Tunica, Screw You!

Well, I am not going to sit here and moan about my bad beats, even though I had a lot of them. I played some bad hands as well, and that hurt me too. I have learned one thing:

(1) Fuck NLHE cash games. I am sure that is where the big money is at. I fucking hate them, though. Spend an entire day playing at a table, slowly building your stack (and rebuilding your stack), only to have one hell of a fluke wipe you out. Not my cup of tea. More on this later

(2) This trip only confirmed to me that I love Omaha Eight or Better. Yes, I bombed out of the O8 tourney I played. But that was all to do about the cards and not the play. I have never had an experience like that. I never (and I am not exaggerating here) had an A2 that gave me a nut lo where I was not quartered. I understand that at times you should expect that someone else will have A2 as well at a full table. But every single time? That is definitely a statistical anomoly. I just love the way the game flows and plays, even when it does not go well. I cannot say that about NLHE.

(3) The O8 cash games were juicy. I only played the 3/6 table with a full kill. For those who don't know how that works, in a limit split pot game, if someone scoops a pot of a certain size or higher in a game with a kill, then the next hand that is played is played at a higher limit. If it is a half kill, then the limits are increased by 50% for the next hand. A full kill means the limits are doubled. In this game, the scooped pot had to be $40 or more (this included the rake and jackpot rake). If this happened, then the next hand was played at 6/12. The person who killed the pot had to put a mandatory $6 out, while the small and big blinds also still had to post their normal 1/3 blinds (unless they were the killer). The action started to the left of the kill. The kill had the option of raising (it basically was a forced straddle). After the flop all the action takes place as normal in terms of position, but the limits of betting were in $6 increments. Turn and River betting were in increments of $12. Asyou can see, this was definitely a game much larger than you typical 3/6 game, but it was so much fun. Almost all of the money I won playing in Tunica was playing this game. I hope that the next time I go (in the very distant future) I will be playing in the 10/20 O8 game. I cannot remember if they had a kill in that game or not.

(4) I will be taking a break from playing live. I plan on spending some time at home doing other things. I will be playing online, but that is not quite as bad as I can break away fairly easily to do stuff around here, while when I am away there is no such luxury. I had my fill of playing live last week, logging in on 24 hour day of playing, and a couple of other 14+ hour days. Very little sleep - lots of coffee - I am glad to be home.

Anyway - I lost what little money I took with me. I lost my last $350 on my last hand (playing $1/$2 NLHE). It was sick. This is the only bad beat story I am going to tell, simply based on how it went down. I played it bad too, which is why my entire stack got in the middle:

I flop a set of 4's on a KJ4 board, re-raise the cutoff who I checked to, and he accidentally calls me. How is that? He misread my raise and put a small amount into the pot thinking he called me, when only called about half my raise. He was told by the floor he had to keep the amount he put into the pot already in the pot. So he just goes ahead and calls. A Ten hits the board. I check and he gets $60 (about half the pot). I think for about 20 seconds and put him on 2 pair (KT or KJ) or top pair with an OESD (KQ) and was willing to gamble that he was not going to hit on the river, or at least make him pay to see it. I shove my stack in (I actually had him covered by a little, but it was a $200+ raise). He insta calls me and flips over Q9. He had raised pre-flop with that hand, which turned out to be my downfall, because I just could not put him on that hand. I had thought he might have had AQ, but it seemed more likely to me based on his demeanor he had a semi-strong hand when he phantom called me on the flop, and not a completely inside-straight drawing hand. Give me limit O8 anyday over NLHE. Next time I will wait for the game I want rather than just hopping into another game because I am impatient.

I am glad to be back home - I will not be travelling to play for awhile (unless I somehow end up with some money to play the Razz tourney at the WSOP). Otherwise, I will be nickel and diming myself online.

Steak