An unbeatable game
What a night.
Last night, a good friend and fellow media compatriot decided to host a friendly game at his house, and I have never seen such horrible play be so richly rewarded. Obviously, I took a bath.
But first, a quick update on the penny Omaha saga. I didn't play any last night, due to the aforementioned live game, but I did the night before. At first, things didn't go so well. I lost my first $2 buy-in with a flush, to a rivered boat, and lost the second one pretty much the same way. Staights, flushes, everything I held was getting beat, usually with the river card. Sets were falling to higher sets, and flopped boats were getting sunk by bigger river boats. To top it off, I split nearly every low hand I won. It wasn't a pretty sight.
Finally, I decided the night required drastic action. I popped the cap on some Michelob Amber Bock, fired up three tables at once and went to work. Playing three tables at once actually helped my game, I think. Omaha hands are god-awfully slow, thanks to the fact that practically everyone sees the flop and about half of them makes it to the river, drawing to a variety of hands for high and low pot. Plus, in the penny game, most of the folks who are actually trying to play well are converted hold'em players usused to the four-card pocket or the restriction of playing exactly two of them, so it takes them a while to calculate all the permutations. Needless to say, it can get a tad boring waiting for a hand to finish up after you've already folded, and when the next one comes up, it's easy to talk yourself into playing a mediocre hand, just to have something to do. Playing three tables, however, allowed me to pare down my starting hands considerably. Quite a few times, I threw away fair-to-middling starting hands I probably would have played normally, just because I was involved in a bigger hand on another table, and that allowed me to save quite a few bets.
It was a little difficult to keep track of how much I was up or down, however. Despite Kenny Rogers' advice, I do count my money all the time, and I think anyone who wants to be a good player should. Money is, after all, how we keep score in this game, and if you don't know where you stand, how can you judge how you're playing? Anyway, it would get to the point where I was up considerably at one table, up a little at another and cut in half at the third, and I struggled to keep track of whether I was up or down overall. At one point, I ended up making back all but a $1 of the $4 I had lost earlier, but then the cards started running cold, and I got down even further. I finally busted out of one table, so I just kept playing two. And then I ran into a stretch of three hands that put me up for good on the night. The first was when I flopped quad deuces. Naturally, I just checked and allowed everyone else at the table to do all the work. By the time the river came around, four people were all-in and only one other remained. Just so he wouldn't feel left out, I bet enough to put him all-in as well, but regretfully he declined the invitation. Next hand, I flop a set of Qs. Flopping sets in Omaha is such a horrible thing. They're well disguised, so people do not run from them, and if you pull in a pot, it's usually a big one. Because it feels like such a strong hand, especially to a converted hold'em player, it's easy to get married to it, but it is so easily cracked and often is. My trip Qs were endangered when a guy made a straight on the turn, but the board paired on the river, giving me a boat and the pot. After that hand, he types in a sarcastic "nice catch," but I didn't feel guilty. I figured I was due to do the sucking out. "Do unto others as they have been doing to you all damn night." A nearly identical situation developed on the next hand, when my trip As became a boat when Qs paired on the river. I led out with a pot-sized bet and everybody folded. The great thing about those three hands was that there was no qualifying low hand to share the pot with, and I ended up $5 on the night.
But back to the live game. There were four of us -- two fellows I play with quite often who are both pretty good and who usually play different styles from me or each other, so it's a good mix. Of the three of us, I have been the most consistent winner, but they are good enough to win about half the time they play and when they do, it's usually for large amounts. The other guy was a fellow who had never played the game before. Guess who ended up with all of my money? The newbie, the guy who never saw two cards he didn't like, the guy who even after three hours of play still could not quite grasp the concept of the blinds, the guy who didn't know what a flush was. I mean, this guy pulled some stupid moves, which isn't an insult against him, since the game was completely foreign to him. We all did stupid things when we first began playing. But the pots he lucked into always seemed to be the ones that cost me a bunch of money. To make matters worse, my two friends, whose play I normally respect, responded by playing just like him. The game became a crapshoot, and i crapped out.
I did win one big pot that allowed me to play until my 1:30 a.m. cutoff time, but that was the highlight. That hand I had A8 of spades. I was already frustrated by this point, and figured I was going to bet any ace strong for the rest of the night, so i bet $2. (I forgot to mention, we play a no-limit game with .25/.50 blinds, and the normal buy-in is $10. Despite being a quarter game, we've had plenty of nights where several people have gone into their pockets several times, so it's not hard to walk out up or down $50 or $60.) One guy calls. The flop brings an ace and two spades. I move all-in and he quickly calls. I figure I'm beat, but he turns over the 3-5 of spades for his own flush draw. Well, I'm way ahead at this point, but there's a two on the board, and if one of the next two cards is a 4 and no more spades fall, I'm finished. The new guy was dealing at this point and he tosses down the Ks on the turn to give me the flush. I'm about to start scooping the pot, when he realizes he didn't burn a card first. We talk about what to do for a few minutes. My friend Heath, who was the other guy in the pot, was ready to just let it go, but I insisted on removing it from the board. I was ahead either way, but I wouldn't have felt right taking what was to that point the biggest pot of the night with such a huge question mark hanging over it, so I insisted on burning the Ks and playing the rest of the cards as they would have fallen. And this way, he still has a chance to win and the question mark is gone. Well, the turn is a third A, which helps, but I figure it's just setting me up for the inevitable 4 on the river, the way my luck has run all night. However, the river turns out to be the fourth A. Hooray for me!
Still, that only slowed the bleeding. My other friend Sheldon cracked my pocket kings twice, and no, not with Ax. The first was a 35 (two pair on the flop). The second was with a J4 (third 4 on the turn). And it get worse from there, but I don't really want to rehash the misery. All the way home, I was extremely pissed, depressed and confused. I just couldn't understand how I have gone from consistently winning money (I hadn't walked out a loser in a single home game since May) to not being able to do anything at the table. It wouldn't be so bad if it had been an isolated session, but I'm still smarting from my recent crash and burn online. The whole drive, I was pretty much convinced to just give up playing cards completely. It wasn't fun anymore, which I think is part of the problem, and all my experiences with the game lately have been losing ones. It's easy to see how I would be discouraged.
But a strange thing happened this morning. I woke up and, for the first time in weeks, I actually felt like playing poker. For some reason, I felt like a huge weight, the one holding down my game, had been lifted. I can't really quite explain it, and it's still very possible that I'll lose the next time I play. But for some reason, I just don't feel like that's the case. The only way I can describe it is to say that the past few weeks it has felt like I've been in a tunnel, the Tunnel of Losing, if you will, but today it felt like I had finally emerged from the other side. There's no real reason for me to feel that way, since nothing has happened to make me think I can win again. But right now, I feel like I could get back in the game and do well. I still think poker is a highly psychological game, and perhaps I have been in some mental funk which has prevented me from winning, or at least from only losing small. Maybe, just maybe, I have been beating myself because of this funk.
Wishful thinking? Perhaps. But I suddenly don't want to quit playing anymore. I am actually looking forward to the next time I get a chance to play. I don't quite know when that will be, and I think taking a break from the game would probably do me some good. But the itch to play is back. The feeling of "having to play" in order to make money is gone, replaced by a sincere desire to play the game, even have fun playing it.
I'll keep you posted.
Last night, a good friend and fellow media compatriot decided to host a friendly game at his house, and I have never seen such horrible play be so richly rewarded. Obviously, I took a bath.
But first, a quick update on the penny Omaha saga. I didn't play any last night, due to the aforementioned live game, but I did the night before. At first, things didn't go so well. I lost my first $2 buy-in with a flush, to a rivered boat, and lost the second one pretty much the same way. Staights, flushes, everything I held was getting beat, usually with the river card. Sets were falling to higher sets, and flopped boats were getting sunk by bigger river boats. To top it off, I split nearly every low hand I won. It wasn't a pretty sight.
Finally, I decided the night required drastic action. I popped the cap on some Michelob Amber Bock, fired up three tables at once and went to work. Playing three tables at once actually helped my game, I think. Omaha hands are god-awfully slow, thanks to the fact that practically everyone sees the flop and about half of them makes it to the river, drawing to a variety of hands for high and low pot. Plus, in the penny game, most of the folks who are actually trying to play well are converted hold'em players usused to the four-card pocket or the restriction of playing exactly two of them, so it takes them a while to calculate all the permutations. Needless to say, it can get a tad boring waiting for a hand to finish up after you've already folded, and when the next one comes up, it's easy to talk yourself into playing a mediocre hand, just to have something to do. Playing three tables, however, allowed me to pare down my starting hands considerably. Quite a few times, I threw away fair-to-middling starting hands I probably would have played normally, just because I was involved in a bigger hand on another table, and that allowed me to save quite a few bets.
It was a little difficult to keep track of how much I was up or down, however. Despite Kenny Rogers' advice, I do count my money all the time, and I think anyone who wants to be a good player should. Money is, after all, how we keep score in this game, and if you don't know where you stand, how can you judge how you're playing? Anyway, it would get to the point where I was up considerably at one table, up a little at another and cut in half at the third, and I struggled to keep track of whether I was up or down overall. At one point, I ended up making back all but a $1 of the $4 I had lost earlier, but then the cards started running cold, and I got down even further. I finally busted out of one table, so I just kept playing two. And then I ran into a stretch of three hands that put me up for good on the night. The first was when I flopped quad deuces. Naturally, I just checked and allowed everyone else at the table to do all the work. By the time the river came around, four people were all-in and only one other remained. Just so he wouldn't feel left out, I bet enough to put him all-in as well, but regretfully he declined the invitation. Next hand, I flop a set of Qs. Flopping sets in Omaha is such a horrible thing. They're well disguised, so people do not run from them, and if you pull in a pot, it's usually a big one. Because it feels like such a strong hand, especially to a converted hold'em player, it's easy to get married to it, but it is so easily cracked and often is. My trip Qs were endangered when a guy made a straight on the turn, but the board paired on the river, giving me a boat and the pot. After that hand, he types in a sarcastic "nice catch," but I didn't feel guilty. I figured I was due to do the sucking out. "Do unto others as they have been doing to you all damn night." A nearly identical situation developed on the next hand, when my trip As became a boat when Qs paired on the river. I led out with a pot-sized bet and everybody folded. The great thing about those three hands was that there was no qualifying low hand to share the pot with, and I ended up $5 on the night.
But back to the live game. There were four of us -- two fellows I play with quite often who are both pretty good and who usually play different styles from me or each other, so it's a good mix. Of the three of us, I have been the most consistent winner, but they are good enough to win about half the time they play and when they do, it's usually for large amounts. The other guy was a fellow who had never played the game before. Guess who ended up with all of my money? The newbie, the guy who never saw two cards he didn't like, the guy who even after three hours of play still could not quite grasp the concept of the blinds, the guy who didn't know what a flush was. I mean, this guy pulled some stupid moves, which isn't an insult against him, since the game was completely foreign to him. We all did stupid things when we first began playing. But the pots he lucked into always seemed to be the ones that cost me a bunch of money. To make matters worse, my two friends, whose play I normally respect, responded by playing just like him. The game became a crapshoot, and i crapped out.
I did win one big pot that allowed me to play until my 1:30 a.m. cutoff time, but that was the highlight. That hand I had A8 of spades. I was already frustrated by this point, and figured I was going to bet any ace strong for the rest of the night, so i bet $2. (I forgot to mention, we play a no-limit game with .25/.50 blinds, and the normal buy-in is $10. Despite being a quarter game, we've had plenty of nights where several people have gone into their pockets several times, so it's not hard to walk out up or down $50 or $60.) One guy calls. The flop brings an ace and two spades. I move all-in and he quickly calls. I figure I'm beat, but he turns over the 3-5 of spades for his own flush draw. Well, I'm way ahead at this point, but there's a two on the board, and if one of the next two cards is a 4 and no more spades fall, I'm finished. The new guy was dealing at this point and he tosses down the Ks on the turn to give me the flush. I'm about to start scooping the pot, when he realizes he didn't burn a card first. We talk about what to do for a few minutes. My friend Heath, who was the other guy in the pot, was ready to just let it go, but I insisted on removing it from the board. I was ahead either way, but I wouldn't have felt right taking what was to that point the biggest pot of the night with such a huge question mark hanging over it, so I insisted on burning the Ks and playing the rest of the cards as they would have fallen. And this way, he still has a chance to win and the question mark is gone. Well, the turn is a third A, which helps, but I figure it's just setting me up for the inevitable 4 on the river, the way my luck has run all night. However, the river turns out to be the fourth A. Hooray for me!
Still, that only slowed the bleeding. My other friend Sheldon cracked my pocket kings twice, and no, not with Ax. The first was a 35 (two pair on the flop). The second was with a J4 (third 4 on the turn). And it get worse from there, but I don't really want to rehash the misery. All the way home, I was extremely pissed, depressed and confused. I just couldn't understand how I have gone from consistently winning money (I hadn't walked out a loser in a single home game since May) to not being able to do anything at the table. It wouldn't be so bad if it had been an isolated session, but I'm still smarting from my recent crash and burn online. The whole drive, I was pretty much convinced to just give up playing cards completely. It wasn't fun anymore, which I think is part of the problem, and all my experiences with the game lately have been losing ones. It's easy to see how I would be discouraged.
But a strange thing happened this morning. I woke up and, for the first time in weeks, I actually felt like playing poker. For some reason, I felt like a huge weight, the one holding down my game, had been lifted. I can't really quite explain it, and it's still very possible that I'll lose the next time I play. But for some reason, I just don't feel like that's the case. The only way I can describe it is to say that the past few weeks it has felt like I've been in a tunnel, the Tunnel of Losing, if you will, but today it felt like I had finally emerged from the other side. There's no real reason for me to feel that way, since nothing has happened to make me think I can win again. But right now, I feel like I could get back in the game and do well. I still think poker is a highly psychological game, and perhaps I have been in some mental funk which has prevented me from winning, or at least from only losing small. Maybe, just maybe, I have been beating myself because of this funk.
Wishful thinking? Perhaps. But I suddenly don't want to quit playing anymore. I am actually looking forward to the next time I get a chance to play. I don't quite know when that will be, and I think taking a break from the game would probably do me some good. But the itch to play is back. The feeling of "having to play" in order to make money is gone, replaced by a sincere desire to play the game, even have fun playing it.
I'll keep you posted.
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