras just a few blocks from the French Quarter.

The first and only interesting story on the night was when I was on the elevator down from my hotel room. A middle-aged lady is on the elevator staring at the buttons. She asks me '”where is all of the food?” After thinking about that for a second I told her everything was on the first floor. “Where is the button?” I said the one on the bottom that says ‘lobby’. “Oh, I’m so fucking drunk I don’t even know what’s going on. I feel like such a fucking idiot.” I should have told her that the first thing is identifying the problem. Second part is fixing it. Yep, I’m pretty sure that I am in New Orleans.

After a nice dinner at Gordon Biersch on the patio watching the Twins lose number 512 in a row to the Yankees, I was ready to play some poker. There was probably eight 1/2 games going at 6:30pm. I was number two on the list and got a seat within five minutes.

My first thought was that the table was a bit on the older side so I was ready for a bunch of nits. While that was somewhat true there was two particularly bad players at the table. One was a middle-aged guy (MAG) and the other was an older guy (OG). MAG was a river aggro player. He loved to fire on all rivers whether he had something or not. OG was a calling station. You never tried to bluff him off of a hand for any amount. One of the fun hands of the night was when these two battled. MAG fired $20 on the turn and $60 on the river with air and was called down by OG with 4th pair. MAG goes off saying he is the worst player he has ever seen. Really? You saw him calling down with any pair for the last two hours and you try and run a bluff on him? Who is the bad player?

My night wasn’t too entertaining at all. I only had two somewhat interesting hands on the night. The first one there was a one limper before the button raised to $12. I had KK in the small blind and just called and the limper called. I opted for just the call because we were going to be three handed at most and the button liked to fire all flops once he put in a pre-flop raise. Flop comes out Q109 rainbow. To my surprise the limper leads for $20 followed by a button call. Based on the limper’s earlier play he has to have two pair plus in this spot. I opted for a call and will re-evaluate on the turn. The turn comes a 4. I check and limper leads for $60. I just don’t think I am good here and pitch without a lot of further thought. I think the only thing I am possibly ahead of here is QJ.

The last slightly interesting hand was late in the session when I called a MP raise to $11 with 97dd along with a lady that came to the table. The lady was very tight and the MP player was aggro but tended to give up on the turn when he didn’t hit. Three to the flop it came down J104 rainbow. MP c-bet $16 and I called with the gutter and the lady called. I was slightly concerned when the lady called. She acted like she had a piece of the flop but not a really big piece. The turn brought and ace. Lady checked, MP checked and this pot was ripe for the taking. I bet out $36 and the lady hummed and hawed before folding and MP folded fast. She commented that she thought she had the best hand. I’m guessing she had something like QJ and couldn’t find a call with my tight-ish image. I told her I turned two pair with A10 to make her feel better.

After that I was at my high point of the night showing a profit of $125. The table got older and amazingly got a lot more aggressive. Since the table was looking a little tough I opted to get up with an $87 profit on the day after about 3 1/2 hours.

Parking at the casino was a touch high at $25 for 24 hours. After 30 minutes of play you got a ticket for free parking. Unfortunately the poker room doesn’t track play. At least they didn’t last time I was there and I never asked. Maybe if asked they give you one. I opted to play some 5 cent 10 Play Jacks or Better. After dropping $5 after what had to be nearly 45 minutes I went to look for something else to play. I found nothing before heading back to the video poker machines and dropped the $15 in a 5 cent 100 Play Jacks or Better machine that took all of 5 minutes to lose. Damn card reader didn’t work either.

I go to get my free parking and it says that I have played 24 minutes, WTF? I go find a penny machine to play to satisfy the time and happened to run good and won $5 over an hour of play. I got my free parking and called it a night.

One side note I wake up at 4:15 (had to get up at 5:30 for flight) by a loud ass party in the room next door. They quiet down just in time for me to get ready to leave for the airport.

Where in the World is Snuffy - Volume 3 and 3a

This week I am in Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Last night I hit the Hollywood Casino in downtown Baton Rouge. No poker room there (knew that going in). It was gonna be a short stay anyways after dinner so I opted for one I have never been to before.

I played budgetcoach's favorite game Mississippi Stud. Ended up winning $50 and gave back $20 playing 10 play video poker. Quick $30 profit is fine by me.

I will be staying at Harrah's New Orleans tomorrow night and hopefully will get in an extended cash game session. Results to follow.

PokerSlut Tour XIX Razz

It's time to Razzle Dazzle!