Weekend Poker

This weekend I actually got to play a lot of poker. A lot for me anyways, probably not as much as many of my fellow bloggers.

My plan on Friday night was to try some bonus whoring. There were reload bonuses at both Party Poker and PokerRoom that I wanted to try to take advantage of. Now, I’m not a very good ring game player, so I wasn’t going to crazy, just hopefully put a little bit of cash in and not lose any more than the bonuses paid out. I had $50 in my account at FullTilt, and my plan was to cash that out, and take it to Party, then take what ever I won had left and put it in PokerRoom, thus getting both bonuses. Unfortunately, the cash out at FullTilt wasn’t instant, as I expected, so I had no cash on hand to use for deposit bonuses. I don’t know why I expected my cash out to be instantaneous, I guess because when I cashed out of PokerStars, I got $100 of it right away, while the rest cleared a few days later.

Anyway, my plan is now ruined. I was really looking forward to some ring game action, but without the deposit bonus as a means to protect me from some of my losses, I was now less than enthusiastic. At this point my wife calls and tells me she missed her train, and asked if I could pick her up downtown in an hour. I was just about to start a few SNG’s, but so much for that. I was afraid they would go long, and somehow I don’t think the chance of winning $50 would be sufficient justification for stranding my wife downtown, so ring games it was.

I had played for about half an hour and I just couldn’t get any cards. On one table I was slowly bleeding away my chips to blinds and missed flops. On the other I was just treading water winning a few small pots every few orbits. The hand that almost put me on over the edge of the tilt chasm was when I got anti-big-blind special. I was in the big blind had [10 3], and a whole bunch of limpers. The flop was [3 8 10]: big blind special. I check, and the button bets. I raise, and he reraises. Now either he fell into my trap, or he has trips and I’m screwed. I call. The turn is an Ace, and I check call. The river is a rag and I check call again positive that I’ve been beaten. He turns over [A 10]. The frustrating thing about that hand is that in any other spot other that the big blind, and I’m folding, but no, I had to get it in the big blind and see a free flop, and hit on the flop, only to get beat on the turn. I don’t know how to avoid that situation, but it seems to happen to me more frequently than it should.

Just to make matters worse, Party decides to start messing with me. I would look at my hole cards on one table, and see 73o, then look across to the other table table where the flop would come [7 3 7]. On the next hand on the second table, my 23o would have went quite well with the [2 3 K] flop that shows up on the first table. I swear this happened four or five times in like 10 hands.

So now I start watching my chip stacks, counting how many big bets I’m down if I stop right now. I still have 20 minutes before I go to pick up my wife, so I decide to play it out, but I’m way more concerned about my shrinking chip count than I should be. Somehow I’m actually up on the other table, despite no memorable hands.

At about five minutes before I have to leave, the cards start falling my way. I’m up almost enough on the one table to cover my losses on the other, and think maybe I should quit while I’m ahead. I’ve just posted a big blind so I opt to play it out for one more orbit.

I get pocket threes in late position, and limp with three others and both blinds to the flop, which is [3 6 Q]. Four checks and a bet ahead of me. I call, not wanting to scare anyone off. We get one other caller. The turn is [4s], the second spade on the board. This time I raise the bet ahead of me, not wanting anyone to be able to get that third spade for cheap. The river is [5h], and knowing my luck, he just hit a seven high straight. He check calls, and mucks his pair of queens, guaranteeing me a profit for the night, as long as I don’t play anymore hands.

Two hands later I get [Ad Kd] and I’m pretty sure that I’ll misplay this into a huge loss. I raise it up to $1 preflop and get two callers. The flop is [3d 2d 6c] and everyone checks. The turn is [4d] completing my flush, and giving me a shot at the straight flush. It’s bet ahead of me, and I call, along with the guy behind me. The turn is [7s] and original better and I cap the betting, while the guy behind me drops out. He had [Jd 5d] for the jack high flush. That was the biggest pot of the night, and a perfect way to go out. All in all, I ended up about $20, playing $.50/$1.00 limit. I’ll take that. I think the moral of this story is just to be patient. If you wait long enough, someone will bet into your nut flush and you’ll come out ahead. Either that or the moral is to wait around long enough to get really lucky then bail.

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Saturday I played six Sit and Goes at Poker Stars, five $10+1s and one $15+1 turbo. They were more frustrating than anything else. I placed in second for the $15 turbo, and in third in one of the others. I had of couple of fourth place finishes as well. The most annoying thing was that I felt like I was playing pretty well. I would get to a healthy first or second place in chip count, and then bully the rest of the table. Once we got down to four or five players, I get caught trying to steal a blind, and have to fold to reraise. It would then take me two or three more orbits to get those chips back. Then I would get someone all in and they would end beating me, and I would have to battle back to the chip lead again. Eventually, I would make a mistake, and someone would knock me out. I just couldn’t seem to get that final blow to put me into the money. I think I prefer PokerStar’s interface to Party’s, except for the fact that there are only 9 players. I don’t think adding another player would have a significant effect on my in the money rate, but not having that player hurts my ROI when I do make the money.

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Sunday I went back to Party for some SNGs. I finished in second twice third once and fourth once. I was going to write about them, but this post is already getting pretty long, and I think I’ll just go play some more instead. I will say that those fourth place finishes are really starting to annoy me. I have way too many of them, although I don’t know what to do about them.

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On a completely unrelated to poker note, another coworker of mine who reads this blog despite not playing poker at all wanted me to mention how great Yahoo Word Racer is. It’s basically an online boggle game. If you are ever bored at work, and think that getting busted for playing poker isn’t quite worth it, check out games.yahoo.com and look for word racer. A game lasts for like 10 minutes, and it’s addictive as hell. It’s also integrated into their Y! Messenger so you can play with your friends and just claim you were instant messaging them. Anyway, maybe he’ll start a word racer blog and then you can read all about it.