Short Night

Well I hope that after this weekend I will be able to put in my usual table time again. I have barely played any the past 2 weeks now. Last night was no different. I did one $5.20 DON and tanked out in 8th..was card dead the entire time and we still had 8 people at the 125-250 blind level! I was short stack at 900 chips and was dominated when I pushed in late position w/ A-9 and was called by big blind with A-J… no running him down today and I was ejected…I had only fired up one instead of my usual two and just wasn’t feeling it last night so I didn’t bother signing up for more. I figured if I wasn’t focused on them I would just kill some ROI% and end up pissed off. I went ahead and opened up two .25/.50 limit Badugi tables though. This game is still really soft and as bad as I sure I am at it I always make some quick money here. I don’t have a problem saying it… I suck at poker! I don’t know all the right +EV moves to make. I make some bad folds and some worse calls sometimes when I play poker. You know what though?? I am still better than the majority of the players I sit down with so I still make money!! That’s the great thing about poker. You don’t have to be the greatest or even that good.. you just have to be better than most of the people at your table to crush a game. So back to my Badugi sessions. I only played about 30 minutes and finished up over $15.00. It just amazes me at how bad some players are at this game. I see 2 raises pre-draw and then someone will call the raises and then draw 3!!! I’m like WTF!! It’s hilarious to watch and only takes about one orbit to find the 4 or 5 that are totally clueless. At one table I had a gold-star sit down to my right with a $100.00. Not sure if he was just trying to show off to us lowly bronze stars or if he was just trying to learn the game since most just buy-in with $10.00. He didn’t stay long and I never managed to get into a pot with him, but he was very aggressive and ended up about $7.00 ahead without ever showing a hand down. Either he ran REALLY good or he just bluffed everyone out. He would always come in for a raise and stand pat each draw and just keep raising. By the final draw everyone would just fold to him. I did make one bonehead play (from what I have read about Badugi strategy) that ended up working out and winning me a nice $5.00 pot. I was dealt a King High Badugi and raised. I had a few callers and stood pat and they all drew cards. I raised again and only had 2 callers and stood pat and they both drew cards. I raised again and this time I was re-raised by just one guy. I called and he stood pat. I knew he ran me down and since I had the worse Badugi possible I could only win if I improved. I went ahead and tossed my King and drew one and drew a 5 giving me a 7 high Badugi now! He led out with a raise and I re-raised him and took it down. I know drawing a card when you already have a made Badugi is supposed to be a cardinal sin but is it really if you know you are beat if you don’t draw? I figured I had nothing to lose in this particular spot. I also checked out a $10/$20 Badugi table to see how it played. They play just as bad as the .25/.50 tables do. They just have more money! LOL.
C-ya at the tables
Dave
Starting BR: $230
Ending BR: $240

Long Weekend

Well this weekend sucked about as bad as I thought it would. The company I work for does their annual physical inventory at all the stores on the first two weekends in December each year. I work at the regional office and have to oversee several stores to make sure they are on track and don’t do any funny stuff. I had to work some Friday night and then from 8am to 10:30pm on Saturday. I was supposed to have Sunday off but I ended up having to do some more work yesterday. That bites and I am going to have to do it all over again this coming weekend too. Understandably I got almost zero table time in this past weekend. I couldn’t swallow taking the whole weekend off from playing so last night I signed on after the family went to bed to squeeze in a couple hours at least. I ended up playing over 5 hours and was up until 3:30!! Oops!! Oh well…I can always sleep when I am dead..I do this all the time anyway..LOL. I have started experimenting with 3-tabling my DON’s with not much success. I think my biggest problem is staggering them properly so I am not having to make several key decisions at the same time. I keep wanting to start them all at the same time and it’s causing me problems in the endgame. I am going to try it a few more times and stagger them about 10 minutes apart and see if that helps. I have no problem 2-tabling so I think that should solve my problem. I have no idea how some of these guys are 15-20 tabling SNG’s! I have come across 3 or 4 of them and they all seem to be running right around a 10% ROI on the $5.20 DON’s. Not a bad profit for dinky $5.20 SNG’s when you are running 3000 of them a month! Nope, not even going to attempt to go there.. I don’t see myself ever going past 4 tabling. Maybe I am just too old, but I like to get reads on the tables so I have a better idea in the endgame of how likely I will be getting called on my pushes. I also enjoy playing and multi-tabling that much would make it too much of a grind and no fun at all!
Well I ended up running 5 out of 7 on my DON’s last night..then I tossed in a Pot Limit Badugi Tourney while my final 2 DON’s were finishing. I wrapped it up by signing up for a Sunday 200K satellite. I had problems getting going on the Badugi and hovered around starting chip count for the 1st hour! I finally got some cards and got up to 10K in chips which was 3rd at the time. Then I lost ½ of them on one hand when my 9 high starting Badugi hand was called all the way to the final draw when I was Pot betting the pot each round. Idiot finally made his hand on the final draw and beat me with 7 high Badugi. Hello!! I guess he didn’t care that I was standing pat for each draw the whole time! LOL.. Then I lost most of my chips a few hands later when I got an 8 high starting Badugi and started Pot betting pre-draw. Guy made his Badugi after the 1st draw and raised me.. I just called him down and luckily he didn’t put me all in. He also had an 8 high Badugi but his kicker was better. I was down to 1,000 chips now with blinds at 250-500!! Luckily there are no antes in Badugi so you can just sit there and wait for a hand. Well I never managed to get much more than that and just squeezed into the money and went out in 13th out of 104 runners. The 200K satellite looked like a repeat of my Badugi tourney! There were 106 runners and 19 got tickets and 20th received $3.00. I was utterly card dead almost the entire tourney!! At the 1st break I was at 1,400 chips with 100-200 blinds and 25 antes!! LOL.. I just stayed tight as a snare drum and pushed a few times and my hands held up. Towards the end I checked my stats and I had only played 10% of my hands and most of those were in my big blind! 2 hours of play and I only played 11 hands and 7 were in the big blind! LOL… what a nit!! I am not usually that tight, but I wasn’t going to push with garbage. But I made it and got a ticket to the Sunday 200K. I was signed up for it for maybe 20 seconds before I unregistered and got my $11 bucks..LOL.. I play these things like a SNG except it has a flat 400%ROI payout. Well, that’s it for now…C-ya at the tables!
Dave
Starting BR: $200
Ending BR: $225