Friday, October 12, 2007

Greg online

Greg plays with free money on line no limit and he writes:

AND I wanna tell you about a good game I had last night on Pokerroom.com, 5 at a table, $10,000 buy-ins.
I came in about 9pm and lost a couple buy-ins, i.e., $20,000 and then started to build my stash.
Another fellow lost about $50,000 and then starts to build.
Buy 10:30pm he and I have $50,000 each; by midnight we have $120,000 each. Other guys are coming and going like flies as we swat them and watch each other carefully -- trading a couple grand now and then.
Then the big hand just after midnight. He checks. I hold an A, 8 and bet $2,000 -- 3 players fold and he calls.
Flop: 9, 10, J. He checks; I bet $4,000; He calls. (no flushes available).
Turn: A; He checks; I bet $6,000; He calls. (now, he's not a slow better; but it's instructive to know that when you're playing a loose player like me, slow can be very good.)
River: A; So I've got 3 Aces and an 8, 9, 10, J.
with 9, 10, J, A, A on the board. I can see about 6 ways to beat me.
Finally he bets! $10,000. I raise to $20,000. He goes all in. I call. So there you have it -- $240,000 in the pot.
He's holding a Q, K. (straight to the Ace) I'm busted!

*************
We talked about overvaluing a small straight draw. In NL the small straight is a real killer.

The fact is that the fellow had Greg beat on the flop. He might have dccided to go all in then. I think he should have decided by the turn. If Greg is still betting, he should have put Greg on trips and made him pay high for the river card. Instead, he goes all in after the river makes any full house and even when Greg's possible Full House is very probable. In fact, he rerasises a 20 grand bet that Greg should only have made as a value bet if he had at least a full house. This was a poor bet on other guy's part and he was just lucky Greg was also playing poorly.

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Head to Head with Greg

At the last minute Greg said he could play for an hour or so yesterday. We set up the game in his little cabin in the back. It was a mild day so it was comfortable. No mosquitoes. I arrived at 2 PM and left at 10 PM. That is what an "hour" of poker means in Gregg's dialect. The money went back and forth quite a few times. We had about $150 on the table for the last half of the play, so those were major all-in pots. I remember some all-in hands:

I flopped the low end of 8-9-10 and he had the J-Q.

He had trip sevens and I had pocket tens for a boat.

Once he tried an all-in bluff when I was waiting with eights full of aces.

The little cabin gets dark in the evening. A small propane lantern gives us just a bit of light. Once after the deal, Gregg started to flop thinking he was dealing that hand with his red cards. I corrected it and beat his pocket queens, but we ran the rabbit on the red deck just to see. He would have flopped 4 queens had he dealt that flop, but three of them would have been red queens.

Toward the end of the evening, we went all-in and I won. Our chips were about even and Greg said, "Just take all of mine," but I insisted we count in case he had some left after he paid me off.
He did.
About $7 worth.
And with that $7 he retook almost all the chips on the table.

Finally, we were about even and I left to pee in the bushes. I don't know what happened. Something with the dog I guess, but when I got back the table was overturned and all the chips and cards as well as the propane lantern were on the floor.

So we split the money in the bank, went to laugh over a few stories on the porch bench overlooking the wetlands, and called it a night.