Poker Night was bittersweet...

Another poker night come and gone. We seem to be getting fewer people as of late. I wonder if the fad is starting to wear off for some. We had seven people for the first game and 5 for the second. I won the first game going heads-up with Chris Blake at the end. The second game was lots of fun as I lost a big hand to Simon when we were down to 3 but ended up tripling up later on with 8s full of 2s. Simon and I ended up going toe-to-toe and I took a shot at two pots in a row, but Simon had amzing cards to beat me.

The reason why the post title says "bittersweet" is because while waiting for the last number 4 bus I took off my school bag as I didn't want to wear it for another 10 minutes while I waited. Anyways when the bus arrived, for some reason I LEFT THE FRIGGING THING THERE!!! ARG!! I was (and still am) very upset about this because the bag had my glasses, my notes for work, as well as a good poker book and my really nice new card box with cards. Here's hoping that some good samaritan found it and will return it to the UBC Security office.

I like the Ladies

Today was rememberance day and both Pam and I had the day off. We planned to clean up the apartment - her the kitchen and surrounding, me the living room. We would them combine our efforts to clean the bedroom. Suffice to say, this ideal situation did not happen (though I did put laundry away and the dishes and cooked supper and put my comics away). The reason this didn't happen was because of a suggestion Pam made:

Pam: "You know what we should do?"

John: "What?"

Pam: "We should go to the casino."

At this point I say "Sure, awesome, sounds good." Then after lunch she gets lazy and says she doesn't want to go anymore. I'm kind of annoyed because I was looking forward to trying my first cash game in poker (for the ill-informed: a cash game is where your chips represent real money ie. I sit down with $100 in chips and if I leave with $50 in chips I've lost $50. This is not the same in a tournament, where you pay a fixed amount for a certain number of chips which DO NOT represent the initial investment).

Eventually I convince her to go and she does her girly thing for 30 minutes trying to get ready. We get there around 2 o' clock or so and I put my name down for the $1/$2 no-limit hold'em tables. The guy tells me it will be a half hour wait at least so Pam and I walk around the casino and she plays some slots. It amazes me how much she seems to win playing those. I was with her when she was up to $15 from $10 and I told her to stop while she was ahead. She did, but then lost it all while I was playing poker (eventually).

At 3:00 a table opens and a busy looking gentleman tells me what table I'm at and to give my money to the dealer for chips. I buy in for $100 and I'm good to go.

I play pretty tight for a while but throw in a few bluffs for good measure. There a few (somewhat) agressive players at the table and I manage to win a few pots till I'm at around $250 (which is frigging awesome on it's own right). Then this situation comes up:

I'm second last to act before the flop in seat G above and I've been dealt pocket Queens (hence the title of the post). Player A folds and B - F all call for $2. Pot now $13. I raise to $15 total (this is the typical sort of thing at this table, rather than standard raises of multiples of the Big Blind). Players H-E all fold and then player F comes over the top making it $50 to go. Pot is now $63 and it costs me $35 to call. I do. Pot now $110 or so. Flop is

As 6c Qs

This is good because I've hit my set of queens and I have position on player F (meaning I act after him). He leads out for $100. If I call and lose I'm right back where I started at $100 not to mention the betting to take place on subsequant rounds. This is a hard call for me (I'm not too experienced yet) because he may have AA. However I take my time with this and think it through carefully. AA is the only hand beating me right now so what does his betting tell me that his chances are of having it? Well he only called the BB pre-flop after seeing many people limp in. Although AA is good you typically don't want to be up against a whole whack of people with ANY hand (unless you have suited connectors and want to see a cheap flop with the potential to win a big pot). Usually with AA you'd want to make a small raise to get some more money into the pot and drive it down to only one or two opponents.

Now after I put in my $15 raise, he re-raised to $50. Thats a big bet. By this time (around 5:00 pm) I think I was projecting a pretty tight image although I did pick up 3 pots in a row about 30 min before without showing cards, so he might think this is one of my bluffs. If he thinks I'm tight then it looks like he wants to scare me out of the pot.

I'm also taking a really long time to make a decision, so he probably puts me on a pair other than Aces or Queens, maybe 10s or Jacks. Ultimately though, I decide that his bet of $50 preflop is too big to have AA and expect a call so I go all in, calling his $100 and raising another $135ish. I see him start to finger his chips and he calls. I wince because I think I'm beat. In retrospect I probably SHOULDN'T have gone all in because if he thinks I'm tight, then I'm screaming that I have trips. However, if he thinks I have a small pair or am bluffing he might think I'm trying to scare him. The re-raise is a good play if I thought he was on a drawing hand like K J. However, this is only good if I had more money such that he wasn't getting good enough odds to call. As it was he needed to put in about $130 for the chance at a $450ish pot so I was giving him about 3.5 - 1 odds, not enough to justify a call with just the straight draw, but he might think that the remaining kings (if he has KK) or the aces/queens (if he has AQ) were outs.

However, with two cards to come, he doesn't flip over his cards and I ask him "Do you have the bullets (Aces)? He looks away and says "Maybe..." At this point I'm pretty sure I'm going to win and after the turn comes K and river 4, he flips over K9 off-suit! He was trying to bully me around! His call was a mistake if he thought I was tight because he had to put me on a good hand. Even if those three pots in a row were stuck in his mind, K9 is NOT a great hand.

The best part was that Pam had come back from slots while I was deciding what to do and saw me win! I tell the dealer I'm done and cash out for a whopping $568 - 5.5 times my initial investment.

New Comics

Hi
It's been a while since I've talked about the comics I've been getting so I figured it was time to break that bad habit. If you're a regular you know that I dropped Ultimate Spider-man after the awful Hobgoblin arc and Ultimate X-men after the not-so-awful "Collosus is gay arc." Recently my interest in both titles has return and I picked up all the back issues I missed. This includes the "Warriors" arc from USM #79-85 and most of the "Magnetic North" arc in UXM. I'll review the arcs rather than the single issues.

WarriorsI was VERY pleased at the improvement over the last big arc. This had an interesting plot and was well paced. Rather than pointless trade filler, each issue held up on its own and stuff ACTUALLY happened. As well I enjoyed the introduction of some new Ultimate characters (ie. Hammerhead, Moon Knight, Iron Fist). The only negative was the repeated "people being thrown out of windows" theme in one of the issues and sometimes Bagley's art looks a little rushed. I'll stay with it until the big 100 issue.

Magnetic NorthReturn of the most evil version of Magneto ever! That alone should get people into this story. Ultimate Mystique is also around which kicks a bunch of booty. These comics are good. Period.

Lady Luck is my Beeatch

Well luck from the tournament seemed to follow me to the weekly poker night at UBC ($5 buy in run tournament style). There was an unimpressive showing of only five people compared with last weeks 10+. Damn Hallowe'en. Anyways the first game consisted of myself, Kory, Simon, Chris Blake, and Gaelen. It went on for about two hours with Simon and I heads up, with him having a monstrous chip lead on me. Matt showed up as well around this time so we'd have six players for the next game. Simon ended up winning that game with a win of $20 and I broke even by winning $5.

The next game was also of good quality and had plenty of action. Once again it ended up with Simon and myself playing heads up. It would have made for interesting TV as chip lead swung from me to Simon, and back to me (I've only seen that happen once on TV - the 2003 ladies night tournament on the WPT). There was one had the Simon made a great bluff. He had K 10 of clubs and I had pocket Jacks. There was a bit of raising pre-flop and flop comes down A 8 3 (one club - not the ace) or something like that. I bet about $500 (the blinds were around $100/$200) and Simon re-raises for $1000 more. Now I think he has an ace with mediocre kicker. I debate for a bit and decide to call. Next card is a 7. I raise again and Simon goes all in for like $3000 or something. I'm in a pickle now. If he's bluffing then its a hell of a bluff but if he has an ace, I'm a big underdog with only one card to come. I maybe should have thought a bit more about it and figures the pot odds a few times and put him on a 40% bluff. I let the jacks go face up and he is shocked. He shows me the K 10 of clubs and I congratulate him on a good bluff. I'm not convinced I played the hand wrongly, though I'm sure Daley will tell me otherwise. On the final hand, Simon raises to $600, I reraise and he goes all in. I have K9 off suit and he has 33. Flop has a King and for extra luvin' the River is also a king. I win and get $25 for my efforts. With my win yesterday I'm +$72 in my poker career.

I should also mention some very good books I picked up recently from Chapters online. I bought them because of an article in Bluff magazine. Phil Laak taught Jennifer Tilly how to play and recommend these books first on the list so I figured if a WPT winner thinks they're good, they're probably good.



I read Theory of Poker in about a week and I'm more than half way through the first Harrington book. Sklansky's book is consisdered to be the best poker book ever written and out of the 2.5 poker books I've read, I agree. It teaches some simple concepts and others that are not so simple (implied odds). Very indepth and can be applied to most if not all poker games.

Harrington's books seemed a little shaky at first because the books are at least half full of example hands, which I wasn't sure would be useful. I was quite wrong. There are several pages explaining concepts and then the examples reinforce whatever you were supposed to learn in that chapter. They also act as quizzes by explaining the situation to you and then asking what you should do. I suggest thinking about each problem before skimming down to the answer. It WILL improve your game.