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| This is what a $2000 chipstack looks like. |
I worked a 12-hour session at $2/$5 no-limit yesterday at
Foxwoods. This is a tough room for a lot of reasons; one of which is that most
of the folks who play here are professionals, semi-pros, or at the least
regulars who show up frequently and play long hours. There are very few
tourists such as me who just show up on a lark to play cards for a while. This
isn't Vegas.
The maximum buy-in at this table is $500. I always like
to buy in for the max, because if I strike gold I want to be able to win the
most I can with it. If my stack drops below $400, I’ll add another bill to the table to
bring it back up again.
Well, yesterday started out as one of the driest sessions
I can remember. At one point, I went four hours without playing a single hand.
I kept adding bills to the table, one after another, and after ten hours I was
down $1000. I guess you could say that since I had around $500 on the
table, I was actually net down only $500, but personally I don’t count the win
until I leave the table. So in my mind, I was down one grand.
It wasn't any single hand that put me down. A loss rate of
$50/hour on a 2/5 game isn't very much at all. I just wasn't getting anything
worth playing.
As I always do, but especially when I am in the midst of
a tough session, I examine my game very closely to see if I can figure out
where I’m making mistakes. If I’m playing poorly, I’ll just get up and leave
and admit I've been beaten. If I’m playing well, I’ll blame the cards and stay
at the table. In this case, I knew I was playing very well. I folded Ace/King preflop
in one hand when I could tell it was beaten (it was). In another hand, I folded
pocket Jacks preflop for the same reason. The flop came A-K-J and the winner
had pocket Aces, so I would have lost a fortune if I’d stayed in. I was clearly
plugged into the table and making great reads. Nevertheless, a loss is a loss,
and the competition was extraordinarily good, so even though I usually can beat
the 2/5 game at Foxwoods I decided that on the next day I would drop down to 1/2
– an easier game for me, but one that doesn't bring in nearly enough money.
One of the things that so intrigues me about no-limit poker
is how a player can spend hours building up a monster stack, winning hand after
hand, and then lose it all in a single bad call. It's something I see nearly every
session (although it hasn't happened to me yet). But I didn't think I would be
on the receiving end of this experience.
It was ten hours into the session when this hand came
up. I was dealt 66 in middle position. I limped in, deciding ahead of time to
call the raise that would surely be coming. Sure enough, the player on my left who
was a very good loose aggressive player (but then they all are at this
room) popped the bet up to $25. There were four callers, including me, so five
of us went to the flop.
The board came out K-6-4, so I hit complete Yahtzee. An
early player checked; I checked; the opener popped in a good continuation bet
and got two callers. When it came back around to me, I check-raised half my
stack. The opener folded and the other two callers came along.
The turn was an Ace. It checked to me; I bombed the pot
with an all-in. One player folded; the other hemmed and hawed and then called.
The river was a brick and I nearly tripled up with my flopped set. From $500 to
$1500 in one easy hand!
The very next hand, I was dealt pocket Kings. This time I
played it fast. I raised a decent amount and got two callers. The flop was
T-8-6 with two diamonds (one of my Kings was the diamond). I c-bet big and the
two callers came along. The turn was another diamond. I bombed the pot again,
and both players folded. So now I was up even more.
I stayed with the game for another two hours, and kept
building my stack, but fatigue finally took its toll and I decided to leave
before I started making mistakes that shrank the stack back down. But there’s
more poker to be played today!
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