Take That, Pocket Kings!

This goes back to July, in fact, it happened on the evening of July 4^th.  I was playing at BSC and I was a bit frustrated.  I started out doing pretty well, got up a bit over $100 and then slowly found myself going into the red.  The table had started out pretty tame and then went aggro.  I was trying to keep up with the table’s mood swings.

At this point, I was down to about $130 from my $200 buy-in.  And I could see that I was either going to have to lower my standards a bit or just sit there twiddling my thumbs waiting for Aces or—dare I say it—the dreaded pocket Kings.  So when I was dealt 8-7 sooooted (spades) on in the cut-off seat, I figured I might just call the inevitable raise in front of me.  Sure enough the guy to my immediately right made it $8.  Surprising that no one had entered the pot until then.  Also surprising that no one came in behind us, it was just the two of us to see the flop.

The guy who raised was not one of the bigger aggros at the table, but he seemed more than willing to play along with the other action players.

The flop was 6-5-4, rainbow, which I figured was pretty good.  The only suit not represented on the flop was spades, but I was pretty happy flopping the nut straight instead of some mediocre flush draw.

The guy led out with a $15 bet, and I raised to $45.  OK, I’m not inclined to slow-play a straight.  Even on a rainbow flop, a straight just seems too small a hand to slow play.  Am I wrong?

In this case, it didn’t matter.  His response to my raise was to re-raise all in.  He had me covered.  Of course I snap-called.  The turn was an 8 and the river was a low, meaningless card.  There were players at this table who easily could have raised with 9-7 but fortunately, not this guy, at least not this time.

He flipped over pocket Kings!  I have to admit, it was especially sweet to beat that dreaded hand.  I enjoyed it more than if I had cracked his Aces.  Finally, finally, I was on the other side of a bad loss with that freaking hand.  I mean, nothing against the guy who lost, but it seemed to me like the poker gods owed me that one.

The other fun thing about this hand was the dealer.  It was my pal Mike, who, as I’ve mentioned before, always cracks my Kings.  Actually, the joke with him goes back to my days as a 2/4 limit player.  He had observed one time that it seemed like every down, he dealt me pocket Kings.  Pocket Kings is not that big a deal in a 2/4 game.  You can raise with them, but it won’t do much good, you’re not getting anyone to fold.  Especially someone with an Ace.  So many people see the flop that you pretty much have to catch a set or better to win with them.  And of course when you lose you don’t usually lose much.

But when he cracks my Kings in a NL game, it can be painful (see here).  So this was extra nice.  As I stacked my chips, I said to Mike, “Hey, you cracked somebody else’s Kings!” 

He laughed and said, “I do it all the time.  I did it just earlier tonight.”  And then he said, “You cracked them.”  About 10 minutes later, when he was pushed out by the next dealer, he said to me, “I’ll get your Kings tomorrow night.”  I said he probably would but, fortunately, he did not.

An hour or so later, as I was starting to think of wrapping up the session, I did get pocket Kings myself.   I was in early position, so I opened the pot for $8.  Three players called me.  The flop was 10-9-x.  I bet out $25, and no one called.  Phew.  A totally successful night with my cursed hand.  Good for me, bad for my opponent. 

There was a hand that didn’t involve me that I’ll mention.  One guy who came to the table was ridiculously aggressive to start out.  He bought in for $300 and raised, three-bet or four-bet almost every hand.  He won a few pots with his sheer aggression, but it didn’t take him long to lose his initial buy-in.  As he re-bought, another player at the table, a regular I’ve seen many times before, told him, “You’re too aggro.  You can’t possibly be getting hands all the time.  Your range is much too big.”

Anybody think it’s a good idea to tell a player that?  I believe that’s what’s known as “tapping on the glass.”  Why not let him keep betting like that with nothing and wait for him to give you some of his money?

Anyway, when he bought in a second time for another $300, he was a total different player.  I dunno if it was the other player’s comments that had affected him, or it was because he had gone through his first buy-in so fast, but he was much less aggressive this time.  He limped a lot, seldom raised, never three-bet. 

Except this one time.  The guy to my left raised, and the reformed aggro shoved.  He had nearly $300 and so did the guy who raised first.  The original raiser had pocket Queens and the guy on his second buy-in had Ace-King.  I guess he didn’t mind being in a race for nearly three bills.

The flop was all blanks, but there was a King on the turn and, for good measure, an Ace on the river.  That didn’t seem fair to me, but then, poker is seldom fair.

Just ask the guy who ran into his dreaded pocket Kings into my flopped straight.

In Memory of Jace Markgraf

Soon after I arrived back in Vegas last week, I learned the shocking, horrific news that Jace Markgraf had left this world.  He was 26 years old.

Jace was a part of the Vegas poker community, and of the MGM poker room family.  For years he was a fixture in their 2/5 NL game.  Everyone who played with him or watched him play agreed he was a terrific poker player.  He made his living “grinding” poker in Vegas.

I met Jace through my good friend Prudence.  After Prudence and I had become pals, she told me that I was one of her two best “poker buddies.”  Jace was the other one.

As my friendship with Prudence grew, she told Jace about me, and about the blog.  She told him of her blog name, and that many of Jace’s dealer pals had pseudonyms in the silly stories I told on the blog.  Without ever having read the blog, he told her that he wanted to have his own pseudonym on the blog—his own alter ego.

When Prudence told me this, I said it would be helpful if I actually met him first.  I had seen Jace in the poker room, but we never really encountered each other because we played different games.

Of course I eventually met him and one of the first things he said to me was that he wanted to be on the blog, he wanted a “secret identity.”  By this time he had read some of my blog posts and doing so actually convinced him even more that he wanted to be featured in a future blog post. I told him that for that to occur, he had to do something “blog-worthy.” 

That finally happened the first time that Jace and I played together at one of those crazy dealers games that I’ve been involved with from time to time.  My initial thought, before I had any story to write, was that I might just call him “Ace” since it was so similar to his real name and, of course, is a great name for a professional poker player.

But when the incident occurred that earned Jace his own blog identity, I came up with another name.  I gave Jace the name “Adolf.”  You can find that post here.  The story of the second dealers game that I played in with Jace is found here.

The name Adolf was of course not a reflection on Jace’s nature or personality or demeanor in any way.  It was simply my little joke, giving him the worst name I could think of because, in the first story, he hit a one-outer on me in a poker game to beat my flopped full house. 

Since learning about Jace’s passing, I’ve thought about taking down the two posts that feature “Adolf”—or editing them. I’ve decided against it.  Jace loved the posts where I wrote about him, he told me so himself.  And he actually liked the name I chose for him; he found it quite amusing.  He even told me that it was somewhat fitting since he has a German heritage—which of course had nothing to do with my picking that name.

Since Jace enjoyed those posts, and liked the joke name I gave him, I’m leaving those posts up.  I believe that Jace would want it that way. He’d want those posts to remain there as initially written—as part of the memories he left behind for all of us who knew him.

You see, among his other qualities, Jace had a great sense of humor.  He was incredibly smart, witty, and fun to be around.  He was a good guy—a really good guy.  And as I said, he was a helluva poker player.  After meeting him, I’d see him the poker room in the 2/5 game that I never played in.  I’d go over to say hi (or he’d come over to say hi to me if he saw me first) and he always had a mountain of chips in front of him.  We’d chat a bit and share our bad beat stories.

I didn’t know Jace as well as I would have liked, and I regret that I will never get to know him any better.  I can tell you for sure that everyone I know who knew him liked him and will grieve over his passing for a long, long time.  I never heard anyone say a harsh word about him—except perhaps at the poker table after he had outmaneuvered them to win a pot.  He did that a lot.

I offer my sincere sympathies to his loving family for their unbearable loss, as well as to all his friends who knew him better than I did and will miss him so much.  I feel especially sad for Prudence, who has lost a very dear friend. 

Everyone who knew him has a piece of their heart missing.  Losing him so soon is a bad beat for all of us.

Farewell, Jace.

Multiple Flights Tournament Twist

Doing my day job I came across what seemed to me was an unusual policy a multi-day tournament has, so I want to throw it out there and see if anyone is familiar with it.  And also to see what you think about it. 

Grand Sierra Resort up in Reno is having a fall tournament series in the beginning of October.  They have two tournaments with multiple starting flights, the opening event and the main event.

The first one has five starting flights and the main event has six.  In each case, you can enter multiple flights—you can enter every flight, if you want.   Also, you can re-enter the same flight for the first few levels, and you don’t even have to bust out.  You can forfeit your current stack if things are going badly but you can’t seem to lose that last all-in.  So if you’ve got just a couple of big blinds left, you don’t have to actually shove every time as the end of the re-entry period approaches and hope you finally lose.    Nothing unusual so far.

If you enter multiple flights and survive day one in more than one flight, you of course can only play day two with the biggest stack.  But here’s what I found that was different.  If you do bag chips from more than one starting flight, they will actually give you back money—more than the original buy in—in exchange for the chips you won’t be using.

So in the case of the opening event, the buy in is $260.  If you bag chips from more than one flight, you turn in the smallest stacks and they will give you $750 cash (which comes out of the prize pool).  So if you play two flights and survive both of them to day two, you’ll get $750 even though you only paid $520 in entry fees.  It’s better than a freeroll, they are actually paying you $230 to play.  If you bought in three times and survived at least two flights, you’d only be paying $30 to play in the tournament.

The main event is bigger so it’s a $380 buy in with a buy back of $1,000.  So if you buy in twice they could end up paying you $240 to play in the tournament.

Both tournaments have guarantees, by the way.  It’s $100K for the first one and $200K for the second one.

The purpose of this is to encourage players to play all the flights.

Of course, the catch is, in order to get money back (before the tournament is over, that is) you have to survive at least two of the flights.  And there’s no guarantee of that. 

If you play a flight and survive to day two, you have a pretty decent incentive to play at least one more flight.  You have a shot at getting back more money that you paid in—without cashing in the tournament.  Plus, you might end up with more chips the second time, and improve your chances of cashing in the actual tournament.

What do you think of this idea?  Ever heard of it before?