I was in Kansas City last week, another burg I used to call home. After wrapping up my business, I decided to check out the Harrah’s out that way. I don’t recall having ever been there before (as in Detroit, the casinos were all built after I moved away) but I probably have been. I know I’d never played poker there, though.
I started out at the cash games ($1/$2 no limit), but between felting the other players and them just up and leaving, I soon found myself with only three opponents. I’d rather play Bridge than Poker when it gets that short-handed (and I don’t even know how to play Bridge), so the table just broke up.
Serendipitously, a $30 buy-in tournament was starting to get underway, so I bought into that and decided to play some tournament poker for a while. Fifty-three other rounders had the same idea.
Long story short – I finished in second place, which put me in a terrific mood. It was good for $294, so not a bad payday for four hours’ work.
There weren’t really any big hands that stood out; I just played pretty tight and let the cards come. I won more than my fair share of coin-flips, but my theory is you need to in order to win anyhow. There are a couple of hands I played really terrible though, so I’ll post those. Maybe I’ll even learn from them.
In the first hand, I was the table’s chip leader by a wide margin. I’d just taken out two players with AA, and I was still stacking the rewards when the next hand got dealt. A spankin’ new player had just sat down to my right, and was under the gun. He had a medium-sized stack. He glanced at his hand immediately went all-in.
I looked at my hand: JJ. For some reason, I thought about what I should do! The answer of course, is you muck immediately. But I was on a big high from just winning a huge pot and taking the chip lead. I didn’t know the player who just sat down, and couldn’t get a read on him. He was older than me (maybe in his 60’s), so if anything that should have cautioned me that he probably wasn’t a maniac. But like a fool, I decided to re-raise all-in myself, to isolate him.
Naturally, the rest of the table folded. Naturally, my opponent had AA. And naturally, he won, as he deserved to. My stack was so big at that time that it barely made a dent, but gee what a stupid way to play Jacks, when the under-the-gun player goes all in!
The second hand was against the player who was probably the best in the tournament (counting me as well). I was in the big blind; he was in early position and doubled the bet. It folded around to me; I had King Ten so I decided to play.
The flop came King Eight Deuce. I decided to go for the check-raise. I checked; my opponent bet, I raised a big amount, and he re-raised all-in. He had me covered, but just barely (we were the two big stacks at the table). I should add that this guy was playing really tight and I had a lot of respect for his game. Nevertheless, like a doofus I called his all-in, and put my tournament life at stake with top pair.
Naturally, he had flopped top two pair (Kings and Eights). Fourth street bricked, but I rivered my three-outer and handed him a terrible beat. His chip stack was crushed, and he was completely ticked off. He walked away from the table (ostensibly out of everybody’s earshot) and swore up a blue streak. I couldn’t really blame him either. As a sign of just how good a player he was, he nursed his micro-stack back up to a decent level and ended up going out third, just before I did.
Overall, the room (and the tournament) was a lot of fun. Since it was the Midwest, everybody was really friendly and nice. I had the final table in stitches with goofy jokes and silly behavior. When it got to heads up, the dealer could hardly shuffle because he was laughing so hard. By the way, the last hand (for the record) was my 44 against the Villain’s Jack-rag. A Jack flopped, and that was that.
A new poker show has made it to TV, “Face The Ace” featuring Full Tilt’s stable of champions and bracelet winners. I’ve only seen the first episode, but I thought it showed promise. The amateurs won every round, but only because they got hit with the deck each time. The host (some guy from The Sopranos) was pretty decent; Ali Nejad is also in the house but fortunately is subdued. The chatter at the table is probably the best part of it all. Erick Lindgren in particular gets an A+ in trying to keep the show interesting. Sadly, the show came in dead last in its timeslot. We’ll have to see whether it can find an audience. Here’s hoping!
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