Archive for "Poker"
My Would-Be Diamond Royal Flush
Posted on February 7, 2009 by Ching under Poker.
This is why they say that you shouldn’t rabbit-hunt. First, allow me to provide a background.
We are only at $200-$400 blind level and I am already crippled. Crippled because I hadn’t been getting any cards, but it was one momentous hand that really took most of my chips. Here’s the story of how I got into this sad state so early in the game:
So I finally get after over half an hour of just folding my cards. It is the first hand that I’m actually able to play. The flop comes and I have a straight draw. There are two hearts on the board, however, indicating that someone could be on a flush draw also.
The turn comes and it is Qh. That gives me my straight. Someone could very well be holding two hearts, though. Richard is first to act and bets $2,000. I thought to myself that he can’t possibly have the flush. If he had the nuts, he would have checked (which is what I would have done). I convince myself that he is bluffing and, after much deliberation, raise to $5,000. This was a very big mistake as you will see later.
Another player calls. I figured, she has the flush. Ack! I didn’t put Richard on the flush even though he called my raise. He could very well have the flush also, though. I was for sure she was the one who had the flush.
Richard bets his final $2000 on the river. At this point I realized my mistake and figured out that I am hosed. Even though I was pot-committed, I decided to save what little chips I had left and fold. The only other player remaining in the hand called.
It turns out she had the straight and he had the nut flush (Ah Kh in he hole). That was good playing on his part, though, because he did the exact opposite of what I would do in that exact same situation which is what really convinced me that he was simply trying to buy the pot. That was an expensive lesson to learn.
A few folded hands later, I look down at Kd Jd. Flop comes Ad As 10d. I checked. Richard bets $2,000. I’m thinking to myself that this is what he did earlier. Instead of checking his big hand, he bet it. I had this nagging feeling that he didn’t have an ace, though. I was drawing to a gut-shot royal flush, but I could not put my tournament life on the line. That bet was about the same amount of chips as what I had left. Calling would have meant the end of the line for me if I was wrong.
I folded and he showed pocket deuces. I said, “I knew you didn’t have an ace!” I was dealing that so I rabbit-hunted just to see if I would have beat his deuces on the turn or river. I hate deuces because they are so easily beaten.
The turn was a blank and the river was a Qd, giving me a diamond royal flush. Ugh. I missed out on a good opportunity to double up!
The rest of the night it was a struggle to stay alive. I’m not sure how I made it to break. I had $8,000 left at that point, which is not even three blinds. Brian, on the other hand, was doing fantastic. He had almost $60,000 chips at break time. I was literally on life support, hanging by a thread.
Brian parlayed his chip stack to the final table. I knew half of the people remaining: Dill, Sunny, Rich (not the Richard at my original table; different guy), and Binder. Sunny got knocked out before the money. Dill got knocked out in fifth place.
Only Brian, Binder, Rich and another guy (we play with him a lot but his name escapes me at the moment) were left. They played a few more hands until the stacks were pretty much even. Brian who had been one of the chip leaders when the final table began, was only third in chips at this point. A chop was proposed. Brian agreed on the condition that Dan, our tournament director was guaranteed tips. They decided to chop $475 four ways at $115 each leaving $15 to Dan and the players would tip more as appropriate. Brian gave an additional $15, so we left with $100.
I wanted to make sure Dan made money so I asked Brian if the other players tipped Dan as well. Brian said he thinks that there was at least one other player who tipped $15 and then maybe a couple more $10 tips. I saw Dill tip him too when he left. I hope Dan made good money last night. He is a good guy. As tournament director, you want to make at least 10% of the pot in tips. That’s a long night. Tournaments will usually run 4-5 hours.
BTW, Sunny and Scott and the rest of the WPTAPL/Highlands big shots are playing in the WPT Celebrity Invitational at the Commerce Casino in LA in three weeks. I’m not sure what day it airs, but remember to check it out. One of our friends might just make the televised final table!
Here’s Vince Van Patten of WPT, which has moved to FSN from the Travel Channel:
P.S. Shane celebrated his 32nd birthday last night. Happy birthday, Shane!
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Liz Lieu in Manila for the APPT
Posted on February 1, 2009 by Ching under Poker.
Just found out that one of my poker heroes, Liz Lieu, in my hometown for the APPT. I’m sure she is going to do fantastic!
P.S. The video above is Pokerstars chatting with Liz on day 1 of the APPT. For more on the APPT, check out the Pokerstars.tv web site.
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I’m So Over the Weirdness
Posted on January 17, 2009 by Ching under Poker.
This is a bit of a whiny post so if you didn’t feel like reading any whining today, feel free to skip this one.
I was kind of enjoying the weirdness there for a while. However, I fell victim to the weirdness last night. It’s not so great being on that end of it. I think the weirdness has hit its peak, though. It’s safe to say that, at this point, the clueless people far outnumber the people who make sense.
One of the most annoying things is having to play with someone who has no idea when it is their turn to be in the blinds and has no desire to understand this concept. I mean, come on. I’ve seen you playing here for several weeks now and you’re not drunk. How can you still not get it? And, it’s specially grating to me when just the other week I explained to you that you get to be small blind after being the big blind. Don’t ask the table if you are small blind every single time. Just freakin’ post it already.
Oh, and it is very annoying when blinds go up every three hands because every hand takes five minutes to complete. Common people. This is not rocket science. It shouldn’t take more than a second to figure out that you are supposed to fold 9 2 off suit. Regardless if someone raised or not. What are you still thinking about?
Oh, and most annoying of all are those people who have no clue what good hands look like and call someone’s $15,500 all-in with K 4 off. Come on, get a clue. That is just stupid. How can you get mad, though? Well, Brian can in these situations. I don’t think it’s appropriate to get mad, though. I mean, you don’t get mad at a baby when it does something bad or wakes you up five times in the middle of the night. You just deal with it. It doesn’t know any better. It doesn’t know that you have to be up at 6 am so you can get ready and go to work the next day. These people are just clueless. They are like babies. They don’t know any better. I can’t get mad at them for doing the wrong thing. All I can do is whine about it afterward.
Needless to say, my quest for the fourth final table in a row got thwarted by stupidity. I made the right choices and I had some luck on my side last night. My luck just got overran with clueless-ness and eventually ran out.
I realized last night that I can play with novices, but I cannot play with completely clueless people. Unfortunately, that’s all I’m running into these days in BCPT. It really makes me want to try Kandu. Then, again, from hearing Scott talk about it ~ there are a lot of clueless people playing Kandu as well. You just can’t get away from them. Maybe I just need to lay off poker for a while.
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Finished in 3rd Place on Friday
Posted on January 11, 2009 by Ching under Poker.
Did I mention already that Sunny and I both made the final table on Friday evening? That makes three final tables in a row for me.
Last Friday I made the final table but finished shy of the money. They only pay the top five places now, as opposed to top eight at the old place, so making the final table is no guarantee that you will win anything. Sunny managed to talk us into playing again the next day. I made final table again. This time I placed in the money. Then again the other night. I’m in a bit of a mini rush right now in terms of poker. Maybe it is supposed to counter balance all the rotten luck I’m having in real life? [ We are now looking at re-plumbing the entire house in lieu of drilling holes in our slab foundation to the tune of $7K. I think I should be playing the lottery rather than playing poker. ]
Anyway, I started doing better about the same time that all the weirdness started at Highlands. I think the weirdness of the Blue Collar Poker Tournaments, despite my complaints, is actually working out to my advantage. I guess I should stop complaining about the weirdness and just start enjoying it.
Incidentally, I think I’ve figured out what to attribute all the weirdness to… Highlands is gaining more and more popularity with the local crowd so more and more new faces are coming to out play. I think all of the publicity is helping to bring people in. Joe Stumpe wrote about the “Barely Legal” card game Kandu in The Wichita Eagle on November 15, 2008 (page 1A). They were featured on KSN’s Business Beat in early December. They were mentioned again in the Eagle in December. Just recently they had a highly favorable review in the January 2009 issue of Splurge! magazine. I think this is just the beginning of more weirdness to come.
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Last Woman Standing
Posted on January 3, 2009 by Ching under Poker.
“I don’t want to jinx you,” Kristy came over and told me when we were down to the final two tables, “but you are the last woman standing.” That prompted a discussion of Tiffany Michelle at the 2008 WSOP and what everyone considered to be bad poker behavior on her part. As pretty as she is and as much as I love her, I really did not want to be compared to her because everyone (at least those discussing her at the table) thought she was a bitch. I don’t like being a bitch. I don’t want people to think that I’m a bitch. I want them to think of me as a nice, personable poker player.
Anyway, I did tend to get a little testy throughout the evening. I think the weirdness at my table and the weirdness of the evening in general started to get to me.
It was a huge night at Highlands. The turnout for the Blue Collar Poker Tournament was so great that they had to set up tables beyond the designated BCPT area. That normally is a bad sign for me. It means that a lot of non-regulars have come out to play. In the past some of these people have really irritated me because they don’t know when it’s their turn (acting out of turn once is forgivable but doing it a lot throughout the course of the game is really annoying) or when they are in the blinds or how much to bet/raise (sometimes not betting enough to cover the big blind, which is the minimum bet or not raising 2x the amount of the original bet) or not keeping the cut card at the bottom so everyone can see that the card you are pretending to have is not really in your had but at the bottom of the deck or discussing their hand while people are still playing… Those are just some of the things that bug me. I have some minor pet peeves that I don’t really get cranky about but also dislike nonetheless. I don’t like rabbit-hunting because it delays the game, pre-burning (I think this is one of Scott’s peeves, too), tossing the burn cards into the muck pile because it’s hard to tell if people are actually burning cards or if they’re burning more than one card (it’s just really weird, don’t do it), splashing the pot… I normally don’t say anything, but these things do bug me.
Last night was just really weird, though, so I was more outspoken than usual. People just get so confused about dead blinds and dealers, or when it is their turn to deal period. I wanted to maintain some semblance of order so I spoke up in order to keep people on track.
Early on in the game, when the blinds were still at $100-$200, one of the players threw out a $500 chip at the table without saying anything. Heather, because she is so nice, asked him if it was a call or a raise. He nodded yes. We allowed the raise but I had to comment that technically that action would have been considered a call. Then other people chimed in and explained what I meant and Rich, who was on my immediate left, pointed out that the best way is to announce the amount of the raise or simply say raise so that other players at the table do not misconstrue your intentions.
Later on the same guy tried to deal twice. I was like, “Didn’t you just deal that last hand?” He said yes and the guy to his left goes, “I was just small blind.” I said, “Okay. You were the small blind so this hand you get to be the dealer.”
I wasn’t being mean or anything, but I didn’t exercise my usual restraint either. I guess I was a little on the controlling side that night because the player across from me, who I had told to be the dealer previously, commented that I ought to play at a casino. He said it in a fun, joking way but I took it as a sign and laid off a little.
I think it was too late, though, because I had already established myself in the unpopular role of table captain. Throughout the rest of the tournament, other players (even those who just moved to our table from another table) would refer to me for guidance asking if it was their turn to be small/big blind. They didn’t do it sarcastically. Not that I could tell, anyway. It seemed to me like they really weren’t sure and honestly sought my response.
I did get somewhat crabby a couple of times during the tournament. Once was at my original table when we were still at the $200-$400 blind level. I looked down at a good hand, but someone acted out of turn so they were already back to the small blind before I could even act. I was so mad that I raised just to punish them for acting out of turn. I figured that if they had a good hand then they would have raised so I was counting on just picking up the pot. Everyone folds except for the guy who acted out of turn. He puts in an additional $1200 to match my raise. There was a pair on the flop, but they were all low cards. Newer players don’t realize that it is far wiser to fold pre-flop than to sink $1200 more to defend their $400, so I figured that he only called my raise because he was compelled to and that he had nothing and hit nothing. I was to act first so I bet again. I was a little nervous about this because I didn’t hit the flop either, but I figured that (a) I had better cards because mine were good enough to raise with (b) I would get away with it because I was playing against a weaker player. He folded just as I predicted.
The second time that I got cranky was when I moved over to the next table. Two guys had split the pot and there was an extra chip. One of the guys goes, “Do you want to high card for the extra chip?” No one else was paying attention so I felt like it was my responsibility to speak up. I told them that the extra chip goes to the player to the left of the dealer. Guy goes, “That’s fine if that’s how you want to do it.” That’s not how I want to do it, I thought to myself. That’s the rule. “The extra chip always goes to the player who is to the left of the dealer.” This time other players noticed, so they backed me up. Guy goes, “That’s fine. I’d just never heard of that before.” They might do it differently at other places and I realize that some people who are used to playing elsewhere might not know any better so I said, “That’s Blue Collar rules.” Another player goes, “Why don’t we ask the tournament director? He’s right there.” At this point, Dan had walked up to our table. Guy goes, “Don’t worry about it.” He still acted like he didn’t believe me, though. I hate it when Brian does that to me — when he agrees just so I will shut up, but really doesn’t believe me — and I never let him get away with it. Neither did this guy. “When there’s an extra chip on a split pot, the extra chip always goes to the player to the left of the dealer,” I said out loud so Dan would hear. Dan agreed and said the same thing for all the other players at the table to hear. “They,” nodding my head toward the doubtful guy, “are unfamiliar with Blue Collar rules so I just wanted to clarify.” I kind of said this in a condescending tone — like thank you for demonstrating your utter ignorance of the rules, you pathetic excuse for a poker player — but I don’t think anyone else picked up on it. Feeling vindicated, I was finally ready to let it go. And that is the end of that discussion.
Despite having my patience tested all evening, I made it to the final table. My patience had worn thin at that point, though. I was bored and tired and feeling impatient. That combined with being short-stacked tends to make a poker player suicidal. I went all in with AJ off and got called by AK, which held up. I was knocked out of the tournament in 9th place just like that. And that is the conclusion of one very weird evening at Highlands.
It was an out-of-body experience as I felt completely unlike my usual self. I took down the title of “Last Woman Standing” that night, though, so that is a pretty good accomplishment. Next time we’re going for the “Last Playing Standing” title…
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