Quincy, Live Poker

Played live poker the other night.  One dude was the ultimate raise-happy luckbox, winning upwards of $500 in a "friendly" game.  I won $80ish.  Fun night.  Drank too much and donked some of it back towards the end.

As for Quincy, he finally meets Natalia Pertman, the object of his desires, in Chapter 31.

Due to spring break, I now have about two weeks of vacation, during which I plan to complete a few more Quincy chapters than my regular two per week.  Everything ends at Chapter 50.

Live Poker Tonight

I have an opportunity to play some live poker again with western teachers in the UAE.  I played once before with them earlier this month, in a game where I won about a hundred bucks, largely by flopping top set against the big loser of the night.

The funniest part of that night actually was how the biggest loser acted.  He wanted to play pineapple, omaha, and another game, all of which he was clearly familiar with, and he talked about how he was able to win consistently playing online.

Okay, fine.  Within the first fifteen minutes, he had been stacked twice, both on questionable plays.

Anyhoo, things went along like that for a while, until he had lost four or five buyins--about $800 or so.  He dropped out of the game for a little while, during which he skyped his wife.  He asked her to show us all his poker trophies.  So she did.

He turned his laptop screen toward us and we made complimentary sounds.

All the while I'm thinking, Poker trophies?  I'd never heard of poker trophies before.  What kind of tournament awards a poker trophy?

When his wife wasn't showing us his poker trophies, he was busy telling us what his salary was in Qatar.

He was the picture of insecurity.  The rest of us just smiled and accommodated him, hoping that he'd get back into the game.

He finally did, only to get stacked a fifth time.

It was the only time I've played live poker where everyone at the table--we were six-handed--won at least a buyin and there was only one loser.

Tonight, we will be playing on a real poker table at another dude's house, a guy who regularly hosts the game.  Unfortunately, Mr. Poker Trophy will not be there.  He's back in Qatar.

Some of the players from the first night will be there.  If the new faces are anything like the guys I played with last time, all nice guys, I guarantee you that it is not a brag to say that I will be the best player at the table.

Which reminds me of law school.  A bunch of classmates wanted to start a regular poker game.  Now, if there's any reliable characteristic of law school students, it is ultra-competitiveness.  I won big the first three times I played, and then they stopped inviting me.

Once again, not a brag.  I'm a 2NL to 25NL player.  That's the extent of my ability.  I know that I'm not a good player.

Poker is such a blessing because so many other poker players don't know this.

I probably just cursed myself.  I'll come back tonight reporting that I donked off all the money that I showed up with.

Live Poker in UAE

Some guys got together at a friend's house for a game, and I got invited.  First poker in over a year, I think.

There were five of us.  Buyin was about $50 each, but the same guy got stacked twice in the first four hands, so pretty soon we were all doubling our buyin and the average stack stood at $200.  So nothing major.

I'm pretty sure I was raising preflop the most, and I just kept whiffing the flop, and my cbets were getting played back at, so I just tried to stay patient.

My only really notable hand was when I was dealt JJ at UTG+1.

UTG made it about $3.  ($0.50/$1 blinds).  I reraised with JJ to $12.  He called and we were heads up.  This was the same guy, by the way, who got stacked twice in the first ten minutes.

Flop came J 6 3 rainbow, and he led out for $13.

Okie dokie then.  I just called, without much deliberation.

Turn was an ace.  He led out $20.  I raised it to $55.

He thought out loud for a long time.  He kept saying, "You reraised preflop with pocket threes or pocket sixes?"  He couldn't figure out my hand.  I kept wondering why he was excluding pocket jacks.  Or pocket aces.

Anyway, he called my raise, and then he shoved a queen river, and I called.

He showed ace jack.  Ah, so that's why he was excluding pocket jacks and aces.  Cool.

Aside from that hand, I was pretty much card dead.  But I drank four beers and won a hundred bucks, so it was fun.

First Live Poker Memory

I didn't start playing live poker until I had been playing online for a couple of years.  I had heard that live poker players were supposed to be worse than online players.  The comparison that I frequently heard was that winning 10c/25c NL players could crush a $1/$2 NL live game.  Well, I was able to win at 25NL online, so I brought three buyins--$600ish--to Harrahs in Council Bluffs (near Omaha) and gave it a try.

Because I didn't know much about live poker--except from what I had seen on TV, which didn't give me much guidance--I didn't really know what was abnormal about my first game.  I guess I was too nervous about doing something wrong.  But it turns out that two things were quite strange.

The first thing was Seat Ten.

I bought in for $200, which I believe was the maximum (perhaps $300?  It has been a while) and observed Seat Ten go all-in about every third hand.  At a passive table.  The action would begin with three or four calls, then ten seat would go all in--maybe $90 into a $10 pot--and everyone would fold.

On 10's third all-in attempt, one of the limpers called and turned over something like ace ten.  Ten Seat had QT.  Anyway, Ten hit his lucky queen and suddenly he had a stack again.  I had the feeling that a few players were deflated by the outcome.  They wanted Seat Ten off the table so that they could resume limping and seeing flops.  Personally, I loved Seat Ten, because I was sitting in seat one.

Meanwhile, I kept waiting.  I recall raising a pair of tens and getting one caller.  On an ace-high flop, I chickened out, lost, and resumed folding for an orbit or so.  I was so nervous that my VPIP might have been 5 percent.

Things settled down for a bit until Seat Ten turned on his randomizer again.  A few players called, Ten declared all in, and the action folded around to seat eight, a young guy with a shaved head and a really old looking t-shirt who had a similar stack.  Shaved Head quickly said, "Call."

His trap had sprung!

Before the flop, Seat Ten flipped over pocket aces, and Shaved Head went quiet.

But when the flop came 3 3 2, Shaved Head exposed A 3, whooped, and that's when the second strange thing happened.

Shaved Head, as white as they come, started some kind of wannabe gangsta trash talk.

"That's how I do!" he exclaimed.  "You can't come with rockets against this," he said loudly, touching his chest.  "Oh no, you can't.  This is how I do.  Quads.  Gimme quads.  I don't win without quads."  He said all of this in a tone of voice that previously had not belonged to him.  He suddenly sounded inner city.  But not exactly inner city.  He sounded like a white kid who has measured his toughness by a single visit to the inner city during which he had not been beaten up.

Anyway, quads didn't come, Seat Ten departed with a surprising amount of grace, and I, on my first trip to a poker room, was too nervous to win at the softest live table I have ever found.

Problems with Live Poker

In light of the fact that my current teaching contract will be ending next semester--actually, it'll be ending a semester early due to my desire to get the hell out of the United Arab Emirates--I've started thinking about what I'd like to do when I return to the good ole U S of A in the beginning of July 2013.  And the thing that always pops into my head is that I'd like to play some poker.  But, of course, internet poker in any truly reliable form disappeared after Black Friday.

So that means that I'll have to play live poker.  Holy Christ, what a difference.

To understate it, there are problems with live poker.  Have you played live poker?  You probably know what I mean.  But here goes anyway.

Live poker players have a smell.  They smell like--how else can I describe it?--sweat, shit, and old people.  Even if they're young people.  In fact, the younger they are, the more they tend to smell.  The young people smell like old people, and the old people smell like sweat and shit.  And as the hours pass, their smell . . . matures.

Villain might start off mildly sweaty.  Then he'll have a few beers.  Then he's sweaty and farty.  And scratching his balls before handling his cards.  Then something goes wrong downstairs and he suddenly smells shitty.  A fart misfired, perhaps.  But does he leave?  No, he's got a hand to play.  Soon he forgets about his situation.  It's up to you to point out that he smells like a greasy sweaty shitball, but you don't really have time because he's hungry and wants to order wings.

The smell in itself would be tolerable, but there's a complicating issue: They're holding, rubbing, and occasionally fondling cards, many of which will end up, over a session, in my hands.  I will, in essence, be holding the physical representation of their smell between my fingers.

And as I pointed out, some of them will be snacking.  If you've ever been a live poker player, an image may pop into your head now: another player snacking on buffalo wings, licking his fingers, and picking up his cards.  If  you have never enjoyed this experience, then you are one lucky soul, because my old casino served wings, and they must've been good, due to all the smack-smack-smacking I heard from players sucking on their fingers and leaving sauce on the cards that would soon end up in my hands.

Once you get past the smell and the lack of hygiene, however, there's poker to be played!  At 30 hands an hour.  When I used to 24-table 1,200 hands an hour.  You can only collect so many tells during the down time.  And most of the tells aren't tells anyway; they're just the result of your brain going batshit crazy from sensory deprivation.

Bringing an ipod helps a bunch. An ipod, playing tight, and paying attention to the weak-is-strong and strong-is-weak tell are really all that's necessary to winning.  But at what cost?

I guess what I'm saying is . . . PokerStars, come back.  Please.

My Biggest Hand Playing Live

Because my mind seems to be focused on poker these last couple of posts, I figured I would tell the story of my biggest win in a live poker hand.

But before I do that, I wanted to point out some similarities that I've noticed about these hands.  I tend to play big hands poorly.  Sometimes very poorly.  Which makes me think, Maybe I play all of my hands poorly.  Maybe I suck at poker.  This is something I should spend some time reflecting on, hopefully at a poker table.

Anyway, I was at a shithole boat casino called Argosy in Sioux City, Iowa, where the briny smell of the water somehow found its way into the casino.  The poker room was small.  Perhaps there was only one $1/2NL game running.  Everyone in the hand had at least 150 big blinds, with my stack of $300 being the smallest.

I'd been playing for three hours or so.  A very tight young player UTG raised the minimum.  He had never raised so small before.  I called with 77 in middle position.  A real moron called from the small blind.

Three handed, we saw a flop of Q 3 3.  Absolutely nothing for me.  The mouth-breather in the small blind checked, the tight kid bet $10, and I made my first mistake by calling.

What was I thinking?  Not sure.  Perhaps my only thought was, I call.  That might have been the extent of my analysis.  Just: I call.

The small blind raised the minimum.  The kid under the gun shifted in his seat uncomfortably and eventually called.

I made my second mistake by calling.  This time I had an actual thought.  The thought went something like this: I just called $10.  How can I not call $10 now?  It's like admitting that my original decision was wrong.  

So I slid out two red chips.  Just one time, I pleaded.

And the turn was a miraculous, heaven-sent 7.  This turn 7 was absolute proof of two things: (1) that I hadn't made any mistakes earlier in the hand, and (2) that I was a poker genius.

The small blind pushed out $35.  The kid called.  I raised to about $100.  He small blind called.  The kid under the gun sank down in his seat for a while, then lifted his cards to show them to the dealer (the kid was in the ten seat).  Everything about his demeanor indicated that he was about to fold aces.  Which he did.

On the blank river, the doofus checked, I went all in, and he called immediately.  I showed the boat; he showed trips--something like J3.

The process of stacking chips after a hand like that has got to be in my top ten of happiest moments.