I was playing some 1/2 recently at the Venetian and had a hand that really stuck with me. It was a fairly standard table, mostly tourists, only a couple players I was really watching to make strong plays. The woman to my right in the 2 seat was there with her husband in the 9 seat. They were both fairly pleasant people and pretty awful poker players. Nice people though.
At any rate, I was seeing a lot of trash hands, when finally I got dealt pocket kings. I was under the gun, bumped it up to $10, and got two callers, one of whom was the woman from above in the big blind.
Flop came down all low, pretty spread out, two spades. Woman checks, I bet $25, other guy folds, she calls. Turn puts a 2nd heart on the board. She checks, I bet $60, she calls. She has about $80 more behind, so my intention was to price her in.
At this point, I'm thinking that she maybe has two spades and is looking for the flush, maybe has a piece of it with a strong kicker (which I'm putting on an ace since I'm holding two kings), or maybe just a hand like AQ that she won't lay down. Terrible ways to play all those hands, but like I said, she wasn't the strongest poker player. Basically, I'm sitting there thinking "No ace, no spade, no ace, no spade, no ace, no spade."
Obviously the ace of spades falls on the river.
To complicate matters further, she goes into the tank. At first I'm thinking she's really considering her play, but then it goes so long that I start thinking she must be Hollywooding it. Then she goes so long that I decide she can't possibly be Hollywooding because nobody would believe such a drawn out act. (Incidentally, that's part of why I never call time on somebody. They reveal information by how long they think, so why stop them from doing so?)
Eventually she pushes all in, and despite my strong desire to call, I'm pretty sure I have to fold. Cowboys just aren't much of a hand on the river with an ace on the board, especially when any hand I'd put her on earlier would have beaten me.
I still have one play left to me though. It almost never works, but I decided to give it a shot. While analyzing her face for any reaction, I flip over my hand.
Turns out I didn't have to analyze too hard, because she pickes up her cards between her index and middle fingers and makes to toss them away. While with a craftier player it could have been a ruse, there was just about zero chance of that with her. The dealer stops her from actually mucking her cards as I hadn't called yet, but it didn't really matter; the damage was done for her. I called, and she mucked without showing.
A $360 pot is a pretty good sized one in a 1/2 game, and was huge at that table. It made the whole session for me, and ended hers.
When the ace of spades came down and she pushed, I figured I was pretty done for. She totally threw the pot by reacting to my prompt the way she did. If I hadn't realized, or she had, that the hand wasn't over yet, she'd have won.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Have a Hobby
I clearly recall my first 21+ trip to Vegas. I was so excited to be here, at the center of the poker world, ready to hit the tables and build my poker fame and fortune. Actually, I clearly recall my first 20- trip to Vegas too. I was about 10 or 11, and we stayed at the Luxor, which was pretty new back then. We rode the rides to find the lost obelisk (since retooled completely; I think one of them now features Leslie Nielsen as a pirate, which is weird). The Fremont Street Experience had just been created also, and I remember not clearly understanding what my dad meant leading up to the trip when he told me they’d put a giant LED ceiling on an entire street. Really, that’s also rather weird.
Anyway, fast forward back to when Smokinokun and I rolled into the Extended Stay America to begin our first summer in Vegas. We both had a fair amount of experience already, both online and in person. The first rush of the poker craze hit when I was about 14 or so, and XP nights (Xbox/Poker) became a weekly event. Our XP crowd usually played dealer’s choice, nickel and dime kind of games. I was partial to Follow the Queen and Low Chicago (still am, to tell the truth).
I can sit for hours and hours at a time, focusing on every minute detail of a poker game and its participants, but when I write about the same experience, my mind wanders over every last aspect of the game it knows. Well, I’ll call it context!
The point to which I’ve been leading (on an admittedly roundabout path) is that when we got here, we were both so excited to finally be living the dream, that we didn’t do much else at all. We were in the casino seven days a week most weeks, and when we were at home (which was an actual home after the first couple weeks in the Extended Stay) we spent much of our time playing online tournaments.
We didn’t have a hobby. We didn’t have much of anything in our lives besides poker. I can’t speak for how that affected Smoke’s mindset, but for me, it was a problem.
I had no recourse. Now, and in the time since that first venture, when I have a bad session, or beat, or run, I use that to fuel me in other areas. Having a hobby on which I can spend time when poker’s got me down (which definitely happens to me, and will happen to you too) is a great way to rebound from these bad turns. Otherwise I just get mopey and unproductive and sit around feeling bad.
When I’m feeling out of control from a game of poker, I write. In fact, that can often be when I do my best writing. Often (though not always), it’s even about poker. Come to think of it, I came up with this article after a bad turn of fortune in a tournament recently. I took a walk down the Grand Canal, stopped for a beer, and wrote away in my 3x5” pocket notepad. I felt a lot better afterward. Maybe in some weird way, writing about poker gives me back that feeling of control. And writing about something else (like time travelers or magical global empires beset by faux dragon attacks) gives me an escape. I need both, and I presume most other people do too.
Note that when I tell you here not to do just poker, I don’t mean as it relates to your income. Those reasons are both myriad and deserving of their own blog post. Actually, they’d make a good one; but I’ll get to them in due time. For now I’m focusing on non-monetary incentives to spend time on things away from the poker table. With a hobby, find a task where what you get out of it is firmly under your control and thoroughly unrelated to sustaining yourself or your way of life.
You need something in your life that is fun, rewarding, and most importantly, controllable. I write, but your hobby can be just about anything you enjoy. In poker, you influence the outcome, but you don’t control it. That simple fact is a big part of what gives poker its thrill, but it can mess with your head. Really mess with it. You’ll develop a pretty thick skin if you stick with poker over the long haul, but nobody can keep from being shaken up indefinitely. Imagine the following scenario:
You’re sitting at a table for hours, patiently waiting. You make the occasional play at a small pot, and everything goes fine, but you’re bored. You’re seeing trash hand after trash hand, and with the few marginal, barely playable ones you see, there is a bet, raise, and reraise in front of you every time, so you have to throw them away. The table’s not exactly full of suckers, but there are a couple big donkeys and you’re just waiting to take them for a ride. You’ve given yourself the perfect table image to do it, too. Now all you need is the right hand.
Finally the spot comes, and your strategy works perfectly. You get all in on the flop vs some dummy who has a 3% chance at runners to win the hand. He gets it, of course, and you die a little bit inside.
That’s really not such an unlikely scenario. I’d probably take a five minute walk to clear my head and come back into the game ready to wait for the next spot. But what if it happens again, and again, all in one session? What if 10 hours and 4 buy-ins since you sat down, you have nothing but a smaller bankroll and stories of bad beats to show for your effort?
Those are the situations that will, I promise you, mess with your head. So have a hobby, and make time for it.
Anyway, fast forward back to when Smokinokun and I rolled into the Extended Stay America to begin our first summer in Vegas. We both had a fair amount of experience already, both online and in person. The first rush of the poker craze hit when I was about 14 or so, and XP nights (Xbox/Poker) became a weekly event. Our XP crowd usually played dealer’s choice, nickel and dime kind of games. I was partial to Follow the Queen and Low Chicago (still am, to tell the truth).
I can sit for hours and hours at a time, focusing on every minute detail of a poker game and its participants, but when I write about the same experience, my mind wanders over every last aspect of the game it knows. Well, I’ll call it context!
The point to which I’ve been leading (on an admittedly roundabout path) is that when we got here, we were both so excited to finally be living the dream, that we didn’t do much else at all. We were in the casino seven days a week most weeks, and when we were at home (which was an actual home after the first couple weeks in the Extended Stay) we spent much of our time playing online tournaments.
We didn’t have a hobby. We didn’t have much of anything in our lives besides poker. I can’t speak for how that affected Smoke’s mindset, but for me, it was a problem.
I had no recourse. Now, and in the time since that first venture, when I have a bad session, or beat, or run, I use that to fuel me in other areas. Having a hobby on which I can spend time when poker’s got me down (which definitely happens to me, and will happen to you too) is a great way to rebound from these bad turns. Otherwise I just get mopey and unproductive and sit around feeling bad.
When I’m feeling out of control from a game of poker, I write. In fact, that can often be when I do my best writing. Often (though not always), it’s even about poker. Come to think of it, I came up with this article after a bad turn of fortune in a tournament recently. I took a walk down the Grand Canal, stopped for a beer, and wrote away in my 3x5” pocket notepad. I felt a lot better afterward. Maybe in some weird way, writing about poker gives me back that feeling of control. And writing about something else (like time travelers or magical global empires beset by faux dragon attacks) gives me an escape. I need both, and I presume most other people do too.
Note that when I tell you here not to do just poker, I don’t mean as it relates to your income. Those reasons are both myriad and deserving of their own blog post. Actually, they’d make a good one; but I’ll get to them in due time. For now I’m focusing on non-monetary incentives to spend time on things away from the poker table. With a hobby, find a task where what you get out of it is firmly under your control and thoroughly unrelated to sustaining yourself or your way of life.
You need something in your life that is fun, rewarding, and most importantly, controllable. I write, but your hobby can be just about anything you enjoy. In poker, you influence the outcome, but you don’t control it. That simple fact is a big part of what gives poker its thrill, but it can mess with your head. Really mess with it. You’ll develop a pretty thick skin if you stick with poker over the long haul, but nobody can keep from being shaken up indefinitely. Imagine the following scenario:
You’re sitting at a table for hours, patiently waiting. You make the occasional play at a small pot, and everything goes fine, but you’re bored. You’re seeing trash hand after trash hand, and with the few marginal, barely playable ones you see, there is a bet, raise, and reraise in front of you every time, so you have to throw them away. The table’s not exactly full of suckers, but there are a couple big donkeys and you’re just waiting to take them for a ride. You’ve given yourself the perfect table image to do it, too. Now all you need is the right hand.
Finally the spot comes, and your strategy works perfectly. You get all in on the flop vs some dummy who has a 3% chance at runners to win the hand. He gets it, of course, and you die a little bit inside.
That’s really not such an unlikely scenario. I’d probably take a five minute walk to clear my head and come back into the game ready to wait for the next spot. But what if it happens again, and again, all in one session? What if 10 hours and 4 buy-ins since you sat down, you have nothing but a smaller bankroll and stories of bad beats to show for your effort?
Those are the situations that will, I promise you, mess with your head. So have a hobby, and make time for it.
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