it’s the beginning of a new age

greetings, 2011.

i think this year is going to bring some incredible things. i have never felt better about my poker game, and after some holiday travel in december i’ve been excited to get back to work. the last two weeks i’ve been working nonstop, putting in some serious hours online and live. i took this morning off to go see black swan, which was a pretty twisted and cool movie. i’m surprised it took me this long to see it, since i’m a big fan of the films i’ve seen by aronofsky (pi, requiem for a dream). i never particularly cared for natalie portman, though i guess the last time i thought about her was like 10 years ago when i lived in boston and she was all smug and snooty about being a harvard student. oh and then when she was just godawful in star wars. but to be fair, the character was godawful; there’s prooobably not too much you can do with padme. ick. but anyway, this was a great role and she did a great job with it. and she looks fucking good, i mean she’s gotta be like.. my age! heh. so two thumbs up from thegroupie.

i grinded (ground?) for like 14 hours online yesterday which made me feel slightly out of whack, so today was a good little break to clear my head. now i’m having a glass or three of champagne and thought i’d take a moment to update the interwebs on my exciting life before i head off to the card club.

i went back to the east coast for the first couple weeks of december to visit family and friends. and one thing i did while i was there was hit up the WSOP circuit event in atlantic city! i would have liked to play more events, but i had limited time on the east coast, and my sister was coming with me to atlantic city (and to new york afterward), so the trip wasn’t all business. with that in mind, i decided to just plan to play the ladies event on saturday, december 11, which was a $230 buy in. my sister and i drove up to atlantic city from DC late on friday night, and i was dead tired but thankfully decided to take care of registration for the tournament that night, because it took me over an hour to figure out where everything was. naturally i headed to the poker room, but then was informed that they were not doing registration for the WSOP events there, and that i had to go to the main casino cashier in harrah’s. at the main casino cashier, there were a bunch of drunk juiceheads in line (oh yes, we picked up some hip jersey shore slang while we were up there) and no one was manning the window for tournament registration, so that took forever. once i finally got the registration taken care of, it took about another half an hour before i found the area where the tournament was going to take place. sheez! then it was off to bed in our rather unimpressive hotel room. the poker rate for friday & saturday was $99 a night, which was cheap compared to usual hotel prices in AC for the weekends, but the room was one of the crummiest i’ve stayed in for that price. no frills, dingy, and the thin walls afforded us way too much familiarity with our neighbors’ bedroom activities. the ONE good thing about the room was that we had a refrigerator that you could actually put things in without getting charged money, because naturally we had a bottle of champagne to celebrate my imminent ladies event win :)

from comments on my twitter and from checking the WSOPC website, i was expecting a bigger field in atlantic city than in lake tahoe. this event was also double the buy-in that the tahoe ladies circuit event was, so with those two factors i was excited for a much bigger prize pool. the tournament began at 11 am on saturday morning, and i barely had time to finish half the bagel i’d grabbed beforehand as i had failed to allocate enough time to account for the snail-paced service at the one coffee shop in the casino. i was beginning to see a pattern at harrah’s: everything took fucking. forever.!!! i hightailed it to the tournament room, which was not the usual poker room at harrah’s, but a hotel-convention room type thing filled with tables. i actually didn’t catch the total number of entrants, but i think it was somewhere under 200 – it looked like 12 tables give or take. the structure was actually quite good for a ladies event – rather than having a turbo-ish structure akin to the daily/nightly tournaments as was the case in tahoe, the ladies event in atlantic city had the same structure as the ring events. this was of course great for me, as better structures and lower starting blinds allow for more play and less reliance on picking up cards.

when i got there (a couple minutes late) i was displeased to find that not only did they not have carts to put my coffee cup on (it is pretty standard in poker rooms to have little carts on wheels that patrons can put their drinks and/or food on), but they also did not even have any of the plastic cup holders that sit on the tables. the dealer joked that i could keep it on the table, because they were $100 clap-trap tables from wal-mart and it didn’t matter if it spilled. they *were* pretty cheapo tables. i just kept my coffee under my chair, which was fine, but that was just another issue that, while seemingly minor, could be very easily rectified and would help things run smoother and make for a better environment for the players. at harvey’s in lake tahoe they had bins full of the plastic table-top cupholders for the players to use, not to mention they provided free food during one of the breaks. in atlantic city, no such nothing.

but as poker players we adapt to our environs and make the best of them, and my attention quickly turned from my awkward coffee situation to my adversaries at the table. from the start i could tell that this would be a tougher field than i faced in lake tahoe, but i don’t know if it was actually possible to face a *less* tough field than tahoe ;) so i was prepared to face people with slightly more of a clue. i didn’t pick up much of anything in the way of cards for the first hour of the tournament, but that was fine, because with my headphones on at a low volume i was picking up massive amounts of information on my opponents. if there’s anything about ladies, they LOVE to talk. a couple of them were local tournament regs, a couple were in these sort of ladies poker leagues, one had come with her husband who was playing a bunch of events. they were all around 40-50 years old, most if not all had kids, who of course they enjoyed talking about nonstop.

while collecting info on your opponents is great, it is only worthwhile if you can use it to your advantage while playing poker. i think i was able to do that pretty effectively; there were a couple spots where i was able to bluff and pick up pots when i could tell that my passive opponent was not going to give me any resistance. for several hours i was playing smart and chipping up. but as always seems to happen with me, i get in a gross spot and make the wrong decision. so a few hours in, maybe near 4:00pm or so, i was hanging out with a pretty decent stack, probably average chips. i had been chipping up and winning the blinds and small pots here and there, but hadn’t been overly active, and hadn’t been involved in any big pots. that’s fine with me, but the blinds were going up faster than i was accumulating chips. there was certainly no need to panic and play any differently than normal with 30bb, but i was starting to get slightly concerned about my stack size relative to the blinds. i had to make something happen pretty soon or i’d find myself getting into short stack mode.

so it happened that a weak-passive, “stereotypically female” player limped in early position, and a lady who i knew was a tournament reg and seemed to play by the book tag, raised it to 3x. it seemed like a small raise given that there was a limper, and while i hadn’t been paying particular attention to this player’s bet sizing, the standard open for the table was at least 3x, so a 3x *after* a limp was on the small side. i put the limper on what-the-fuck-ever-who-cares and the tourn reg raiser on a medium pair or some other medium-strength hand, trying to isolate the limper without committing too many chips. she seemed predictable-tag and i was fairly certain she would have raised bigger with a premium hand. in late position, i looked at my cards and had AK. now, that’s a very good hand, but with my stack size i was in an awkward spot. a 3bet would have been 1/3 of my chips, essentially committing me to the hand. online it’s a spot where i would very often shove that stack size over a standard raise, or 3bet hoping to induce a shove. but in this situation, i had about average chips, and the raiser had me well covered. i didn’t need to flip 30bb against a medium pair, especially when i felt i had a skill advantage against the field. i call. everyone else folds.

we go to the flop and it is K hi with two small cards, with two diamonds. there is no reason for me not to love that flop, and the raiser leads for something around 2/3 the pot. given her pre-flop aggression and general TAG-ness, i’m expecting her to cbet with pretty much all her hands, and with AK i am almost certain i have the best hand unless she has flopped a set. i don’t want to scare her off, so i elect to call and let her keep bluffing if she is bluffing and/or control the pot if she has a set. the turn is another small diamond and she checks. at this point, given the action, i am fairly convinced that she has a medium pair lower than a K, something like 77-TT (because i think she would have raised more with JJ+ preflop), and is now is either in check-call mode or shutdown mode. i bet large, maybe 2/3 the pot, figuring she might call but would probably just fold. she insta minraises me.

now, this is a weird spot. this is becoming kind of a trend online and people do this ALL the time – the insta minraise or check-insta-minraise postflop – as a total bluff or with whatever medium strength hand, figuring that you’ll fold if you don’t have the nuts or at least top pair. these players are quite easy to identify and exploit. but that’s online; this lady is a fortysomething live tournament reg. would she know that move? is she just playing big stack bully? i was getting worried, but for a minraise i wasn’t about to fold top pair top kicker. i called.

the river was an offsuit blank and she asked what i had left. i nudged my big chips into her view; i had 4k in big chips and a few stacks of smaller chips left behind, and i think the blinds were at 300/600 at this point. she instantly tossed 4k into the pot. now i had a rough decision. she had a lot more chips than me; was she just trying to barrel me off the hand? was she ever value betting for 90% of my chips? wouldn’t she bet much smaller if she wanted a call? the line she took was so weird that i was having trouble putting her on a hand. i tanked for a couple minutes, i figured if she had a set so be it, but the way the action had gone i was pretty sure she either had a medium pair i could beat, or something like KQ or KJ which i could beat, or – what i was starting to think was a very likely possibility – that she also had AK.

i thought it was likely enough that i had either the best or the same hand, and if i folded i would have to give up a giant pot and be left with 10bb. i didn’t like it, but i called. she turned over AQ of diamonds for the nut flush. to be honest, the flush didn’t even cross my mind, though it should have. i have to give her credit for confusing me enough to pay her off! i shipped her all my big chips and was left with 4 or 5 bb in little chips, which i shoved in shortly thereafter with AJ only to be bested by K3. and that was the end of that!

so that was my ladies event. maaaaaybe i could have gotten away from the AK when she checkraised me on the turn, or maybe i could have folded the river. but with my stack size, after flopping the K i think i was committed to the hand. i could definitely have folded to one of the more tight passive limpy players, but the woman i was up against in that hand was aggressive and savvy enough to make those bets with a hand that i could beat, so that kind of fucked me up.

on the plus side, i busted before the dinner break, so my sister and i went and had a nice dinner and drank our bottle of champagne! we went down to the poker room, which was buzzing nicely on a saturday night. we drank some dranks and i made a little money back at $1/2 while she sat behind me doing sketches (she’s an artist) of the degens at the table. we went to NYC the next day and saw some old friends and had a great trip, and overall i was happy i stopped in atlantic city, despite not cashing. i’m still so new to the tournament circuit that i feel like every tournament i play increases my knowledge and experience exponentially. i’m planning to play as many as my bankroll will allow in the coming year!

well, that took awhile to write, and now i’ve had a bunch more champagne than i anticipated. watch out card club! and watch out 2011!

xo,
thegroupie