Pocket Kings to the Rescue

(Before I get started with your regularly scheduled blog post, I want to mention that Hollywood Poker has just put my blog on their list of Top 25 poker blogs/poker sites of 2013!  Thanks very much, guys!  I truly appreciate it.  You can check out the full list here. They were quite complimentary too. Amazingly, they managed to describe my blog with out mentioning how long-winded I tend to me.  They also managed to avoid mentioning breasts.)

This goes back to September 15, a Sunday night.  The day and date are important because of the Sunday NFL game.  You see, right before the season, MGM started their first ever football promo in their poker room.  It only runs twice a week, during the Sunday and Monday night games.  Every time a team scores, someone playing a cash game in the room is randomly selected to pick a mini-football out of a drum, which can be worth between $100 and $500 dollars (there’s only one $500, a couple of $400 and so on down to $100, which have the most chances).  And if a team scores a safety, two names would be randomly drawn, instead of one.

I would have played there anyway, but it did give me a little extra incentive to get there early enough to get settled into a game before the football game started, which I did.  But remember the game?  It was the Seattle-San Francisco game that was interrupted for an hour by a lightning storm.

So there I am playing there, hoping to maybe get lucky with the football promo.  Poker had not been kind to me since I arrived in town a couple of days before. 

So the first bad beat was that they delayed the game because of rain.  Since when do they have rain delays in football?  When did that happen?  Back in the day, you played football in any kind of weather.  It’s not baseball, for crissakes!  I remember watching the famous Ice Bowl between the Packers and the Cowboys back in 1967, which was played in temperatures below 0 degrees (that’s Fahrenheit) ,  When did it become the National Pussy League?

 

Anyway, the way my luck had been running, I wasn’t sure my bankroll would last until they finally restarted the game.  And sure enough, although I won a few small pots, my stack was dwindling and I was down to about $120-$130 when I was dealt pocket Aces in the big blind. There had been a bunch of limpers, so I made it $20.  Only one guy called, one of the limpers.

This guy had just gotten to the table a few minutes earlier with his buddy.  Both he and his pal were wearing New York Yankee caps, and they both had thick New Yawk accents.  The flop was King-9-x, x being a small card.  I believe it was rainbow.   I bet $30 and the New Yawker called.

A Jack was the turn card, but considering my starting stack and what I’d already put in the pot, I was committed.  I figured he probably had a King and hopefully he didn’t have King-Jack.  I thought Queen-10 for the straight was pretty unlikely.  So I went all in for the rest of my chips.

The New Yawker snap called.  Another Jack hit the river, but that wasn’t important.  He did indeed have Queen-10 for the straight.  So he called my $20 raise preflop with Queen-10 (off suit, I might add).  Then he called my flop bet with nothing but a gut-shot.  Which of course, he hit.  You want to play against players who play like that, right?  Right?

So that was bad beat #2.  The football game hadn’t resumed, so I just left and went to get some dinner.  My original plan had been to pick up some food at half time and eat during the game, so I wouldn’t miss my chance at the football drawing, but hell, the game wasn’t been played anyway.

The game resumed quite soon after I busted out, while I was sitting down to eat.  That was bad beat #3.  Then when the game resumed, does anyone remember what the first score was?  It was a damn safety!  Yes, a safety.  So that was bad beat #4—that they scored a safety, so if I had been logged into a poker game, I would have two chances to win the promo, not just one!  But since I wasn’t playing, I wasn’t eligible of course.

I made it back to the poker room soon thereafter, but while I was waiting to get into a game, they were was another score (a field goal, leading to a baseball score of 5-0—but hey, if they’re gonna have rain delays like they do in baseball, why not?).  And since I hadn’t gotten into a game yet, I missed out on a chance to be picked for the promo then, too.  Call that bad beat #5.

The new table I got into proved to be a wild one, featuring some crazy aggro action.  But I hadn’t quite figured that out the first or second hand, when I was dealt pocket 7’s.  I was in late position.  An early position player made it $15, and I was certainly prepared to call that.  Another guy called, and then the guy to my immediate right made it $45.  Ugh.

At this point, I had no idea how any of these people played.  I had no reads on any of them.  So I did the math.  According the Ed Miller book I had recently read (see here), you need to expect to win 12 times the bet you call preflop in order to justify set-mining.  I couldn’t expect to win $540 if I hit my set of 7’s.  But then, I didn’t really know, because I had no idea how these clowns played.  But I played it safe and folded.

The original raiser folded but the limper called, saying, “I don’t have a very good hand, but let’s gamble.”  So the two of them saw the flop, which of course had a 7 on it.  Also an 8 and a 9.  Also a flush draw.  There was big betting on the flop and they both went all in on the turn, which was a 6.  Note: both of these characters had me covered.  I was almost relieved to see the 6, thinking for sure someone has a straight and thus my set of 7’s were no good anyway.

But after they went all in on the turn, the river paired the 6, giving me a boat.  Except for the fact that my hand was in the muck, that is.  Anyway, the three-bettor showed his hand.  Ace-King.  The other guy looked at his hand, looked at the guy’s Ace-King and then….mucked.  He couldn’t even beat Ace high.  I guess he had the flush draw and missed.  I couldn’t believe it.  Not only would I have won a huge pot, but….I didn’t even need to hit my set of 7’s to win.  Yikes.  Call that bad beat #6.

I know you can’t think about that, especially since I made the right play.  Still, when you’re in the middle of a slump like I was, and you see some clown drag a huge pot with Ace high when you would have had a boat….well, it’s hard not to think about it a bit.

I didn’t get any cards to play for some time, and I was down to about $180 when I looked down and saw my old friends, the dreaded pocket Kings.  The guy who went all in with less than Ace-King in the previous hand I described made it $8 in front of me.  I made it $24.

It folded to the aggro who had initially raised to $15 in that previous hand.  By now I knew this guy was a total maniac.  So I wasn’t really surprised when he raised me, but the amount was a bit shocking.  He made it $100 (he had me covered).  The initial raiser folded, and it was back to me.

I’ve never folded pocket Kings preflop.  And of all the players I might conceivable fold pocket Kings to, this guy was none of them.  It didn’t make any sense to just call, I’d be committed anyway.  So I shoved.  For another $80 or so it was an easy call for him.

We didn’t show.  The highest card on the board was a 10.  More importantly (I assumed) there was no Ace on it.  I showed my Kings and he just mucked.

It was easily the biggest pot I’d won since I had gotten back in town.  And it felt good.  It felt really, really good.

I was thinking when I got back to my room I would edit the blog and change the tag “the dreaded pocket Kings” to the “welcome pocket Kings.”  Or the “wonderful pocket Kings.”  Or maybe the “awesome pocket Kings.”

Except I knew how fickle they could be and I knew it was only a matter of time before they’d kick me in the nuts again.

Anyway, didn’t get much else to play the rest of the night, and didn’t find any opportunities to make plays either.  I came close to getting back all the money I lost in the first session, but it felt like a win to me.  So I picked up my chips and booked a winning session to follow the losing session earlier in the evening (but hey, as they say, it’s all one session).

And by the way, the NFL game was a low scoring dud and of course I didn’t get picked.  But the following Sunday, my last night in town, I did get picked on the last score of the game.  I picked a football worth $200.

Win!

The Chairman of the Board

This goes back to early May, one of my last sessions in the MGM poker room before they moved away from the new nightclub (and thus, farther away from The Slut Parade).

There was one of those really, ultra-friendly guys at the table.  Wouldn’t shut up.  This can go either way.  Sometimes that can be annoying as hell, other times, it can be quite entertaining.  This guy was very entertaining.  I guess I should give him a name, and in fact he did tell everyone at the table his full name (first and last) and I remember it.  But instead of using his it, I’ll call him “Jake.”

Jake was kind of telling us his life story and it seems he had just retired to Las Vegas and was planning to spend his retirement drinking and gambling—at least for a year.  Then he’d see how much money he had left.  He told the story of a 30 hour poker session he had just had a few days earlier.  Unlike now, when he was playing 1/2, he was playing 2/5 and he met a couple of “professional” poker players.  I guess these guys were somewhere between the guys you see on televised poker and the local grinders that I often run into.  But to hear him tell it, they were quite successful, even somewhat well known.

They took a liking to Jake, and apparently one of the reasons was that Jake lost a lot of money to them.  He said he lost around $15k playing poker to these two guys.  He also said that this was the only losing session he had had since he moved to Vegas.  And apparently, that $15k loss didn’t hurt his bankroll “too much.”

The story Jake told was that they took him home with him (or one of them, I guess) and he crashed at their place to sleep off all the booze he had consumed during this 30 hour session.  They offered to take him under their wing and help him become a better poker player.  One bit of instruction they gave him:  Never drink while playing poker, especially when playing 2/5.  Of course they also told him to stick with 1/2 instead of 2/5.

They also bought him $1,000 worth of furniture for his Vegas apartment that he had just moved into.  Jake said they were using his own money since he had lost way more than that to them, but as a poker player myself, I don’t think that’s how it works.  Once you lose your money to me, that money is mine, all mine.

Jake told us that he retired from being a sales rep at a company that was a subsidiary of a major Fortune 500 company.  It’s a well known company and only because I don’t want to make it easy for some random reader to identify Jake, I won’t give its real name.  So how about I refer to this real company by the fake name “Boobies & Boobies” (fake boobies—get it?) because I have a reputation as an “ass man” I’m trying to live down.

The mention of the firm Boobies & Boobies prompted a person at the other side of the table to tell a story that one of his buddies told him.  Supposedly, the Chairman of the Board of Boobies & Boobies was playing poker right in this very poker room a few days earlier.  He was having a bad session and ran out of cash.  So he left with his body guard or his driver and went to Wells Fargo bank to get more money.  He came back with a brick of $100 bill and proceeded to lose all that money too. 

This story interested Jake because he knew the Chairman of the Board of Boobies & Boobies and knew that he had started out as a sales rep for one of their subsidiaries and worked his way up.  Well, to make a long story short (wait—when have I ever done that?), he got enough details out of the guy to realize that the losing poker player was not in fact the Chairman of Boobies & Boobies but was in fact….Jake!  Yes indeed.  In the telling of the story, a few details had gotten scrambled so that Jake, the retired sales rep formerly of Boobies & Boobies, was actually the head of Boobies & Boobies.  And the body guard was actually just one of the new friends that Jake had made losing $15k.  But yes, he did have to take a break at one point and go to Wells Fargo get $10K in cash in order for him to continue his poker lesson with his new found buddies. 

“That was me!” Jake exclaimed, several times.  Everyone at the table got a good laugh over that, the guy telling a story on a guy having no idea the guy he was telling the story on was right there hearing it.  As Jake said to all of us, “Well, now you’ve all got a good story.”  Yeah.  But who can I tell that story too?  Hmmmm…..

All the dealers seemed to know Jake, apparently that 30 hour session had made an impression on them.  And he knew the dealers by name.  When Mike came to deal, he said hello by name and said something like, “Hey, good looking.”  Mike turned red and said, “Why are you saying that to me when there’s all these beautiful girls around?”

You see, this was, in fact, a “Slut Parade” night, and as the evening wore on, we could see club goers walking through the room and starting to line up.  And Jake was definitely interested in checking out the young ladies.  He said that his wife has no objection to his looking, as long as there’s no touching.  His wife will even point out attractive girls to him.  Mike claimed his wife has the same attitude. 

We actually did play some poker that night and I had a good night.  I caught a set of 6’s in a limped pot.  I bet the pot, and the aggro at the table raised a little more than twice my bet.  The board had both straight draws and flush draws, so I didn’t think it wise to just call.  Besides, I thought the aggro would call, if not re-raise.  But no, my bet, about 2 ½ times his bet, didn’t get called.

Then I had pocket Jacks in middle position.  Jake had made it $6 in front of me.  Jake being more of a calling station than an aggro, I decided to just call.  If it had been the aggro I would have three bet there.  The aggro and one other called.  The flop was all low, and it was checked to me, so I bet $15 with my overpair.  Only the aggro called.  The turn put two diamonds on the board (in addition to the two hearts that were on the board on the flop) but my Jacks were still an overpair.  The aggro had been the big blind, and this time he moved all in for $55.

I thought about folding, but then I remembered who the villain was.  The more I thought about it, the more I thought about calling.  I realized there was too good a chance my overpair was good.  So I called and when I did he said, “I got a lot of outs.”  He probably had a straight draw in addition to a flush draw.  But when a black 3 hit the board, which was too low to make a straight, he just mucked and said, “I missed.”  Fortunately, he rebought.

I raised with pocket 10’s and the flop came J-9-8.  With both the pair and the open-ender, I bet out and got only one caller.  I played it conservatively after that, we both checked it down.  Turns out he had a Queen and was going for the gut-shot and my 10’s were good.

I was dealt pocket 6’s back to back.  The first time I caught a set and won a very small pot—no one called my flop bet.  Two sets of 6’s in one night.  Could I go for the hat trick?  No, I had to call a raise to see the flop the next time and missed.  I think I lost money in total on those two hands.

Then was dealt pocket 9’s in the small blind.  The aggro was UTG and had straddled, as he had done every time he was UTG.  I limped in for $3 and he made it $12.  I called.  We were the only two to see the flop.  I guess you could say I liked the flop.  It was Jack-9-9.

Of course I checked and the aggro bet out $21.  I took some time to call.  I was definitely Hollywooding, and perhaps I overdid it.  I looked at my cards and tried to make it look like I was thinking about folding.  But of course I called.

The turn card appeared to be a blank and again I checked.  The aggro had money in his hand and appeared like he was gonna bet.  But he looked at me and then checked.  I hope I wasn’t giving off a tell.

So on the river, another blank looking card, I had to bet.  I put out $50, hoping that was small enough to get him to call (or raise, even better).  But he folded.  Damn.  I showed the quads because they’re just to pretty to keep to myself.  Someone said to the aggro, “You weren’t getting him to lay those down.”  Ya think?

I called a small raise with King-Queen soooted.  There were a bunch of callers. The flop was 10-10-4, everyone checked, including the aggro who had been the preflop raiser.  Another 10 hit the turn.  Again, everyone checked.  The river was a 4, putting a full house on the board.  I reflexively checked, then realized that I probably should have bet.  This time the aggro bet $20 and the other two players folded.  I thought about it.  I figured there was a good chance the aggro was going to be playing the board.  So I called.   “You got a bigger pocket pair than mine?” he asked.

I showed my cards and said I was playing the board.  Well, so was he.  He had like Jack-7.  He said, “Well, at least I got two players to fold.”  I said, “I’m actually kind of mad at myself for not trying your move there first.”  And the two players who folded?  They were both pissed.

That was about it for the poker, I left up over $200.  I expected to see Jake again; I was sure he would be a regular.  But I haven’t seen him since.  He either ran out of money or found another venue to play.

Actually, I’d really like to run into that aggro again, I made most of my money off him.

Professional Losers

This was about a real fun nite of poker from late May.  I was playing with grrouchie .  I did a spot check and it doesn’t appear that grrouch ever blogged about this session.  So I guess at long last, it’s up to me.

There won’t be much poker in this one because there was really only one hand that was worth reporting, and I already did the blog post about that hand (see here).  This is about the fun we had at the table, with the group we had, it was really more like a 2/4 game than a 1/2 game.

Grrouchie had arrived first and was already playing when I got there.  I was called to his table almost immediately.  We started talking about our blogs and one of the players overheard us.  Somehow he got the completely wrong idea.  “Oh, am I playing against a couple of professionals?”

The dealer happened to be my buddy Troy, and he couldn’t let that go by.  “Professionals?” he said.  “More like professional losers.”

Grrouchie laughed but was probably a bit surprised since he didn’t know Troy. I thought it hysterically funny.  I knew it was all in fun, but the player who asked the question (along with his family) acted surprised, saying “Whoa.”  Troy realized it came out nastier than he intended.  “Well, I know him (pointing to me) and I don’t know him (pointing to grrouchie).”  Then Troy added, pointing back to me, “he knows what I used to call him.  What did I used to call you?”

“The Rock,” I said.  He called me that back in my 2/4 days when I routinely played less hands than anyone else at the table.  Then I added, “But I had to give up my wrestling career.”

I of course had to respond to that I said to Troy, “Let’s see if I ever tip you again when I win a pot.” 

“You have to win a pot first.”

“True.   So in five years, when you finally push me a pot, I’ll say, ‘Remember that time in 2013 when you called me a professional loser?  Well that’s why you’re not getting a tip now.’”

In fact, Troy actually did push me a couple of small pots before he left and I tipped him of course, and didn’t even joke about it.

The rest of the night, the player who had asked the initial question referred to the two of us as “losers.”  He would actually address us as that directly, as in, “Nice hand, loser.”  Or, if he lost a pot to one of us, he’d say, “Oh damn, I’m losing to a professional loser.”

The guy was there from Minnesota with his wife and his father-in-law.  The father-in-law was sitting between the couple.  He was teasing his father-in-law a bit but they were all having a good time.   At one point he must have felt he was teasing his father-in-law a bit too much, and he said, “I really shouldn’t be giving you a hard time.  I’ve very grateful to you.  After all, I have my wife because you got horny in 1983.”

The dad-in-law shot back immediately, “Who didn’t?”

The son-in-law said, “I didn’t. I was only 10 years old.”  I must admit, it didn’t look like there was a 10 year age difference between husband and wife.

There was some discussion at one point of grrouchie going to prison and being somebody’s “prison bitch.”  I didn’t make a note of why this came up at the time but now, many months later, I seem to think it had something to do with a discussion we were having about Pittsburgh Steeler’s QB Ben Roethlisberger, who hasn’t been to jail but probably should.  The Steelers are grrouchie’s favorite team, you know.  Grrouchie said he would be someone’s prison bitch for X amount of dollars, but I don’t recall the figure.

There was one really head-scratching hand that didn’t involve me.  Father-in-law raised to $10, another guy called, and a third guy made it $20.  The other two players called.  There was betting on all the streets, but not really all that much, and I don’t recall who did the betting.  The board seemed rather innocuous but the river was a King.  Modest bets were made and called on the river.

At showdown, both the father-in-law and the guy who made it $20 preflop showed….pocket Aces.  The guy between flipped over pocket Kings for a rivered set of Kings.

Huh?

How did those three players not get it all in preflop?

The guy with the dreaded pocket Kings simply said, “I knew I didn’t have the best hand.”

Again, huh?  If he knew he didn’t have the best hand, why call all the way down waiting for his two-outer?  The guy who three-bet the flop said, “Well, I didn’t want to get sucked out on.  Whenever I push with Aces, I lose.”

I dunno.  I think this is one time when he could have gotten Kings to fold if he had played it aggressively.  He might have even gotten the father-in-law to fold his Aces!  The father-in-law offered no excuse for his timid play.

A very strange hand.

The husband bought his wife a massage, and it didn’t take long for a comment about a “happy ending” to be made.  Then the husband decided to have the same girl give him a massage based on the wife’s recommendation.  There was a joke about the massage girl being better than the “girls on Spring Mountain.”  I’m not sure if that was before or after he asked the girl to work his “glutes.”  The wife didn’t mind.  The guy started moaning and groaning as if he really was going to have a happy ending.  At one point the massage girl said to him, “You sleep on your left side, don’t you?”

He said, “How did you know that?”

She said, “I know a lot of things.”

Apparently that was what grrouchie needed to hear.  He got a massage next.  This actually prevented me from getting up and going to the Mens room, something I needed to do.  I was kind of locked in.

The husband was also talking about needed to go, and trying to figure out when the right time to leave the table was. He said there needed to be something like a “poker catheter.”  He suggested that they could have celebrity endorsements.  “I’m Chris Moneymaker and this is the poker catheter I used to win the World Series of Poker.”  And then they could auction off the actual bottle that was strapped to his leg (assuming there was one) on Ebay.

When grrouchie was finished with his happy ending, I mean, his massage, I was finally able to get up and use the Men’s Room.  When I got back, I was surprised to see that he was gone.  I texted him to see if he had busted out.  No, it turns out that his girlfriend (I think this was before they became engaged) was available at the last minute, so he took off.

When a woman came to take the seat that grrouchie had vacated, the husband told her, “The guy who just left that seat left to make a booty call.”  The woman was indifferent to this.

But I did confirm with grrouchie that he had indeed told the family from Minnesota that he left to make a booty call. 

I was about even all night, until the guy paid me off when his Ace-King rain into my Aces (again, see here).  And I left not long after that, having had both a fun and profitable session.