The Problem with Low Buy-in Poker Tourneys

I have about $50 in an online poker account.  That's plenty.  The 'rush' I get over chipping in a dollar and battling it out in a nine-way sit & go is plenty for me.  That said, there are problems with this method.  None more so than this: playing in the little pool with the little fish makes you susceptible to getting beat by people who don't know what they're doing. 

 

Case in point.  Actually, two from last night.

1) It's five-handed and I'm on the button.  It's around the 15th hand of the event, and I have about half of my original chip stack.  The blinds are getting pricey, I haven't caught cards all through this event, and I need to get some chips.

 

I look down at K9o, not the worst hand you can get on the button, but not an all-star either.  Nobody really charges pre-flop, so I make it 2x to go.  I get a couple of callers and we move on.  The flop is mostly blanks.  8-7-3 or something like that.  Someone in early position bets the minimum.  Action folds around to me.  Now at this point, I've played only one hand.  I have nothing here, but I'm pretty sure that the raiser has nothing either.  So I'm going to make a move.  I've already raised, and I'm going to raise again.  Big time.  I push all-in.  The seed I'm trying to plant is that I've got a middling pair (9s 10s or Js), which would make an opponent believe I've got the best hand on the board after the weak flop. 

 

So it's her turn.  Tick tick tick.  The FullTilt 15 second bar has just about wound down.  I'm sure she's going to lay her cards down.  And she calls.  She turns over A8.  Then the turn comes with an A and I'm clicking FullTilt's stupid little "You just finished in 5th place" pop-up.

 

If someone ... ANYONE ... can explain to me how you call that bet in that situation, please explain.  My only thought process is that she paired up one of her hole cards and had a fantastic kicker.  She couldn't have possibly considered what I might have had in the pocket or my tight table image.  She's a fish, playing only her cards and not the situation, and I'm burnt by her inexperience and stupidity. 

 

2) Later on in the evening, I'm in a similar situation.  Around a dozen hands into a sit & go and my chip stack has bled off around 1/3 of its original value.  Again, I'm on the button, and I look down at 4d 5h.  Blah.  But nobody raises the blinds, I call, and I get to see a flop. 

 

And what a flop it is...2-3-6, but with two diamonds.  I'm pretty sure this flop doesn't help a lot of people - except me - but I am concerned about the flush draw.  I'm not willing to go all-in here with the flush draw on the board, but I will make a big bet.  I bet 3x the pot, or 600 chips, and I get a caller. 

 

The turn is a low diamond.  Uh oh.  I make the same bet - 600 chips into a 1400 chip pot, or about half the pot.  Another sizeable bet, and I get the same caller. 

 

The river is another diamond.  He checks over to me and I just check it, having only a couple hundred chips left at this point anyway.  I figure the guy has stuck around and made his flush.  Well he has.   He turns over 55 - one of which is a diamond.  His flush with his 5d beats mine with my pocket 4d. 

 

But look at how this guy played the hand.  After the flop, he had a gutshot straight draw and needed two cards to the flush.  He had pocket 5s and called a bet for 3x the pot.  After the turn, he had the gutshot plus a flush draw, and now had two overcards on the board.  He stuck around after my bet of about half the pot. 

 

What could I have done to chase this guy away from the hand?  He was either completely married to his low pocket pair, or married to chasing the straight and eventually the flush draws. 

 

A couple hands later, four-handed, I raise with AdTd and someone goes all-in after me.  I call.  He has KK and I'm done.  What a night.  At the end of the night, the only thing that got me to sleep was the comfort that I played the hands well.  Not perfectly, I'm sure, but well enough to not have lost them in this manner.  I guess I just have to accept that I'm going to lose some races to opponents with weaker engines who just happen to work their ways around the train wrecks that Hold 'em can leave on the track. 

El RushBo Imitates Fox

Has to be seen to be believed.  Not only did Rush claim that Fox was 'acting' in his ad for a Democratic Senate candidate from Missouri, he actually imitated Fox's body movements while in the studio. 

 

In the video, Fox's classy response to the classless comments by Fat Ass are well worth viewing. 

Home Game Stories

Six-handed the other night, and arguably about the six best players in
our group were there. At the very least there were no fish.

I have this super-tight image, so this first situation is classic.
I'm in the big blind and I get A-A. Blinds are something like 100/200
- everyone had 2500 in starting chips plus a 2500 rebuy so there are
30,000 chips in play at this time (nobody has busted). It folds all
around to the small blind, who ALSO folds. I get A-A and NOBODY calls
the blind. Unreal.

The next time in the big blind, I get AsJs and the SAME Thing happens.
I turned both of these over and the room roared. Whatcha gonna do?

Highlight of the night...in the small blind, I get 39o. Call the big
blind, he pops it to 2x and I stick around. Flop comes with three
rags. Turn is a 9. River is another rag. He bets every time and I
call every time. At the end, someone says to me "How could you just
call that?" and I respond "Because I believe I have the best hand." I
have the pair of 9s. He has a couple of over cards, A-high or
something like that. I read it *perfectly*. Didn't play it
perfectly, though. I should've popped it on the turn instead of
giving him another chance to catch. Still, your reads can win you
pots that your cards alone won't touch. Very rewarding to start
taking these kinds of pots.

Highlight of the night not involving me...our home game
player-of-the-year leader goes all-in early on and gets called by the
player to his left. Roughly 2500 chips at stake for each player,
though the re-buy was still out there. This was no more than six
hands into the evening. POY leader has 9-9 and is called by 7-7.
Holy crap! Those are complete throw-away hands until the blinds get
into the hundreds, aren't they?

Missed opportunity of the night... I got 3c6c in early position and
something was telling me to play it. But you can't play that hand,
right? Well I laid it down. I would've had a set of 3s on the flop
and quads on the river. Could've done some damage with that. It's
still the right play to lay it down, though.

The end came suddenly. Blinds were 800/1600 and about to go up on the
very next hand. I get A-10o on the button, three-handed (so I'm first
to act too). I go all-in (1600 call + 4700 chips) and big stack to my
right calls with Jh5h. Flop 5-5-6 and that was that. Tourney ended
on the very next hand. Again, whatcha gonna do? With nobody busting
out early, and the blinds doubling to extreme amounts later on, this
quickly morphed into bingo by the 7th level.

Still, third place in this field is pretty good. Felt like I played
well, made some good reads, and turned up the heat when the time was
right.

Rush on Fox

Once again, Rush sets the bar incredibly low, yet manages to crawl beneath it. 

Willie Post-Mortem Comments

Willie speaks to the media on Monday, possibly after spending the weekend hooked up to the business end of a few bottles of booze.  I'm not sure he's thinking any more clearly.  Certainly it's hard to figure out what he's saying:

 

Courtesy of mets.com:

"Sometimes you get caught up in the moment. I wasn't thinking home run there. I was just thinking that he'd hit the ball in the gap somewhere and [Endy Chavez] could score from first [to tie the score]."

But why had Randolph used Floyd rather than have another player bunt?

"We had bases loaded for Carlos Beltran. Same scenario, right?" he said. "Just make believe I bunted. It would have been the same thing, right?

Uh, not the same scenario, Willie.  Beltran was up with two outs.  The pinch-hitter (Floyd) came up with none out.  Clearly you understand the difference, right?

"I don't second-guess all that stuff, man. If you subscribe to that, then we would have had the same situation. If you believe we would have bunted and Jose Reyes would have hit that ball to center field. If you look at it that way and that's the way most people look at it. It would have been two outs, [Paul] Lo Duca would have walked. Same scenario is set up.

 

OK, so they pitch exactly the same way to Floyd or some pinch-hitter with runners on 2nd/3rd and one out as they would with 1st/2nd and none out?  Exactly the same - even though the double play is now off the table? 

"That's the way I look at it because no one knows. I don't believe in that situation in giving up an out. One run down? A tie game? Yeah, I probably do [bunt] then. But not with two runs down and you've got momentum going. I didn't send Cliff to hit a three-run homer.

 

Well Cliff sure thought he was trying to hit a three-run homer. 

I was hoping he'd drive the ball into the gap. He's an excellent doubles hitter, one of the few guys on my team who doesn't hit into double plays. He's a fly ball guy. I'm not thinking he's going to hit a grandiose home run. He's going to drive the ball. We're going to keep the momentum going. We're going to score a couple of runs.

"You can look back -- and I don't -- and think about what you could have done, should have done. But the bottom line is that thing played out the way we wanted it to. And maybe even better because we had our best hitter, a Cardinal killer, at the plate; with one hit we're going to the World Series.

"Wouldn't change a thing. Second-guess whether I would have bunted or not. Who knows?

 

I KNOW...I KNOW!!!

I might have put Anderson Hernandez up there and in front of 50,000 people, the 20-year-old kid could have [not gotten it done]. He might have popped that ball off ... or tried to bunt against a guy with a hellacious curveball and a 95 mph fastball and gotten to a point where he had to swing with two strikes on him and he hit into a double play or whatever. ... Say Glavine gets a bunt down. There's no guarantee. It's not always easy to lay a bunt down, especially when all the money's on the table like that. ... I thought about it. I thought about it way before it came up. But I still felt like with two runs to come across I needed to keep our momentum going.

 

Instead Cliffy strikes out and the momentum gets eaten up pretty quickly, wouldn't ya say?

"It would have been [an] easy call for [a] bunt. Outside of that, I didn't want to give up an out in that situation. In hindsight, it turned out even better, perfectly, for us. Best hitter. This guy killed the Cardinals all series. He threw a nasty curveball and Beltran got locked up. I'd like him to have taken a swing there.

Beltran...Bus.......Bus...Beltran.

But the guy has a great curveball. He made a great pitch. I know that's part of it, people want to second guess that. But I feel real good about the decisions I made."

Me too...especially after watching the Tigers hack their way through Game 1. 

Mets Post-Mortem

These are the good things to come out of last night:

 

1) I can once again get to bed regularly before midnight.

2) I can now focus on the cards and not the TV at my Saturday night poker game.

3) Billy Wagner didn't blow it, so I can feel somewhat assured we'll have a semi-reliable closer in 2007. 

4) Perez is a legitimate rotation candidate in '07.  Glavine, Maine, Perez, maybe Pelfrey or Humber, Pedro at mid-season.   Put it this way, I won't be crushed if we don't get Zito. 

 

That's it.  That's the complete list. 

 

Now...Willie. 

 

I have absolutely no problem with Heilman starting the ninth, pitching after Rolen got on, or anything with what Heilman or Willie did in the Top of the 9th.  It's freaking Yadier Molina.  If they wanted to bring in me to pitch to him, that's ok.   Yadier freaking Molina is not a homerun threat, particularly on a damp October night at Shea.  Groove him a freaking fastball and he flies out routinely about 75% of the time, plus he's a stellar DP candidate.  In no way should the result reflect poorly on Heilman or in no way should the decision to keep Heilman in the game in the 9th reflect poorly on Willie.  After all, the game had all the earmarks of going extra innings, so if you can milk Heilman for more than one, you're ahead. 

 

Then it's the bottom of the 9th.  Willie made two major MAJOR mistakes.  First, you don't bring in A-Hern to pinch run for LoDuca, you bring him in to pinch run for Valentin.  Get your fastest guys on base right away.  Second, you have to bunt with 1st/2nd and none out.  Or better yet, with A-Hern and Chavez on base, square someone around to bunt, get the 1B charging, the 3B charging, the SS on the wheel and STEAL the bases.  Make Molina grab a slick ball and try to throw out someone at 3rd with that little shit Eckstein running over to cover the base.  If the steal works, and it will most of the time, you can pinch hit again for the would-be bunter and put Floyd in and you've removed the DP threat that looms over his head.  Now a flyball of routine depth scores a run, possibly gets Chavez to third, and you can try to salvage the game. 

 

The called third strikes on Floyd and Beltran are due to Wainwright's nasty stuff.  He's got about 20MPH between his fast stuff and off-speed stuff.  That's lethal.

 

It's heartbreaking to pour your time and thoughts into a team from March through mid-October.  170+ games, plus the time spent watching highlights, recap shows, reading columns, blogs and magazine articles, only to have it yanked out from under you in the last inning of what proved to be the last game.  It's completely different than watching a football team over the course of the season.  In the last week and a half, I've lived and died through seven games - practically half of a football season - and all after following a team from winter through spring, summer, and into fall.  Heartbreaking.  Gut wrenching.  Sad.  It's not easy to handle it today. 

Why I Hate the Cardinals

Just a partial list.  I'm sure I'm leaving some things out:

• That little rodent playing SS
• Ozzie Smith
• Willie McGee.  FUgly to this day.
• Whitey Herzog
• Tony LaRussa, his overmanaging, the suicide squeeze, and all his crap
• The pitching coach's kid who manages to hit a HR
• Spiezio's stupid red goatee/soul patch
• Tommy Herr and his curly mullet
• Darrell Porter
• The 25,000 idiot fans who sport a cardboard one at the games
• The other 15,000 idiot fans who sit on their asses until something good happens. 
• All 40,000 of them who wear red, willingly drink Budweiser, and worship the rodent SS.
• John Tudor
• Busch Stadium.  The new one seems nice.  Awful quiet though.  But the old one was just such a disaster.
• These too-dumb-to-know-any-better juveniles coming out of the bullpen
• Braden Looper
• Vince Coleman.  Damn the Mets for ever thinking that would work.
• The fat 2B with the dreadlocks.  Still faster than Shawn Green, though.

Here's a list of the things that I like.

• Pooholes.  Forget about the Glavine comments, this guy is a machine.  You can't not like him. 

Maine needs to contribute 4-5 solid innings.  3 runs or less.  Carpenter needs to be smacked around early and often.  The bullpen needs to shore up a win and help move on to Game 7.

 

Stop the Presses

I actually agree with George Will.

The Latest Panacea

Ford has done it again.  They've come right out and found the solution for all their problems.  Well, at least one of them - dwindling market share.  'What's the solution' you ask?  It's the Edge. 

 

As usual, I wish 'em all the luck in the world with this one, but I tend to believe that this one just won't quite hit the market sweet spot they're envisioning, sales will lag, and this thing will be discounted like mad come April or May. 

 

Think about it - what are the last Ford products to 'hit'?  The newest Mustang.  The Escape.  Then you go back to the Explorer and Taurus.  That's it.  That's the list.  And it's not a very long one. 

 

On the flip side, I did get my first on-road look at the Honda Fit this morning.  That thing is a real head scratcher.  Looks like a slightly oversized Yugo.  Small wheels, not that dissimilar in body style to the Toyota Matrix.  Didn't impress me much. 

Priorities

So, just to recap, the U.S. Government has been (a) unable to win/finish off/maintain the peace in Iraq; (b) unable to properly secure Americas borders from illegals, potential terrorist threats; (c) unable to do anything to squash the potential North Korean/Iranian threats to world peace; and (d) unable to police itself from sexual predators of underage boys roaming the halls of congress for over ten years. 

 

Yet, the U.S. Government has been able to accomplish some things.  Foremost, you soon won't be able to play poker online.  Phew.  Glad we got that scourge out of our society.  Thanks to Rep. Frist (R-TN) who shoehorned that little piece of (bullshit) legislation onto a port security bill.  Great maneuvering there, Billy Boy.  And thanks for taking away one of the few simple harmless pleasures out of my life. 

 

We've done a great job of protecting ourselves from ourselves and the victimless crimes we commit.  We've done a horrible job protecting ourselves from the evil doers the right repeatedly harps about.  And we've let a known predator continue to operate in the congress, all the while turning a blind eye to his actions.