Monday, June 19, 2006

Mashin and All-Nighter Are Now Official!!

I am now officially adding two new words to my mental dictionary: all-nighter, and Mashin. I use these words enough where they can now be officially added to my library of literary uses.

Last Saturday Darsky decided to come to Chumash to hang an all-nighter with me. He called me on Friday to let me know what time he'd be up, and about an hour later I got a call from our other poker buddy Kirk. He told me he was lookin to go Mashin on Saturday as well. I let him know that Darsky was already planning on coming and told him to meet us in Santa Barbara so we could all hit the road to Chumash together.

Dar showed up in SB at around 5PM on Saturday and we decided to grab some food before we headed out. We had our usual poker conversation as we ate and Kirk showed up as we were finishing. Kirk decided he was going to drive up there separately, since apparently he wasn't up to stay until 5PM the next day. A quick stop at the pad and off we went.

The ride up there in Dar's Bullitt is always nice, and coming off of two weeks in the red it felt good to take the walk from the parking structure to the casino entrance. I was really feelin like I was going to play solid and take some cash home at the end of this session. I sat in an open 100/200 buy-in NL game, and was shortly switched over to the 300/500 buy-in when a seat opened up. There was a couple regulars in the game already.

Sam is an older, tan-skinned gentleman with a middle-eastern accent. He has this air about him like he doesn't have to work because he has enough money, but at the same time he respects money and enjoys the game, even for the low-limit stakes. He likes to gamble, but overall gambles in the right spots and can usually be seen with $1,000+ in front of him in the 300/500 game. If there was a bigger game at the Mash he'd probably be playing in that. We both respect each other and like to have friendly rivalry at the table.

Larry is an older, pudgy, nerdy-looking white guy with thick-framed glasses. He's the kind of guy that you always love to see at a table, because whenever he has all of his money in it's usually when he's drawing dead. I love to walk in and see him a the 300/500 buy-in. He's a nice enough guy, but a horrible card player. But as long as he's got money to spend, we'll all be there for him. He goes there with his buddy John H., who's a middle-aged, overweight guy with glasses, who is barely better than Larry, but has enough cash to blow. I see them dump at least $2,000 a week, and that's only for the days that I'm up there. I have no idea why they keep going, but more power to him. This night John was playing the 100/200 though. I don't respect either of these two with regards to poker playing ability, but we're all very friendly with each other and constantly have friendly conversation at the table.

I took a seat in the 7s, which is, of course, my preferred seat, along with the 2s, 3s, and 8s. I bought in for $400, and started assessing the table. We had Sam in the 1s, Larry in the 3s, and a bunch of unknowns. There was an idiot kid to my immediate right who I'd sat with at the 100/200 buy-in just previous to my table-switch, and a gambling biker to my immediate left. It looked like an easy enough table, but I kept running into terrible, tough-decision situations. I had to lay down 99 to a board of 2-2-5 after dumping $120 into the pot. Then this hand came up:

I'm sittin on a little under $500, and the idiot kid to my right open-raised for $20. I'd seen him make stupid raises all night and was comfortable playing him post-flop. I saw Kh10h, and called off the raise on the button. Sam had limped and noe came in for the raise as well. The board came up K-K-J, putting me in pretty decent position. Although as soon as the flop came I saw Sam make this weird motion and immediately put him on KJ. He checked it, and the kid almost immediately bet out $50. I was strongly feeling that he had aces, yet I still thought Sam had KJ and was thoroughly confused about the hand at this point. Knowing I had position on the kid to the turn, I decided to flat call the $50 and see what Sam did. If Sam raised I was definitely going to fold, knowing that he wouldn't make that raise without having K10 crushed. I definitely didn't put him on JJ because he would have most certainly reraised that preflop, as Sam would have hated taking JJ against two players to the flop. But no raise came as Sam called as well.

The turn now came off a Jack, giving me Kings full and completely voiding out Sam's KJ, should that have been what he had. He checked again and the kid now insta-bet out another $70. I decided to bump it up to $180, knowing that if the kid had Aces, he was way dumb enough to stick around with them and give me some more money. Sam flat-called, as did the kid.

The river was now another Jack, making the board K-K-J-J-J. As soon as the river hit, I instantly felt sick to my stomach. Sam checked again, and now the kid bet out again!! He made it $100 to go, and now with $850 in the pot I was not laying down to this frickin kid. I relunctantly called off and now Sam decided to raise it to $250 when it got back to him and I was in a world of hurt!! I only had about $190 left now, and there was no way I was calling off $150. But at the same time there was no way I was going to put my whole stack in after I had put Sam on KJ the whole way down. After the raise the kid thought about it for like 10 seconds and then flipped over his AA as he threw it into the muck. The rest of the table yelled at him since I was still in the hand. I called for time and went back and forth from convincing myself that he didn't have the Jack to pleading with myself to follow my original read.

I was dead on about the kid having AA, and now this was a huge pot. If I were to commit the rest of my stack to this hand, the pot would be $1,390. I apologized to the table for the wait and sat for about an entire two and a half minutes before finally mucking. Sam smiled and flipped over KJ. There was a couple of regulars who had come over to watch the hand unfold, and they all gasped. Sam asked if I had the King, and I bunched my lip and nodded. He told me that it was a good lay-down, and I told him nice hand.

I took a minute to go for a walk and release the stress of that whole situation. I was 50/50 on whether or not I played that hand well, and would appreciate any feedback in the comment box. I thought I had played it right and I was happy that I trusted my reads, but I was confused on the flop and on the river, which isn't good. I thought and rethought the hand for a bit, and then headed back to the table. Shortly after that, Larry went bust drawing dead to Sam (as usual), and then Sam took out the idiot kid who had left himself with $150 after that hand with his AA.

I busted out about another hour later after a cold run and 50/50 gamble with my remaining $150. I have a part II to this story as well, which I'll try to write this weekend.

Until next time.

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

An Old Re-Find and a Party Poker Tourney

I'm not gonna write anything too great here, just thought I'd share a re-found find if you all aren't reading it anyways. Table Tango is an awesome blog. She's a dealer in Vegas and she's been blogging for a long time; most of it's poker related (obviously), some of it's not. I read a few entries here and there a while back, but since I've become so close with the dealers and the staff in the poker room at the Mash, it's sparked my interest yet again.

I haven't played at Chumash since Friday. It's killing me, seriously. I have small plans tonight, though, so I can't go tonight. I might go up tomorrow night, but my car sucks and I don't feel like driving it a lot so I might not go.

I put $200 online to play a quickie session of Omaha HL on Party and quickly found a $5/$10 10-handed game. I got caught up in a pot where I had the nut boat capped three ways on the flop and turn, and figured to be chopping up a pretty decent pot until the third guy caught a 2-outer on the river for a higher boat, which got me a whole bunch of nothing but a lost $100. After I finished playing Omaha I was still down around $100 and decided to put the last $100 into a $109 buy-in MTT. 363 entrants, over $9k for first. My goal was to get to the final two tables and that's exactly what I did. For three and a half hours I kept pretty quiet. Once the money hit I started doubling up with smart play, and throughout the whole tournament I'd hadn't had my money in against a worst hand the whole time and I hadn't gotten into any coin flips all tournament.

Sitting on the button with about 47,000, and blinds at 2,000/4,000, a MP raised it up to ~13,000, and I see AK. I thought for a second and decided to push it. He had to call off about half of stack, and he did so with 88. I flopped the A, and then he turned an 8 and I was sent packing in 15th place. I made a tiny bit of money, but was disappointed that I had gone all tournament without getting my money in on a flip, and I finally was in one and hit my ace, only to have him trip up on the turn. Sad. I would've rather had the $9k. Oh well, you gotta win coin flips to win tournaments.

In short, I need a new car soon. I need to win coin flips. Go read Table Tango.

Until next time

Monday, June 12, 2006

Blegh

Well the last couple of weeks haven't really been good to me. I've had ups and downs, but more downs than ups. I keep having these losing sessions that bring down my morale, because there's so many bad players at the 2/5NL game at Chumash that I feel like I should never leave loser. Obviously that's an unreasonable request in a gambling game, but still, it brings me down. I'll be taking a couple days off to recuperate, and will be heading back up there on Wednesday.

Joe and I went to Dani's wedding on Saturday, who's one of the night shift dealers at Chumash who we've come to be pretty close with. Her husband is a blackjack dealer, so there were more blackjack dealers than poker dealers there, which made us fitting in a bit more difficult since we consciously try not to get to know the blackjack dealers, if y'all catch my drift. We felt out of place for the first little bit of the reception, but a special someone showed up about half an hour after we arrived, and then from there we caught up with some familiar poker staff so we settled right in. After the reception we headed over to Tim's house, who's one of the poker room's floorman there. That was good times and good conversations, as it usually is with Tim. Plus, at the end of the day I had a reason to get a bad-ass grey suit, so the whole day just worked out.

Later that night Joe booked a decent cash in a $50 MTT on Party good for $2,500+, while I'm still sitting here despising online poker. Watching him rolling online makes me feel like giving it another shot online. I'm putting a lot of thought into playing lots of MTTs, but I just don't like playing online so I don't see that happening. Ya never know, though, I might be able to get up to Tre's level of ass-kickery if I practice long enough. :)

This entry's gonna end short, although there is some stuff I want to write about later. But for now I'll leave it short.

Until next time.

Tuesday, June 06, 2006

A Poker Weekend: Part 2

Here's the rest of the weekend recap from Part 1

After Paul's 2 tournies there's always a small cash game, usually dealer's choice, and I'll usually play it. This night, however, Darsky and I had different plans. We were goin straight to Morongo to pull an overnighter and to keep a full poker weekend concentrated on playing good, solid poker, and not messin around with useless games. We wanted money.

The last time we hit up Morongo for the weekend back in December, I took a pretty decent hit, and Darsky took a small profit. That suited neither of our expectations so needless to say we were eager to get back into action there again. Last time we had a whole weekend of play, but this time we decided to just opt for a long night and morning of play, and if needed we would get a room. We took off from Paul's at around...midnight? Maybe. I don't really remember.

I followed Dar back to his place and left my car there and we were off. I started dozing off half way there thanks to a long night of drinking and reminiscing with the boys. When I woke up an hour later I started looking around and realized that it looked a lot more like we were heading to Barstow than to Cabazon. "Dude I asked you if it was North or South at the fork and you said North!!" Oh......sorry Dar, I was sleepin. So we turned around and Darsky let out a (somewhat frustrated) laugh. Time to pass out again. I woke up as were nearing the nicely lit up casino, and by this time it was 4AM. I dunno about Darsk but I felt well-rested and ready to play some cards!! (Haha I know I'm such a bastard)

It was refreshing to walk into that casino again, especially after cramming Chumash for months straight. Don't get me wrong, I love the Mash dearly, but it was definitely a welcome refreshment to get out to another playing ground. Considering it was a long weekend we figured that the poker room would be packed, and packed it definitely was. It was 4AM and there were games a plenty. There were three 2/5NL games going, and Darsky and I found an open table and sat at the 2s and 3s. I bought in for $200, and quietly sat and played next to this crazy, loud, obnoxious Iranian guy for twenty minutes before that table broke. We moved to another table with split seats, I took the 7s and Dar took the 3s. There was a very loud, and horrendously annoying lady in the 9s who obviously didn't know what she was doing, and hardly had any understanding of the concepts of poker. That's supposed to be great for players like me, but she was really getting on my nerves just being there and being alive and around me at that moment. I know that's not a good way to play poker, and I'm usually ok and would welcome that, but I think I was just tired.

The 4s quickly opened and I literally jumped out of my chair to occupy that one instead. Darsky was in the 3s, so having someone readily available to talk to and joke around with eased my nerves. Sitting on about $160, I limped the A6c from mid position, only to have the crazy lady in the 9s raise it up in the SB. It folded to me and I called. The board came up Kc-Xc-X. Crazy bet out maybe $40, and after a second of thought I pushed my remaining hundo. She insta-called and turned over JJ. A bit suprising, but actually not really. It went blank blank and it was time for a rebuy.

At this point I looked around and realized that somewhere within the hour that we had arrived, the poker room had widdled down to about 4 running tables. The entire room was practically filled when we showed up, and now the games were few and far between. It was really odd.

I rebought for $300 more and was ready to get my money back. The table was running weird though, and throughout the next half hour I managed to lose my second buy. By the time I lost it the table had gotten down to 4-handed, and I got tangled up in a QQ vs KK situation to an undercard board. Knowing that playing with Darsky in a 4-handed game wasn't good conditions, I decided to take a break and go over why I had lost so far. I took a quick breather and went back to the board. There was a 1/2NL, a 2/4, and a 3/6Kill going. I took an open seat in the 3/6Kill and plugged my iPod into my head. After about twenty minutes of mindless limit action, I looked over at the ongoing (now 3-handed) 2/5NL game where Dar was still seated, and saw him pickin up his chips. I sensed a sign, food was in order!!

It was time for sweet breakfast! We headed over the the cafe and discussed some plays, some players, and my overall hastely dumping of money in the first couple of hours. I enjoy my conversations with Darsky, because he always has insightful things to say, whether it be about life, poker, or whatever, he always just says good stuff. I try to soak it in every time I talk to him. He explained some things about my situation at the table, and we discussed a few hands. It's always good and I value those poker conversations because I feel like I can really benefit from what he says. It was rejuvinating and vitalizing and pumped me up to play some more after bagging a $500 loss just an hour before.

I downed a Red Bull and some french toast, and we were back to the action half an hour later. By now there was only a 1/2NL, a 2/4, and two 3/6Kills going. We put our names up on a weak 2/5NL wishlist, and as we waited we both noticed a smokin hot little chicky playing the 3/6 right in front of us. We (I should really say I, as I think my interest was a bit more peaked than Dar's) oohed and awed over the little hotty, and eventually after waiting for our game to open up, I saw a seat open at the 3/6 and took it as an open invitation to play with my little inflatuation. Not long after that another seat was open and Darsky took that one. Seeing Darsky in a low-stakes limit game made me laugh, but no matter what we're playing time at the table with Dar is always good times. Plus we got to stare and talk to a hot chick playing poker.......what more can you want.

A little while later she left and Dar piped up asking what we were still doing at the game now that she was gone. Good point. As I was looking for a rack the names were being called down for an opening of a 2/5NL game. Yessss. This time I took the 1-seat (or the knee-banging seat) and Dar took the 2s. The Morongo game is always fun because with $2 and $5 blinds, they have a no-max buy-in, which usually creates some decent action, and is a much welcome change from the limited buy-ins at Chumash. I bought in for another $300 (a pretty comfortable buy-in for my play) and was really ready to play some solid poker after my reassurance by Dar over breakfast. Nothing really big happened, but I flopped a couple sets against horribly scary boards and took it down on the flop both times for small profits. Other than that I just grinded it out. Darsky took some really stupid, stupid beats, and ended up a small loser on the trip, while I barely squeaked an even run for the trip on my last hand.

I raised preflop with the AQs, and got called by only the SB. He only had about $100 behind after my preflop raise to $20, and he pushed it all in on a flop of Js-10s-X. I put him on a jack (funny story, Darsky knows it) and pretty much called instantaneously figuring that I had to be ahead in the hand. He flipped over J6o, and I turned a Q and rivered a flush, so that pot brought me back to even on the trip. I ran the hand in an odds calc when I got home and saw that I was a %62.22 favorite to take down his J6 offsuit after the flop, so my thought process was right. We both headed home as tired, poker-playing bastards, who just booked a fun weekend of cards and good times. An In-N-Out stop before I took off back to Santa Barbara, and that was that.

Tonight Joe and I are headed to the dealers' game with the dealers from Chumash, so that should be great fun as well.

Until next time.

Monday, June 05, 2006

A Poker Weekend: Part 1

2 weeks and no update? I must be dead...

After a pretty mundane short week, I headed out to Simi on the 26th to meet up with Casey late at night after a smallish loss at the Mash. I got there at around 11PM and cruised over to Doug's house where Casey and his girlfriend were at a party. Doug, Casey, and I all used to work at Mervyn's back when I was living in Simi and attending CSUN, and the three of us had a hell of a good time. I hadn't seen Doug since I moved out to Santa Barbara, though, so it was really cool chillin with him again. I recently had come into contact with an even older friend who I hadn't seen for two years, and I also told him that I'd call him next time I was in Simi. I called him from Doug's and told him I was in town at a party. He said, "Oh, Doug's party?" .......ok Simi is too small of a city. Apparently he knew Doug from a while back and word had gotten out around a ring of people that Doug was having a party. Andrew dropped by and we all hung out for about an hour and a half.

After a little while Casey brought up that Nick was having a get-together at his house, so Decker(Andrew), Casey, Summer(Casey's girlfriend), and I all headed over to Nick's. We all hung out, had some drinks, played games, and told stories of old times and joked around. It was great fun, and since I haven't seen Decker for two years, and Nick and Casey for months, I really had a blast. Decker and I crashed at Casey's place, and we gathered up Nick and couple others and headed to my dad's pizza shop for lunch. It was great food, and everyone gave compliments. My dad just opened it recently so it was cool to have good reviews of the food, which seems to be the general consensus so far.

After lunch I spent some much warranted time hanging out with Decker. We chilled at his house for a while and caught up on lost time. He had to go to work so he took me to retrieve my car, which I had left at Doug's the night before. It was around 3:30PM and Paul's game was at 6. I headed over to my dad's house where I saw Pam and my little sister Ally, both of whom I haven't seen for quite some time either. I showered up and hung with the family for a little bit. And I also bought some socks. I really wanted some new socks.

We had Paul's home game later that day where I met up with Darsky. The two of us have been having some mixed feelings about the setup at Paul's lately, mainly the lack of players. A little info about the usual game: The game is a $50 buy-in NL tournament, which at it's peak was bringing in 30+ people. We run the tournament twice with a side game going amongst those not "fortunate" enough to still be in the tourney, the side game consisting of either $1 No Fold 'Em Hold 'Em (I'll explain that in a later thread) or $0.25 dealer's choice games. The number of players was increasing at a steady rate until we hit a 40-person mark when we had a game featuring professional poker player Amir Vahedi, who is close friends with one of the regulars.

Nowadays the numbers have decreased immensely, due mostly to an intentional effort to keep the game smaller, as the environment was becoming a bit too crazy once it hit the 40-person mark. Certainly no one can blame a guy for wanting to keep his house and garage to a reasonable decibel level, but as of late the tournament has been lacking so many players that there barely is a tournament! We only play once a month now whereas we used to play every other week. Therefore the attendance is a bit more important than it used to be. In April's game, however, we had only 8 people. It was known that Paul had purposefully not been telling people about the game, but to players like Darsky and me, 8 players simply doesn't constitute a worthy tournament. We both let him know that if he didn't call people this next time around that he would be down another two players.

This time Paul was more or less coerced into calling people, and although he only called a few, we ended up with 14 players for the first tournament and 12 for the second, which was at least better than last time. Dar and I had talked earlier that week and had planned on going to Morongo after Paul's game for an overnight session. Had we not had enough players, we agreed, we would have just left to Morongo and completely skipped the tournies. Once we showed up and figured our game for 14 players, we were both sufficed to stay and play. Coming off of a 3-week rush at Chumash I was feeling pretty good to play that night. Darsky and I have been trying to get heads up at one of these tournies for the longest time, but we always seem to start at the same table, even when we had 3-4 tables going, and of course with 2 tables nothing changed. We both started at the same table but managed to play some great poker and dodge bad luck at the same time, and wouldn't ya know it we ended up heads up! We've been meaning to do this for quite some time, but somewhere along road to heads up Darsky or myself always takes a dumb beat and can't hang to the final two. Tonight was different, and we started heads up with me having a considerable chip advantage. After about a fifteen- to twenty-minute match, I couldn't put him away and Dar took first place. I was happy with my play for the whole match, though, and I gladly took second place to the master of poker.

Most of the other players were being very annoying when Darsky and I were fighting our epic battle, and it irritates me to mention it because I think it lacks class and makes the bunch sound like little impatient kids, but Dar mentioned briefly in his weekend recap, so you might be able to find what I'm talking about. Anyways we started up the second tourney after a brief food break, and once again Dar and I ended up in the top three. When it was lookin like we might end up heads up for the second time of the night, the third player, who was a very horrible player and easily beatable over time, had too many chips to overcome and took out Darsky in third, and myself in second. So overall I had two second place finishes, and while I was proud of that I was also half-expecting it because of the way that I feel like I was playing going into it.

This past week hasn't been to good for me up at Chumash. Joe recently quit his part-time job and has decided that he'll be living off of the 2/5NL game there, which I think is easily doable for his level of skill. Him going up there more should mean that I'll be playing on quite a regular basis as well, so the last week's losses should be easily rebounded this soon. I wish I had more time to write, but I gotta go play some cards!

Until next time