I watched as much of the WSOP Main Event final table, live, as time would allow that evening. Overall, I was tremendously disappointed. The players were far too stoic to make for good viewing. Nothing against the players or their style, just not good to watch.
For me, poker is a hobby. Poker is a card game. Poker is fun. I realize that there are many players that make their living playing poker. Good for them. But, I will never do that. Even if I make a huge hit in a tournament at some point and win life-changing money, poker will still be my hobby.
Consequently, when I see players claiming that God answered their prayers and brought a set on the flop or a winning pair on the river, poker ceases to be fun. Its fine that some players make a living at the game, or that they are winning enough to allow them to quit their jobs, but don’t lose the humor. Don’t lose the fun.
Take baseball. Its is a game that is fun to play and watch. There are many people that make their living from baseball, but at that level its still a game that is played for viewing entertainment. When players lose site of the fact that it’s a game played for entertainment, the game ceases to be fun for the viewers.
When it comes to poker, I want to see leather-assed Texas road gamblers. I want to see Scandinavian uber-nerds that employ bizarre games-theory techniques. I want to see Vegas rounders that are living from tournament to tournament. I want to see professional gamblers that are gambling. I want to see wealthy Iranian and Israeli guys with thick accents needling their opponents to gamble it up. I want to watch loud Americans with swollen egos that think they are the center of the universe. I do not want to watch or play with stoic monks that pray for God to alter the order of the cards so that they can provide a better life for their family. That’s a virtuous endeavor with plenty of merit, but its not fun poker, either in person or on TV.
Each player is free to play the game as he wishes, but that doesn’t mean that I have to like it. A selfish but honest perspective.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Vegas 2007
Vegas trip, June 28-July 1. A trip report that is out of order.
Achieving Zen
I’ll start the Vegas report at the end. During my last session on Saturday night, for about five hours in the $2/5 NLHE Venetian cash games, I finally reached what for me is the perfect Zen state of poker. I was in a zone that I have been trying to achieve since I started playing this game as a serious hobby. I was perfectly focused and locked onto everyone at the table. I knew exactly where I was in every hand. I knew when I was ahead and when I was behind, and I almost always knew when another player had a better hand but I could make him lay it down. I can recall only one hand where I won a sizable pot with luck.
I bought in for $1000. After about an hour I was up several hundred. Then things just took off. I hit some big hands to take a few players’ stacks of around $300-$400. Then I became more active, playing a wider range of hands pre-flop and occasionally hitting some boards in the range that no one else was playing.
I still maintained a fairly tight image, and I did not become a chip-spewing maniac. I would fold for extended periods when I got bad cards. I would bet or raise when I thought I was ahead or needed to see where I was at. I yielded to aggression when I felt that I was behind, unless I felt that I could steal. I focused on staying tight, in the sense that I refused to pay off in big pot with a strong second-best hand. I think the most that I ever put into a pot which I later abandoned was maybe $150. I did not double anyone up.
You Don’t Pay Off
There was one very solid player at my table on Saturday night whom I sat next to for several hours on Friday night. He was playing similar to my style, but he probably had a bit more gamble. He was easily the best $2-5 NL player I encountered on my trip.
A good portion of the Saturday night Chip Fortress came from his stack. After the Chip Fortress started to take shape, I too some big pots off of him. The pattern became this: he and I would take from the other players, and then I would take some more from him. At one point the commented, “I think half of your stack came from me.” He was right -- he was doing a serious amount of chip collecting, and then delivering to me.
Mid-way through the session, he started commenting about how he was paying me off for my big hands, but I was not paying him off in return. My response was, “I know when I am beat.” That was probably the key to maintaining my focus and resisting the temptation to give back to the table. When you build up a big stack in a live cash game, its easy to give a lot back because (1) you loosen up and (2) you feel somewhat obligated to spread the love around to keep the action lively.
Is the Stack too big?
After I crossed the $2500 mark, the thought occurred to me that I might be killing the action with a monster stack. Its one thing to build up an intimidating stack in a tournament, when no one can move. In a cash game players can leave whenever they want, and some players don’t like to play against someone who has a dominating stack.
It was clear that I was not freely giving chips back to the table. I started to wonder whether I would kill the action. But that question was continually answered throughout the session – players kept playing back at me, and I kept collecting chips.
Remembering Zen
I’m sure I will have future sessions where I completely lose the ability to read the players and get in a zone. Here are a few of the key things that I remember about this session --
I almost never spoke during a hand, unless it was to tell someone what I thought they had before I folded in a heads-up pot. I’d say something like, “You must have hit your set. OK, I’ll give you credit.” Sometime this would get a verbal response, or they would just show me their hand. The thing was, I hardly ever said what I actually thought they had -- I would just call out a very strong hand, and then see how they responded. If they showed me, fabulous. If not, I still had a good sense by their reaction if I was right or not. It was a great way to gather information. Deep down, I think that most players don’t like to be called bluffers (i.e. “liars”) when they are not, and many will expose their hand to prove that they were strong and not bluffing. This is probably much more the case in cash games than in tournaments.
I hardly ever made eye contact during a hand. I used my peripheral vision a lot. I was almost always looking at the felt between the betting lines on the table, and no higher than players’ hands. I did not look at faces or make eye contact. I discovered (or rediscovered?) that I can get almost all of the information that I need from a player by watching their hands and arms, general body position, and just getting an overall sense of their strength. Kind of like “reading their aura.” That sounds really silly as I write it, but that’s what it was -- I could just tell where a person was in the hand by staying relaxed and letting all of the information that they were giving off flow to my read. The true Zen state of poker. Its very hard to describe, but it was completely working for me.
I paid attention when I was not involved in a hand. I watched people as the hand played out. I would try to guess a player’s strength. I would watch the player and ask “Did he like the flop, or not?” Then, if there was a showdown, I would see if I was right or not. This is what I like most about poker – watching players and making reads.
Response to the Chip Fortress
After the stack grew to multiple players, the rock to my right named it the Chip Fortress. I saw an interesting dynamic taking place during the last half of my session. As players busted out and new players came into the game, they eyeballed the Fortress. Nearly everyone had one of responses: (1) they were scared and requested a seat change; (2) they were amped at the opportunity to win lots of chips from me. It was comical -- about half of the players who sat down would say within one orbit “Seat change button!” This was new to me.
Rock on the Right
So, the players that stayed were eager to make a play for the big kill. Some were super-LAG, trying to get me to open up my game or frustrate me. Some were TAG, waiting for a hand to bust me. There was one guy to my immediate right all night who was a complete rock. A giant granite boulder. He was sitting on around $1800 all night after making two huge hits early on. This was perfect, because I knew exactly where he was all night long -- he was 100% predictable. And, he had the shakes when he got a good hand. Only the players not paying attention tangled with him. And, there was a third level of thinking between us -- he knew that I knew that he was a rock, and he knew that I knew where he was in a hand. Does that make sense? So, I had the ability to raise him off a hand – when I played back at him, he would give me credit for knowing that he was strong. I only did it 2 or 3 times, but it was effective. Fun stuff.
Do I have to leave?
The hour passed Midnight. I was running so well that I did not want to leave this table. But, I had to get up around 5am on Sunday morning to catch my painfully early flight home. I had about two hours at home to repack, and then load the kids in the van and head to St. Louis for three nights. Pulling an all-nighter would mean pain for several days. I just can’t do that anymore.
What to do? If this session happened on Friday night, I absolutely would have stayed at the table as long as possible. I would have played until I lost my ability to focus. I heard Phil Ivey say on TV one time that one of the biggest mistake many players make is leaving a cash game too early, while the table was still good, in order to lock in profits.
But, I had to stop. It was a decision made for the benefit of my family, more than anything else. I didn’t want them to have to put up with tired, cranky dad. But, I just could not lose at this table. As I started racking up my chips, I continued to play. After the chips were fully racked, I decided to play to the button. UTG, I raised to $20, got one caller, led out on the flop and won the pot. In the BB, I checked after several limpers, led out on the flop after flopping top pair with QJ and won the pot. I folded the SB, then finished the session by winning the pot with a pre-flop raise on the button. Its never been so hard to leave a table! I cashed in +$3200 for the session.
Venetian Tournaments
The First Tournament
I arrived early on Thursday to play in the noon Venetian Deep Stack Tournament. I registered at the hotel, dropped my stuff off in the room, and proceeded directly to the tournament sign-up counter at the back of the poker room.
I received a card with the number “242” scribbled in black marker. I was alternate #242. You’re kidding me, right? I arrived early to play in this tournament, a field of 480 players already have a seat, and I have to wait until 242 players bust out before I can even get a seat? Fuck that.
Backup Plan -- I’ll just play in the Venetian cash games after I grab some lunch. No, sorry, all tables in the Venetian will close at 11:30am because they are devoted to the tournament. And, since about half of the bustouts will be filled with alternates, there will be no tables available for the cash games until around 3:30 or 4pm. Fuck that, too.
Backup Plan B – relax at the Venetian pool for two hours, hit the cash games at the Mirage late afternoon, and then proceed as the Vegas winds blow.
Okay, the First Tournament
I won a few hundred at the Mirage NL cash games on Thursday afternoon, then signed up for the 8pm Venetian tournament. Its not a “Deep Stack” tournament, but you still start with about 80BB, so its not bad. First significant hand – I flop a set of nines on an 983 board. I use Jedi mind tricks to get the PF raiser to commit his stack on the flop with QQ. Q hits on the turn, and I am crippled. Being a 92% favorite is not good enough on-line or in Vegas, apparently.
Second significant hand – I push 1500 at the 100/200 level with QQ, and BB calls with A8o. What a donk. An ace hits on the river. Live poker is completely rigged. I go to bed.
The Second Tournament
On Friday morning, I hit the Venetian NL cash tables at 9:30am. I won a few hundred. I signed up for the noon $500+ tournament the night before, so I had a seat at noon.
The room was packed. Poker players were swarming everywhere. Dozens of alternates were clustered at the back, waiting for a seat. Poker is fun for everyone.
We start with 10,000 chips and 25/50 blinds, for a starting stack of 200BBs. Very cool. Despite the deep stacks, I quickly notice something very odd. Everyone was playing artificially aggressive. What I mean by “artificial” is that most of the players aren’t really capable of playing a good LAG game, and are weak-tighties, but they believe that they must play a LAG style because this is the “correct tournament strategy” despite stack size. So, the range of raising and calling hands was immediately larger than it really should have been when everyone still had a deep stack.
I did not adjust correctly. I loosened up a bit, but I flopped absolutely nothing. I was down to 7500 when the blinds hit 100-200. As my stack dwindled by playing solid starting hands that never connected, I was quickly forced to push with QQ into AA and was out before 2pm.
Tournament Observations
The Venetian has scored huge on this tournament series. They have perfectly tapped into a swelling market. There are lots of decent players that want deep stack tournament poker which is lower on the luck factor, with reasonable buy-ins that still produce a healthy prize pool. For $500+, you get 200BB to start and a chance to cash for $100,000+.
But, I don’t like the payout structure. Its way too top-heavy. Despite starting fields of 500+, including alternates, they only pay 40 spots. And, 40 through 25 or so only pays a few hundred above the buy-in. You have to go really deep to even hit a 2x buy-in profit. I guess this allows them to publish the big 1st place payouts at $100,000+.
The players reaction to this shallow pay-out structure is to chop as soon as possible. The big story at the Venetian was how they were getting ridiculous chops early in the tournament. I heard at least four dealers tell the story about the tournament a few days before I arrived -- they had a 32-player even chop for something like $6000 per player. The story was that, shortly after they hit four tables, some guy yells out, “If we chop now, we all get $6000.” Everyone looked around at stack sizes, and said, “We’ve been at this for 11 hours. That doesn’t sound too bad.” So the tournament ended at four tables remaining.
The place was swarming with packs of guys from Europe. An army of Gus Hansen wannabes. I played with guys from Germany, Sweden, Denmark and Holland. They seemed to travel in packs of four or five. They were all 22 or younger. They all had backpacks and jackets. They all drank Red Bull or Green Tea. They all had big headphones that were permanently resting on their shoulders. They were all pale white, but usually in good physical condition. They all needed a haircut. They would typically gather behind one of their brethren who was sitting in a cash game, and proceed to work themselves into a frenzied poker conversation in German, Dutch, or whatever the hell language they were speaking. I could tell it was poker talk because occasionally I would recognize an English word or phrase thrown in like “turn cahd,” “beht,” “spaides” or “I donknow vat he was tingking by calling hees stack wit a backdoow floish dwaa.” They were focusing on tournaments and playing in cash games when they busted out. I took one German guy for about $350 in a $2/5 NL game, but that was the extent of my confrontations with them.
Bad Cash Game Hand
Okay, not everything was roses in Vegas. For the trip, I won several thousand, but I made my share of bad plays along the way. Here’s one hand that still makes me mad –
Friday morning Venetian $2/5 NL cash game, about 11 am. Table is running very loose for a morning session, with no drinkers. Soon after I sat down, I hit a big hand. I called a standard raise to $20 in late position with 77 and was heads up against a 40ish dude that looked too serious. The flop was A-8-7. He bet out $30, I raised to $90, he raised to $190, and I pushed. He had another $350 or so and I covered, so it took him about two minutes to call off the rest of his chips. Based on how long he took, I was 100% sure that I was ahead and he probably had AK or AQ, maybe A8. I turned my hand up on the table, showing trips. The turn was A-8-7-7, and the table gasped at quads.
A few orbits later, I called a raise to $20 in the CO with 98s. Three players to the flop of 9-8-K. Original raiser was a young, nervous looking dude, and he bet out for $50. Based on his style, he still had a wide range of hands here, and I read this as a continuation bet. Player between us folded, and I raised to $125. Nervous Dude thinks for a while, then just calls. At this point him on a draw or top pair with a mid-kicker, like maybe KQ. The pot was now about $310.
Turn was 9-8-K-T. Nervous Dude checked. I asked him to raise his hands so I could get a look at his stack. As he did this, my read was that he was not checking with the intention of check-raising. My read was that I still had the best hand. It appeared that he had about $320 or so left in his stack. I thought about how much to bet, and here’s where I made my mistake.
I wanted to make a bet that made this the “pressure point” of the hand. I didn’t want to push and scare him completely away, but I wanted the bet to be big enough so that if he wanted to continue, he would have to just push. So, I bet $180, a little more than half of his remaining stack.
He thought for a long time, and was clearly troubled by the decision. Then he just called.
River was 9-8-K-T-J, no flush possible. He checked, and still looked nervous. I pushed, and he immediately looked exasperated. He thought I hit a straight. It was another $140 for him to win $670. He called and showed JT for a better two pair. I mucked.
I’ve re-run the hand in my head numerous times – I raised on the flop with the best hand and bet on the turn with the best hand. I am still kicking myself for not just pushing on the turn. My intention was to bet enough on the turn to signal that we were playing for his stack, but my bet was not enough to deter just a call. Then he was priced into any bet on the river with just about any sort of hand, even one pair. Next time in this type of situation, I push the turn. I’m sure he would have folded one pair. If he calls my push and draws out, I can live with that result.
I just hate my play in this hand. I gave back almost all of the profit from my earlier quads hand.
The Venetian
Among the Venetian, the Wynn and the Bellagio, the Venetian wins the poker competition. The staff at the Venetian act like they want the business from poker players. They know that there is stiff competition for poker traffic right now, and they have stepped it up a notch. The tournaments are well run. The room is huge, and there is space between the tables to move. They fill tables very fast. The dealers are solid and keep the action moving. A lot of the dealers are also players, and some even play in the Venetian tournaments. The location on the Strip is great. Overall, this is where I prefer to stay and play.
Achieving Zen
I’ll start the Vegas report at the end. During my last session on Saturday night, for about five hours in the $2/5 NLHE Venetian cash games, I finally reached what for me is the perfect Zen state of poker. I was in a zone that I have been trying to achieve since I started playing this game as a serious hobby. I was perfectly focused and locked onto everyone at the table. I knew exactly where I was in every hand. I knew when I was ahead and when I was behind, and I almost always knew when another player had a better hand but I could make him lay it down. I can recall only one hand where I won a sizable pot with luck.
I bought in for $1000. After about an hour I was up several hundred. Then things just took off. I hit some big hands to take a few players’ stacks of around $300-$400. Then I became more active, playing a wider range of hands pre-flop and occasionally hitting some boards in the range that no one else was playing.
I still maintained a fairly tight image, and I did not become a chip-spewing maniac. I would fold for extended periods when I got bad cards. I would bet or raise when I thought I was ahead or needed to see where I was at. I yielded to aggression when I felt that I was behind, unless I felt that I could steal. I focused on staying tight, in the sense that I refused to pay off in big pot with a strong second-best hand. I think the most that I ever put into a pot which I later abandoned was maybe $150. I did not double anyone up.
You Don’t Pay Off
There was one very solid player at my table on Saturday night whom I sat next to for several hours on Friday night. He was playing similar to my style, but he probably had a bit more gamble. He was easily the best $2-5 NL player I encountered on my trip.
A good portion of the Saturday night Chip Fortress came from his stack. After the Chip Fortress started to take shape, I too some big pots off of him. The pattern became this: he and I would take from the other players, and then I would take some more from him. At one point the commented, “I think half of your stack came from me.” He was right -- he was doing a serious amount of chip collecting, and then delivering to me.
Mid-way through the session, he started commenting about how he was paying me off for my big hands, but I was not paying him off in return. My response was, “I know when I am beat.” That was probably the key to maintaining my focus and resisting the temptation to give back to the table. When you build up a big stack in a live cash game, its easy to give a lot back because (1) you loosen up and (2) you feel somewhat obligated to spread the love around to keep the action lively.
Is the Stack too big?
After I crossed the $2500 mark, the thought occurred to me that I might be killing the action with a monster stack. Its one thing to build up an intimidating stack in a tournament, when no one can move. In a cash game players can leave whenever they want, and some players don’t like to play against someone who has a dominating stack.
It was clear that I was not freely giving chips back to the table. I started to wonder whether I would kill the action. But that question was continually answered throughout the session – players kept playing back at me, and I kept collecting chips.
Remembering Zen
I’m sure I will have future sessions where I completely lose the ability to read the players and get in a zone. Here are a few of the key things that I remember about this session --
I almost never spoke during a hand, unless it was to tell someone what I thought they had before I folded in a heads-up pot. I’d say something like, “You must have hit your set. OK, I’ll give you credit.” Sometime this would get a verbal response, or they would just show me their hand. The thing was, I hardly ever said what I actually thought they had -- I would just call out a very strong hand, and then see how they responded. If they showed me, fabulous. If not, I still had a good sense by their reaction if I was right or not. It was a great way to gather information. Deep down, I think that most players don’t like to be called bluffers (i.e. “liars”) when they are not, and many will expose their hand to prove that they were strong and not bluffing. This is probably much more the case in cash games than in tournaments.
I hardly ever made eye contact during a hand. I used my peripheral vision a lot. I was almost always looking at the felt between the betting lines on the table, and no higher than players’ hands. I did not look at faces or make eye contact. I discovered (or rediscovered?) that I can get almost all of the information that I need from a player by watching their hands and arms, general body position, and just getting an overall sense of their strength. Kind of like “reading their aura.” That sounds really silly as I write it, but that’s what it was -- I could just tell where a person was in the hand by staying relaxed and letting all of the information that they were giving off flow to my read. The true Zen state of poker. Its very hard to describe, but it was completely working for me.
I paid attention when I was not involved in a hand. I watched people as the hand played out. I would try to guess a player’s strength. I would watch the player and ask “Did he like the flop, or not?” Then, if there was a showdown, I would see if I was right or not. This is what I like most about poker – watching players and making reads.
Response to the Chip Fortress
After the stack grew to multiple players, the rock to my right named it the Chip Fortress. I saw an interesting dynamic taking place during the last half of my session. As players busted out and new players came into the game, they eyeballed the Fortress. Nearly everyone had one of responses: (1) they were scared and requested a seat change; (2) they were amped at the opportunity to win lots of chips from me. It was comical -- about half of the players who sat down would say within one orbit “Seat change button!” This was new to me.
Rock on the Right
So, the players that stayed were eager to make a play for the big kill. Some were super-LAG, trying to get me to open up my game or frustrate me. Some were TAG, waiting for a hand to bust me. There was one guy to my immediate right all night who was a complete rock. A giant granite boulder. He was sitting on around $1800 all night after making two huge hits early on. This was perfect, because I knew exactly where he was all night long -- he was 100% predictable. And, he had the shakes when he got a good hand. Only the players not paying attention tangled with him. And, there was a third level of thinking between us -- he knew that I knew that he was a rock, and he knew that I knew where he was in a hand. Does that make sense? So, I had the ability to raise him off a hand – when I played back at him, he would give me credit for knowing that he was strong. I only did it 2 or 3 times, but it was effective. Fun stuff.
Do I have to leave?
The hour passed Midnight. I was running so well that I did not want to leave this table. But, I had to get up around 5am on Sunday morning to catch my painfully early flight home. I had about two hours at home to repack, and then load the kids in the van and head to St. Louis for three nights. Pulling an all-nighter would mean pain for several days. I just can’t do that anymore.
What to do? If this session happened on Friday night, I absolutely would have stayed at the table as long as possible. I would have played until I lost my ability to focus. I heard Phil Ivey say on TV one time that one of the biggest mistake many players make is leaving a cash game too early, while the table was still good, in order to lock in profits.
But, I had to stop. It was a decision made for the benefit of my family, more than anything else. I didn’t want them to have to put up with tired, cranky dad. But, I just could not lose at this table. As I started racking up my chips, I continued to play. After the chips were fully racked, I decided to play to the button. UTG, I raised to $20, got one caller, led out on the flop and won the pot. In the BB, I checked after several limpers, led out on the flop after flopping top pair with QJ and won the pot. I folded the SB, then finished the session by winning the pot with a pre-flop raise on the button. Its never been so hard to leave a table! I cashed in +$3200 for the session.
Venetian Tournaments
The First Tournament
I arrived early on Thursday to play in the noon Venetian Deep Stack Tournament. I registered at the hotel, dropped my stuff off in the room, and proceeded directly to the tournament sign-up counter at the back of the poker room.
I received a card with the number “242” scribbled in black marker. I was alternate #242. You’re kidding me, right? I arrived early to play in this tournament, a field of 480 players already have a seat, and I have to wait until 242 players bust out before I can even get a seat? Fuck that.
Backup Plan -- I’ll just play in the Venetian cash games after I grab some lunch. No, sorry, all tables in the Venetian will close at 11:30am because they are devoted to the tournament. And, since about half of the bustouts will be filled with alternates, there will be no tables available for the cash games until around 3:30 or 4pm. Fuck that, too.
Backup Plan B – relax at the Venetian pool for two hours, hit the cash games at the Mirage late afternoon, and then proceed as the Vegas winds blow.
Okay, the First Tournament
I won a few hundred at the Mirage NL cash games on Thursday afternoon, then signed up for the 8pm Venetian tournament. Its not a “Deep Stack” tournament, but you still start with about 80BB, so its not bad. First significant hand – I flop a set of nines on an 983 board. I use Jedi mind tricks to get the PF raiser to commit his stack on the flop with QQ. Q hits on the turn, and I am crippled. Being a 92% favorite is not good enough on-line or in Vegas, apparently.
Second significant hand – I push 1500 at the 100/200 level with QQ, and BB calls with A8o. What a donk. An ace hits on the river. Live poker is completely rigged. I go to bed.
The Second Tournament
On Friday morning, I hit the Venetian NL cash tables at 9:30am. I won a few hundred. I signed up for the noon $500+ tournament the night before, so I had a seat at noon.
The room was packed. Poker players were swarming everywhere. Dozens of alternates were clustered at the back, waiting for a seat. Poker is fun for everyone.
We start with 10,000 chips and 25/50 blinds, for a starting stack of 200BBs. Very cool. Despite the deep stacks, I quickly notice something very odd. Everyone was playing artificially aggressive. What I mean by “artificial” is that most of the players aren’t really capable of playing a good LAG game, and are weak-tighties, but they believe that they must play a LAG style because this is the “correct tournament strategy” despite stack size. So, the range of raising and calling hands was immediately larger than it really should have been when everyone still had a deep stack.
I did not adjust correctly. I loosened up a bit, but I flopped absolutely nothing. I was down to 7500 when the blinds hit 100-200. As my stack dwindled by playing solid starting hands that never connected, I was quickly forced to push with QQ into AA and was out before 2pm.
Tournament Observations
The Venetian has scored huge on this tournament series. They have perfectly tapped into a swelling market. There are lots of decent players that want deep stack tournament poker which is lower on the luck factor, with reasonable buy-ins that still produce a healthy prize pool. For $500+, you get 200BB to start and a chance to cash for $100,000+.
But, I don’t like the payout structure. Its way too top-heavy. Despite starting fields of 500+, including alternates, they only pay 40 spots. And, 40 through 25 or so only pays a few hundred above the buy-in. You have to go really deep to even hit a 2x buy-in profit. I guess this allows them to publish the big 1st place payouts at $100,000+.
The players reaction to this shallow pay-out structure is to chop as soon as possible. The big story at the Venetian was how they were getting ridiculous chops early in the tournament. I heard at least four dealers tell the story about the tournament a few days before I arrived -- they had a 32-player even chop for something like $6000 per player. The story was that, shortly after they hit four tables, some guy yells out, “If we chop now, we all get $6000.” Everyone looked around at stack sizes, and said, “We’ve been at this for 11 hours. That doesn’t sound too bad.” So the tournament ended at four tables remaining.
The place was swarming with packs of guys from Europe. An army of Gus Hansen wannabes. I played with guys from Germany, Sweden, Denmark and Holland. They seemed to travel in packs of four or five. They were all 22 or younger. They all had backpacks and jackets. They all drank Red Bull or Green Tea. They all had big headphones that were permanently resting on their shoulders. They were all pale white, but usually in good physical condition. They all needed a haircut. They would typically gather behind one of their brethren who was sitting in a cash game, and proceed to work themselves into a frenzied poker conversation in German, Dutch, or whatever the hell language they were speaking. I could tell it was poker talk because occasionally I would recognize an English word or phrase thrown in like “turn cahd,” “beht,” “spaides” or “I donknow vat he was tingking by calling hees stack wit a backdoow floish dwaa.” They were focusing on tournaments and playing in cash games when they busted out. I took one German guy for about $350 in a $2/5 NL game, but that was the extent of my confrontations with them.
Bad Cash Game Hand
Okay, not everything was roses in Vegas. For the trip, I won several thousand, but I made my share of bad plays along the way. Here’s one hand that still makes me mad –
Friday morning Venetian $2/5 NL cash game, about 11 am. Table is running very loose for a morning session, with no drinkers. Soon after I sat down, I hit a big hand. I called a standard raise to $20 in late position with 77 and was heads up against a 40ish dude that looked too serious. The flop was A-8-7. He bet out $30, I raised to $90, he raised to $190, and I pushed. He had another $350 or so and I covered, so it took him about two minutes to call off the rest of his chips. Based on how long he took, I was 100% sure that I was ahead and he probably had AK or AQ, maybe A8. I turned my hand up on the table, showing trips. The turn was A-8-7-7, and the table gasped at quads.
A few orbits later, I called a raise to $20 in the CO with 98s. Three players to the flop of 9-8-K. Original raiser was a young, nervous looking dude, and he bet out for $50. Based on his style, he still had a wide range of hands here, and I read this as a continuation bet. Player between us folded, and I raised to $125. Nervous Dude thinks for a while, then just calls. At this point him on a draw or top pair with a mid-kicker, like maybe KQ. The pot was now about $310.
Turn was 9-8-K-T. Nervous Dude checked. I asked him to raise his hands so I could get a look at his stack. As he did this, my read was that he was not checking with the intention of check-raising. My read was that I still had the best hand. It appeared that he had about $320 or so left in his stack. I thought about how much to bet, and here’s where I made my mistake.
I wanted to make a bet that made this the “pressure point” of the hand. I didn’t want to push and scare him completely away, but I wanted the bet to be big enough so that if he wanted to continue, he would have to just push. So, I bet $180, a little more than half of his remaining stack.
He thought for a long time, and was clearly troubled by the decision. Then he just called.
River was 9-8-K-T-J, no flush possible. He checked, and still looked nervous. I pushed, and he immediately looked exasperated. He thought I hit a straight. It was another $140 for him to win $670. He called and showed JT for a better two pair. I mucked.
I’ve re-run the hand in my head numerous times – I raised on the flop with the best hand and bet on the turn with the best hand. I am still kicking myself for not just pushing on the turn. My intention was to bet enough on the turn to signal that we were playing for his stack, but my bet was not enough to deter just a call. Then he was priced into any bet on the river with just about any sort of hand, even one pair. Next time in this type of situation, I push the turn. I’m sure he would have folded one pair. If he calls my push and draws out, I can live with that result.
I just hate my play in this hand. I gave back almost all of the profit from my earlier quads hand.
The Venetian
Among the Venetian, the Wynn and the Bellagio, the Venetian wins the poker competition. The staff at the Venetian act like they want the business from poker players. They know that there is stiff competition for poker traffic right now, and they have stepped it up a notch. The tournaments are well run. The room is huge, and there is space between the tables to move. They fill tables very fast. The dealers are solid and keep the action moving. A lot of the dealers are also players, and some even play in the Venetian tournaments. The location on the Strip is great. Overall, this is where I prefer to stay and play.
Monday, July 02, 2007
Vegas Cash Games at WSOP Time, Baby!
Back from Vegas. Donkaments suck, cash games rule. This pic of The Chip Fortress, as it was duly named in a Venetian $2/5NLHE session, pretty much sums up the trip. Cash game action was Fan-tastic. For me, there is nothing better in poker than building up a massively intimidating 600+BB stack in a cash game. More later when I have time.
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