Resurrecting the Blog

I had literally forgotten all about this blog. I was (virtually) cleaning out an old laptop, and found some old entries, and well … I guess we’re back in business.

I never really stopped playing poker, although it lightened up significantly after “Black Friday”. Like the death of JFK or the attack of 9/11, if you were a poker player you’ll always remember where you were when you heard about it … I was in Pendleton, playing their Spring Round-up, and in the hallway I overheard some poker luminaries discussing the shut-down (Linda Johnson, Jan Fisher, Susie Isaacs). I wasn’t sure what they were referring to … a temporary outage of some kind? Anyhow, I finally learned the whole tragic story.

So there’s not much online poker anymore, and of course none at all in Washington State since it’s a felony. But as I travel a lot for my day job, and since there are plenty of card rooms across the country, it’s easy to find a game to sit down in. I’ve been playing a lot in L.A. lately, as well as Foxwoods and A.C. on the East Coast. I even checked out Mohegan Sun once, but the games there are very hard and I don’t know that I want to go back.

I’m pretty happy with where my cash game is nowadays. Lately I’ve been trying to sharpen up my tournament game. I played a WPT main event at Borgata last year (made it to Day Two but didn’t cash); a WSOP bracelet event (made it to Day Two but didn’t cash), and of course Pendleton’s Round-Ups (in the last one I cashed in two out of four tournaments, which is an extraordinary accomplishment).

I met a couple of guys at the last Round-Up, Grant and Jonathan, who are poker coaches. Their operation is called the Portland Poker University (pdxpkr.com). I went ahead and hired Grant – the tournament expert – and my tourney game has gotten a lot better just in the few weeks since then. I knew that my successful cash-game style was too tight to work in tournaments, but I wasn’t sure how to loosen up. Grant has shown me how and where to do that, and we’ve also worked on overall hand-reading (which is very helpful). He’s a terrific instructor and the investment is already paying off.

Portland does have poker rooms, which I never realized before. Actually, they’re more like private clubs. You buy a membership ($5/day or so) and play all the tournament poker you can stand. During my on-site visits with Grant, we’ve been playing some of them. Last weekend, cousin Dave and I played a tourney at a club called “Aces”. I finished in the money (sixth out of 80 or so players), and there’s no doubt at all that my results have improved because of the coaching. For example, here’s one hand that tells the story:

It was very early in the tournament, before antes kicked in. Blinds were something like 200/400, and we all had deep stacks of over 50,000. I was in the big blind. Action folded all the way to the button, who limped. The small blind completed. I looked down at QQ and decided to pop it … made it 1300 to call. The button called, and the SB folded.

The flop came nine-high with two diamonds, and so I continuation-bet around 1600. The button put in a giant re-raise to 5000. This was such an odd move, that I had to stop and think about it for a while.

I gave some serious thought to just folding. There wasn’t much in the pot, and I didn’t want to risk losing a lot of chips so early in the tourney. But I tried to figure out what hands could be ahead of me right now.

First of all, my opponent was a really good player. I could tell that just from watching the action at our table. He’d seen me continuation-bet a lot of flops and clearly knew that I’d stolen a lot of pots holding nothing. He probably thought I was doing it again … he can’t have known just how strong my hand was. It was a good move, if that’s what he was doing.

But what could he have that beats me? AA or KK would probably have raised pre-flop, rather than just called the button. A flopped set or two pair probably would have raised less on the flop, or even just called, to keep me in. I couldn’t put him on a flush draw either. Frankly, his raise showed me that he didn’t want me to stick around. The best hand I could put him on was something like A9 – top pair, top kicker. But even that might be an overestimation. (This is the kind of thinking that Grant has been encouraging in my game.)

I called that flop bet, and he was visibly displeased. Since the pot was big enough to satisfy me, the turn and river went check/check, and when I showed my unimproved Queens he mucked disgustedly.

I won another big pot from this same player later in the game, which ended up tilting him beyond any possibility of repair. Again, he was the button and I was the big blind. He raised preflop with AA, and I called with KQ offsuit. The flop was King-high, so I check/called his bet. Turn was a rag, so I check/called again. I actually thought I might have the best hand. The river was another King, which pretty much took away any doubt. I put out a very big value bet, he made a crying call, and when I showed my hand he literally bolted from the table and ran out the back exit. He lost over half of his stack to me on that hand. He did come back to the table – walking through the front door, so he’d literally stomped all the way around the building – but he didn’t last much longer, given his dark mood.

I have some poker trips coming up, and some tournament play planned, so we’ll see if I can keep this blog updated a bit more regularly.